Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England Addressed to the Brothers of the Oratory in the Summer of 1851

The Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England is John Henry Newman's brilliant satirical attack on anti-Catholic prejudice and propaganda. The lectures appeared at a time of national uproar, the "Papal Aggression" crisis of 1850-51, and they landed Newman in court for libel. Aimed at a popular audience, they are supremely readable, at times shocking, and certainly the most humorous of any of Newman's writings. Yet they are less well known today than his other works and until now have only been intermittently available. Newman himself thought they were his best-written work, and the leading Newman scholar, Ian Ker, has called them a "neglected satirical masterpiece".