WHY THE EXHIBIT
We must learn from Newman’s three conversions, because they were steps along a spiritual path that concerns us all.
1) CONVERSION TO GOD: THE TRUE REALISM
Here I would like to emphasize just the first conversion: to faith in the living God. Until that moment, Newman thought like the average men of his time and indeed like the average men of today, who do not simply exclude the existence of God, but consider it as something uncertain, something with no essential role to play in their lives. What appeared genuinely real to him, as to the men of his and our day, is the empirical, matter that can be grasped. This is the “reality” according to which one finds one’s bearings. The “real” is what can be grasped, it is the things that can be calculated and taken in one’s hand. In his conversion, Newman recognized that it is exactly the other way round: that God and the soul, man’s spiritual identity, constitute what is genuinely real, what counts. These are much more real than objects that can be grasped. This conversion was a Copernican revolution. (...) Where such a conversion takes place, it is not just a person’s theory that changes: the fundamental shape of life changes.
2) CONVERSION TO THE DOGMA: FAITH AS A PATH OF KNOWLEDGE
The second step in Newman's lifelong journey of conversion was overcoming the subjective evangelical position in favour of an understanding of Christendom based on the objectivity of dogma. In this connection I find a formulation from one of his early sermons to be especially significant today: "True Christendom is shown... in obedience and not through a state of consciousness. Thus the whole duty and work of a Christian is made up of these two parts, Faith and Obedience; 'looking unto Jesus' (Heb. 2,9) ... and acting according to His will ... I conceive that we are in danger, in this day, of insisting on neither of these as we ought; regarding all true and careful consideration of the Object of faith, as barren orthodoxy, technical subtlety... and ... making the test of our being religious, to consist in our having what is called a spiritual state of heart..."
3) CONVERSION TO THE CHURCH: FROM CONSCIENCE TO THE 'WE' OF THE CHURCH
His third conversion, to Catholicism, required him to give up almost everything that was dear and precious to him: possessions, profession, academic rank, family ties and many friends. The sacrifice demanded of him by obedience to the truth, by his conscience, went further still.
(...)
The drama of Newman’s life invites us to examine our lives, to see them against the vast horizon of God’s plan, and to grow in communion with the Church of every time and place: the Church of the apostles, the Church of the martyrs, the Church of the saints, the Church which Newman loved and to whose mission he devoted his entire life.
THE METHOD
The driving force that impelled Newman along the path of conversion was conscience. But what does this mean? (...) For him, “conscience” means man’s capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize precisely in the decision-making areas of his life – religion and morals – a truth, the truth. At the same time, conscience – man’s capacity to recognize truth – thereby imposes on him the obligation to set out along the path towards truth, to seek it and to submit to it wherever he finds it. Conscience is both capacity for truth and obedience to the truth which manifests itself to anyone who seeks it with an open heart. The path of Newman’s conversions is a path of conscience.
Newman was a person converting, a person being transformed, and thus he always remained and became ever more himself.
(from passages of the Pope
http://meetingnewman.blogspot.com/p/pope-and-newman-must-read.html)