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From the Editor
Hi there,

The name Cardinal Newman seems to have accompanied me from

schooldays, although back then he was probably just a name in a
hymnbook. (As an aside, I have heard many English hymns since then but few, if any, with the doctrinal
clarity and elegant simplicity of Firmly I believe and truly.) But it was only 20 years ago or so that I met
John Henry Newman in his autobiographical Apologia Pro Vita Sua and in Meriol Trevor's two-volume
biography and became a confirmed admirer.

What I mainly remember from those sources was that, thanks to his deep sincerity and commitment to
the truth, he gave himself an extraordinarily arduous life, full of public controversy, personal
misunderstandings, impossible jobs - like founding a Catholic university in Ireland without any money -
poverty, and suspicion even from the highest levels in the Catholic Church. That sort of thing, however,
seems to go with the territory - of becoming a saint, that is.

In anticipation of his beatification by Pope Benedict next Thursday, we have three articles on Cardinal
Newman today. Jack Valero, press officer for the beatification, writes about making the most of the
controversy swirling around the event - as much on account of the Pope as of Newman himself - to bring
home to the English that Newman really is one of them, and very relevant to the issues dividing British
society today.

Fr Daniel Seward, parish priest of the Oxford Oratory founded by Newman, looks more closely at those
issues, which have come down to us directly from Newman's era: aggressive secularism on the one hand
and anemic religion on the other, with the two merging, in Pope Benedict's famous phrase, in the
"dictatorship of relativism". Against that conspiracy between bullies and sloths, Newman held fast to faith,
truth and conscience.

But he was no arid intellectual. Newman scholar Fr Juan Velez writes with great insight of his capacity
for friendship, summed up the motto Newman borrowed from another saint, Cor ad cor loquitur (heart
speaks to heart). Here is a straightforward account of this quality of Newman which some today are bent
on misinterpreting.

Our other theme today, on the eve of another 9/11 anniversary, is war. MercatorNet editor Michael
Cook asks, and answers, the hard question about Operation Iraqi Freedom: was it a just war? George
Friedman says that US foreign policy has become too narrowly focused on counter-terrorism since 9/11.
And Zac Alstin draws an important ethical lesson about modern warfare from the London Blitz. With the
war on terror continuing in Afghanistan, we have to do some hard thinking about when and how we use
military force.

Given the role that religion has come to play in geopolitics, I wonder what Cardinal Newman would have
to say about these things. Any guesses?

As always, we welcome your feedback.

Carolyn Moynihan,
Deputy Editor,
MercatorNet