July 22, 1879.
To HIS Eminence John Henry Newman,
Cardinal OF St. George IN Velabro.
It is now fifteen years since the clergy of Lancashire had the honour to address you. It was then to thank you for your triumphant defence of the Catholic priesthood; for in repelling a wanton attack made upon yourself you had fully vindicated the character of the whole body of the clergy. Since that time each successive year has added to the services you have rendered to the Church in England, and our gratitude to you has grown in proportion. We are well aware how averse you have ever been to outward display, but we could not but wish that those services should be acknowledged in some fitting manner. And when at length it was rumoured that the Vicar of Christ had named you for the Cardinalate, we felt that the honour had been well earned, and that our long cherished hope was being realised in the happiest form.
To a Catholic and a priest honour bestowed by the Holy Father is honour indeed; and when that dignity is the highest in his gift, and conferred upon you with every mark of delicate consideration, your friends could hardly wish for you anything greater in this life. That England, in spite of its manifold divergences in religious opinion, should be united with its children of the Old Faith, and with the whole Catholic world, in a common joy that this mark of distinction should have been conferred upon your Eminence, must needs deepen our satisfaction, as no doubt it increases yours. We can only wish for your Eminence many years of life to instruct, to charm, and to edify, with added lustre and undiminished power, your fellow Catholics and fellow-countrymen.
Signed in behalf of our General Meeting, held at Preston on the 22nd of July, 1879.
W. WALKER,
Canon of Liverpool, President.
To the Clergy of Lancashire
(This Reply is taken from the rough copy.)
My DEAR Canon Walker,
It is one of the highest favours which Divine Providence can bestow upon a priest, for him to have gained the good opinion and the sympathy of his brethren. This is the thought which took possession of me, and I trust without any fault, on reading the Address, so simple, yet so strong, which you have sent me from the clergy of Lancashire.
I had not forgotten, I assure you, their generous act in 1864, when they honoured me with a like distinction; and that I should have received it twice from such a body of men is a marvel of which I may well be proud to the end of my life.
I trust, as I have said, it is not wrong thus to feel and speak. There was One, who for all her unapproachable sanctity and her transcendent humbleness of mind, could in her “Magnificat” rejoice in the prospect of all generations calling her blessed; and how then can it be wrong if I, on my own low level, but in her spirit, include in my supreme thankfulness, due to the Giver of all good, an exulting sense of the paternal tenderness towards me of the Sovereign Pontiff, and of the warmth of the response which your friends have made to his act in your Address of Congratulation to me.
Relying on them and on you, my dear Canon Walker, who have so long shown me such kindness, to supply for me whatever is wanting in this letter in the expression of my thanks to you all,
I am,
Your faithful and affectionate servant,
John H. Cardinal Newman.
From the C. U. I. Bono Club of the Irish Catholic University
(Presented Wednesday, July 23, 1879.)
May IT PLEASE YOUR Eminence,
At a time when you are receiving the congratulations of Catholics from all parts of the world on your elevation to the dignity of Cardinal, we trust that you will not think it presumption in us to express the joy and pride with which we have heard of that elevation. The club on whose behalf we address you is formed mainly of ex-students of the Catholic University of Ireland over which you once presided, and it was founded with the object of discussing and taking action upon questions bearing on the welfare of that University. In the humble efforts which from time to time we have made for the advancement of the University education of Irish Catholics, we have found in your writings a never-failing counsel and guidance, and we therefore feel that we may with especial fitness avail ourselves of this opportunity to tender to you the expression of our gratitude, respect, and veneration.
As students of the Catholic University of Ireland, we can never forget that the “Lectures on the Scope and Nature of University Education” were delivered in our halls, and by our Rector. When you came to Ireland to undertake the Rectorship of the newly founded Catholic University, the Catholics of this country, owing to their having been for three centuries excluded from all share in the advantages of higher education, had no traditions to guide them in forming a correct estimate of what a University ought to be. Your great work, which we may justly call our Charter, has supplied the place of those traditions, and, thanks to it, the Irish people have now realised what a true University should be, and what inestimable benefits a National Catholic University could confer upon Ireland.
It is not as Irishmen only, but also as Catholics, that we owe you gratitude for your teaching in our University. You have shown that education is a field in which both clergy and laity can work together, harmoniously and without jealousy, for a common object, and in which both have duties, and both have rights, and in establishing this, you, as it appears to us, have rendered valuable assistance to the Catholic Church in her great struggle for freedom of education throughout the world.
In one of the noblest passages in English literature you have proclaimed your sympathy with our country’s past and your hope in the promise of her future. Seeking a fitting site for a University, you say of our country: “I look towards a land both old and young; old in its Christianity, young in the promise of its future; a nation which received grace before the Saxon came to Britain, and which has never quenched it; a Church which comprehends in its history the rise and fall of Canterbury and York, which Augustine and Paulinus found, and Pole and Fisher left behind them. I contemplate a people which has had a long night and which will have an inevitable day.” And you proceed to prophesy for our University a glorious destiny to be attained in the future, “when its first founders and servants are dead and gone”. It is our earnest hope that you, the most illustrious of our founders, may yet live to see your prophecy at least in part fulfilled.
It was during your Rectorship that the Chair of Irish History and Archæology was founded in our University, and that a Professor of those subjects was first appointed in Ireland; and to your encouragement and practical sympathy, as warmly testified by Professor O’Curry, was due the preparation by him of those lectures on Irish History and Antiquities which are among the most honourable records of what the University has already done.
We venture to ask your acceptance of the National Manuscripts of Ireland, a work edited by a distinguished Irish scholar, in the hope that it may serve to remind you of the efforts which you made to foster Irish studies in our University, and that it may thus be to you a pleasing memento of your labours in an institution in which your name will ever be mentioned with veneration and love.
In conclusion, we beg to tender to you our respectful congratulations upon the exalted dignity to which it has pleased the Holy Father to raise you, and to express our earnest hope that you may long be spared to serve the Church of which you are so illustrious an ornament.
Committee:—
George Sigerson, Joseph E. Kenny, Gerald Griffin, P. J. O’Connor, Michael Boyd, George Fottrell, jun., Charles Dawson, John Dillon.
Hon. Secs.:—
H. J. Gill, William Dillon.