John Henry Newman was an Anglican (Church of England) clergyman who in mid-life chose to become Roman Catholic. This was something of a surprise in its time—as Catholicism had been outlawed in England from Queen Elizabeth I’s day until early in the 19th century. The average Englishman of that day generally associated Catholicism with Irish immigrants—the folks who dug your ditches or did your laundry for you, but whose faith was not seen as an attractive option to a highly cultured and educated population. The reception into Catholic communion of Dr. Newman, renowned for his preaching and writing, it helped spark an intellectual revival among English-speaking Catholics.
A few years after Newman's death in 1891, a group of students at the University of Pennsylvania banded together to form a club where they could keep growing in their Catholic faith as they developed intellectually. Looking for a name, and a patron, they landed upon Cardinal Newman—this model of combining the intellectual and the religious life. They christened themselves "The Newman Club," and that idea of a Catholic student organization spread to other public universities. There has been a Newman Catholic Student Club at the University of Wisconsin—La Crosse since the 1920’s. After decades of meeting at various on and off-campus sites, the current Newman Center building was erected by the Catholics of the Diocese under the leadership of Monsignor Anthony Wagener and dedicated May 24, 1964. No sooner was the Center completed, than non-students began to join the student community for worship. Some of these were faculty, some neighbors, some Catholics from the area drawn to a worshipping community where college students were the mission and focus. In the early ‘70’s, the Newman chaplain and stationary members requested for themselves the status of a personal parish with a mission to the Catholics of the University and Technical College communities, a request formally granted by Bishop Frederick Freking in 1976.
The Roncalli Newman Parish has seen growth both in its primary student membership and its non-student stationary community. To keep a better focus on our mission to the campus, the stationary membership has been capped at 475 households since 2001. Even so, with our 850+ student members, our stationary households, and frequent guests, we commonly seat as many as 475 for Sunday worship in a chapel designed for 240. The need to improve our current permanent seating, address some mechanical and structural problems, and give the forty-year old building a fresher and more beautiful context are what lead us to launch the Building on Good Faith Renovation Campaign at Roncalli.