NEWMAN APOSTOLATE

The work of the Church on the campuses of secular universities and colleges. While its first objective is the religious education, pastoral care, and apostolic formation of Catholic students attending secular colleges, it is deeply concerned with the presentation of Catholic thought and culture to the whole university community. This article gives a brief history of the origins and development of the Newman movement and of the national organizations that have been established to promote its growth.

Beginnings. The first Newman Club was formed at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1893. Timothy L. Harrington, a medical student at the university, was primarily responsible for its organization. In his undergraduate days at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he had belonged to the Melvin Club for Catholic students. Finding no similar organization at the University of Pennsylvania, Harrington elicited the interest of others in the medical and dental schools, and after receiving the approval of P. J. Garvey, pastor of St. James Church, in whose parish the university was located, proceeded with its organization. It was Harrington who suggested the name Newman Club in honor of Cardinal John Henry newman, the English scholar and churchman who had died just three years before. Harrington became the first president of the Newman Club. Of the first officers of the Newman Club, Harrington and two others, James J. Walsh and his brother Joseph, later became men of such prominence in Catholic affairs that they were listed in the American Catholic Who's Who.

In addition to establishing an organization for Catholic collegians under the direction of a chaplain, these pioneers began a threefold program—religious, intellectual, and social—that still remains basic to the Newman Apostolate; they chose Cardinal Newman as their patron. The accusation has been made that Newman has been patron of this apostolate in name only. But in fact Newman's spirit, ideas, and ideals have had a continuing influence on the development of the movement; and he has often provided the one source of unity in an apostolate carried on in diverse circumstances and at differing stages of development.

For almost 50 years after this first Newman Club, the work of the Church for those attending secular colleges was carried out almost entirely within the framework of similar student organizations, more and more of which came to be called Newman Clubs. At times and in some places these clubs might not even have an officially recognized chaplain. Carlton J. H. Hayes, recalling his early days at Columbia University, observed that a classmate of his "did found a Newman Club, but it was a strictly lay organization; and what outside clerical instruction we occasionally got was bootlegged to us, so-to-speak, by a brave Jesuit and scholarly editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia, the late Father John Wynne." Hayes further noted that a metropolitan federation of clubs, formed by faculty advisers, was "without benefit of clergy." Usually, however, a chaplain was appointed by the bishop, though in many instances only by a casual general directive to "look after the students at the college."

The year after its foundation, the Newman Club at Pennsylvania sponsored a lecture by Bp. John J. Keane, then rector of The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. The lecture, "The Outcome of Philosophic Thought," was given in the university chapel to a large audience that included a professor of philosophy (an Episcopalian minister) and many of his friends. A few years later the Penn Newman Club sponsored a lecture by Cardinal James Gibbons. Then gradually the social program grew, and after the middle of the 20th century Newman Clubs were said by a national secular magazine to be noted more "for tea-dances than theology."

Early Developments. Although the Newman Club was the sole Catholic program in most places until after World War II (and still is at small schools), as far back as 1906 other patterns began to develop. In 1906 Henry C. Hengell was appointed by Abp. Sebastian G. Messner of Milwaukee to serve the Catholic students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison as full-time chaplain. That same year, Abp. Patrick W. Riordan of San Francisco asked the Paulist Fathers to provide a full-time chaplain for the University of California at Berkeley. In 1910 St. Paul's Chapel at the University of Wisconsin and Newman Hall, with its St. Thomas Chapel, at Berkeley, were built. Student organizations were maintained on both campuses and the scope of the Newman work was greatly enlarged. There was, for all practical purposes, a university parish at Wisconsin and California. The chaplain gave his full time to the Newman Apostolate and became acquainted with the university. He found some of the faculty anxious to cooperate with religious groups for the welfare of the students. He came to be viewed as the Catholic chaplain of the university, rather than as restricted to the group of students who belonged to the Newman Club.

Question of Religious Education. The appointment of full-time chaplains led to other developments. As priests came to understand better the religious needs of the campus community and developed a better perspective of the role of the Church and the Church's responsibility in this community, they saw that the apostolate was an educational one. Pastoral concern would in one sense always be first; Catholic students' salvation was to be achieved through the sacramental grace and liturgical worship of God in His Church. But their salvation and Christian perfection would normally be attained only if the knowledge and understanding of their faith was commensurate with their secular knowledge. Formal educational programs were imperative; and given the circumstances, credit courses in religion were a practical necessity if many students were to take them.

