John Henry Newman has been made a Doctor of the Church. But who is he and what does it mean?

As an undergraduate, John Henry Newman would look from his bedroom window and consider the flowers. White snapdragon, in particular, which adorned the wall that divided Newman’s student digs at the University of Oxford from the neighbouring building.  

The stability of the plant gave him dreams of academic glory – “the emblem of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University”, he recollected. He became a Church of England priest but, after his conversion to Catholicism in 1845, he was all but hounded out of a university which, in those days, could only receive worshippers of the Established Church.  

Instead, Newman now awaits the exalted role of ‘Doctor of the Church’, which Pope Leo recently announced he would bestow upon him. It follows his canonisation in 2019. 

Prayerful practise 

To understand what this title means, we have to remember that the Church works things out in prayer. And, at the last gasp of the 13th century, the special status of four Christian saints were sealed in prayer. The theological heavyweights - St Ambrose, St Augustine, St Jerome and St Gregory the Great - had their feast days upgraded to the ‘gold standard’ of the Church’s calendar (a category reserved for the commemoration of Jesus’ birth, or the apostles, and which had certain liturgical demands).  

Newman was unaware God would need to prune away worldly ambition before putting those gifts to the task of helping the whole Church 

This bit of prayer admin might not mean much to non-liturgical Christians. But it amounted to an official proclamation: the Church had named her first ‘doctors’ – from the latin docere, meaning “to teach”. These chosen four were granted a special status in recognition of their teaching, which held a distinguishing mark. Since then, the process has been clarified. If a Christian saint is renowned for their teaching, while also walking in a manner worthy of the calling to which every believer is called, then they too can receive the title, ‘Doctor of the Church’, by a Pope’s proclamation.  

For Catholics like myself, it’s the language in which we thank God for people who have this gift; we say in our liturgy that they were great Doctors, and that is, if you like, rubberstamped by the Pope. Their work will, of course, have an authoritative character as a result. But we should be careful not to mistake the title for an insistence that these thinkers never put a foot wrong, or that every one of their works is a theological masterpiece.  

Far from it. 

A long history 

Since Pope Boniface VIII granted those first four divine doctorates in 1298, 34 more have earned theirs: St Thomas Aquinas, as well as an old Archbishop of Canterbury known as St Anselm. The first female doctors were formally recognised in 1970; there are now four, including St Thérèse of Lisieux, putting paid to the idea that women have no role to play in Catholic teaching. 

St John Henry Newman is to become the second English Doctor after St Bede, the Anglo-Saxon monk and historian. It reflects a longstanding respect for Newman’s voluminous output, the subjects of which ranged from early Christian heresies to tertiary education.

While he was, first and foremost, a thinker totally beholden to divine revelation, he taught that the full range of human thought should be recruited in the service of receiving it. We are not to be startled by new scientific knowledge or non Christian philosophy - these things, where they are true, can help us understand Christian truth. For truth cannot contradict truth.  

Newman was, first and foremost, a thinker totally beholden to divine revelation 

It is easy for me to picture a young Newman in his student accommodation, plotting a glittering scholarly career. How unaware he was that God would need to prune away worldly ambition before putting those gifts to the task of helping the whole Church attain more fully to the knowledge of the Son of God.  

But then, I have stood in that very accommodation. In 2014, I arrived at Oxford as an undergraduate, to take up residence in the exact same room as Newman a century earlier: staircase 14, room nine. The snapdragon was still there. At the time, the strange plaque on my door which bore his name was a curiosity, and I went about my fairly normal British university experience with no interest in God - or the people that followed him.  

But the prayers of the saints are not in vain. 

University is often wasted on the young. It is only now – after my conversion to Christ – that I see a little of how God redeems the time we think we have misused. He did it in me, but far more glowingly in St John Henry Newman. I suspect Newman will continue to be a light for a few others as he was to me – and I give thanks to God, with all the more confidence after the Pope’s announcement, for this great Doctor of the Church.