| Ffinch's Newman is a vivid portrait and sympathetic assessment of England's most eminent churchman. One hundred years after his death Newman is remembered not only for the vital role he played in the Oxford Movement and for his subsequent conversion to the Church of Rome, but also for his writings, hymns, and for the Oratories he founded in Birmingham and London. He was a man of deep faith and one of the great teachers of the church. His influence remains strong, for he anticipated much of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on matters such as ecumenism and the role of the laity. Ffinch's book is not a biography in the accepted sense: it is an attempt to place Newman's spiritual pilgrimage in the context of the nineteenth-century religious revival and the changing attitudes brought about by the granting of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Michael Ffinch shows how Newman's conscientious search for truth led him away from his early Evangelicism into Anglicanism, and how his involvement in the Oxford Movement brought him ultimately, though with much pain, to Catholicism. His narrative ends at an important moment in the English Catholic Church's history, the year 1852, when after the restoration of the Hierarchy, which caused wild controversy throughout the country, Newman preached his famous sermon, "The Second Spring." It was the beginning of a Catholic revival that continues to bear much fruit in England and America today. Ffinch displays an unusual insight into Newman's character, finding an unexpected warmth and humor in a man who has often been thought of as cold and austere. He was in no sense a recluse, rather a practical man and devoted parish priest, but his greatest work was his battle for the Faith against the skepticism of the time. Ffinch is a poet and broadcaster. He is the author of a major biography of G. K. Chesterton and currently lives in Cumbria, England. "Newman is very much alive in this book--warm and witty, a lovely man and a gentle pastor. Newman still speaks cogently and clearly about the faith to which he brought so much and gave so much." -- The Methodist Recorder. |
Shopping
Cart (1) Items 
