Cardinal John Henry Newman, a convert from Anglicanism, was one of the great theologians of the nineteenth century, and much of his thought would later be taken up by the Second Vatican Council. One of Newman’s key ideas was that of ‘development of doctrine’. Christian tradition holds that there is no new revelation after the death of the last witnesses to the earthly life of Christ. Yet it is clear that there are many elements of church teaching now generally accepted that had not been fully formulated by the end of the first century. Newman held that, as Christ’s followers through the ages have thought about, prayed with, and tried to live according to, his words and example, they have gained new and valid insights into the implications of these. It can thus be held both that all the Church teaches is implicit in Christ’s original revelation, and that new ideas can emerge which have a profound effect on the way in which the faith is lived at any given time in history. Much of what is written in this issue bears witness to such development.
Joseph A. Munitiz, ‘Glimpses of Newman, 1801–1890’, 7–16
John Henry Newman, recently beatified by Pope Benedict XVI, seems to have made a deep impression on many of those who met him throughout his life. To mark his beatification a selection of brief reports that people made of these encounters has been gathered here. Taken together they present a rich and varied description of the man in his own time.
Richard Boileau, ‘Consolation of Mind and Heart: The Search for Meaning and Happiness’, 17–30
In his work as spiritual director and counsellor, Richard Boileau has repeatedly encountered people who struggle to articulate their search for happiness and for meaning in their lives. Ignatius of Loyola spoke of the experience of ‘consolation’ as the prime indicator that one was moving along a path that led to God. Here Boileau considers how these two understandings of human fulfilment might relate to one another.
John Moffatt, ‘Beyond the Catechism: Faith and Reason’, 31–39
The Christian Church faces a perennial problem in trying to present ancient truths in modern language. An inherited technical language of theology can sit uneasily alongside an equally technical discourse shaped by contemporary science. Here John Moffatt, Jesuit chaplain to Oxford University, asks how we might begin to achieve a successful translation between the two modes of expression.
Sue Delaney, ‘Women in Search of a Way’, 41–54
Sue Delaney is an Australian psychologist who has found her own spiritual journey enriched by the accounts that other women have written of the steps they have taken to make sense of their own lives. Here she reflects upon four such quests, and the relevance they can have for those who set out to discover God at work in their own lives today.
Robert E. Doud, ‘Poetry, Poetics, and the Spiritual Life’, 55–71
The philosopher Martin Heidegger and the theologian Karl Rahner both reflected upon the nature of poetry, and its capacity to reveal important spiritual truths. Here Robert Doud relates their thought to the writing of poets such as T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Friedrich Hölderlin, arguing that ‘all poetry points, however remotely and obscurely, to the gospels of Christianity’.
Patrick Baker, ‘As I Was Going To Loyola’, 73–82
Over the past forty years, thousands of lay Roman Catholics have found themselves influenced by Ignatian spirituality. Increasingly, this influence has spread to members of other Christian Churches, including those at what could seem to be the opposite end of the Christian spectrum?
Ignatius Jesudasan, ‘The Metaphor and Mystery of Christmas’, 83–101
Most Christians today can readily accept that not everything in the Bible is to be taken literally. Scripture contains not only history, but poetry, parable, refashioned folk tales, and moral fables. Ignatius Jesudasan asks how an understanding of metaphor can illuminate the gospel accounts of Jesus’s birth, and the faith of the community of believers whom these scriptures bring together.
Robert Govaerts, ‘Prayer and the Healing of Nature’, 103–115
Jesus urged his disciples to pray for whatever they needed, in confident expectation of receiving it. Often these needs include healing, on a personal level or more widely. Throughout the church’s history Christian thinkers have tried to understand The Ways in which such prayers might “work”, if the responses they receive are to are to be more than capricious whims on God’s part. Govaerts considers some of the answers which have been given to this question, and offers a striking contemporary example of this kind of answered prayer.