Abstract
In this chapter, we engage with John Henry Newman's work in order to explore the topic of spiritual alienation and how it might be overcome. In the first section, we discuss an important passage from Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua where he gives vivid expression to an experience of spiritual alienation. We take some issue with the bleakness of Newman's depiction of the world in general and humanity in particular. But we are especially interested in examining Newman's suggested path for affirming God's existence and overcoming spiritual alienation: not traditional philosophical or natural theological arguments, but rather harkening to the voice of conscience. In the second section, we take up an examination of Newman's account of conscience, especially as found in A Grammar of Assent, and we also discuss his account of real and notional assent and why conscience is important for coming to a real assent to God. In the third section, we suggest that Newman, due to his one-sided depiction of worldly woe, overlooks another pathway to a real assent to God and overcoming spiritual alienation, namely, the way of beauty or aesthetic appreciation. Appealing to Newman's younger contemporary, the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, we discuss how a key task of the spiritual life is to find one's way to a contemplative vision of the world as "charged with the grandeur of God."