The Idea of a University

In Newman’s fifth piece in “University Subjects,” he addresses the challenge presented to Catholic education by contemporary sensibilities regarding faith and education. Newman compares the 19th century with the rise of Catholic universities in the high middle ages, and he professes that he prefers certain dynamics of his own day to those of centuries past, even if the entirety of western Europe was nominally Catholic at that time. Whereas in those days, heretical teachings fostered their spread within the Catholic Church itself, in the 19th century heresies simply made use of greater societal options to leave and become something other than Catholic. This, Newman believed, was preferable to having false teachings growing inside the Church.

Newman understands the main opposition in his day to be a general sensibility that assumes that nothing definite can be known about religious truth. Religious belief, in such a view, is seen to be a matter of personal opinion, and thus any attempt to present it as knowledge rather than opinion fosters an unending series of debates. Newman, however, rejects this sensibility, arguing that no one has made a good case that religious truth cannot be ascertained, and further, that many scholars have made a good case that it can: “Both Catholics and Protestants have written solid defences of Revelation, of Christianity, and of dogma, and these are not simply to be put aside without saying why” (293).