Liberalism and Newman:
The Anglican Vision and Response
A Doctoral Dissertation by Father John McCloskey
Introduction (continued)
The second part of this doctoral thesis will switch to an examination of Newman the man of action. He often declared that faith must lead to action and his Anglican life certainly reveals a person who was disposed to put his beliefs into action even at the risk of family, friendship, and livelihood. If he had contented himself with a simple analysis of the evils of religious Liberalism no doubt he would have had his small part in the history of the nineteenth century. However, it is Newman the real founder of the Oxford Movement and Newman the theologian and preacher that have made his reputation what it is today: one of the great religious geniuses of all time. His cause was the restoration of the Anglo-Catholic orthodoxy in an ever increasingly Protestant Church, which finally lead him to the belief that he was serving a false master the Anglican Church and that the complete truth lay elsewhere.
His willingness to act starts with such a simple response as Letters to the Editor, a great English tradition, but gradually grows into the Oxford Movement, rejection of former friends and teachers, and even participation in political life in as much as it affects Oxford. All the while he attempts to continue his pastoral duties, first at St. Clement's, then at St. Mary's and Littlemore, which from time to time put him into direct conflict with liberalism, as in the famous case of Miss Jubber.
What inspired him most greatly, at least from age twenty-seven on, was his devotion to antiquity, those first vibrant centuries of the Christian Church, above all exemplified by the teachings of the Fathers. The images of Sts. Athanasius and Basil fighting off the Arians at the risk of exile, life and limb, and of St. Augustine in his battle with the Manicheans and Donatists served him as a "kindly light," a beacon in his own struggles for doctrinal purity and truth. Another of the Evangelical mottos learnt in youth, "Holiness before Peace" as exemplified in these early Confessors of the Faith, also helped to light his crusading instincts. He found that a response in writings and actions to Liberalism were not only helpful in the search for sanctity but in his own particular case a necessity. For if he did not act, who would? With St. Jerome he could truly say, by a slight paraphrase, that "Ingemuit totus orbis, Protestantum se esse miratus est." As a true reformer Newman looks to history and tradition, that "Democracy of the Dead," as Chesterton so aptly phrases it, for guidance.
Living in an age of reform, Newman was not exempt from that contagious spirit, although in his case it was an attempt to reform to a purer "apostolical" past rather than towards a progressive latitudinarian future. His beliefs realized in action played a very important role in his gradual realization that indeed there was not a Via Media and that anything of its sort was rejected out of hand by the Anglican hierarchy. Newman oft remarked that his bishop was his Pope and without ecclesiastical approbation he could not continue his work. The rejection by his own ordinary of his reforms put the final nail in the coffin insofar as his continued membership in the Anglican clergy and then of the Church itself.
The second parts of Part II present Newman the Anglican from another viewpoint, that of the author. Between the publication of his first book, The Arians of the Fourth Century based on his early reading of the Fathers to the last of his Anglican period, The Development of Christian Doctrine, which led him directly to his conversion, there are numerous sermons, articles, essays, and poems. Remembering that Newman said repeatedly that he had never written a book (other than Grammar of Assent) that was not a response to a request or a specific necessity, I have chosen here to look for the solution that Newman offers in order to beat back the deluge of liberal thought in the Anglican Church. That response, above all in his last work, is to obey a final authority on earth, that in the last analysis has to be divine.
Newman's craving for a final human authority on matters of dogma made rapid strides between 1837 when these lectures on the Roman and Protestant controversy were written (Via Media) and 1845 when he joined the Church of Rome. 2
Thus I attempt to show the "Verba" of Newman as a direct reaction to liberalism, both as an attack on its basic tenets and at the same time a justification for the role of an Anglo-Catholic Church directly descended from the apostles. His failure in the last venture nevertheless left the theological world infinitely richer with two masterpieces of historical and theological research and some of the finest sermons written in the English language. I have already commented in the prologue on Newman's single-minded pursuit of the truth and it is in an examination of his writings that we find this obsession so admirably exemplified.
In the following pages, then, you will also read the story of Newman the reformer, in his mind, his words and his action. It is difficult to separate the interwoven threads of the Anglican life of Newman, but nevertheless profitable to do so in order to realize the facets and kind of genius that he possessed. In doing so I hope the reader may gain an insight not only into the theological problems of nineteenth century England but also some practical ideas for waging the struggle that continues with us today, both inside and outside the Church. Unfortunately, it appears there are few men in the present scene that so admirably combine deep thought with a disposition to act both fearlessly and prudently. Such a one I suggest is the reigning Pontiff. We too need other Athanasius and Basils; we also need other Newmans. Let his example serve as a stimulus to continue to search for the right combination of sanctity and intellectual ability which can help so much in the battle for the lives and minds of men that take place today.