In 1915 arrangements were made by the Paulists in charge of the Newman Foundation at the University of Texas to teach Bible courses for which university credit would be received. Protestant groups at the University of Texas had been offering such courses for a number of years; and after a full-time Catholic chaplain arrived, similar arrangements were approved for a "Catholic Bible Chair."

A similar plan, developed in 1919 at the University of Illinois, was initiated by the Catholic chaplain, John A. O'Brien, in cooperation with Protestant chaplains. The university senate, petitioned to allow university credit for religion courses, gave approval, but with the stipulation that each religious foundation be chartered by the State of Illinois as a school of religion and that certain standards regarding facilities and personnel be met. Having purchased a frame house on campus with borrowed money, O'Brien obtained the charter from the state and in 1920 offered three courses for Catholic students. In his efforts to provide adequate and permanent facilities, however, he precipitated a controversy that affected the development of the Newman movement for many years to come.

Catholic Foundation Controversy. O'Brien's project for the Catholic educational foundation at the University of Illinois had the approval not only of Bp. E. M. Dunne of Peoria, the diocese in which the university is located, but also of Abp. George W. Mundelein of Chicago and the other bishops of Illinois. In an address before the state convention of the Knights of Columbus on May 12, 1925, appealing for financial help to build the Catholic foundation at the university, O'Brien stressed the educational role of the foundation as a supplement to the secular education offered by the university. A few months later (Aug. 22, 1925) appeared the first of a series of articles in the Jesuit weekly America that continued periodically for the next several months to attack secular education, Catholics attending secular colleges and universities, and, in a particular way, O'Brien's concept of the Catholic foundation. The attitude of America was perhaps summed up in an editorial comment on March 20, 1926:

America has repeatedly gone on record as heartily in favor of ministering to the spiritual needs of Catholics at secular colleges and universities. What America opposes is undue extension of the Newman Club idea into the educational field of those institutions.

This attitude was shared by many at that time and for many years to come. Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore was particularly outspoken against the Catholic foundation plan and openly stated that those who were backing it "are waging a secret hypocritical warfare against the best interests of the Church in America….The whole movement is decidedly inimical to the Church of Jesus Christ. It matters little who the authors are. Luther and Arius were both priests."

As a result, bishops who shared such an evaluation (and it seems that for years, most did) merely tolerated Newman Clubs as a necessary evil, as something purely remedial—much like prison chaplaincies—and made it clear that their only purpose was to safeguard the faith of students who should not have been at secular colleges anyway. Any efforts to provide a positive program of religious education was considered as calculated to attract to secular colleges students who would otherwise have gone to a Catholic college. The few studies made during those years had consistently shown there were three primary reasons for Catholics' attendance at secular schools: financial necessity (particularly in publicly supported institutions), proximity to home (financial considerations often entering in again), and availability of courses not offered in Catholic colleges. It could, of course, be shown that many Catholics were in secular colleges for less worthy reasons, though these were actually in the minority. Nevertheless, the conviction persisted that a Catholic foundation at a secular university would be harmful to Catholic colleges—and so they were not established until the second half of the 20th century. It is noteworthy that, except for priests directly involved in the Newman movement and an occasional layman, the Jesuit editors of America were the first to speak out openly to urge reversal of the stand taken by their predecessors 35 years earlier. In May of 1960 they wrote:

Some way must be found to insure that Catholic students on secular campuses share to the greatest possible degree in the positive benefits of Catholic higher education…. What is required is a newkind of Newman Club, more on the scale of a Catholic Institute. This would be complete with library, lounges, study facilities, lecture halls, seminar rooms, and above all, a faculty competent to create the scholarly climate of Christian culture that attracts and challenges students.

The official acceptance of the educative role of the Newman apostolate came in 1962, when the college and university department of the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) amended its bylaws to provide associate membership for Newman educational centers. Since that time Newman concerns have been an integral part of the annual NCEA convention, and the Newman Apostolate is seen as an important arm of Catholic higher education.

