There have been several in-depth studies of Newman’s Idea of a University in recent years. There is no shortage of contemporary reflections on Newman’s philosophy of higher education and its relevance for the modern academy, with some of the most profound insights coming from Alasdair MacIntyre. Where this study breaks new ground, however, is in its welcome attempt to go beyond the well-known theoretical basis and literary brilliance of Newman’s ideas on the subject as enshrined in his Idea and Dublin lectures—a literary brilliance which can sometimes seem to obscure—and to explore the concrete reality of Newman’s ideal. The author focuses on one of Newman’s key educational ideas which Newman did not develop in the Idea, a work which was itself an unsystematic and incomplete treatment of the subject – namely the pastoral dimension of a university education and what we now call ‘human flourishing’. As his title suggests, Shrimpton explores the reality of Newman’s vision of a university as exhibited during his many years as Fellow and tutor of Oriel College, Oxford, and in the Catholic University in Dublin which he helped found. Shrimpton insists on the need to examine theory and practice together and claims that only by doing this can one appreciate Newman’s vision for the university in its entirety. He goes beyond the cultural significance of Newman’s educational ideas and the confines of the text of the Idea to examine their profoundly spiritual core. He sets himself an ambitious task and in his early chapters the author goes admirably far towards achieving his stated goal.
After a masterly overview of the current literature and statement of his methodology in the introduction, Shrimpton’s first chapter highlights the essential Oxford Movement or Tractarian background to the development of Newman’s pastorally focused ideas on higher education and his emphasis on ‘the force of personal influence’. This is ground which has been recently well covered elsewhere. The debt which Newman owed to his formative Oxford experience is well known and was eloquently expressed in various passages in his Idea and Dublin lectures. Shrimpton has a tendency to discuss events through a prism of Newman contra mundum. For example, he rather uncritically ‘sides with’ Newman during his many tussles at Oriel with his Provost, Edward Hawkins – in fact Newman’s own memorandum in 1860 on Hawkins, which Shrimpton cites rather selectively, itself accepts that he (Newman) was as much to blame as was the Provost for misunderstandings and conflicts between them. Contributions to the recently published Oriel College: A History (2013) make this and the wider point that Newman could generate conflict and was not always the hapless victim of it. Shrimpton’s dismissal of Hawkins, one-time close companion and collaborator and a potent theological influence on the young and impressionable Newman, as an ‘establishment’ man who personified ‘an entirely impoverished view of education’ and was ‘blind to its deficiencies’ (p. 467) is particularly wide of the mark. Nonetheless, the author concedes that the pastoral element in Oxford’s new tutor-pupil relationship, so central to the personal emphasis in Newman’s educational thought, was ‘prized by many who were unsympathetic to the Tractarian cause’ (p. 37) and was already enshrined in the Laudian statute code of 1637. In truth, Newman’s disagreement with Hawkins over tuition at Oriel was not so much over first principles but based on the latter’s fears over the nature of Newman’s religious influence and of inclinations towards ‘favouritism’. Moreover, Shrimpton acknowledges (p. 12) that Newman’s higher view of university education as exercising the mind rather than merely imparting knowledge owed much to the influence of Edward Copleston, Hawkins’s like-minded predecessor as Provost of Oriel.
Shrimpton does not devote much space to the place of Newman’s Oratorian ideal in his educational vision, probably because this is ground previously well covered, though he touches on Newman’s novel Loss and Gain (1848) wherein he explicitly links the protagonist’s personal growth to his experience of university. The great bulk of his book, however, is devoted to a painstaking and detailed narrative account of Newman’s years in Dublin in founding, establishing and running a Catholic University, a subject already recently well covered in among other studies Colin Barr’s magisterial Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman, and the Catholic University of Ireland (2003), a work which Shrimpton cites in his bibliography but does not closely engage with in his text.
