Any serious reader of Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, and of the many controversies appertaining thereunto, will repeatedly face a certain kind of problem. I will explain by reference to one example, though I could choose dozens of others. In late 1845, when Newman had recently swum the Tiber, “the editor of a magazine who had in former days accused me, to my indignation, of tending towards Rome, wrote to me to ask, which of the two was now right, he or I?” Newman replied at length, and...
