About NCCM

We are a very active Catholic community of university students. The people you meet and the things you do will enrich your life at Western and in the years beyond as well.

Newman Catholic Campus Ministry will do all we can to help you experience the love of God in your life; whether at Mass, at a retreat, serving the homeless or at Praise & Worship.

There is no better time or place to experience the powerful presence of God than during your time here at Western

Everyone is invited and welcome to join us at any of our events. For more info on upcoming events, please check out our Calendar.

We are located at the Newman Center at 714 N Garden Street next to WWU campus           (5 houses from Nash Hall). Please visit our Contact Page for more info on how to find or contact us.

Where Newman Catholic Campus Ministries came from

John Henry Cardinal Newman was one of the most famous and influential Catholic converts in England. He was a learned Anglican divine who converted to Catholicism when Catholics were again beginning to be tolerated in England.

Born in London on February 21, 1801, Newman earned his bachelors degree at Trinity College, Oxford in 1820. He became a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford in 1822 and a tutor in 1826. Newman had a revolutionary approach to instructing students; he saw his role as a mentor who should develop a close relationship with his students and assist them in developing as whole persons, rather than solely concentrating on academic subjects. Through his powerful but scholarly preaching, he influenced hundreds of students, university officials, and townspeople.

The height of Newman's career as an Anglican was as a leader of the Oxford Movement. This was a high church movement which sought to restore various pre-Reformation practices into the Anglican church. While extensively studying the Fathers of the Church, Newman began to lose faith in the principles upon which the Oxford Movement was based. His reading of the Fathers caused him to reevaluate the claims of the Catholic Church in a more positive light. On October 9, 1845, Newman was received into the Catholic Church and was ordained a priest one year later. As a Catholic, he performed many important works such as establishing the Oratory of St. Phillip Neri in Birmingham and the Catholic University of Dublin in Ireland.

Aside from his brilliant preaching, Newman made many other important contributions to theology, which have influenced Christian thought even to today. In The Idea of a University Newman outlined his vision for a Christian liberal education, and the institution that could provide it. Newman's Essay to Aid in a Grammar of Assent showed how certitude regarding propositions, especially religious ones, could be reached, and his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine still remains the definitive work on the subject. Newman outlined his own conversion in Apologia pro Vita Sua, which is a classic work of English literature.

In 1877 Newman became the first person to ever be elected to an honorary fellowship to Trinity College. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII made him a member of the College of Cardinals. Newman died on August 11, 1890. His epitaph reads "ex umbris et imaginibus in veritate" - out of shadows and images into the truth.



The History of the Newman Movement

The history of the Newman Movement began over 100 years ago. In 1883, in response to attacks on the Catholic Church made by university professors at the University of Wisconsin, several lay people established a student group known as the Melvin Club in order to study their faith. Soon, similar clubs began to spring up at colleges and universities across the U. S. The University of Pennsylvania's club was the first to call itself the "Newman Club" in 1893. Cardinal Newman had died three years before Penn founded its club, and they chose the name in recognition of Cardinal Newman's immense contributions to Catholic intellectual and university life.

These new Catholic Clubs, which almost universally bore the name "Newman", formed a nationwide association in 1908. By the time of World War I, this association became known as the "National Newman Club Federation". This organization was extremely successful in its heyday, but it was never strongly supported by the bishops of the United States. The National Newman Club Federation began to disintegrate with the upheavals in the Church, on campuses, and in the wider American culture which occurred in the 1960's, and finally ceased to exist in 1969.

Since 1969 there has been no monolithic national organization of Catholic campus ministries. However, that is not to say that Catholic campus ministry has declined, rather it has increased. In the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, many diocesan bishops began to realize the importance of campus ministry, and have placed a renewed emphasis on Catholic campus ministry in their dioceses.