Abstract

This is a welcome edition of the documents of a dramatic controversy of a century ago, which brought unexpected public glory upon a disappointed and brilliant convert to Catholicism. In 1864, a year of apparent neglect after nineteen years of Catholic life and a series of disheartening failures—as University Rector, translator of Scripture and editor of an intellectual journal—Newman was shocked by an incidental challenge to his integrity in a passing review by Charles Kingsley: “Truth, for its own sake, has never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world”. An unsatisfactory exchange of letters, published as a pamphlet by Newman led to Kingsley’s pamphlet reply, which in turn provoked the Apologia, or systematic History of My Religious Opinions.