The America editorial and the acceptance of Newman by the NCEA were symbolic of a more general change in attitude toward the Newman movement. Several factors brought about this change. The most obvious was the fact that every two out of three Catholics were enrolled in secular institutions, while most Catholic colleges had capacity enrollments. Other factors also played a parṭ bishops' awareness that many vocations were coming from the secular campus; assumption by Catholic faculty of secular colleges and former Newman students of prominent roles of lay leadership in parish and diocese; an increase in the number of priests, brothers, and sisters doing graduate work at secular universities. Each in its own way served to break down the prejudice that the secular university was totally inimical to Catholic life and values. Along with this, and perhaps even more important, was the general change that had taken place in the social status of Catholics and of the Church in America, and the resulting weakening of the earlier ghetto mentality of the Catholic community and the more positive evaluation of facets of American culture and of American institutions. Another factor was the impact of the national organizations formed to promote the Newman Apostolate. Helping in a variety of ways, these national groups helped most, perhaps, just by being national rather than local, and thus bringing the importance of the Newman Apostolate to the attention of the whole American Church. The first of these got its start in the early 20th century.

Federation of College Catholic Clubs. In the spring of 1915 representatives of five Catholic clubs from New York City colleges gathered to discuss the formation of a federation of such clubs. The clubs included the Barat Club of Hunter College, the Newman Club of the College of the City of New York, the Newman Club of Columbia College, the Craigie Club of Barnard College, and the Catholic Club of Teachers' College. The purpose of the federation was to join for mutual assistance in preserving and strengthening the Catholic faith of club members. On Oct. 28, 1915, students and faculty members of these colleges met at the New York home of Mrs. Jacob L. Phillips, formally organized the Federation of College Catholic Clubs (FCCC), and elected its first officers: president, Prof. James A. Kieran of Hunter College; vice president, Prof. Alexis I. DuPont Coleman of the College of the City of New York; and secretary, Frank W. Demuth, a graduate student at Columbia College. At the first annual conference, held the following July at the Catholic Summer School at Cliff Haven, N.Y., 50 delegates from 11 college clubs were present. In addition to the original five, there were delegates from Smith College, Northampton, Mass.; New York University; Adelphi College, Garden City, N.Y.; Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute; Princeton University, N.J.; and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. A similar federation, organized earlier (1908) at Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind., made up mostly of Catholic Clubs in the Middle West—the Catholic Students' Association of America—remained in existence until World War I. Its member clubs later joined the Federation of Catholic College Clubs.

In June of 1917, the professorial leaders of the young federation published the first issue of Newman Quarterly. It was intended "to hasten the growth and expansion" of the FCCC, to promote "inter-club cooperation and national unity," and to serve as "the expression of intellectual Catholicism." In 1926, Newman News replaced the Newman Quarterly. Until its demise in 1946, it supplied the clubs each month with articles and items that addressed the interests and needs of the members.

Another significant event of 1917 was the appointment of John W. keogh as chaplain general of the FCCC. Keogh had been the first full-time chaplain at Pennsylvania, and remained chaplain of the federation until 1935. He traveled from one end of the country to the other urging the formation of Newman Clubs and the appointment of chaplains. Where Newman Clubs were already established, he urged affiliation with the federation. He was a man of priestly integrity and orthodoxy, and his concern for the Church and the salvation of souls could never be questioned. When he relinquished the post of national chaplain, the federation had withstood its greatest period of opposition and was ready for a new period of development.

For more than 25 years after its organization, this federation of Newman Clubs had at best been tolerated by the ecclesiastical authorities. In several instances the local ordinary refused to appear at an annual convention held in his diocese. On one occasion the bishop agreed to meet the student officers at his home—and then proceeded to excoriate them for attending secular colleges. Then, in 1941, with the formation of the National Council of Catholic Youth at the behest of the Holy See, the Newman Club Federation was accepted as a full member of the college and university section, and thus finally received the formal approbation of the American bishops. Permanent headquarters were established at the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) building in Washington, D.C., and a part-time executive secretary had a desk in the NCWC Youth Department. Eventually a full-time executive secretary was engaged, and in 1952, Thomas A. Carlin, OSFS, was appointed as the first priest to direct the national office.

