Greater intellects than mine have considered this question before. John Henry Newman — a saint of the Catholic Church and the patron saint of the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian Catholic University (ACU) — is perhaps the greatest among them.

Newman's eloquent articulation of a universal Catholic liberal arts ideal claimed traditions from the Oxford of his happy youth.

He foresaw an institution which could explore harmonies but also probe tensions; which was committed to truth; which would dedicate itself to the pursuit of virtue and the celebration of Catholic culture; which embodied the simple love of learning; which harnessed both faith and reason in its wide-ranging engagement with those who lie beyond the reach of Church teachings.

As first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, Newman developed and realised his vision for learning, enriching young lives and passionately defending the idea of knowledge for its own sake. All this was the science of humanity.

I have thought a great deal about Newman's vision and its importance now that my own Catholic University told us it is to make devastating cuts to teaching and research staff, and to the University's ability to engage in knowledge creation as Newman understood it.

Some 32 full-time humanities posts are being permanently disestablished.

Other staff will retire and will not be replaced.

More staff on temporary contracts will see those not renewed.

History and philosophy — core disciplines of the Catholic tradition — are the disciplines worst affected.

Theology, literature, political science, and sociology will suffer as well from these cuts.

The University claims that this is a critical moment when its academic model requires change to ensure it can meet long-term operational needs in an economically sustainable manner.

It says it wishes to align education and research better to its major thematic directions and operational needs. But it also just does not have the money.

ACU went from surpluses of over $30 million in 2020 and 2021 to a deficit of $8 million in 2022 and a forecast deficit exceeding $30 million for 2023. Critics might ask: where did the money go?

ACU says it no longer has the students or the revenues to sustain the interest in humanities fields it was investing in as recently as the start of 2023.

But the scale and speed of its retrenchment are scarcely precedented in the history of the humanities anywhere.

The effect on the lives of individual academic employees will be a hard cross to bear.

Many ACU staff moved heaven and earth to heed the University's call to speak truth.

Some have been teaching here for years and are now forced to compete with cherished colleagues to retain their jobs.

Others left tenured positions in Britain, America, or other parts of Australia to join ACU. Only recently arrived, some will now be marooned on this island continent with no loved ones, little financial support, and no valid visa.

ACU brought over their possessions, but no one will foot the bill for their lonely return to a place of origin.

The moral tragedy of this situation is grave. It is a deplorable, heart-breaking situation which raises many questions.

Where did ACU lose its way?

Should not Newman's vision have held even in the brave new world we find ourselves in?

A twenty-first-century Catholic University cannot always conform to his golden ideal.

It must work with the secular: with research metrics, performance indicators, funding requirements, and all the knowledge-creating bureaucracy's other paraphernalia.

Those who have made decisions about our lives and futures repeatedly emphasise this.

Yet Newman's vision recognised something which risks being lost in all this: the exceptional difficulty of quantifying truth's value.

Is there a litmus test for validity of truth?

What even is a truth?

How is one truth to be separated from any other?

Is the authenticity of truth to be measured in terms of the number of pages needed to describe it or the frequency of its citation?

What of its impact factor or potential for commercialisation?

Only an unworldly ivory-tower dweller could remain self-cocooned from these questions. However, only a fool would deny that truth is not narrowly confined: it has a universality, a Catholicity.

At a practical level, truth must also be less abstract.

It must be found in the experiments scientists run, the accounts of the past historians give, arguments that philosophers reason.

A modern Catholic University must embrace all such modes of truth-telling which, properly constituted and understood, complement and inspire one another.

As Newman recognised, the Catholic University also needs to confidently embrace the daily concerns, perspectives, and languages — technical and everyday — of a wide world of stakeholders from across a global communion and academy.

ACU retains its Biblical and Early Christian Studies programmes and Theology and Religion.

It will spare a small number of history and political science posts in areas of perceived teaching "need".

But a significant question remains: is this sufficient to fulfil Newman's shining concept?

Will this lead to the impoverishment of Catholic intellectual life?

As yet incomplete research projects to be abandoned by the University, and perhaps lost to the world at large, include pioneering studies on the concept of home and problem of homelessness, on the origins of conspiracy theory, on transgender Australia and Queer Medievalism, on AI safety, and epistemic humility.

My colleagues work on understandings of gender, on stories of migration, on the entanglements of empire, and on ecologies of experience.

