Cause for Newman's beatification gets its miracle, green light

The Times (London) reported on October 19, 2005, that the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman may soon be England's first canonized saint since the Reformation. The article's author, Richard Owen, reported from Rome:

The Vatican is preparing to give England its first post-Reformation saint by putting Cardinal Newman -- the 19th-century priest whose conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism shocked Victorian England -- on the road to canonisation, thanks to a long-awaited miracle.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, who is in Rome attending a Synod of Bishops, said that he had raised the issue of John Henry Newman's beatification -- the step before sainthood -- three years ago with the late John Paul II, who described Newman during his visit to Britain in 1982 as "that great man of God."

Candidates for beatification must, however, as Owen noted, be shown to have been responsible for at least one miracle, usually a medically inexplicable cure. The article continued:

Although a dossier on Cardinal Newman's beatification was first opened in 1958, no miracles had, until now, been attributed to his intercession. "I had to tell John Paul that the English are not very good at miracles," Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said. "It's not that we are not pious, but the English tend to think of God as a gentleman who should not be bullied."

Yesterday, however, the cleric responsible for arguing Newman's cause, Father Paul Chavasse, the Provost of Birmingham Oratory, which was founded by Newman in 1848, said that a deacon in the Diocese of Boston in the United States had testified that he had recovered from a spinal disease after praying to Cardinal Newman. "At last we have a miracle cure," he said.

Read more here. (A tip of the hat to "New Catholic")

Brief Newman bibliography:

• Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford Univ. Press, 1990)
• Ian Ker, The Achievement of John Henry Newman (T. & T. Clark, 1996)
• Ian Ker, Newman and Conversion (T. & T. Clark, 1997)
• Ian Ker, Newman And Faith (Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs 31) (Eerdmans, 2005)
• John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (Penguin Classics, 1995)
• John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (University of Notre Dame Press, 1989)
• John Henry Newman, Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (University of Notre Dame Press, 1979)
• John Henry Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843 (University of Notre Dame Press, 1998)
• John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (Ignatius Press, 1997)
• John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000)
• John Henry Newman, Loss and gain: The story of a convert (Longmans, Green & Co., 1903) [Autobiographical novel; may be the best place for the non-specialist to begin with Newman. Unfortunately the work is out-of-print, but is readily available through a good library.]
• John Henry Newman, Newman to Converts: An Existential Ecclesiology (Real View Books, 2001)
• John Henry Newman, Conscience and Papacy [Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, edited with notes by Stanley L. Jaki]
• John Henry Newman, The Mother of God [Newman's writings on Mary, edited with notes by Stanley L. Jaki]
• John Henry Newman, The Heart of Newman: A Synthesis, ed. Erich Przywara (Ignatius Press, 1997) [Excellent compilation of selections from Newman's works]
• John Henry Newman: Selected Sermons, ed. Ian Ker (Paulist Press, 1993)
• Stanley L. Jaki, Newman's Challenge (Eerdmans, 2000) [See also Jaki's The one true fold: Newman and his converts (Real View Books, 1998)]
• Meriol Trevor, Newman's journey (Collins, 1977)