St. John

Henry Newman

The College is named after Saint John Henry Newman (1801-1890), an English Catholic Cardinal, theologian and scholar. Newman had an important influence on education, founding the Literary and Historical Society while the rector at the Catholic University of Ireland, Dublin, and later publishing a volume of lectures entitled The Idea of a University. He was a supporter of the renewal of the vision of a liberal education, rather than an education aimed at purely ‘useful skills’:

Now this is what some great men are very slow to allow; they insist that Education should be confined to some particular and narrow end, and should issue in some definite work, which can be weighed and measured. They argue as if every thing, as well as every person, had its price; and that where there has been a great outlay, they have a right to expect a return in kind. This they call making education and instruction "useful," and "utility" becomes their watchword.

"Good" indeed means one thing, and "useful" means another; but I lay it down as a principle, which will save us a great deal of anxiety, that, though the useful is not always good, the good is always useful.