68 / 665
40 • Part I. The Creed: The Faith Professed
John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) often wrote about
faith and its implications. He was born and raised in England. As a
child, he was exposed to Protestant Christianity in a very general
sense. Around the age of fifteen, he had a conversion experi-
ence that led him ultimately to seek ordination as an Anglican
priest. Even before his ordination, which took place when he
was twenty-three, Newman served as a fellow at Oxford, where
his teaching, preaching, and writing caused him to reassess his
strong anti-Catholic position. He entered the Catholic Church in
1845, was ordained a priest in 1847, and eventually was named
a cardinal in 1879. He spent much of the rest of his life teaching
and writing about the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church. His
influence at the university level drew many others to follow him
into the Catholic Church. Because of Cardinal Newman’s university
work and the success of his efforts to teach the faith, centers of
Catholic faith and worship at secular colleges and universities are
often called Newman Centers.
In 1849, the then-Fr. Newman published an essay in which he
wrote of the necessity of trusting in God’s Word and submitting
in faith to the teaching authority of the Church. Newman’s words
can be read and reflected upon in light of contemporary trends
towards deciding for oneself what to believe:
[In the time of the Apostles] . . . A Christian was bound to
take without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be
revealed; if the Apostles spoke, he had to yield an inter-
nal assent of his mind. . . . Immediate, implicit submission
of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only,
the necessary token of faith. . . No one could say: “I will
choose my religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not
believe that; I will pledge myself to nothing; I will believe
FAITH REQUIRES SUBMISSION