The Newman Society: The Oxford Catholic Society (est. 1878; current form 2012) is Oxford University's oldest Roman Catholic organization. It is a student society named as a tribute to John Henry Cardinal Newman, who agreed to lend his name to a group formed seventeen years before the English hierarchy formally permitted Catholics to attend the university. The society acquired its current form and title following the merger in 2012 of the pre-existing Newman Society and Oxford University's Catholic Society (est. 1990). It exists, according to its constitution, to 'work in conjunction with the Chaplains to support and encourage Catholic students in their Christian vocation by promoting their personal, intellectual and spiritual development, social interaction, and apostolic witness within the broader context of their university experience' and has served as the model for Catholic students' societies throughout the English-speaking world.
History
Foundation: 1878–1896
Founded as the Catholic Club in 1878, it was not until 1888, the club was renamed as Newman Society. At the time, the renaming of the society was not uncontroversial; Lord Acton, whose son Dick was amongst those involved in the changing of the name, counselled him to be careful. Owen Chadwick describes his letter of advice thus:
[He] felt it to be awkward. On one side was the pride of Trinity College in Newman as one of its eminent graduates; and of Oriel too, connected as it was ‘with the period of his fame’. But on the other side Newman still had enemies in Oxford and they were no small men – Max Müller ‘probably’ his worst, but perhaps Jowett also, and then several secular minds. [Acton’s] advice to Dick on this matter was ‘Do nothing too conspicuously.’Chadwick 1998, p. 131.
Meetings of the society originally took place at the parish church of St. Aloysius Gonzaga or in members' rooms. Speakers were frequently undergraduates, as records show, and topics were wide-ranging. Quoting from surviving minute books, Walter Drumm notes: At the twenty-fourth meeting, on 2 November 1890, Mr. Parry (University College) read a paper on ‘Lake Dwellings in Switzerland’. ‘A desultory discussion followed with most of the speakers professing ignorance of the subject’. Mr. Urquhart read a paper on ‘Christian Socialists in France’ and Lord Westmeath on ‘De Quincy and Opium Eating’. Hilaire Belloc was probably the best known of the early members of the Newman; on 11 June 1893, when he was still an undergraduate at Balliol, he spoke on ‘The Church and the Republic’. In the following year, the Society fielded a football XI, although the title ‘Newman Football Team’ was not approved by all members.Drumm 1991, p. 47
When the Catholic Chaplaincy to the university was established in 1896 the society found a natural home there, often meeting in the Chaplain's rooms. The same year also saw the society's hundredth meeting, which took the form – on 18 June 1896 – of "a dinner at the Clarendon Hotel. Bishop Ilsley of Birmingham, the Duke of Norfolk and thirty-two others, which was practically the whole membership, consumed at 10/- per head: lobster bisque, sole dauphinoise, poussin (method of cooking unstated), gateaux and fromage."Drumm 1991, p. 48. The New York Times reported the dinner, observing that "the real point of the festivity ... was not its apparent occasion. The main topic was the final settlement ... of the long-contested question of the recognition by the Roman Church of the education of Catholics ... at Oxford and Cambridge."
Twentieth century: pre-1960s The minutes for the period 1898 to 1907 have been lost; "the records of the Newman Society are very sparse until the 1940s, from which period society cards have survived." However, as Drumm has emphasized, what records do remain all point to the fact of the Newman's being central to Catholic life in Oxford:
...we can see from the earliest records that the newly arrived undergraduate at the turn of the [20th] century would have been welcomed not only by his chaplain ... but by his fellows who met at the Newman.
By 1926, when Ronald Knox became chaplain to Oxford, the society's speakers were no longer predominantly drawn from the ranks of students. Meeting in the long room on the first floor of the Old PalaceWaugh 1959, p. 209. – then known as the Newman Room – the society frequently attracted important figures. Such was the Newman's importance that it even laid claim to some of the Old Palace's furniture; Knox records that the Newman Room's "larger sofa ... was presented to the Society by Mgr. Barnes, who assured me that it was the sofa on which his father proposed marriage to his mother".Waugh 1959, p. 210.
Meetings during Knox's period as chaplain were generally held on Sunday evenings. In a description of a typical Sunday, Knox wrote:
At five or ten minutes to seven the Newman speaker, duly washed, must be taken off to whatever club the Committee is dining at. He and the Committee must be lugged back to the Old Palace about 8.10 and given port in the chaplain's room. The chaplain will keep a look-out to see when the members have mostly arrived (he may even send an S.O.S. to Campion to ask if a few people will turn up and conceal the sparsity of attendance); then he will take the Committee down to the Newman Room ... and come to roost in a comfortable chair if he can still find one. During the five-minute interval after the paper, the chaplain invites one or two of the more distinguished people present ... to come up after the meeting. During question-time he tries to keep things going. ...The visitors probably retire at eleven or soon after and the chaplain (unless he has the speaker to entertain) can now enjoy his own company.Waugh 1959, p. 219-20.
