Carta a Pusey

John Henry Newman writes this impassioned short treatise in response to Eirenicon, a long volume written by his friend Edward Pusey. Here the saint insists on the legitimacy of Mary's place in Catholic theology by turning to the source that he knew his friend could not help but accept: the Patristics. When asked why the Church Fathers were so important to him, Newman's younger sister Mary replied that they possessed and expressed firsthand knowledge of the objects of God's Word. And for this reason, for him as for the Fathers, theology and spirituality are not different things that follow different paths or paths, but are two different but complementary faces of the same reality. And both aspects, his knowledge of the Fathers and his spirituality, are revealed in the Letter to Pusey and are aimed at demonstrating the legitimacy of the cult of the Virgin Mary and her devotion on the part of Catholics.