My pastor until I moved from SC. Fearless and smart as a whip.
If you’re a Catholic, you know that most priests are pretty lame homilists - if you get a good sermon, it’s the exception, not the rule. You just don’t generally get the lively, fiery preaching you see in a lot of Protestant churches.
Newman didn’t have a Billy Graham style, but he was an excellent public speaker, and his sermons were always well-thought-out and very incisive. And amazingly enough - given his background - very old school Roman Catholic - you would have thought he was a pre-Vatican II Catholic.
In fact, Newman grew up in a conventional Southern Protestant household (I’ve forgotten the denomination), became an atheist in high school, went to an Ivy League school (Princeton?), and in college returned to Christianity as an orthodox Catholic.
Having lived a good portion of my life in the heart of the Southern Baptist Bible belt, I have no doubt that those Southern Protestants who’ve made the move to Rome have been a real benefit to the Catholic Church - Newman’s a prime example. And I have nothing but admiration for those Protestants who’ve made common cause with Catholics against the corrosive secular influences eating away at our culture, abortion being the worst.
Some of the strongest Catholics I know are those who have come from other faiths.