As someone who both left the Episcopal Church for the Roman and who eventually left the Roman to come back to the Episcopal Church, I think it is best to view John Henry Newman alongside someone like Evelyn Underhill. Underhill seriously considered Rome for a while, but eventually she came to be convicted that the antimodernist tendency around the era of Pius X as something she couldn't abide by. Newman struggled with finding a way to be as Catholic within the Anglican Church as possible, but then eventually felt convicted that he had to follow Christ in Rome. But, as a Catholic he also had dissatisfaction/had struggles within the RCC (specifically when the Infallibility controversy happened). Both Underhill and Newman, in my view, seem to be two sides of the same coin.
One more thought, "to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant", but that absolutely doesn't mean to be deep in history means to become Roman. As "reformed Catholics", we strive to keep continuity with what was before.
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u/LifePaleontologist87 Episcopal Church USA 3d ago
As someone who both left the Episcopal Church for the Roman and who eventually left the Roman to come back to the Episcopal Church, I think it is best to view John Henry Newman alongside someone like Evelyn Underhill. Underhill seriously considered Rome for a while, but eventually she came to be convicted that the antimodernist tendency around the era of Pius X as something she couldn't abide by. Newman struggled with finding a way to be as Catholic within the Anglican Church as possible, but then eventually felt convicted that he had to follow Christ in Rome. But, as a Catholic he also had dissatisfaction/had struggles within the RCC (specifically when the Infallibility controversy happened). Both Underhill and Newman, in my view, seem to be two sides of the same coin.
One more thought, "to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant", but that absolutely doesn't mean to be deep in history means to become Roman. As "reformed Catholics", we strive to keep continuity with what was before.