Catechesis – “Saints Do Not Write Tales”: Newman and an Irish Bull – Fr Peter George Flynn OFMConv
Radio Maria IrelandShow Notes
On the feast of St John Henry Newman, Fr Peter George Flynn looks at the stories Newman told, and at why he used to cut off anyone who called him a saint by pointing out that saints don't write tales. He traces how Newman's view of the Irish changed after his conversion, and reads from Loss and Gain, his novel about an Oxford student who reaches the Catholic Church without meeting a single Catholic, including a dinner-table argument that collapses in laughter at an Irish bull. He closes with Newman's description of the young man's first experience of Catholic worship, in a plain, unfinished church crowded with people of every class.
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