An additional aim of the thesis is the viewing of Newman's gradual drawing near to the Roman Church as an ever increasing reaction to religious Liberalism in the Church in early nineteenth century England. It is always a daring and somewhat dangerous speculation to attempt to place a person in a different historical situation. But I think it legitimate to ask if Newman would have embraced Catholicism if he had lived, let us say, in the late seventeenth century of Laud and the Non-Jurors. It is hard to say. I think that the Liberalism of the day was a key factor that helped him to finally sail into the safe port of the true Church. One cannot judge the very important role of supernatural grace in the conversion. However we do know that John Henry Newman was a loyal conservative Englishman of his time and one little given to high opinion of "corrupt" Latin Churches replete with fasting monks and sighing nuns, not to mention miraculous relics, according to the mistaken notions of those days. I contend and will attempt to show that his aversion to Liberalism and its progress were the catalyst if not a principal cause of his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845.
Thus the first part represents the vision and challenge of Liberalism while the second part reveals the literary and active response.
Now some words regarding the bibliography for this thesis: After much reading and research and consultation with various Newman experts I decided the best way of pursuing the thesis would be with an almost complete reliance on the primary source, i.e. the complete Anglican works of Newman which are quite numerous as can be seen by referring to the Bibliography in the back. Many of the books or articles listed in the Bibliography have been used as direct sources. I especially concentrated on the first five volumes of Letters and Diaries since as they reveal Newman, for the most part, during his more speculative moments in correspondence with friends and family. As in any group of personal letters, the real personality and opinions of the man come out without any need for dissimulation.
I have also read a number of the Catholic works of Newman in order to see how his thought on the subject developed after his conversion. I have made extensive use of his Apologia and one of his two novels, Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert, as they both deal with his long Oxford years and with the remote and immediate preparation for his conversion. Newman's initial struggle against Liberalism is understood much better in light of his later struggle against the extreme ultramontanists during the decade of the 1860's and afterwards.
Realizing that no man, however great, can be separated from his era I also made a point to reread some of the basic texts of history and philosophy dealing specifically with the early nineteenth century. Although in many aspects Newman transcends his era, he nevertheless is dealing with a concrete and new problem in the early nineteenth century, and that is where this study must be situated. His life covered nearly the whole of the nineteenth century and his name and history are irrevocable connected with it.
The remainder of the Bibliography is taken up with various biographies and studies both of Newman and the Oxford Movement. I have purposely tried to limit their number to a manageable and high quality few. Not to be able to refer to Pusey, Keble, Froude, or Ward, however would be a sore strain for a thesis that has to deal, however infrequently, with the Oxford Movement. The references to these men will also serve to highlight and isolate Newman's unique position as the leading intellectual and organizing light in the struggle against Liberalism. The fact that the first three all ended their days in the Anglican Church also reveals much about the role of Liberalism in the conversion in 1845 of both W.G. Ward, later an enemy of Newman, and of Newman himself.
To avoid secondary sources as much as possible became a necessity after realizing that so many studies of Newman are not only poorly written but often times completely misunderstand both the figure and the man. Newman himself was arguably the finest prose writer of the century and his style and diction were commented upon in his own time by such luminaries of the pen as Matthew Arnold, George Eliot and Lord Macaulay. He is thus capable of explaining himself much more clearly than many of his critics; he is almost never obscure.
The contribution of this work is small although in as far as I have been able to ascertain, it is original. I aim to show that Newman is one of the first to recognize religious Liberalism, based on what he would call the "non-dogmatic principle," as a destructive force for modern society, mainly in the fact that it does not recognize the claims of objective truth. He not only recognizes it for what it is in its essence but also laid bare its roots and its ultimate destination. It is an acute analysis that was to be borne out unfortunately even during his own long life and above all in the diminishing influence of dogmatic based, organized religion in our own century. Newman traces religious Liberalism directly to the philosophical theory of the rationalism and ultimately to the Protestant revolt of the sixteenth century. He would have agreed whole-heartedly with the German author Heinrich Heine who declared that "Protestantism is the mother of Free Thought." Newman foresaw and lived the gradual disappearance of doctrinal authority in the Anglican Church and no doubt would not have been surprised, although he would have been deeply grieved, at the emergence of modernism in the Catholic Church and its persistence, at times openly, at times veiled, up to the present day.
