Rite & Reason: Newman wrote, “if I were an Irishman, I should be (in heart) a rebel”
Newman House has played host to Cardinal Newman, who founded the university; poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who died in the buildingOn May 18th, 1854, the Irish Catholic bishops met to approve the statutes of a Catholic University and to confirm John Henry Newman as Rector. On November 3rd, 1854 the university on St Stephen’s Green received its first students; among them Daniel O’Connell, grandson of the Liberator.
Newman was rector of the Catholic University from 1854 to 1858. Sometime after his return to England the university was placed under the care of the Jesuits. The best-known graduate of the university from the Jesuit era is James Joyce who suggested, through the lips of Stephen Dedalus, that Newman was the greatest of prose writers.
Newman House was earlier called St Patrick’s or University House. In an appreciation of Michael Tierney written in 1976 by Jeremiah Hogan, Tierney’s successor as president of UCD, Hogan said that Tierney “gave the permanent name of Newman House” to the place in which he had been a student. Tierney became President of UCD in October 1947. The first reference to Newman House in The Irish Times is in April 1949, so it appears that Newman House was named between late 1947 and early 1949.
While Newman’s Catholic University is no more, his legacy is represented by University Church which he described as “the most beautiful in the three kingdoms.” Closely linked to the Catholic University, it opened in 1856. Designed by John Hungerford Pollen, it followed a simple Byzantine style.
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