When Knox finally retired from the role of chaplain in 1939, his impact on the Newman Society and Catholic life in Oxford generally had been such that his farewell included "a dinner at the Randolph Hotel at which the Newman Society presented him with an early folio of the Douay Bible, a silver mug, a water-colour of the Old Palace, and £50."Waugh 1959, p. 273. His involvement with the society was not over, however. Women had been admitted to Oxford in 1920, and became members of the Newman Society and of the congregation at the Old Palace in 1941, having previously been cared for by a separate chaplaincy. Knox – who had been called on to return to Oxford but was unenthusiastic –- proposed the merger to the Archbishop of Birmingham as a solution to the unexpected vacancy he was being asked to fill; as a confident Evelyn Waugh would later put it, Knox "was the author of the temporary amalgamation, which persists to this day."Waugh 1959, p. 289.
In 1945 the Newman was sufficiently established to merit two mentions in Waugh's "Oxford novel", Brideshead Revisited. The first reference comes in the course of Lady Marchmain's comments to Charles Ryder about her son, Sebastian:
The society participated in the refurbishing of the Chaplaincy which followed the Second World War; with Newman funds purchase was made of 'a new wireless set and an electrically operated gramophone'.Drumm 1991, p. 94. Socially, the Newman continued to reflect the character of Catholicism among Oxford students; Baroness Williams of Crosby has recorded that while she "went occasionally to the Newman Society", she "was never part of the exclusive Catholic groups, usually young men and women from distinguished recusant families."Williams 2003, p. 4. Francis Muir has written of being introduced (by then-chaplain Mgr. Valentine Elwes) to Elizabeth Jennings at a "Newman Society bun-fight" during this period.
The academic year 1956-7 saw the society hosting a disputation conducted by Oxford's Dominicans, an event repeated to much acclaim in Hilary 2014, with a further disputation scheduled for Michaelmas of the same year. In 1959 the society held a dinner at which the Vice-Chancellor was represented, and which was attended by Archbishop of Westminster William Godfrey, who had become a cardinal in the previous year. The latter took the opportunity to announce the resignation of Mgr. Elwes.
Twentieth century: 1960–1990
Following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the 1970s proved a turbulent decade in the life of the Church. Karl Rahner, who loomed large in the theological battles of the period, was one of several high-profile speakers at the Newman whose presence served to underline the era's changes. The situation at the Chaplaincy, then under the authority of Crispian Hollis, was bleak, as the system of catechetical Sunday sermons – established in the time of Ronald Knox for the purpose of promoting students' doctrinal and spiritual formation – collapsed.Drumm 1991, p. 125. In the midst of widespread ignorance, doctrinal confusion, and moral rebellion, the Newman staked out its position in 1973, hosting an address by Elizabeth Anscombe titled "Contraception, Sin and Natural Law" – a philosophical defence of Pope Paul VI's encyclical on artificial birth control (Humanae Vitae). Yet the society was not so inflexible as to refuse to accommodate some new social realities; a 1972 termcard expressed the hope "that activists, gnomes, ravers and potential saints will be inspired by this ... term's programme."
By 1982 fashions had changed again, so that the year of Pope John Paul II's apostolic voyage to Britain also saw the Newman organizing a "Boaters and Bloomers" event – a prize being offered for the "best Brideshead dress". The Pope's visit was itself advertised by one enterprising president as a Newman Society event: Oxonians were informed that "His Holiness the Pope will address Newman Society members and others in Coventry."
The 1980s were a difficult period for Oxford's student Catholics, as the Newman Society lost a sense of its role, held since the war, as institutional representative of the university's young Catholics, leading to the unsatisfactory situation which prevailed until the 2012 merger, when the heritage of the Newman combined with the vibrancy of the CathSoc.
The Newman had ceased to be the university's sole Catholic society, following the creation by the university chaplains and Chaplaincy community of the Oxford University Catholic Society in 1990 to take up the slack left by the increasingly narrow focus of the Newman. The Newman continued to play a significant role in Catholic life in Oxford: in 1996, the society organized a Sarum Rite Mass for the feast of the Translation of St Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford. Another such Mass was organized by members of the Newman in 1997, for the feast of Candlemas. Videos of this latter Mass can be viewed on YouTube. The society marked the end of the 20th century with a number of events, culminating in a visit by George Pell, then Archbishop of Melbourne and not yet a cardinal.
Twenty-first century: Benedict XVI
Following the election of Pope Benedict XVI, mentions of the Newman Society and its events appeared in the Catholic and secular press on a number of occasions. During the Regensburg affair of 2006, the society's voice was heard with the publication of a letter in The Daily Telegraph from the then-President:
I understand that the Pope's words prompted some Indian Muslims to protest by burning an effigy of the Pontiff. How extraordinary that this old English custom should appear there so many years after the Empire fell. I assumed the eccentrics in Lewes, East Sussex, were practically peerless in the practice of pope-burning. ...[M]arvellous that, even if they failed to read the context of the Pope's remarks, these people still managed to wheel out a centuries-old English tradition.
In November 2007, following Pope Benedict's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, the Society organized a High Mass as in the 1962 Roman Missal to mark the centenary of co-founder Hartwell de la Garde Grissell's death.