This just isn’t true, except for his being Anglican. It was right at the cusp before he converted. But he was NOT focused on Protestantism. When Newman wrote that, he was actually looking way back into the past—specifically at the 300s and 400s.
The quote comes from Chapter 6 of his big 1845 book, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. In that part of the book, he’s tracking old-school theological dramas like the Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite controversies.
It’s super easy to read that and assume he’s talking about the Protestant Reformation, since the it sounds similar. But Newman’s actual goal in that chapter was to run a historical test. He wanted to see if the Roman Catholic Church of his own time looked and acted like the official, orthodox Church from the days of the early Church Fathers.
I’ll keep that in mind if I assert that, but he was oversimplying history in that quote.
You’re missing the point. Anything at the time he was focusing on was going to be labelled heretical if it did not follow the then Catholic Church. There is a fundamental disagreement between the groups and this immediately led to the Church waging both spiritual and physical war using roman Emperors to use their military against them. No wonder they would attack the church. It’s not like the great Church was just sitting there, victimized by the attacks. And who else would they attack, the heresies? Or split from? But despite this they also attack Roman pagans and Judaism.
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Don’t care what they are, someone saying something along the lines of “I’m a professor, I’ll have you know” is off to a bad start as far as I’m concerned. Means f all.
That quote deals with something from a later work and you haven’t got it right. 1864 or so there’s another book. At that point in his history, he now noticed what he thought were parallels to the disagreement he had charted in the earlier work, which was not focused at all on Protestantism - and the academic notes in the brackets is just plain confused and does not fit the book that quote was from, whoever wrote it. What he said was “I found, as it seemed to me, Christendom of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries reflected [in the fifth]. I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite.” My bold in that quote.. He is aware that this is HIS interpretation and is doing his best to find what he considers the true church. He was pointing out a historical parallel: the arguments he was using to defend Anglicanism looked identical to the arguments used by 5th-century schismatics. It was a realization about his historical consistency, not a divine revelation that Rome was automatically right. Flattening his deep, intellectual crisis into a simplistic ‘I realized I was a heretic’ is a complete misrepresentation of his actual writing. He never presented it as a blunt objective fact.
Further, your original post presents the situation as if it is a logical conclusion that the Catholic Church is where the unity should be. But there is nothing that demonstrates this. Perhaps one of the other churches is where the unity should form. Newman was a brilliant scholar, but brilliant scholars convert between Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy all the time based on how they interpret history. A smart person changing their mind is evidence of their personal conviction—it is not logical proof that the Catholic Church is the one true interpretation of Christianity. And many if not all of these other churches most likely believe they have the best interpretation and are the real church and unity should be built around them. One can be unified with others around the wrong scripture or interpretation.
If an ad populum argument is on the way, Islam is growing rapidly and has more adherents than Catholicism. Christianity is still larger, but I doubt many would convert if Islam surpasses that total.
To determine where the unity should be focused would be about the qualities of the various churches and why X is the right one. We can see how the Catholic Church argues it is the right church and its arguments are problematic and seen as so even to people who don’t have skin in the game - secular historians, for example. The whole non-existent Bishop of Rome thing, the succession that includes some of the most vile individuals (despite being Popes) to the values of the Catholic church itself and so on.
Objective demonstrations are very unlikely on this issue. Nor is unity.