RIP, Fr. Ian Ker: Christian, Priest, Scholar, Wit, & Friend

Like St. John Henry Newman, of whom he was the greatest living scholar, Fr. Ian Ker possessed a wicked wit, which he was certainly not afraid to deploy in public or private. He could also be fierce in defending the honor of Newman and Christ’s Church against unfair or dishonest critics.

Though the pictures accompanying notices of his death all depict a serious young-to-middle-age priest looking at the camera, Fr. Ian Ker’s face always appears in my mind with a slightly impish grin and knowing eyes. Like St. John Henry Newman, of whom he was the greatest living scholar, he possessed a wicked wit he was certainly not afraid to deploy in public or in private.

I met him close to twenty years ago when Fr. James Reidy, a retired English professor and friend, invited me to go hear the English scholar speak at St. Michael’s parish in Stillwater, Minnesota. The topic of the evening is now forgotten, but I remember watching that face as he lamented the fact that there weren’t any real heretics around these days. After all, he said as he watched some shocked faces, real heretics take one part of the truth and run with it. They help the Church think through the truth by bringing up questions that the Church must answer. What we have today, he told the audience, are just a bunch of people who repeat whatever the New York Times tells them to say. They are boring, and real heretics are never boring.

It was a perfect and witty encapsulation of what Newman had to say on the subject delivered in a manner guaranteed to be remembered. After the talk, Fr. Reidy invited me over to talk to Ker at the reception. Since I was writing a doctoral dissertation on Newman, it was a privilege to get to know him a bit. Whenever he would come to Minnesota after that, I would try to meet him for a meal. Such occasions never disappointed, for he offered the gift of friendship even to young graduate students like me. Like his friend Don Briel, who had founded the Catholic Studies program at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota—and Newman himself for that matter—Fr. Ker was fascinated by the glories and foibles of his fellow men and had plenty of stories about figures in English and Catholic life.

And well he should have. Born on August 30, 1942, in India, Fr. Ker’s grandfather was a first cousin of Ronald Knox. Though Ker’s father was an atheist, the teenage Ker (now living in England), read C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which impressed him and led him to practice Christianity. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied “Mods and Greats,” which included ancient history as well as ancient and modern philosophy. He studied with some of the great scholars in Latin and philosophy there before going on to study English literature at Oxford’s Corpus Christi College and then pursuing a doctorate at Cambridge University. Though his doctoral work on religion in the novels of George Eliot was rejected, he was able to get a position teaching English and Latin literature at York University.

Already at Oxford, however, the young Ker had applied the arguments Lewis had made about Christ—that he was either liar, lunatic, or Lord—to the Catholic Church and found that they fit. He became a Catholic. It was only after he had begun teaching, however, that he began to read Newman in earnest when a colleague suggested to him that he edit an edition of Newman’s famous Idea of a University. Once he did, he found that he was dealing with a figure who was even greater than Lewis. In a later essay about his conversion, he wrote that Newman “was a writer who had all—and more—of Lewis’s trenchant powers of argument, but also a depth, a subtlety, and an imaginative vision which made the hero of my teenage years seem very limited. The truth was that I had discovered an intellectual and literary genius as opposed to a brilliant and gifted thinker and writer.”

Ker would go on to edit several editions of books by Newman and write a number of articles about him. He also decided, much to the chagrin of academic colleagues, that he wanted to become a priest. After studying privately for ordination, he was ordained and did some parish work. It was through his meeting with Fr. James Reidy at a conference, however, that he came to St. Paul for the first time when Don Briel secured for him a position as a visiting professor of philosophy and theology at the University of St. Thomas. He observed that though he had been led to believe that Midwesterners were “dull characterless” people, his time living on campus in the priests’ residence introduced him to some “wonderful eccentrics.”  It was during this happy time that he wrote what came to be regarded as the definitive biography of Newman, which was published in 1990.

Because his parents needed care and his one living sibling was in Canada, Fr. Ker returned to England and served a parish while joining the theology faculty at Oxford. He continued to write and edit books on Newman (over twenty in total) as well as the very well-received biography of Chesterton, a masterful work on the English Catholic literary revival, and a wonderful little apologetic book titled Mere Catholicism. That last volume was meant to be, in his words, a “completion” of his teenage hero Lewis’s apologetics that puts back together what Lewis separated: doctrine and the Church. Fr. Ker’s contention was that mere Christianity, viewed rightly, would ultimately be Catholic.

Fr. Ker was rightly proud of his scholarly work. Like most authors he could be a bit touchy about criticism. He could also be fierce in defending the honor of Newman and Christ’s Church against unfair or dishonest critics.

But what sticks with me is that smile of his, which conveyed joy as often as it did mischief. For Fr. Ker thought of himself first as a Christian and a priest. Like Chesterton, he understood that joy was “the gigantic secret of the Christian.” He died on November 5 at the age of 80. Requiescat in pace.

Republished with gracious permission from The Catholic Servant. A few insertions have been made to the original for clarity.

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