This penetrating interpretation of the thought of John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) confronts a variety of common misperceptions of the famous English churchman, especially those that diminish Newman’s deep appreciation of the supernatural. As Stanley Jaki writes, “Newman’s chief challenge today, as in his times, aims at the defense of the supernatural.” In this volume Jaki shows that such a defense was, for Newman, far more than a simple intellectual enterprise: for him the supernatural was above all a spiritual challenge of the profoundest sort. In the first chapter of the book, Jaki provides an overview of the challenge that Newman set for himself as well as for the Church. The rest of the book unfolds this challenge across a dozen key topics drawn from Newman’s writings. Jaki shows that much as the topics of original sin, angels, miracles, Anglo-Catholicism, conversion, and the papacy may differ from those of assent, science, evolution, and history, they all bespeak Newman’s total engagement with the concretely given supernatural.

New, revised edition (2020).

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892539-23-6  •  viii + 321 pages  •  softcover