Newman's Controversies
by Father John McCloskey
The celebration of the 200th anniversary of Cardinal Newman's birth has brought back into focus one of the major figures of the recent history of the Catholic Church and indeed, of world religion. A major congress on his life took place in Rome at the time of the most recent consistory. Also Pope John Paul II has taken keen interest in the cause for his beatification as evidenced by the Papal Letter celebrating the Centenary. The man who was called" the invisible Peritus" of the Second Vatican Council still has a lot to tell us in the third millennium. The twenty -first century may well be the century when it can be said that the worth of battles that Newman fought and the originality of his contributions to the Church will be fully recognized and put to use. As the Pope put it in his bicentenary letter: "Newman was born in troubled times, which knew not only political and military upheaval but also turbulence of soul. Old certitudes were shaken, and believers were faced with the threat of rationalism on the one hand and fideism on the other. Rationalism brought with it a rejection of both authority and transcendence, while fideism turned from the challenges of history and the tasks of this world to a distorted dependence upon authority and the supernatural." John Paul II, himself a long time admirer of Cardinal Newman, has recently addressed the question of religious liberalism t and the supposed conflict between faith and reason and the "crisis of truth" in his encyclical "Fides et Ratio" (nos 6, 90).
Newman was a man of many facets and there have been dozens of books written on the various sides of his intellectual life. What I want to examine briefly here in order to encourage the reader to delve into Newman's prose is Newman as controversialist. Even though he was man of a shy, retiring nature, he rarely turned down any challenge that he saw as an opportunity to set forth the truth, whether the challenge came from within the Catholic fold or from the secular world.
When he was named Cardinal unexpectedly by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 he made clear what had been his life's work as both an Anglican and a Catholic: And I rejoice to say, to one great mischief I have from the first opposed myself. For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of Liberalism in religion. Never did holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now when, alas, it is an error over spreading, as a snake, the whole earth.
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous, and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man's religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion in no sense is the bond of society...The general nature of this great apostasia is one and the same everywhere.
Newman might have been describing the situation of the twentieth century where religions were created by the thousands based on the principle of private judgment and where in many parts of the Western world, particularly in Europe, even to bring up the subject of religion in personal conversation could be reason enough for avoiding an acquaintance or even severing a friendship. Newman's remarks n his "biglietto" speech cited above relate very well to what the Holy Father examines in "Fides et Ratio" (see nos. 11-12) regarding history and revelation.
The Cardinal wrote 30 or so books. The majority of those that came out in his Catholic period were, as he put it, "for the most part what may be called official, works done in some office I held or engagement I had made" or "were from special call or invitation, or necessity or emergency." Many of these works were the result of controversy that came from attack or unexpected misunderstandings. By nature Newman was introverted and not combative but as we shall see, he used every literary skill that he had–which were many–to defend the truth as he saw it and to serve the Church.
Arguably his most important work, as a theologian, was his Essay on the Development of Doctrine finished and published in 1845. Since the early 1830's Newman had been the head of he Oxford Movement inside the Anglican Church. This group of Anglican clergymen were seen as revolutionaries trying to re introduce Catholic principles, devotions, and tradition into a highly resistant "Low" or Protestant English Church. Newman and his close friends and colleagues, John Keble and EB Pusey carried on the movement through writings and distributing tracts to clergymen and educated laymen throughout England. In the early 1840's Newman resigned his curacy, gathered a group of close Oxford disciples around him and retired into a small town outside of Oxford called Littlemore. During the next four years while leading a semi-monastic life, he wrote his seminal book of theology, In retrospect, the book represented a reasoned theological explanation for his eventual conversion to Catholicism. At the time, however and particularly in his first years as a Catholic, the book was considered suspect in some quarters in Rome as somehow approving a "change" in doctrine rather than an organic "development" guided by the Holy Spirit never contradicting what had been taught authoritatively before by the Church. At the heart of the book is the argument that there been a doctrinal development in the Church guided by the Holy Spirit whose supernatural authority assures its authenticity. He attempted to prove that the primitive Church of early Christianity was identical with the Catholic Church of the day. As his most recent biographer, Fr. Ian Ker put it, "the book...is the theological counterpart of The Origin of the species which it predates by over a decade."
He ends the book with an appeal to the reader: "And, now dear Reader, time is short, eternity is long. Put not from you what you have here found; regard it not as a mere matter of present controversy; set not out to refute it, and looking about for the best way of doing so; seduce yourself not with the imagination that it comes of disappointment, disgust, or restlessness, or wounded feeling, or undue sensibility or other weakness. Wrap not yourself round in the associations of years past; nor determine that to be truth which you wish to be so, nor make an idol of cherished anticipations. Time is short, eternity is long."
