SOURCE: "Newman's 'Apologia'—1965: A Testament with a Special Meaning for all Christians in These Ecumenical Days," in America, Vol. 112, No. 18, May 1, 1965, pp. 631-36.

In the essay that follows, Noon characterizes Newman's Apologia as a "history of his religious opinions" and contends that this pioneering work stands as part of a Christian tradition of self-reflection.

There may be an appropriateness, during this seventh centenary of Dante's birth, in saluting John Henry Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua, now in the 100th year after its appearance as a book. Both Dante and Newman are first-class Christian citizens and witnesses. Across the "dark backward and abysm of time," both continue to hold the attention of almost all who are now trying to live Christian lives of the imagination and the mind. Newman, especially, speaks our own language. And he speaks it, as it were, in the diaspora—long after Dante's ideal of...