Such projects, disciplines, and those who pursue them, ought to be utterly central to Catholic intellectual life.

They search the innermost corners of hearts and consciences; they interrogate pasts known or unknown; they challenge perceptions of what we think we know about stories, artefacts, identities, ideas.

Charity, a primary Catholic virtue, should begin at home for the Catholic institution — and where better than through a detailed study of Catholic contributions to hospitality and treatment of the displaced and destitute?

Sexuality has been perhaps the area of the Church's greatest influence on human behaviour and the human condition. Is it not entirely fitting — indeed, essential — that a Catholic University fosters deep engagement with the difficult questions which inevitably emerge from every manner of expression of human bodily desires?

What also of our relationships to generations past and future? To art and beauty? To our fragile earthly and celestial environments?

The list of questions that were being asked by these abandoned projects is sad and long.

My intrepid ACU colleagues have pursued truths in relation to such topics and such questions without fear or favour.

They have interrogated ideas that every Catholic must ponder every day and they have answered them in language that bridges the secular-spiritual and faith-reason divides.

I suspect some see these endeavours as a threat.

They are afraid of an inexact science in which conclusions cannot be quantified and are unappreciative of irreconcilable disagreements that nevertheless benefit from being aired. But such discomfort and disagreement are part of Catholicism's universal, all-embracing identity.

As Catholics, we must all recognise that.

We must also recognise that Catholic education, especially one that benefits from the largesse of the state, is universal and for everybody. That means articulating truths in ways understandable to those of faith and those of none.

What will be lost? For what gain?

I grieve for what might have been.

And I fear there can be no optimistic chord on which to end this lament.

ACU is the second-ranked Catholic university in the Anglophone world in philosophy, and is tied for sixth-place in philosophy of religion (according to the Philosophical Gourmet Report).

Once ACU has gone down its chosen path, will it be able to recover, much less retain, its standing in the world of learning, nationally or internationally?

It seems doubtful.

Which scholar will henceforth want to settle in Australia to tell truths if it means giving up security for precarity?

Who will dare speak truth to power when that power may strip them of their livelihood in the blink of an eye?

• Miles Pattenden is, for the time being, Senior Research Fellow in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the Australian Catholic University.

In the age when he lived, Newman stood for the life of the spirit against the forces that would debase human dignity and human destiny.

In the age in which he attains sainthood, his example is needed more than ever - for the manner in which, at his best, he could advocate without accusation, could disagree without disrespect and, perhaps most of all, could see differences as places of encounter rather than exclusion.

At a time when faith was being questioned as never before, Newman, one of the greatest theologians of the nineteenth century, applied his intellect to one of the most pressing questions of our era: what should be the relationship of faith to a sceptical, secular age?

His engagement first with Anglican theology, and then, after his conversion, Catholic theology, impressed even his opponents with its fearless honesty, its unsparing rigour and its originality of thought.

Whatever our own beliefs, and no matter what our own tradition may be, we can only be grateful to Newman for the gifts, rooted in his Catholic faith, which he shared with wider society: his intense and moving spiritual autobiography and his deeply-felt poetry in ‘The Dream of Gerontius' which, set to music by Sir Edward Elgar - another Catholic of whom all Britons can be proud - gave the musical world one of its most enduring choral masterpieces.

Harmony requires difference

At the climax of ‘The Dream of Gerontius' the soul, approaching heaven, perceives something of the divine vision:

• a grand mysterious harmony:
• It floods me, like the deep and solemn sound
• Of many waters.

Harmony requires difference. The concept rests at the very heart of Christian theology in the concept of the Trinity. In the same poem, Gerontius says:

• Firmly I believe and truly
• God is three, and God is One;

As such, difference is not to be feared. Newman not only proved this in his theology and illustrated it in his poetry, but he also demonstrated it in his life. Under his leadership, Catholics became fully part of the wider society, which itself thereby became all the richer as a community of communities.

Newman engaged not merely with the church, but with the world.

While wholeheartedly committed to the Church to which he came through so many intellectual and spiritual trials, he nonetheless initiated open debate between Catholics and other Christians, paving the way for later ecumenical dialogues.

On his elevation to the Cardinalate in 1879, he took as his motto Cor ad cor loquitor ('heart speaks to heart'), and his conversations across confessional, cultural, social and economic divides, were rooted in that intimate friendship with God.

His faith was truly catholic in that it embraced all aspects of life.

