One cannot help but wonder what kind of conversion Newman made to Catholicism. It is known that when a person converts, he must abjure the errors of the false religion from which he is coming and profess the truths of the Catholic Church that oppose those errors. Newman did not take this position toward Anglicanism. He conferred a continuous admiration to the so-called Church of England.
Doing this, he was a promoter of false ecumenism, which does not aim to convert heretics and bring them to the bosom of Catholic Church, but allows them to remain where they are, and even praises their supposed qualities.
Newman's role as a precursor of Vatican II ecumenism is demonstrated by the two documents we present below.
Document 1 is the complete text of a letter to Canon Estcourt dated June 2, 1860. In it Newman, considering a proposal to construct a new church close to Oxford, refutes the suggestion that the church should encourage Anglicans to become Catholics, following the example of Newman and his friends two decades before. Newman rejects that suggestion. He further affirms that he never attacked Anglicanism and lists several "good" points that he admires in it. This document 1 is in Volume II of Ward's Life of Cardinal Newman (pp.56-58), whose frontispiece we reproduce below left.
Document 2, taken from Ward's Volume II (p. 651 - see cover below right), is a letter to Isaac Williams dated June 7, 1863. In it Newman compares the "truth" of Anglicanism to that to the Catholic Church - only to absurdly conclude that the former had done much more good for England than the latter.
With such a radical promotion of false ecumenism, one understands the admiration for Newman not only by Liberal Catholics and Modernists, but principally by present day Progressivists.
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