Roman Catholic historians have frequently cited lack of Government recognition and support as the main cause for the failure of the Catholic University. As evidence of this, they have pointed to its medical faculty, the relative success of which they attribute to the possibility at that time of being recognised as a medical practitioner without holding a university degree. Yet, by 1859, the year of his resignation as Rector, Newman had come to the conclusion that the real problems lay elsewhere. In the same year, the Irish Bishops admitted openly that the granting or withholding of state recognition would not ultimately determine the success or failure of the University. In any event, they could easily have overcome the difficulties posed by the lack of a charter by affiliating their College to London University, merely for the purpose of taking London examinations and degrees. This they admitted in a letter to the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey. In 1857, the Roman Catholic College of St John the Evangelist, Sydney, Australia, did affiliate, for the purpose of obtaining degrees, to one of the new non-denominational state-erected universities of that colony. But Newman was too suspicious of London's alleged liberalism and Cullen too jealous of undiluted episcopal control over the Dublin establishment to tolerate such a notion. It is, therefore, towards the attitudes and roles of these two that one is led in considering why the Catholic University failed.

In a region of sparse population and little culture it is hardly surprising that organised religion has never been strong in Cumbria. During the Middle Ages the Church's main influence was via the several monastic settlements, particularly the powerful Furness Abbey, which possessed a real economic empire. The influence of the clergy was restricted when population was so dispersed and parishes so massive, and the conclusion must be that Roman Catholicism possessed only a tenuous hold at any point in its history. That the Cumbrians so easily and swiftly on the surface adopted the new Anglican Establishment of the sixteenth century did not reflect the attractions for the new faith or the coercion of authorities; it was simply that no Christian denomination was taken to heart by the native Cumbrians. By the mid-seventeenth century it has been estimated that there were about 500 Roman Catholics in the whole of Cumbria out of a population of towards 100,000. A number of prominent Cumbrians retained the old faith—the Stricklands of Sizergh (who suffered greatly for it) and most of the Howards of Corby and Naworth (who enjoyed considerable honours) and their households being the most prominent. Generally, the remaining Catholics were left alone, though in case of emergency their loyalty might be questioned.