New Book Sheds Rare Light on Newman’s Vision for the Laity and Its Modern Relevance: ‘Holiness Is the Great End’
Acclaimed Newman expert Paul Shrimpton says the newest doctor of the Church ‘foresaw the world we live in and tried to prepare Christians to face it.’
ROME — St. John Henry Newman, whom Pope Leo XIV will formally declare a doctor of the Church at the Vatican on Saturday, championed the essential role of laypeople in the Catholic Church, insisting on their need for a well-formed faith, a robust theological education, and active engagement in the life and mission of the Church.
Newman taught that the laity have a central and indispensable role who, in Church history, had often upheld orthodoxy when the clergy had faltered. He insisted the laity be holy and know the creed “so well that they can give an account of it” and defend it — a novel concept in the 19th century.
But so far no full study has been made on his legacy in this regard, nor any serious case made for anticipating the Church’s teaching on the subject. Now, in a major new work entitled The Most Dangerous Man in England: Newman and the Laity, acclaimed Newman expert Paul Shrimpton offers a fresh, original and thorough examination of the 19th-century theologian’s bold views on the laity that challenged the ecclesial structures of his day.
In this Oct. 29 email interview with the Register, Shrimpton, who teaches at Magdalen College School, Oxford, discusses how Newman’s thinking on the laity influenced the Second Vatican Council, his striving for balance and the realization of complementarity between the hierarchy and laity, and what Newman would make of synodality and using his famous teaching on the development of doctrine for ideological ends.
Dr. Shrimpton, what was the impetus behind the book, and how large an undertaking was it?
The book was three years in the writing but 33 in the thinking. The theme of Newman and the laity has been in the background of all my Newman scholarship, which has been focused on education. Over the years I became aware that Newman and the laity was a neglected topic, despite claims that his “theology of the laity” is one of his main contributions to the modern Church.
Read the rest of the interview at www.NCRegister.com