I am kidnapping the monastery blog for a personal enthusiasm: Cardinal Henry Edward Manning. This year has seen a fresh appreciation of Blessed John Henry Newman, but Manning continues to suffer obloquy and distrust, largely because he was so ill-served by his first biographer, Edmund Purcell. He also suffers by comparison with Newman whom many see (wrongly) as the embodiment of liberal intellectualism. There is also the incontrovertible fact that Newman wrote like an angel whereas Manning wrote . . . ponderously. If you look at portraits of the two, Manning also comes off worse, especially after he lost most of his teeth. So is my enthusiasm nothing more than a typically English championship of the underdog? Not at all.

Manning was not an easy man, and I certainly don't agree with all his opinions, but I am deeply impressed by the person he was and what he achieved. When he died in 1892, his funeral was the biggest ever seen in London: the poor crowded the streets. They did not forget all he had done for the dockers and other London poor. His theology has been under a shadow for many years, but now that most of his work is in the public realm, including a host of private letters to Gladstone and Wilberforce, we are better able to judge what he did. A new Cardinal Manning Society with web site has been set up to make Manning better known. Why not take a look? Newman is not diminished because we see Manning in a more just light. Cardinal Manning Society and Web Site