JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: MYTH AND REALITY FR IAN KER DISPELS COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE CARDINAL PAGE 8

13 DAYS TO THE PAPAL VISIT

No. 6471

Newman’s feast day will be October 9

CatholicHerald.co.uk

BY ANNA ARCO

CARDINAL John Henry Newman’s feast day will be celebrated on October 9, the day he was received into the Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict XVI will announce the date at the Mass in Cofton Park, Birmingham, on September 19 during the beatification. The date for the feast day was disclosed last week after the publication of the Magnificat booklet, which has the orders for the liturgies and events for the Pope’s four-day visit to Britain.

Blessed Dominic Barberi received Cardinal Newman into the Church on October 9 1845, at Littlemore near Oxford.

Newman scholar Fr Ker said: “I do think it’s significant that they’ve chosen the day of his conversion.”

According to a well-informed source, the postulator of the Cause for the Canonisation of John Henry Newman discussed several dates as potential feast days for the former Anglican clergyman with members of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments some years ago. They were trying to find a day on which Cardinal Newman could be celebrated in the calendar of the Universal Church and not just in England and Wales.

Cardinal Newman’s day of death on August 11 falls on the Feast of St Claire ofAssisi while his birthday on February 21 falls on the Feast of St Peter Damian, a doctor of the Church.

Several dates were discussed as alternatives including February 1, when Cardinal Newman founded the first Oratory of St Philip Neri in England at Maryvale in 1848.

Cardinal Newman’s beatification will be the first to take place in England and he will be the first English “Confessor of the Faith” to be beatified in 600 years, according to the papal liturgy booklet.

Saints and Blesseds who are not martyred for their faith but have lived good and holy lives are given the title “confessor of the faith”, but they can also have additional titles.

A leading member of the Oxford Movement and a prominent 19thcentury Anglo-Catholic, Cardinal Newman was an Anglican priest before his conversion to Catholicism. After his reception into the Church, Cardinal Newman went to Rome to study for the priesthood and was ordained in 1847. He founded Britain’s first Oratory and was the first president of the Catholic University of Ireland.

During his lifetime he continued to be a prolific theologian, writer and scholar. His Idea of a University is widely considered to have laid the groundwork for liberal arts schools while his Grammar of Assent is a classic philosophical text. He is thought to be both a great Anglican and great Catholic theologian. While the late Pope John Paul II himself performed beatifications in Rome, Cardinal Newman will be the first person to be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI. After assuming the papacy, Pope Benedict returned to an older tradition by which beatifications are celebrated in the places where the beatus, or Blessed, lived on behalf of the pope. Benedict XVI, who is known to have a special dedication to Newman, waived his own rules in order to beatify the English Oratorian personally.

Fr James Martin, a Jesuit and author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, said that saints’ feast days are “usually the date of their death, or their ‘heavenly birth’, or entrance into heaven, which I think is rather poetic”.

The beatification will be broadcast live on BBC Two. The Pope’s meeting with the Queen, the Mass at Bellahouston Park and ecumenical vespers at Westminster Abbey will all be aired live on either BBC One or BBC Two.

Papal visit news: Page 2 Mary OʼRegan: Page 16 Editorial Comment: Page 17

A statue of Cardinal Newman outside the London Oratory

September 3 2010 £1.20 (Republic of Ireland €1.70)

Poll: half of Mass-goers would attend older form

Mazur/CCN

BY ANNA ARCO

ALMOST half of English and Welsh Massgoers would attend Masses in the traditional form of the Roman Rite if it was celebrated in local parishes, a new study has shown.

The survey, which used a sample of 800 people who identified themselves as Catholic, showed that 66 per cent of practising Catholics would be happy to attend the traditional Latin Mass once a month if it were celebrated in their parishes.

Commissioned by the French group Paix Liturgique, the survey also showed that Britain had a higher percentage of regular Mass attendance than France, Portugal and Germany.

