During his recent visit to England the pope announced the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, the scholar, priest, and poet, who left the Anglican for the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, and who was to become the most important Catholic intellectual of his time. He was the author of The Idea of a University.
For Newman, a university does not exist simply to convey information or expertise. The university is a society in which the student absorbs the graces and accomplishments of a higher form of life. In the university, according to Newman, the pursuit of truth and the active discussion of its meaning are integrated into a wider culture, in which the ideal of the gentleman is acknowledged as the standard. The gentleman does not merely know things; he is receptive to the tone, the meaning, the lived reality of what he knows.
Thus, for Newman, “the general principles of any study you may learn by books at home; but the detail, the colour, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom it lives already.” The university of Newman’s day was a place in which men (and it was then an institution for men only) lived for scholarship, and arranged their lives around the sacrifice that scholarship requires. It was not simply a repository of knowledge. It was a place where work and leisure occurred side by side, shaping each other, and each playing its part in producing the well-formed and graceful personality.
Roger Scruton, in the September issue of The American Spectator.
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The Republican politician Christine O’Donnell, brought up a Catholic, is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickenson University, New Jersey.
On September 18, 2010, comedian Bill Maher aired a clip of O’Donnell from a 1999 appearance on his former television show, Politically Incorrect. On October 29, 1999, O’Donnell said, “I dabbled into witchcraft – I never joined a coven…. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do.” She added, “One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it.”
On last Friday’s show, she said “Evolution is a myth.”
Christine O’Donnell is the nominee in Delaware’s 2010 U.S. Senate Special Election, which will be held on November 2. She is a political commentator on Fox News.
Eric Koch’s new book, The Golden Years: Five Stories, was launched on Saturday, March 16. The book is available from the 
What do Newman and O’Donnell have in common? Please tell me.
I wanted to juxtapose a high mind and a low mind.
Oh, my! Does anyone even know about these things today “The idea of a University”, the concept of the “gentleman” as a guide for behaviour? [Philip Mason's The English Gentleman should be mandatory reading, along with Churchill's comment that "a gentleman is one who only insults you on purpose".] Having spent six years in residence in two different universities I was firmly convinced that half the education occurred there. Today most residences are zoos and the students can’t wait to strike out on their own. The Universities had abrogated any responsibility for them. They have ignored the benefits that properly regulated residence life can bestow.
Thank you. Yours was the kind of response I had hoped for. You are a gentleman.
I had occasion, within the past several years, to attend a civic dinner in honour of a visiting Ambassador. A significant proportion of our municipal population traces its origins to his country. The President of our local University (an American) declined to rise for the Toast to the Queen. Encouraged by his wife I took him to task. I pointed out to him that he was present representing a major institution. As such he had a duty to follow norms. It might be otherwise if he were there in a private capacity. A discussion ensued. It became apparent that Newman’s concept of a university, that is that it is a vessal for conveying our culture to succeeding generations, was foreign to him. He saw the university as a vehicle for casting off the fetters of the past and fomenting change in society.
Perhaps this is a valid view. It is not mine!
“You are a gentleman”. As my children would say “it takes one to know one”.
If you will forgive me for breaching the code of the gentleman and embarrassing you I would simply note for others that having landed in pre-war England as a refugee from Germany you were interned upon the declaration of war as a Suspect Enemy Alien and shipped to Canada to be imprisoned in Prisoner of War camps with German combatants. Your memoir of the experience (Deemed Suspect) did not follow the usual genre of “poor me, I should be compensated” but demonstrated that generosity of spirit one expects of a gentleman and set out the facts without rancour but with an understanding of the circumstances that led to this travesty of justice.
How uncommon in today’s era of entitlement!
Lest someone think I am your brother-in-law I should note we have never met.
I don’t know what to say – other than ‘thank you’.