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| John Henry Newman |
Even before John Keble’s
famous sermon “National Apostasy” which triggered the Tractarian movement,
Newman had immersed himself in the study of the Fathers of the Church and had
in 1833 produced his first major work, The
Arians of the Fourth Century. This
led, in turn, to a study of the heresy on the other end of the theological
spectrum from Arianism, the Monophysites.
But he became deeply troubled as he got further and further into his studies,
perceiving similarities between the Monophysites and his Anglican Church when
it came to questions of ecclesial authority.
He then came across a quote from Saint Augustine that shook him to his
core “'Securus judicat orbis terrarium!” “The decision
of the entire world is definitive.” In other words: When the Church reaches a
consensus, the answer is established.
Newman saw that the position claimed by the Church of England to be a via media, a sort of bridge between Catholicism
and Protestantism, wasn’t tenable. You
either stood with the Church or outside it.
From this point on his commitment to Anglicanism was in its death
throes.
While he had come to this
understanding sometime around 1839, and while he ceased priestly ministry in
the Church of England after 1843, it was only in October 1845 that Newman
himself made the leap into the Catholic Church.
Several of his Littlemore associates had already preceded him.
Newman’s choice for Roman
Catholicism shocked family and friends alike.
Many of his old associates turned their backs on him. It was impossible for him to stay at
Littlemore since the cottages belonged to the Anglican parish, and he and his
associates moved to Oscott, the seminary of Bishop Nicholas Wiseman who was the
Vicar Apostolic (Catholic Bishop) of the Midlands district. (England at the time had no established
Catholic hierarchy but was guided by four—and then later eight—regional bishops
known as Vicars Apostolic.) That
October, the first anniversary of his being received into the Catholic Church,
Newman went to Rome where he was received by Pius IX and ordained a Catholic
priest by Cardinal Giacomo Filippo Fransoni.
Pius awarded the Doctorate of Divinity to the distinguished convert. He
was hereafter known as “Doctor Newman” even in Protestant circles. Newman wanted to be a religious priest and
looked at several Orders, most notably the Dominicans. In the end, however, he settled on the
Oratorians, who are secular priests (without religious vows) living a collegial
life with some common prayer and meals while collaborating in ministry. It is a life highly suited to the apostle and
to the scholar but no so much to the mystic.
Newman returned to England
in late 1847, and after some moving around finally settled at Edgbaston in
Birmingham where the magnificent church of the Immaculate Conception and a
large and commodious house for the Oratorian community were built. The Church became famous for its superior
music and Newman’s preaching drew a large audience, both Catholic and
Anglican.
Newman wasn’t long in
England before the Catholic Church in England had to face a major crisis. We will have to deal with this in a future
posting but in summary in September 1850, Pope Pius IX established a Catholic
hierarchy in England. While the Pope was
careful not to give his bishops the titles of the pre-Reformation Sees, titles
still held by the Bishops of the Church of England, to give any English title
was seen to be an affront to Her Majesty, the Queen. The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, was a
particularly nasty anti-Catholic and rather than come to some understanding of
the situation chose to fan the flames.
The somewhat high and mighty attitude of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, the
first Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, didn’t help. Wiseman, like so many hierarchs, was a
natural at pontificating and not only at the Liturgy. The brouhaha reached such a point that Newman
was called in to rescue the situation with a series of lectures explaining
Catholicism to the public. Though in the
end the arch-Protestants (they had never liked Newman when he was a High Church
Anglican) did not accept his explanations, Newman was able to bring an
objective understanding of Roman Catholicism into the eye of the English
public. You would think the Catholic
party would be appreciative; it never was.
Newman was part of a flood
of converts from Anglicanism to Catholicism.
While his conversion was the occasion that triggered many others to
follow, they didn’t convert to the same Catholic Church. Newman never lost that Anglican reserve that
made him uncomfortable with the more exotic flowerings of Latin Catholicism
whereas many of the converts—and most especially Henry Edward Manning, the
Anglican Archdeacon of Chichester who followed Newman into the Catholic Church
in 1851—went full fig into the most outrageous Ultramontane Catholicism. (Ultramontane refers to those Catholics who
were determined not only to be more papal than the Pope, but more I-talian in
their enthusiasm for baroque Catholicism and sentimental piety. It really wasn’t a pretty thing then and it
isn’t now as we see in the vagaries of neo-traditionalism and the excesses of
the Burke/Cordileone/Morlino burlesque.)
Newman wasn’t trusted by the zealots because he was a strong advocate of
using one’s intellectual abilities to define one’s theology rather than blindly
getting on the popular bandwagon as it rolled along a road of Italianate extravagances.
In 1854 the Catholic
Bishops in Ireland invited Newman to come to Dublin and establish a Catholic
University. They really didn’t
understand his basic philosophy of Education.
Newman believed that the University should be a place free of direct
control of the Church where there was sufficient latitude for research,
publication and open debate. His ideas
were drawn from the great Medieval universities of Europe where Revelation was
cherished and Tradition maintained but also where there was an intellectual freedom
to explore questions without being bound to pre-determined answers. This view did not make the Bishops happy and
Newman resigned after four years and returned to the Birmingham Oratory.
Later in life Newman
somewhat romanticized his Anglican years as a time of his universal popularity
and esteem and his Catholic years as a time of being bitterly
misunderstood. There is some truth to
the picture as long as you don’t look too closely at the details—especially in
the Anglican phase. Suffice it to say
that the 1860’s and ‘70’s were a time of personal anguish in which he felt he
had sacrifice everything for the Truth he found in Catholicism. Rumors abounded that he had—or soon
would—revert to the Church of England.