Although only 19 per cent of Britain’s population identifies as Catholic, 32 per cent of Catholics attend Mass at least once a month, if not more often, compared with 19 per cent of French Catholics and 10 per cent of German Catholics.

According to the survey, 43 per cent of those Catholics who practice regularly would attend Mass in the Extraordinary Form once a week. Fifty per cent of the Catholics questioned said that they would find it normal if Mass were celebrated in the Extraordinary Form alongside the Ordinary Form in their parishes. The survey also found that 60 per cent of Catholics were unaware of Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum which lifted restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass in 2007.

John Medlin, general manager of the Latin Mass Society, said: “Broadly speaking these results are the same across Europe. They indicate that among Catholics who take interest in their faith, although there is great ignorance, once people are made aware of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum there is a willingness for people in large numbers to accept the Extraordinary Form.

“Once it is explained, there is a willingness on the part of Catholics attached to the Ordinary Form for the two forms of the rite to exist quite happily side by side in the parishes, just as most of those attached to the Extraordinary Form are quite happy to accept the right of those attached to the ordinary form to have Mass celebrated in this way.”

In a statement Paix Liturgique said: “In Great Britain as elsewhere, the argument resting on the lack of interest among the faithful for the application of the Motu Proprio is unfair. When their point of view is solicited in an opinion poll the results are quite different to those obtained when one merely speaks in their name.”

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Benedict XVI gives book-length interview to Bavarian journalist

BY ED WEST

POPE BENEDICT XVI has given a series of interviews to a German journalist that will form the basis of a new book to be published later this year.

The Vatican said this week that the Holy Father and fellow Bavarian Peter Seewald spoke several times over the course of the final week in July at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, just outside Rome. It will be the third time their conversations have been published. Mr Seewald interviewed then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for his 1996 book Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church in the 21st Century, a transcript of interviews on the state of the Church from Cardinal Ratzinger’s perspective as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Vatican spokesman,

Fr Federico Lombardi, said the new book would be published before the end of the year by the Vatican’s publishing house in German and Italian.

Mr Seewald comes from a Bavarian Catholic family but became involved in Left-wing politics and founded a radical Left-wing newspaper in Bavaria in the 1970s.

After writing on religious themes, Mr Seewald returned to the faith in the late

1990s, partly attributing the conversion to Cardinal Ratzinger.

The two men have remained friends since, and Mr Seewald followed up his original book with a sequel, God and the World, in 2000.

Mr Seewald has written three other books about the Pope, The German Pope – From Joseph Ratzinger to Benedict XVI, Benedict XVI: An Intimate Portrait and Benedict XVI: Life and Mission.

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Cobbler makes shoes for Patriarch

Bishops run marathon to pay off £1.3m debt

BY ANNA ARCO

POPE BENEDICT XVI’s cobbler has made a matching pair of shoes for the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Adriano Stefannelli, who makes Pope Benedict’s stylish white satin shoes as well as his signature red patent leather ones, which have long been rumoured to be Prada, has taken the unusual step to promote ecumenism.

He has created a pair of black shoes for the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, exactly like those Pope Benedict wears.

Mr Stefanelli, one of several papal shoemakers, sent the Patriarch of Moscow his shoes while personally presenting the Pope with two new pairs of shoes at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence.

He told Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano: “It’s a small sign for strengthening the desire for Christian unity.”

Mr Stefanelli has made the Pope five pairs of shoes and two pairs of hiking boots.

BY HUW TWISTON DAVIES

TWO American bishops are intending to run a marathon in October to pay off £1.3m worth of debt and to raise awareness of vocations.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois (pictured) has run in 16 marathons in the past, and hopes to run in order to pay off debt owed on the renovation of Cathedral of the

Immaculate Conception in Springfield.

The bishop said the debt was due to “unexpected expenses”, and that he wanted to “retire this debt immediately”.

He said: “This year I have decided to dedicate my marathon effort to help pay off the debt of the recent restoration.”

Auxiliary Bishop

James Conley of Denver will also run 8.9 miles in the marathon to raise awareness of vocations.

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