Pope Benedict clears way for Cardinal John Newman to become first English saint in 40 years

Daily Mail ^ | July 3, 2009 | Simon Caldwell

[C19fan]

Pope Benedict XVI today announced the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman. The declaration means that the Anglican vicar, who shocked Victorian England by converting to Catholicism, will be given the title 'Blessed'. It also puts Newman just one stage away from becoming the first English saint in about 40 years.

[C19fan]

Read the article. Goes into depth how Cardinal Newman's writings had a big influence on His Holiness. It would be nice if Newman was still around to give an intellectual pummeling to Dawkins and others of his ilk.

[Artemis Webb]

[AnAmericanMother]

The good Cardinal beat Charles Kingsley to a bloody pulp. He’s done his share.

[AnAmericanMother]

It's interesting to me how the British papers always use a picture of Cardinal Newman as a very, very old man, ill and infirm, instead of one of his portraits from when he was given his red hat -- or the splendid portrait sketch by George Richmond when Newman was in his forties -

[Chode]

because they are all or at least were CoE???

[AnAmericanMother]

There's a strong strain of anti-Catholicism in Britain. The aforesaid Charles Kingsley (whom Newman beat up so badly) was a good example. Brilliant scholar, excellent author of children's books - The Water Babies, Westward Ho! - loving husband and father, good pastor. But he had an absolute screw loose about Catholics. And he had a lot of company.

My personal opinion is that it mostly stemmed from politics, not religion. You had the power struggles during and after the English Reformation, the wars with Spain, then the Irish problem, by the time all that was over a good Englishman reflexively hated Catholics.

[Radl]

I think you should call it Irish genocide. Maybe they have a guilt problem.

[agere_contra]

The Irish what?

No-one here in Britain feels guilt about the "Irish Genocide", any more than Israelis feel guilt about the "Gaza Genocide".

This is because (like the mass killing of the Palestinians we read so much about in the quality papers) this putative mass extermination of the Irish people has never happened, except in the fevered brains of NORAID apologists. Indeed, NORAID and its ignorant supporters have blood on their hands for ever suggesting such a thing.

[CaptRon]

Could you say more about this. I googled Kingsley but found nothing about it.

[AnAmericanMother]

What led to the Famine was the Irish system of land tenure plus one-crop agriculture.

And I agree, there was never any "genocide". Some wrong-headed government policies by people honestly trying to help, and some foolish nationalists who also honestly were trying to do the right thing. And a sprinkling of malicious people on both sides just to aggravate everyone. But no genocide.

[AnAmericanMother]

Kingsley and Newman had a very public spat in MacMillan's Magazine in 1864.

What really set it off was Kingsley's writing about something Newman had published and so far forgetting himself as to say (paraphrased) "like all Romans, Newman teaches that truth is no virtue."

THAT put the cat amongst the pigeons. Kingsley was an excellent writer and an effective polemicist, but he was entirely out of his league once Newman brought the big guns to bear on him.

Newman's reply to Kingsley ultimately evolved into his spiritual autobiography, Apologia pro vita sua (Apologia for ones life - you can't say apology because Newman used it in the Latin sense of defense or explanation, not the English sense of acknowledgement of fault.)

You can read the whole thing, including the original controversy, here.

[CaptRon]

thank you!

[Radl]

I can understand wh the Brits would not feel guilty. They never do.

[Radl]

From http://www.allsands.com/history/events/irishgreatfami_bim_gn.htm

The British government and the British and Irish Protestant landowners still required the Irish peasants and laborers to pay their rent for the land they could not work due to the blight and the hunger upon them. In a lush island surrounded by water teaming with fish and land that fattened pig and cattle alike, how could one failed crop cause a Famine? According to British law, Irish Catholics could not apply for fishing or hunting licenses. Their pigs and cattle were sent to England to feed the British and to export for trade, while the landlords kept the fine cuts for themselves. Ireland was part of the British Empire, the most powerful empire in the world at that time - yet the British government stood by and did nothing to help their subjects overcome this hardship. In our time, an enforced famine such as this would be labeled genocide yet in the 1800s it was merely an unfortunate tragedy. As defined in the United Nation’s 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1987 Genocide Convention Implementation Act, the legal definition of genocide is any of the acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including by killing its members; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The British policy of mass starvation inflicted on Ireland from 1845 to 1850 constituted “genocide” against the Irish People as legally defined by the United Nations. A quote by John Mitchell (who published The United Irishman) states that “The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.”

Sounds like genocide to me. They didn’t even mention the blockades. They have blood on their hands.

[AnAmericanMother]

I don't know allsands.com from Adam's housecat, but they sound like they have an axe to grind. They certainly don't know their history - it's a farrago of nonsense. They also have a limited command of the English language (not knowing the difference between "team" and "teem" for example) which certainly goes along with their limited knowledge of history.

Anybody who thinks the British had a "policy of mass starvation" is not thinking straight. The early Victorian governments did not have the administrative machinery for dealing with a widespread famine; they made honest efforts at relief but were thwarted by bureacratic snarls and stupidity (to expect the Irish to eat maize which they had never seen and didn't know how to cook was absurd). The government DID learn from its mistakes and later British relief efforts (in India, for example) were better organized and far more effective.

As I noted earlier, the Irish system of land tenure and the one-crop system was behind most of the problems, absentee landlords didn't help but the idea that they were (a) exclusively protestant (b) deliberately starving their tenants is simply untrue.

I've got Irish on both sides of my pedigree, plus I married a man whose maternal grandfather got off the boat from Cork. But I read history with a critical eye (it was my undergraduate major) and don't believe every rabble rouser just because they (a) claim to support the Irish; but (b) more likely just hate the English.

[AnAmericanMother]

I can understand wh the Brits would not feel guilty. They never do.

What a surprise. You betray yourself.

[Radl]

Not really. The only difference between the Brits and the Germans seems to be that the Brits had better press. Wherever the empire ruled someone died. You have good company though. Unlike the Germans, the Turks also have never had to say I’m sorry.

[AnAmericanMother]

Well, there's no arguing with national prejudice.

You may suit yourself. I prefer facts.

[Radl]

If you are going by facts you agree with me. Welcome aboard.

[AnAmericanMother]

Nonsense, you haven't come within shouting distance of a fact yet. You are simply stating opinions without any basis in fact. What few facts you've stated have been demonstrably wrong.

As I said, national prejudice can't be argued with.