John Henry Cardinal Newman 
Scope Nature of University Education [PDF ebook] 

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Cardinal Newman’s lectures on the Scope and Nature of University Education have quite special interest as a turning-point in his mental history. At Oxford he was regarded as the head of the reactionaries, the unflinching opponent of all liberalism in Theology. In later life he was called by many a Liberal Catholic, and though he most strongly repudiated that epithet he did admit in 1866 his enthusiastic agreement with the general line of thought of Montalembert and Lacordaire, who gloried in the title of Liberal Catholic. Later on came a phenomenon yet more surprising on the surface. Such advocates of Modernism as Abbe Loisy and M. Leroy claimed Newman’s philosophical thought as being in line with their own speculations. The fact is that labels and watchwords are constantly so inadequate as to be quite misleading. Not all opponents of Liberalism have been illiberal. All Newman’s earlier career emphasized his opposition to Liberalism. His later years brought in evidence his true liberality. Newman was never a Modernist, but he was keenly alive to the changes of outlook wrought by the thought and research of modern days. One side of his thought was emphasized at Oxford, another was developed in his later Catholic life. And the change was brought about by the circumstances in which these lectures were written.