My Address to John Henry Newman College

Lead, Kindly Light, amidst the encircling gloom!

Across the Anglosphere, there’s a big drive for better schools: schools where the teacher is in charge, not the kids; and where the focus is on classical learning rather than the latest educational fad.

Below are my remarks at the launch of one such school, St John Henry Newman College in Queensland.

At one level, this is simply the foundation of another Catholic school in the archdiocese of Brisbane. But at a deeper level, this is a new beginning, a rededication of education to the best that’s been thought and said, the great principles which have driven our civilisation since time immemorial.

John Henry Newman has always been one of my favourite Catholic thinkers. Not quite in the league of Augustine, with his immortal plea, “give me chastity but not just yet, but very apt for these times. At about the time of the First Vatican Council, Newman declared that “the pope is not infallible when chooses his necktie”. That thought might have occurred to President Trump recently. It was Newman who said that if truth and Catholicism are in conflict, either it’s not really true, it’s not really Catholic, or there’s no real conflict. And it was Newman who declared that “ten thousand difficulties do not make a doubt”.

That’s so relevant for today. The complexities of the modern world can’t paralyse us from decision and from action. It’s this blend of awareness and resolution, that the modern world needs now. At a time when our country is drifting backwards and when our very civilisation may be fading.

That civilisation has rested on three pillars, all of which have a deep scriptural inspiration. First, the insight that all of us are made in the image and likeness of God, which is the foundation for our concepts of human equality. Second, the injunction to do unto others, what you would have them do unto you, to “love your neighbour as you love yourself”, which is the foundation of our concepts of justice. And most important of all, the imperative to seek the truth. “Know the truth”, we’re told in the gospel, “and the truth will set you free”.

St. John Henry Newman

It’s this restless quest for ever deeper truth, that animated the life of John Henry Newman, and that will be the spirit of this school. Indeed, it’s this quest for ever deeper truth that, until very recently, has been at the heart of Western civilisation. Yet that capacity for self criticism and for renewal, that I always thought would guarantee that our civilisation would endure in a way that previous civilisations have not, has now metastasised into a corrosive self loathing.

This college aims to restore what’s best in our culture: the best that’s been thought and said; the true, the beautiful and the good. It’s that focus – in common with that of other fine institutions, such as Campion College in Sydney, and the Great Hearts network of schools in the United States – that’s our best hope for the survival and revival of the civilisation that, for all its faults, has been mankind’s best achievement yet.

Underlying the comparative economic stagnation, the relative societal fragmentation, and the intense strategic peril of these times is a spiritual malaise. We have lost faith: in God, in our country, and in ourselves. That’s why the foundation of a college like this is so important. It’s not a political project. It’s not even a national project. It’s actually more important than that. It’s a project to revive the human spirit.

Every John Henry Newman College graduate will also be a citizen. Better people will be better citizens and better citizens will make a stronger country. That’s why this is a great day, not just for the Catholic Church, here in Brisbane, but for our country, and for the wider world.

Forty plus students and two buildings is just the beginning. The start of something magnificent. And decades hence, when John Henry Newman College is one of Australia’s best schools, all of us will be able to say, that “we were here”.