Welcome back to the Word on Fire show.

I'm Dr. Matthew Patrusick, Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the

Word on Fire show. Thank you, as always, for joining us.

Friends, in honor of St. John Henry Newman's recently being named a doctor of the church,

we're bringing you Bishop Barron's entire Word on Fire Institute lecture series on John Henry Newman,

right here for free.

Throughout these next several weeks, we'll dive deep into one of Bishop Barron's spiritual and intellectual heroes.

St. John Henry Newman. As always, enjoy.

Well, a very special greeting to all the members of the Word on Fire Institute. Good to be back with you.

Today, I've got the great privilege of beginning, of course, in one of my spiritual and intellectual

heroes, the great John Henry Cardinal Newman.

You know, something I said at the beginning of the Baltazar lectures, I'll say now,

namely people that know my work, if you know the Catholicism series or the priority of Christ

or other books of mine, likely as I go through these lectures on Newman, you'll say,

oh, that's where he got that idea from. That's something from the priority of Christ or from

another of my videos, because Newman's had a very big impact on my own thinking.

And I believe he's one of the most significant figures in Catholic theology, period. And that's why I'm

going to share with you now 12 lectures on his life and thought. I'll tell you exactly when I first

really heard of Newman. I was 19, and I was a student at Catholic University. I was living at

theological college, and one evening for our Mass, over to the

chapel came this elderly Monsignor, whom I had never heard of. Turns out that it was the dean of

American Catholic Church historians. I'm talking about John Tracy Ellis, one of the most

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