Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Monday 23 August 2021

Hostility to Newman from his Tractarian brethren


Stephanie A Mann, creator of the blog Supremacy and Survival has an interesting note therein about the actively hostile reaction of some of St John Henry Newman’s associates in the Oxford Movement to his reception as a Catholic in 1845. It can be read at Some Contemporary Reactions to Newman's Conversion

Not only is this interesting in terms of that specific parting of friends, but it ties in with a tendency I have observed amongst some - some I stress, not all by any means - Anglo-Catholic clergy to be hostile to, or critical of Newman in the present day. This is not so much a matter of dogma or belief but is more personal in its nature. After nearly two centuries you might think the wound would have healed. This is not from those traditions which might be further removed from Newman, such as the Evangelical* or the Broad Church, who might disagree mightily with Catholic belief and practice, but from those whose group identity flows in the main from the Oxford Movement. The concept or the critique of the “Lost Leader” is a strong idea in human life.

* I was told the story of one ardent leading light in the Christian Union at Oriel a year or two before I went to the college who was known to pray that Oriel would be forgiven for producing John Henry Newman….



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