John Henry Cardinal Newman Honorary Society. The 1938 convention of the Newman Club Federation in Washington occasioned the formation of another national organization related to the Newman movement. For several years a special honor key for outstanding service to the Newman movement had been conferred by the federation. Now it was decided to bring these honorees into a permanent society, to form, as it were, an elite group devoted to the furthering of the Newman movement, as well as to provide local groups with a means to confer special recognition for outstanding service. After 1950 the John Henry Cardinal Newman Honorary Society brought national attention to the Newman movement by conferring annually the Cardinal Newman award on a distinguished lay Catholic. This award recognizes an individual for some special contribution to the work of the Newman Apostolate or for that individual's special exemplification of its goals and ideals. Among those who have received this award are Clare Booth Luce, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Sheed, Dr. Jerome Kerwin, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, Dr. Carlton J. H. Hayes, Dr. Helen C. White, Benjamin G. Raskob, and Dr. George Shuster.

National Newman Chaplains Association. Following World War II, the number of full-time chaplains increased rapidly. In 1950, at the Mid-Century Newman Convention held in Cleveland, eight of them organized a professional association for Newman chaplains. Recognizing the voluntary character of affiliation with this group (as with all affiliation to the national Newman movement), the association sought, in the words of its brief charter, "to set standards for educational and pastoral programs by discussion and agreement; and to implement them by mutual assistance." By 1960, over half the estimated 500 priests assigned to work with Newman Clubs belonged to the Chaplains' Association.

Through the regular meetings of the association's advisory board and executive committee, a consensus developed on a number of points regarding the basic philosophy of the Newman Apostolate. A number of publications and (since 1962) a training school for new chaplains, as well as an institute for new chaplains during the annual meeting, made it possible to assist newly appointed chaplains and to guide them by commonly accepted principles of operation. The importance of the educational function of the Newman Apostolate and the educational role of the chaplain in his work on the secular campus was stressed, but always within a framework of the basic pastoral ministry of the Newman chaplain.

Role of the National Chaplain. Following Keogh's long term as national chaplain, the tenure of this post has varied. Until 1942 voting delegates at the national convention elected the national chaplain, much the same as other officers in the federation. After the inclusion of the Newman Federation in the NCWC in 1941, the episcopal chair of the youth department appointed the episcopal moderator for the Newman Federation, and he, in turn, appointed the national chaplain. For several years, the term of office was only a year; but on petition of the Chaplains Association in 1951, it was approved that the term of office should be two years and that the Chaplains Association should present a preferential list of names to the episcopal moderator.

Over the years many outstanding priests gave leadership to the Newman movement through the office of national chaplain. Donald Cleary of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., chaplain from 1940–44, wrote the first Newman Club manual and played a key role in gaining official recognition for the Newman Federation through its affiliation with the NCWC. Edward Duncan, of the Newman Foundation at the University of Illinois, nurtured a vision for the future of the Newman Movement that earned him election as the first president of the Chaplains' Association.

During the 1950s, 11 priests who had been Newman chaplains became bishops. Three active chaplains, made bishops within 18 months, proved to be of special benefit to the movemenṭ Leonard P. Cowley of the University of Minnesota, Minn., became auxiliary bishop of St. Paul; Paul J. Hallinan, director of Newman Clubs in Cleveland, became bishop of Charleston and was later named first archbishop of Atlanta; Robert E. Tracy of Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, became auxiliary bishop of Lafayette, La., and later first bishop of Baton Rouge; and Maurice Schexnayder, who became the auxiliary bishop of New Orleans. They worked hard to forge closer ties between the Newman Club Federation and the Bishops' Conference.

In addition to being informal episcopal witness for the Newman Apostolate, Bishop Hallinan became episcopal moderator of the national Newman work in 1960 and gave decisive leadership to the movement for three years.

In 1965 the role played by the national chaplain was assumed largely by the priest in charge of the national office at the NCWC, when the one holding this position became assistant director of the youth department and director of the National Newman Apostolate.

National Newman Alumni Association. At least as early as 1920 Newman Alumni Clubs had been formed to offer a program of continuing religious education to its members and to support the work of the Church on campus. For many years these clubs belonged to the national federation on the same basis as the campus clubs, and their members were a strong force in the leadership of the federation. In line with the policy to make the federation truly a student organization, these alumni clubs withdrew from the federation in 1957 to form the National Newman Alumni Association as an affiliate organization to the federation. Provision was made for individual memberships in the association as well as club membership. The alumni attempted to promote the work of the apostolate, particularly by assisting in the national public relations program.

