John Henry Newman's Role In The Oxford Movement

John Henry Newman was one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians in the 19th century, otherwise known as the Victorian Era (Shiefen). He is known greatly for his involvement in the Oxford movement, a movement in which many men argued for the want of older Christian traditions to return so that the Church of England could be brought back to its Catholic roots. Before Newman was a part of the Oxford movement, he was a very popular priest at Oxford, and he later became a cardinal. Throughout his life, John Henry Newman preached to many about Jesus and he proved to be successful in helping the Roman Catholic Church. After all of his studies, Newman decided to become a Roman Catholic (New Catholic Encyclopedia). Through John Henry Newman’s …show more content…
The first couple of years of the movement, Newman had to give countless sermons and deliver lectures as well as publish articles, poems, tracts, and books all relating to the teachings of the apostles within the church (Shiefen). While Newman was working on the Oxford movement, he worked alongside some other men as well. These men included John Keble, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and Richard Hurrell Froude (New Catholic Encyclopedia). For the first couple years Newman was ordained a deacon and preached his first sermon at Over Worton. A few weeks later Newman began serving as a curate, which is a clergy member who acted as an assistant to a priest or vicar, and shortly after, that Newman was ordained an Anglican priest (“John Henry Newman”). Newman found Oxford in an uproar when there was a proposal to close several dioceses and parishes of the Anglican Church. Many of the Irish were Roman Catholic and so to the government this did not seem like a bad idea. This proposal, called the Whig proposal, was an intrusion of the government in the business of the Church (New Catholic Encyclopedia). After this, Newman and other Oxford graduates got together to campaign against the Whig Proposal. In doing so, the graduates of Oxford began writing tracts that were supposed to call for a renewal of the Church of England (Shiefen). Newman published Tract 90, showing that the doctrines of the Church of England were compatible with the teachings of the Council of Trent (New Catholic Encyclopedia). This caused trouble for Newman. He was caught between doubts about the ecclesiological position of the Church of England and his reservations about some Roman Catholic doctrines (Shiefen). Newman moved to a small town called Littlemore and supervised the small church there. One of his companions at Littlemore decided to become Roman