In 1851, after his conversion, ordination as a Catholic priest, and establishment of the English Orator, Newman wrote "'The Present Position of Catholics in England" to defend Catholics against centuries-old Protestant prejudices, newly roused by Pius IX's institution of an English hierarchy.
Here we find Newman at his wittiest and most humorous and himself considered it to be his best book. It consists of weekly public lectures delivered from the end of June until the end of August 1851, in which he investigates the reason for the universal prejudice against Catholics. Many of these same prejudices are alive and well up to the present day throughout the English speaking world although more prevalent among fundamentalist denominations than mainstream ones. He says that it is because "Catholicism appeals to the imagination, as a great fact, wherever she comes", that Protestantism has countered by impressing upon the popular imagination that the Church is "Antichrist." Such impressions "do not depend afterwards upon the facts or reasoning by which they were produced, any more than a blow, when once given, has any continued connection with the stone or the stick which gave it" This prejudice remains as a "stain on the mind." He attacks these prejudices above all for on their inconsistency. For all of that, Newman remains very much an Englishman and praises the English for their gift of "personal attachment." He says prophetically that the Pope himself would doubtless be "received with cheers, and run after by admiring crowds, if he visited this country, independent of the shadow of Peter which attends him, winning favor and attracting hearts, when he showed himself in real flesh and blood, by the majesty of his presence and the prestige of his name!" Of course, this happened over a hundred years later with the visit of Pope John Paul II to Great Britain.
In April of 1851 Archbishop Cullen of Armagh, Ireland, wrote to Cardinal Newman to ask him to advise on the appointment of a new head for the new Catholic University of Ireland and to inquire whether if "he could spare time to give us a few lectures on education." This letter lead by November to Newman being named the President of the Catholic University of Ireland. The story of the difficulties Newman experienced as being both the head of the Birmingham Oratory and president of a new and unprecendeted Catholic university for the English speaking world has been e told many times before. That project did not work because of a variety of circumstances, including opposition from both within and outside the Church, but the University College of Dublin is an indirect descendant of that project.
It was during that time that Newman delivered perhaps his finest but most certainly his most famous sermon, "The Second Spring" preached in July of 1852 at the first synod at Oscott after the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy to England with all the new bishops present masterpiece of rhetoric." "The past is out of date; the past is dead," yet "the past has returned, the dead lives." The Catholics of England had survived, but" in corners, and alleys, and the housetops; cut off from the populous world around them, and dimly seen, as if through a mist or in twilight, as ghosts flitting to and from, by the high Protestants, the lords of the earth." The sermon is triumphant but it warns much work ads to be done, a that this spring would "turn out to be an English spring,, an uncertain, anxious time of hope and fear, of joy and suffering,–of bright promise and budding hopes, yet withal, of keen blasts, and cold showers, and sudden storms." And so it has been.
The greatest legacy of as Newman put it, "My Campaign in Ireland" was the classic statement of liberal education," The Idea of A. University," Newman himself said this book was one of "my two most perfect works, artistically "though the one, which had given him, the most trouble in writing. Like many of Newman's writings it grows out of historical circumstances which determined his approach. He had to address Irish clerics, the Roman authorities, and the anti clerical lay element not eager to see the establishment of a high level Catholic University in the British Isles.
Newman's foremost biographer, Fr. Ian Ker of Oxford, explains the essence of the first Discourses which make up "the Idea of a University" this way:" Religion and knowledge are not opposed to each other-and not because they are irrelevant to each other, but because they are indivisibly connected, or rather because religion forms part of the subject matter of knowledge. Newman says, "If the Catholic Faith is true, a University cannot exist externally to the Catholic pale, for it cannot teach Universal Knowledge if it does not teach Catholic theology. What gives the Discourses their special character is... the tension between the genuinely unconditional insistence on the absolute value of knowledge itself and the equally firm conviction that knowledge is emphatically not the highest good. Newman says, "Right Reason, that is, Reason rightly exercised, leads the mind to the Catholic Faith, and plants it in all its religious speculations to act under its guidance. But reason, considered as a real agent in the world, and as an operative principle in man's nature is far from taking so straight and satisfactory a direction." Fr. Ker's remarks suggest the importance of the Cardinal's contribution to the understanding between faith and reason, so widely misunderstood at that time, a misunderstanding that continues today.
The 'Idea" has never been out of print and books continue to be written in response to its classic definitions and reasoning. Virtually all the Catholic universities and a goodly number of small secular and Protestant-based colleges in the United States have used the theories of The Idea of A. University as the foundation for their programs of studies.