National Newman Foundation. In an effort to obtain funds for the many needs of the Newman Apostolate, to ensure responsible control of such funds for the welfare of the Church, and to prepare for the growing financial needs of the future, the Chaplains Association petitioned the bishops of the NCWC administrative board in November of 1959 to approve a plan to set up a national foundation as a nonprofit corporation. This proposal was approved and a charter for the foundation was issued by the District of Columbia in May of 1960. For several months it was directed by a temporary board of trustees made up of Newman chaplains. In December of 1962 control of the foundation was turned over to a permanent board of 20 lay Catholics and six clerics who held official positions in the National Newman Apostolate. Besides seeking funds from individuals and corporations, the National Newman Foundation also appealed for grants from other foundations to fund special projects.

National Newman Association of Faculty and Staff. Recognizing that many contributions can be made to the Newman Apostolate by the Catholic faculty members and others on the administrative staffs of our secular colleges and universities, a national association for such persons was begun in 1959, primarily as a means of communication with the Catholic faculty in secular institutions. Governed by a desire to keep organization to a minimum, the development of this segment of the apostolate has proceeded slowly, though on a local level there were many instances of strong faculty participation in the local Newman program.

National Newman Apostolate. Six national organizations were established over the years to further this work of the Church on the secular campus. Except for the special approval given to the foundation, for many years only the National Newman Club Federation had the formal approval of the American hierarchy. When the federation was first organized in 1915, it was technically a federation of student clubs. In fact, it was an organization run by faculty, alumni, and chaplains; it was not until 1938 that the federation constitution allowed an undergraduate student to hold national office and not until 1942 that a student could become president of the federation. When formally recognized by the bishops, the federation was placed in the youth department of the NCWC, and for 20 years the work of the national Newman movement was carried on under the fiction that this was an exclusively student operation. The welfare of Catholic students was indeed the principal concern of the Newman movement, but as has been seen, there were certainly other than student organizations set up to promote this apostolate.

Recognition of these developments led Abp. John F. Dearden of Detroit, as episcopal chairman of the NCWC youth department, in consultation with Bishop Hallinan, as episcopal adviser to the Newman movement, to reorganize the national Newman work under the umbrella title of the National Newman Apostolate, and to give formal approval to these six national organizations as component units of the national apostolate.

In April of 1962 this recognition was formalized by Abp. John J. Krol, who succeeded Archbishop Dearden in the youth department post, and who established the National Newman Apostolate as a full section of the youth department. Charles Albright, CSP, who served as executive secretary for the federation, became the first coordinating secretary of the national apostolate. A former student officer of the federation was named his assistant as executive secretary for the student federation.

Thus, from clubs of Catholic students, arising at the Universities of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and similar places around 1900, and from a struggling but ever expanding federation of these clubs, a major Apostolate of the American Church developed in the 1950s and 1960s. It focused on every aspect of the secular university community and, commissioned by the Roman Catholic Bishops of the country, boldly went forth to carry out the work of the Church there: the National Newman Apostolate.

Starting around 1970, the Newman Apostolate underwent dramatic restructuring. It once again became diocese-centered and reflected a number of features from those days before 1910, when a handful of bishops set up "Catholic Halls" with full-time chaplains to celebrate Mass and to teach Catholicism on a regular basis in the university setting. Over 200 diocesan directors continued to lead the ministry with the aid of their own national organization. Meanwhile, Newman Centers and university parishes replaced Newman Clubs as the primary source of institutional Catholic identity on the secular campus. In 1969 the Newman Chaplains' Association reorganized itself into the Catholic Campus Ministry Association (CCMA). Its membership has grown to include women religious, and lay men and women. By then it had taken on many of the functions delegated to the youth and educational offices of the former NCWC. Finally, also in response to the Second Vatican Council, a new ecumenical spirit among chaplains (both men and women) and students manifested itself towards members of other religious traditions. In a similar spirit, Catholic college leaders showed a new readiness to cooperate with the Newman Apostolate.

In 1873 John Henry Newman asserted that the elementary principle of the "new philosophy" was that "in all things we must go by reason, in nothing by faith." A century later and more, those laboring in the milieu of the secular campus, who revere him as the patron and inspiration of their apostolate, faithfully continued to bring to those campuses the pastoral ministry and religious literacy that give salvific meaning to academic study.

Bibliography: w. j. whalen, Catholics on Campus (Milwaukee 1961). j. w. evans, The Newman Movemenṭ Roman Catholics in American Higher Education, 1883–1971 (Notre Dame 1980).

[c. albright/

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