‘It is very important to prepare spiritually for the beatification of Newman and I think there are some very good ways of doing that. Trying to get to know Newman through some of his writing, for example. Now some of his works are quite demanding: the big books like The Idea of a University, The Dream of Gerontius, A Grammar of Assent or even his Parochial Sermons. But there are lots of small books about Newman on the market, especially Newman’s prayer books.  Newman always said that he prayed with a pen in his hand. He wrote lots of prayers for the use of the boys [he was the founder of The Oratory School, near Reading], and so they’re accessible.

‘In his writings he puts down, his own doubts, his own difficulties, his troubles, his sense of not always knowing where his life was going but trusting in divine providence. So when you pray with Newman’s prayers it’s as if you’re entering Newman’s own soul and you find there that his problems are your problems. How, for example, do I know what God wants me to do?  What is God’s plan for my life? These are common question for all of us. We hear all over the world that people don’t believe in God, but I don’t believe that. I don’t think peoples’ problem is believing in God. It’s more about how do we know about him? How do I know what he wants me to do? I don’t think people have doubts about believing in God, and I think Newman understood that.

Newman always said that he prayed with a pen in his hand‘The truth is we don’t know much about God. This is why we need the Church to teach us, because God reveals himself through the Church, through the scripture and through the tradition. That’s what Newman latched on to, by becoming a Catholic. When he was a young man he toyed with atheism. He read the writings of sceptics, but he then had an experience that converted him to belief in God and to a sense of the necessity for dogma. But really what Newman meant was that it’s important that we know truth about God, because if we don’t have some clear ideas about the truth that God reveals then this affects how we relate to him.

‘Cardinal Newman’s motto was  Cor ad Cor Loquitur – “heart speaks to heart”. I think one of the things he meant by this is that it’s all about my heart to God’s heart. At his first conversion at the age of fifteen, he had a profound conviction that there were only two luminously self-evident beings in the universe, himself and God. Which isn’t a denial of the rest of creation, but it’s a profound realization of the important relation between God and the individual person.

The point of conscience is that it enables us to know how to act, and to be the vehicle whereby Christ speaks to us‘Newman is often presented as a great intellectual, which indeed he was; but he wasn’t just a great intellectual in the sense that he believed that you can argue people into faith by reasoning alone. It was much more about personal conviction, about the culmination of probabilities, about kindness, about how we relate to each other, about example, and he said you’ll never convert people with syllogisms (deductive reasoning), but Newman believed evangelization was all about speaking to people heart to heart, person to person, one to one.

‘The quote “heart to heart” comes from the writings of St Francis de Sales. Newman had a great love of St Francis – his chapel here [at the Oratory, Birmingham] is dedicated to Francis de Sales. St Francis de Sales knew people who had known St Philip Neri [who founded the first Oratory, a congregation of Catholic priests and lay-brothers who live together in a community bound together by no formal vows but only with the bond of charity]. Newman loved St Francis de Sales because of the Oratorian connection. Another thing about “heart to heart” is that it’s a very Philippine motto. St Philip’s way of converting people was always through personal contact, through joy and kindness, and his heart was full of the Holy Spirit – so much that his heart was physically enlarged by it.

‘A lot of intellectuals are interested in Newman, but I think once he’s prayed to and once his prayers are used in our Church, he takes on a more human dimension. His feast is always celebrated on 9 October, the anniversary of his reception into the Church. It is a great thrill for us to have an English saint in the making. We always love our English saints.

And of course, Newman follows in a great tradition about English saints, about saints of conscience, saints who stand up for what they believe in and do the right thing. For example saints like St Thomas Becket, St Thomas More, and St John Fisher –  were men who had great worldly careers but when the chips were down, they had to follow their conscience and in doing so pay the ultimate price.

‘And Newman is exactly in this tradition, with his understanding that the Church is the authentic voice of truth. And of course, as we all know to stand up for the truth involves courage, conviction and often self sacrifice. And that links to Newman’s whole doctrine of conscience which he understood as an inner light but ultimately subject to the divine light of Christ and his Church.

‘The Holy Father, Pope Benedict has studied intently the work and writings of Cardinal John Henry Newman. The Pope is himself an outstanding theologian and I am sure sees in Newman not only someone who is considered to be the Father of the Second Vatican Council but also a prophet who speaks to men and women of every age and culture of the truth, goodness and beauty of God.

‘When Pope Benedict beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman on September 19th at Coventry airport  it will be a great day of joy, celebration and rejoicing for the whole country. And we Oratorians will give thanks and praise to God for raising this servant of God, our friend and brother to the altar of sanctity.’