Newman's Challenge

by Fr. Stanley Jaki - published by Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000

A Book Review by Father John McCloskey

Recently I received an email from a gentleman who asked me if I could tell him where to find a "translation" into readable English of the works of Cardinal Newman. He simply couldn't handle "An Essay on the Development of Doctrine." After my initial amusement ("Could you simplify Mozart? There are too many notes!"), I saw he had a point. His failure may explain why Newman, the towering religious figure of the nineteenth century, is so little read and appreciated in these days. Even though Newman was generally acknowledged to be the finest prose stylist of the nineteenth century, few people today are capable of grasping the meaning of a beautifully crafted and balanced sentence that is a whole page long. Their attention span is too short, and ability to follow an argument that is somewhat abstruse almost non-existent. This neglect says much more about our culture than it does about the genius of Cardinal Newman. Newman is an acquired taste that requires serious effort, but the reward more than compensates the struggle.

Next year we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Cardinal, and we can expect world congresses and new writings to celebrate that event. With his books, sermons, and letters and diaries, Newman wrote dozens of volumes. And commentary on them has generated hundreds of books and thousands of articles. I have written a few myself.

Anticipating the 200th anniversary, Fr. Stanley Jaki, the well known scientist-theologian, distinguished University Professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey has collected a dozen or so essays written over the last decade and put them in a volume entitled Newman's Challenge (Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2000). Fr. Jaki is best known for his seminal work on the relationship with science and religion and his argument that modern science in the West arose largely out of Catholic revelation and metaphysics. Preeminent among his many honors is the Templeton Prize for Religion in 1987 and the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for l970. Here we have a rare instance of a Catholic thinker writing about Newman who can begin to approach him in his stature as a controversial original thinker. It is likely that scholars will be dealing with Jaki's work in the 22nd century as we continue to look at Newman's today. Fr. Jaki arguably stands with Fr. Marvin O'Connell, formerly of Notre Dame University, and the incomparable Fr. Ian Ker of Oxford in England as the outstanding English speaking Newmanists. At this point, as the final volumes of his Letters and Diaries are being published, there would seem little more to be discovered of his original writings, although a stray letter may appear from time to time.

In these essays, Fr. Jaki examines a wide variety of issues and incidents that flow out of the writing and the very long public life of Newman, which spanned virtually the whole of the nineteenth century. He looks at topics as varied as original sin, miracles, Anglo-Catholicism, conversion, and the papacy. The articles are copiously footnoted (many people read Jaki just for his footnotes) and reveal a deep knowledge of the vast secondary sources available to the Newman scholar.

Fr. Jaki wrote the first essay in the collection specifically for this volume to set the motif for the following essays, entitled Always Challenged and Always Challenging. It presents I think on the whole a balanced portrait of the great man. He sees Newman as a man who from very early on until virtually the last ten years of life was presented with a significant series of challenges both as an Anglican and Catholic, which he courageously met with mixed success. The challenges are well known to all students of Newman: liberalism, Tractarian movement, conversion to Rome, the Kingsley challenge, foundation of the English Oratory, the slander of the renegade priest, the Irish University, the anti-Catholicism of the English, the failed college at Oxford, the proposed Bible translation, and so on.

Jaki sees the key to Newman's ability both to challenge, and to face up to challenges, in his deep appreciation of the supernatural. "Challenge in that sense sums up what Newman truly represented and still does. As one who has been recognized by the Church to have practiced the virtues in a heroic way, Newman certainly lived up the to most difficult challenge a human being can face: the relentless challenge of dealing with one's own fallen self." In short, the life long interior struggle of Newman towards holiness aided by grace is the determining factor in his greatness. The Church recognized this in declaring him Venerable in l991. He only lacks a miracle to be beatified, and perhaps at some distant date to be declared a Doctor of the Church.

Jaki says of him, "He could persuasively urge that 'to live is to change and to change often,' but only because what he had his eyes fixed on what was permanently valid in the old. He espoused the idea of development because he accepted the challenge to be faithful to the type set by a divine plan that no welter of change could ever alter."

On account of his prolific writing, his longevity, and his genius, practically everyone who writes on Newman can find evidence to claim Newman for his own particular viewpoint–religious or ideological. Hence, we have Newman the liberal, the conservative, the Papist, the absolute champion of conscience, the reactionary, the second-rate novelist and poet, the fussy Victorian, the neurotic, the anti-Irish, the invisible peritus of the 2nd Vatican Council or one who would have been its sworn enemy, and the list goes on.

Jaki generally gets it right in pointing out Newman's holiness as the most important aspect of his personality and work, but in one respect he claims New man for his own particular ecclesial viewpoint. Jaki, it seems to me, puts an undue emphasis on the anti-liberal side of Newman by constantly taking on the liberal or heterodox students of Newman who have tried to claim him as their own. Jaki continually points out the defects of the Second Vatican Council, not only in the obviously twisted interpretations of the documents that have caused so much confusion over the last 35 years, but also in the "pastoral approach" of the documents themselves. He is too fond of quoting Cardinal Ratzinger's private opinions on the weakness of some elements of the Conciliar teaching than John Paul II's magisterial pronouncements praising the Council, of which he was a Father. Indeed, the whole pontificate of John Paul II has been dedicated to the implementation of this Council.

Paradoxically, the most cited person in the preparatory documents for the Second Vatican Council was John Henry Cardinal Newman, whose influence can be seen everywhere in the Conciliar teaching. Fr. Jaki, it seems, is not looking forward to "a springtime for the Church" in this new century. To be fair, he may be right, but if so, many of Newman's most prophetic insights regarding the nature of the Church and her mission will not be realized.

I throw out the challenge to the reader. Read Fr. Jaki's fine "Newman's Challenge" as an introduction to Newman's life and works and see what you make of this holy man and religious genius.