Indeed a conference on this theme is being held this very year in Washington, DC, at the Catholic University of America. It will always controversial to those who do not consider" knowledge as an end in itself" but rather view education either a simply professional career preparation or as a means to prepare young persons to become useful citizens of the state.
Perhaps the best known of all Newman's works acknowledges as a great classic both of literature and autobiography, is his "Apologia Pro Vita Sua: History of My Religious Opinions." This is the book that finally established his reputation as a great Englishman and Catholic. In some way, it prepared for the crowning honor of his life–being named a Cardinal in 1879 by Pope Leo XIII, "when the shadow was lifted forever." Newman was attacked in a magazine by a well-known advocate of Protestant "muscular Christianity," the novelist Charles Kingsley. In the review of an anti-Catholic History of England by J.S. Froude, Kingsley gratuitously attacked Newman by writing, "Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be'; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion is doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so." After an exchange of letters over some months, Newman replied to this insult against himself and the Catholic priesthood with his masterpiece. Newman wrote not to attack Kingsley personally as it was "very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen, but I wish to impute nothing worse to Mr. Kingsley than that he has been furiously carried away by his feelings." He wrote the Apologia to defend himself against the charges of his being "deceitful", hypocritical, and cunning," and as one "who has given up so much so much that he loved and prized and could have retained, but he loved honesty better than name, and Truth better than dear friends." The book was written as rapidly as possible in six weeks with Newman writing standing up sometimes as long as 22 hours straight in order to get his story before the public. He said' it was "the most arduous work I ever had in my life" in "one of the most terrible trials I ever had." The reviews of the book were universally favorable, and the sales were enormous. His reputation was restored and heightened and indeed even his constant financial worries were over.
However, even after he entered what he considered to be his last years, Newman was not exempt from controversy. The First Vatican Council was convened in 1870 and the biggest question it considered was the timing of the declaration of the Pope's infallibility and the extent of its authority. In England, Newman's fellow Anglican converts such as the Archbishop Manning and his formerly close English disciple W.G. Ward, were enthusiastic Ultramontane proponents of the widest scope being given to the definition. In deed, Newman referred to them as an "aggressive and insolent faction." Newman was a firm believer in papal infallibility but was pleased with its eventual restriction to matters of faith and morals. However, he was by no means convinced that its declaration was opportune given the revolutionary fervor in Europe and strong anti-Popery in England and other countries. To him it appeared" a new and most serious precedent in the church that a dogma, should be passed without definite and urgent cause...." This to my mind is the most serious part of the matter." Newman said that really there was no great difference between the opinions of the two sides.
One of the last controversies in Newman's life that provoked a written work was over the question whether Catholics could be true English citizens. Where did their loyalties lie? Of course, this is a question that continued to be asked right through the presidential election of John F. Kennedy in the U.S. in 1960. Gladstone wrote a pamphlet in November of 1874 making reference to the First Vatican Council entitled, "The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on civil allegiance: A political expostulation." Already in a an earlier article he had spoken about "the effort to Romanise the Church and the people of England." He said this could not come about now on account of the Vatican I. Decrees, which he said show that," no one can become her convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another." Newman by now, was 74 years old, but he steeled himself to the task and choosing to reply indirectly to Gladstone, wrote to the leading Catholic layman, the Duke of Norfolk, who had been a student at Newman's Oratory School in Birmingham. "A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," actually a 150 page book, was published in 1875. Newman used the letter both to explain the moderate Catholic position and to chide the excesses of the Ultramontanes. He upheld the teaching and "claims" of the first Vatican Council saying, "I have never denied them" and declaring his intention "to uphold them as heartily as I recognize my duty of loyalty to the constitution, the laws, and the government of England." He answers point by point the many objections of Gladstone to Catholicism in its history and creeds. He says the real objection of English Protestants is not to the papacy but to the Church: they do not believe that Christ set up a visible society or rather kingdom, for the propagation and maintenance of his religion, for a necessary home and a refuge for his people; but we do." As for Gladstone: "It is not the existence of a Pope, but of a Church, which is his aversion."
Although Newman continued his voluminous correspondence, this controversy was his last. However, the fact that hundreds of books and articles continue to flow from him and his work two hundred years after his birth is a tribute to his importance as both a religious and a secular figure. Few men in history have had such a great variety of talents and gifts and few have used them as effectively over a long lifetime and yet maintained a reputation for holiness. In the years ahead, we may well see him raised to the altars and perhaps even named a Doctor of the Church. Reading Newman requires an intellectual effort but it is a refined and elevating taste that once acquired is never lost.
First appeared in the Catholic Answer of Our Sunday Visitor in the March/April, 2002, issue.
