St Mary’s to host Book Launch for Newman: The Heart of Holiness

St Mary’s University, Twickenham is to host a book launch for Monsignor Roderick Strange’s new book Newman: The Heart of Holiness on Monday October 8^th at 6pm.

Newman: The Heart of Holiness looks at the model of holiness Cardinal John Henry Newman offers us to us all, on the occasion of his canonisation, a moment the Church recognises officially that Newman offers a model of holiness that is relevant for the Universal Church.

In this book, Roderick Strange brings his own lifetime of learning and studying of Newman together with newer material that has come to light since the beatification to offer a portrait of Newman's interior life. That is, his intimacy with God and his understanding of Christ, which led him to rejoice in the gift of the Eucharist, and he explores how Newman's interior life had its outworking in his pastoral ministry serving others.

This understanding of Newman's spirituality and legacy, suggests the author, might offer us an apologia for our own times, one in which we realise the connection between the sacred and the secular, one in which our faith can sustain us through the inevitable troubles of life, and in which we can cultivate a perceptiveness peculiar to faith, a perceptiveness that helps us recognise the gifts of the Spirit we have received as people who 'watch for Christ'.

This book, therefore, is an attempt to peel back the layers of Newman's spirituality so as to explore respectfully the heart of his holiness.

Roderick Strange was ordained a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Shrewsbury in 1969. Since then, besides working in parishes in that diocese, he was one of the Catholic chaplains at Oxford University from 1977 to 1989 and from 1998 to 2015 was Rector of the Pontifical Beda College in Rome, a college that prepares older men from the English-speaking world for priestly ordination. As Rector, he was in 1999 appointed a Prelate of Honour by Pope John Paul II with the title of Monsignor. He is now a professor of Theology at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, the only faith-based university in the London area, and Rector of Mater Ecclesiae College, a pontifical institute based at St Mary’s.

Besides these responsibilities, he has directed retreats for lay people and priests in Australia, Canada, and Asia, as well as the United Kingdom, contributed to The London Times since 2002, and acted as an adviser to the BBC, notably during the papal visit in 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman, and in 2013 when Pope Francis was elected. He has also written a number of books, on the Catholic faith and on Newman. In 2015, he published John Henry Newman: A Portrait in Letters, which had been commissioned by Oxford University Press and was drawn from the 32 volumes of Newman’s letters. His latest book, Newman: The Heart of Holiness, coincides with Newman’s canonisation. 

This event is free to attend, but we will need guests to register on the St Mary’s website due to room capacity.