His third gift, somewhat invisible and on the side of the eternal, is truly perceptible to us in Ireland today it is the trail of saintliness he left through his personal influence, which had touched the hearts and minds of those who were in contact with him during those seven years. For the experience of seeing and praying within this little hidden marvel of a Christian church, one has to come to Dublin. Newman considered it ‘a beautiful imposing structure’, artistically displaying a catechesis on the visible and invisible reality of the Church, its Trinitarian God, its saints, confessors and martyrs, and its history as ‘One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic’, yet pervaded by the presence of Irish Christian tradition and the rich marbles of Ireland. The Church, in the form of an ancient Basilica, is under the patronage of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom. The second gift, of a spiritual and religious nature is the beautiful University Church he founded, financed and designed with his friend Professor John Hungerford Pollen as its architect and decorator, a pre-Raphaelite artist. As the scholar Jaroslav Pelikan puts it: ‘The most important treatise on the idea of a university ever written in any language’. One of them, of an intellectual nature, a book, a “classic”, ‘The Idea of a University’. Two of these gifts are visible, material objects. We can count in Ireland today three outstanding gifts Newman left us as permanent tokens of the undertaking that, in his own terms, he brought to completion. At a distance of about 160 years, since Newman left Dublin for good, we can acknowledge how this answer reveals the spiritual foundation of his marvellous achievements in Dublin and the legacy we have received from those seven years. My purpose in what follows is to give an answer to this ‘why’, so that we can enter into the saintly heart and mind of Newman. These questions were put to him, as he tells us, as part of ‘ a conversation which I have just had with an intimate English friend’.
“But what on earth possessed you, my good friend, to have anything to do with the Irish University? What was it to you? How did it fall in your way… Yes, but seriously tell me, what had you to do with it? What was Ireland to you? You had your line and your work was not that enough?”
But why did Newman decide to come to Dublin to work in such ‘great undertaking’ during those seven years? This is a question his contemporaries asked him too: These were the years 1851 to 1858, which as regards personal powers and dedication he describes as ‘ some of the most valuable years of my life’. By Teresa Iglesias, Professor Emerita of Philosophy, University College Dublinįrom the age of fifty to fifty-seven Newman tirelessly laboured for a ‘ great undertaking’ in Dublin, the establishment of the Catholic University of Ireland.
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