John Henry Newman and when heaven might be hell
Although I’m not Roman Catholic myself, I was gladdened nonetheless to see the announcement that Pope Leo XIV is to name (St.) John Henry Newman the 38th Doctor Ecclesiae Universalis (“Doctor of the Universal Church”). The pope’s revered namesake (the thirteenth Leo in the papacy) was the pontiff responsible for making Newman a Cardinal in 1879, so it is fittingly complementary that another Leo will do him this last honor. I have held Newman in high esteem (and affection, too) for many decades, although as a feckless Anglo-Catholic twenty-something putting on airs, I was known to refer on occasion to his departure from Anglicanism as a “defection.” More fool me. I couldn’t foresee then my own future “defection(s),” first to Rome in Newman’s footsteps, then for a time back to Anglicanism, only to find my home (and it truly is home) in Orthodoxy. I’ve been drawn, it seems inexorably, toward the latter for forty-plus years, yet stubbornly resisted the pull to “go the distance” for far too long. But I’ve told that tale already. This post is really about a sermon Newman preached at Oxford in, I believe, 1825 (which would make this, serendipitously, its bicentennial anniversary), when he was still in Anglican orders and only twenty-four years of age. It’s a remarkable sermon, daring to imagine that for some heaven could prove to be a hell, and that God in his mercy would never inflict it on such persons in their unprepared state.