Immense influence

It is in that same spirit that we, whether we are Catholics or not, can, in the tradition of the Christian Church throughout the ages, embrace the unique perspective, the particular wisdom and insight, brought to our universal experience by this one individual soul.

We can draw inspiration from his writings and his life even as we recognise that, like all human lives, it was inevitably flawed.

Newman himself was aware of his failings, such as pride and defensiveness which fell short of his own ideals, but which, ultimately, left him only more grateful for the mercy of God.

His influence was immense.

As a theologian, his work on the development of doctrine showed that our understanding of God can grow over time, and had a profound impact on later thinkers.

Individual Christians have found their personal devotion challenged and strengthened by the importance he attached to the voice of conscience.

Those of all traditions who seek to define and defend Christianity have found themselves grateful for the way he reconciled faith and reason.

Those who seek the divine in what can seem like an increasingly hostile intellectual environment find in him a powerful ally who championed the individual conscience against an overwhelming relativism.

And perhaps most relevantly of all at this time, when we have witnessed too many grievous assaults by the forces of intolerance on communities and individuals, including many Catholics, because of their beliefs, he is a figure who stood for his convictions despite the disadvantages of belonging to a religion whose adherents were denied full participation in public life.

Through the whole process of Catholic emancipation and the restoration of the Catholic Church hierarchy, he was the leader his people, his church and his times needed.

His capacity for personal warmth and generous friendship is shown in his correspondence.

There exist over 30 collected volumes of his letters, many of which, tellingly, are not addressed to the fellow intellectuals and prominent leaders but to family, friends and parishioners who sought out his wisdom.

His example has left a lasting legacy.

As an educator, his work was profoundly influential in Oxford, Dublin and beyond, while his treatise, The Idea of a University, remains a defining text to this day.

His often overlooked labours on behalf of children's education are testimony to his commitment to ensuring those of all backgrounds shared the opportunities learning can bring.

Laity

As an Anglican, he guided that church back to its Catholic roots, and as a Catholic he was ready to learn from the Anglican tradition, such as in his promoting the role of the laity.

He gave the Catholic Church renewed confidence as it re-established itself in a land in which it had once been uprooted.

The Catholic community in Britain today owes an incalculable debt to his tireless work, even as British society has cause for gratitude to that community for its immeasurably valuable contribution to our country's life. Continue reading

• Image: BBC

Not only did he live in a very different time, but his day-to-day existence was quite different from what most of us experience.

We should be careful, though, about being too quick to dismiss his example.

Newman, like all of the saints, is perennially relevant because holiness never goes out of style.

In light of his feast and in celebration of his canonization, here are five ways Newman remains relevant to the world today:

1. He prioritized the education of the lay faithful

   Throughout his life, Newman had a real concern for education.

   He thought it was particularly important that the lay faithful—not just clergy—have a strong understanding of the reasons the church taught what it did. Newman promoted various educational efforts, and this legacy has been preserved through his being named the patron saint of Catholic campus ministries at public universities.

   Thus, thousands, perhaps even millions of U.S. Catholics have experienced the formative years of their intellectual and spiritual development at Newman Centers on college campuses. When adult Catholics think about when they made a personal commitment to their faith—something beyond simply making their parents happy—their mind very likely turns to Newman.

2. He fostered community

   The generation of Americans who are coming of age now highly value community.

   Newman recognized that in the Christian faith, we need the support of others—not only to steer us away from erroneous ideas about God but also to sustain us through the difficult moments that inevitably come our way.

   He was celibate, but this does not mean that he was devoid of love. He developed several close friendships, and in his voluminous collection of letters (now digitally archived in the NINS Digital Collections), we can see just how significant these relationships were in his spiritual journey.

   For young Catholics, the communal life that Newman fostered is a shining example of the kind of shared witness that is sorely needed in our world today.

3. He stood up for the truth

   Newman wrote extensively about conscience—its role in our coming to know God as well as the moral imperative of listening to the promptings of conscience.

   As applied to his life, he firmly believed that he was bound in conscience to adhere to the truth regardless of the personal costs.

   For instance, when Newman, ordained an Anglican priest in 1825, became convinced that the Roman Catholic Church was founded by Christ as the ark of salvation, he felt compelled to enter that communion, even though this decision cost him close friendships and meant giving up his fellowship at Oxford. Continue reading

• Image: America