About 450 out of 500 pages are devoted to Newman’s Dublin venture and this, given the reference to Oxford in the title, gives a somewhat unbalanced and even misleading quality to the book as a whole. The interplay between Newman’s Idea and the reality is fruitfully explored in chapters 2 and 3 on establishing the Catholic University and on Newman’s search for implementation in Dublin of his educational via media. In chapter 3, Shrimpton highlights the enormous difficulties which Newman faced in interesting the majority of Irish-speaking Catholics in a university education at all but shows that he was particularly suited to the task of educating public opinion owing to his experience as a pamphleteer and leader of the Tractarian movement. However, this reviewer feels that an over-abundance of detailed minutiae of the daily internal history of the administration – the ‘bricks and mortar’ reality—of the Catholic University obscures as much as it sometimes illuminates the overarching theme of the concrete realisation of Newman’s educational theories. In fact, there are almost two books in one in this volume. An editorial pruning knife would have benefited the overall shape of this study, in particular chapter 6 on ‘Problems of keeping house’, though admittedly the ‘select biographies of promoters and staff’ in one of the appendices does aid the reader to some extent. This is the more the pity because the final chapter on ‘Newman’s legacy’ very effectively and eloquently re-engages the professed theme of analysing Newman’s experience of creating and managing a Catholic University in Dublin in relation to his theoretical educational vision and ideals. This reviewer also missed in this volume any serious engagement with or understanding of Newman’s vision or concept of a university as a Schola Theologorum which current scholarship is recovering.
Nonetheless, as if alive to the above criticism, Shrimpton makes the valid and telling point (p. 433) that it is a willingness to exploit the survival of so much archival material that alone can counter the common notion that all Newman’s practical educational endeavours came to little and that the Idea should be considered his sole legacy to the world of education. On the other hand, others who have used those same sources have arrived at different conclusions. It was Colin Barr’s view and that of several of Barr’s reviewers that too many historians have based their treatments of the Catholic University of Ireland on Newman’s own voluminous correspondence and later writings. He and they point to the dangers of a purely personal interpretation of events and stress the significance of institutional problems in assessing the success or failure of educational ventures. While Shrimpton patently does not fall into that trap – being alive to inherent institutional problems and fully utilising the Irish archives—it would have been interesting to have his view of Barr’s own more favourable reassessment of Archbishop Paul Cullen’s role as co-founder of the Catholic University and his difficulties with the ‘English’ Newman, a different interpretation using these same hitherto unavailable sources. Sensitivity to context is everything and Barr focuses on the purely Irish context, though Shrimpton is alive to the difficulties presented by the Irish dimension and is not to be included among those whom Barr criticises for blaming the Catholic University’s ‘failure’ entirely on an obscurantist Cullen thwarting Newman at every turn. In fact, while showing that Cullen’s refusal to permit lay participation was to be a fatal handicap, Shrimpton readily concedes ‘that the University would not have come into being but for his whole-hearted commitment to the project, nor would Newman have been invited to lead the project’ (p. 460).
In his last chapter on ‘Newman’s legacy’, Shrimpton admirably ties his initial argument together and makes thought-provoking reflections as to how Newman’s educational vision has been harnessed to current debates on the future of the academy and how Newman’s vision stands at odds with the contemporary research university’s – some would say ‘impoverished’—understanding of its mission in terms of specialised knowledge, secular values and social utility. He returns (p. 479) to his opening argument that it is a mistake to limit Newman’s influence to his educational classic, The Idea, and that one can find the theme of education running throughout his sermons and letters. Newman was always alive to the dangers of ‘unreality’ – a trope running through his letters during his Tractarian years. It is welcome that Shrimpton so comprehensively tests and grounds and ‘incarnates’ Newman’s high-flown educational theories in the reality of his Oxford and above all Dublin experiences even if the level of institutional historical detail almost obscures the broader picture.
The above minor criticisms do not diminish the overall achievement of this highly perceptive study which in many ways nicely complements the author’s A Catholic Eton: Newman’s Oratory School (Gracewing, 2005). As in that earlier book, Shrimpton takes Newman out of his private study and into the world of men and measures. Shrimpton thereby not only presents the pastoral idea of an academic university by one of the great Christian humanists – many other studies such as Dwight Culler’s Imperial Intellect: a study of Newman’s educational ideal (1955) have done this in a way hardly to be bettered – but what that pastoral idea could actually mean in practice when implemented or attempted to be implemented. In this way, he admirably makes good his title by showing what Newman’s vision really meant in terms of ‘to be made men’. Newman was a prophet, educationally as well as spiritually. His is a lesson that the modern academy is sorely in need of today and this book helps us to understand why.