And in all honesty old Anglican friends, most notably Richard William
Church, the Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, were far more faithful
friends than his Catholic co-religionists.
Newman was a particular
thorn in the side of Manning who had, by this time, advanced to the position of
Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and (Catholic) Primate of England. Henry Manning was a particularly stony fellow
who met the description often used by a late friend of mine when describing
unpleasant people. “He had a face like a
bowl full of sour a**holes.” Manning was
in many respects the polar opposite of Newman.
As Newman stuck to the understated Recusant Catholic Tradition that
marked English Catholicism between the Reformation and the establishment of the
hierarchy, Manning embraced a Catholicism that would make a Neapolitan
blush. Newman and Manning came to public
disagreement over the Declaration of Papal Infallibility in 1870. Newman professed his belief in the Doctrine
but felt that it may not be opportune to define. Manning supported the definition with an
alarming enthusiasm totally divorced from the socio-political realities of the
Catholic Church in England. Newman, of
course, was a priest and therefore would not be attending Vatican I, his
influence being confined to his writings and talks. Manning was leading the English Episcopal
delegation to the Council. Manning made
sure that Pius IX and the Roman Curia well understood just how liberal Newman
was and his intellectual ties to other opponents of the definition. This pushed
Newman further and further back into the shadows.
Newman was sustained during
this period of neglect by Ambrose Saint John.
Saint John had been part of the Littlemore community and converted to
Catholicism about a month before Newman.
He accompanied Newman to Rome and was ordained to the Catholic
priesthood there with him. Together they
were received into the Oratory and together they planned and built the
Birmingham Oratory. Other than Newman’s
four years in Dublin they lived together in the Birmangham Oratory for the
remainder of Saint John’s life. When
Saint John died in May 1875 Newman threw himself on the bed next to the corpse
and would not be parted from his friend until the undertakers came for the body
the next morning. Newman said: "I
have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband's or a wife's,
but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one's sorrow
greater, than mine.” He called Ambrose
Saint John his “life under God for 33 years.”
(This would be from the time Saint John came to Littlemore in 1842 until
his death in 1845.) Newman instructed
that he was to buried in the same grave as Ambrose Saint John. It was a very complex relationship and while
there is no reason to suspect that it lacked an integrity, it does reveal the
complexities of our psycho-sexual natures.
In 1878 Pius IX died. The election of Giacomo Pecci as Leo XIII was
as much a new broom sweeping away the accumulated rubbish of the previous reign
as the election of Pope Francis has proved to be. And in the very first consistory of Cardinals
named in his reign in 1879, Leo named John Henry Newman. The Duke of Norfolk, the premier peer of the
Realm as well as England’s leading Catholic layman, had suggested the idea to
the new Pope who was quite enthusiastic about it. But even here Manning tried to stop it. The practice was (and still is) that
Cardinals who are not residential bishops live in Rome. Newman, now at the age of 78, was reluctant
to give up the comforts and securities of England and said he might accept the
Red Hat but only if dispensation were given him to continue to live at the
Birmingham oratory. The correspondence
all went through the Primate and Manning did not forward Newman’s letter but duplicitously wrote Rome
saying that Newman had declined as he did not choose to live in Rome. When Pope Leo expressed his regrets to the
Duke of Norfolk, Norfolk immediately cleared up the “misunderstanding” on
Newman’s behalf and Newman got his Red Hat.
Punch, the satirical magazine,
put it right when it wrote of Newman’s elevation:
"'Tis the good and grey head that would honor the
Hat
Not the Hat that would honor the Head."
Newman died August 11, 1890 and was interred
in Saint John’s grave in Rednal as he had requested.
When Newman died he was
much admired by Anglicans and Catholics alike, especially among the
intelligentsia. A particular
correspondent and admiring friend was Liberal Prime Minister William E.
Glastone. Gladstone, like Newman,
believed in the supremacy of the individual conscience.
Ironically Newman has been
adopted by several right-wing groups of contemporary Catholics, most notably
the “Cardinal Newman Society.” He is
posited as an anti-liberal when in fact he was anything but. Newman’s opposition was to the “liberalism”
of the Enlightenment and its heirs who saw religion only as a natural
phenomenon and discounted not only the idea of Absolute Truth(s) but of Divine
Revelation itself. Newman had always
seen what a blind alley this rationalism led to but he was no
conservative. His philosophy of
Education which had led him into conflict with the Irish Bishops during his
years with the National University in Dublin shows his respect for open
inquiry, investigation, and discussion. His defense of the supremacy of
conscience was decades ahead of its time.
Moreover his essay on the need to
consult the laity in matters of doctrine gives lie to his belief in the
Magisterium as the sole source of authority in the Church. Indeed, he had a great confidence in the
capabilities of a Catholic laity and was very leery of hierarchical absolutism
in the Church. He is often referred to
as “The Father of Vatican II” since the Council realized so many of his dreams
for the Church. We can’t say, of course,
what his attitude would be towards the Liturgical Reforms which came about only
75 years after he was in his grave, but an overall familiarity with his
writings gives that sense of confidence in modernity that is reflected in the
1970 Missal. “To live is to change,” he
wrote “and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
Newman’s flight from the
Church of England to the Catholic Church gave impetus for many more to follow
him but ironically he has always, even in his lifetime, served as an eirenicon of harmonization between the
two traditions.
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