Conscience the Path to Holiness : Walking with Newman [1 ed.] 9781443871068, 9781443867009

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Conscience the Path to Holiness

Conscience the Path to Holiness: Walking with Newman

Edited with an Introduction by

Edward Jeremy Miller

Conscience the Path to Holiness: Walking with Newman, Edited with an Introduction by Edward Jeremy Miller This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Edward Jeremy Miller and contributors The dust jacket’s depiction of light emerging from darkness captures the experience of Newman's conscience that led him from ambiguity to certainty. All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6700-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6700-9

Gwynedd Mercy University, through released time and financial assistance, has supported my scholarly research over the years. In gratefulness I dedicate this book, the latest of my endeavors, to the University’s president, Dr. Kathleen Owens who has ever encouraged me as member of the faculty, to Dr. Robert N. Funk who was Interim Academic Vice President when I began work on this edited project and who prospered my academic life in manifold ways, and to Dr. Carol A. Breslin, Professor Emerita of English, whose deft touch in proofreading brought clarity and attractiveness to whatever I myself wrote for publication. Edward Jeremy Miller, Ph.D., S.T.D. Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies Gwynedd Mercy University Gwynedd Valley, PA 19437

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations and References .................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Edward Jeremy Miller Chapter One ............................................................................................... 15 The Role of Conscience in the Adventure of Holiness According to Blessed John Henry Newman Fr. Thomas J. Norris Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 31 Seeking a Reserved Enthusiasm as Via Media: Newman, Holiness, and the Asceticism of Antony of Egypt Nathan A. Lunsford Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 50 Newman’s Journey toward Rome: From Willfulness to Holiness Via the Spiritual Exercises Dr. Robert C. Christie Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 66 The Spiritual Summons to Rome: The Oxford Converts’ Call and Response to Holiness Fr. Patrick Manning Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 85 Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? Responses from Newman, Urs von Balthasar, and Pope Benedict XVI Dr. John F. Crosby Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 97 Conscience and Holiness: Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI’s Reception of John Henry Newman Fr. Idahosa Amadasu

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 112 Obedience to Conscience in Newman’s Spirituality: Lessons for Our Times Fr. Emeka Ngwoke Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 134 The Role of Mystery in Experiencing God Dr. Ono Ekeh Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 151 The Analogical Imagination: A Newman Strategy for Holiness Sr. Marie Brinkman, SCL Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 164 Modern Obstacles to Holiness Dr. Jane Rupert Epilogue................................................................................................... 178 Newman’s Decade of Disappointments: 1850-1859 Fr. John T. Ford, CSC Contributors ............................................................................................. 191

ABBREVIATIONS AND REFERENCES

This book quotes Newman’s words many times, and this presents an immediate challenge for an editor. Several of Newman’s books, such as his famous Idea of a University, have been reprinted by various editors. The same Idea text appears on different pages, depending on who the editor is. If the reader does not possess that editor’s version, finding Newman’s words becomes a headache. In his own lifetime, Newman oversaw a uniform edition of his books that Longmans, Green & Co. published between 1868 and 1881. Individuals purchased this or that work, and libraries acquired the whole collection. The pagination was set in stone, as it were, and Longmans continued to reprint the books of the “Uniform Edition” as needed. But the “stone” did not endure when the printing plates were destroyed during World War II. This would seem to present a new challenge to consistently paginated Newman texts, and for years after the war it did. Fortunately, all volumes of Newman’s Uniform Edition from Longmans can now be accessed on the web at www.newmanreader.org/works. The site is sponsored by the National Institute of Newman Studies, Pittsburgh, PA. Other Newman writings are also found at this site, such as the thirty-two volume collection of The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Charles Stephen Dessain et al., (Oxford and London, 1961-2008). The abbreviations below follow the standard Rickaby notations for the Uniform Edition to which are added abbreviations for posthumously published works of Newman’s or materials pertaining to him. Newman’s spelling of words and style of punctuation are retained as much as possible. Unless otherwise noted by an author, all biblical references are to the New American Bible Revised Edition and to its abbreviations for individual biblical books. Add. Apo. Ari. Ath. 1, 2 A.W. Call.

Addresses to Cardinal Newman and His Replies, ed., W.P. Neville Apologia Pro Vita Sua The Arians of the Fourth Century Select Treatises of St. Athanasius, 2 vols. John Henry Newman: Autobiographical Writings, ed., H. Tristram Callista: A Tale of the Third Century

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Campaign Cons. D.A. Dev. Diff. 1, 2 Ess. 1, 2 G.A. H.S. 1, 2, 3 Idea Jfc. L.D. 1-32 L.G. M.D. Mir. Mix. Moz. 1, 2 O.S. P.S. I-VIII S.D. S.E. T.T. U.S. V.M. 1, 2 V.V.

Abbreviations and References

My Campaign in Ireland, Part I, ed. W. Neville (privately printed) On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, Rambler, July 1859 Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, 2 vols. Essays Critical and Historical, 2 vols. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent Historical Sketches, 3 vols. The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 32 vols. Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert Meditations and Devotions of the Late Cardinal Newman, ed. W.P. Neville Two Essays on Biblical and Ecclesiastical Miraches Discourses addressed to Mixed Congregations Letters and Correspondence of J.H. Newman during His Life in the English Church, ed. Anne Mozley, 2 vols. (London: Longmans Green, 1903) Sermons Preached on Various Occasions Parochial and Plain Sermons, 8 vols. Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day Stray Essays on Controversial Points (privately printed, 1890) Tracts Theological and Ecclesiastical Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford The Via Media, 2 vols. Verses on Various Occasions

INTRODUCTION EDWARD JEREMY MILLER

About twenty years ago the phrase “playing the race card” entered the American vocabulary. It described a lawyer’s strategy, on behalf of defending his black client, of voicing the suggestion that racial prejudice was embedded in the prosecution’s case against his client. In the court of public opinion, who after all listen to the news on famous trials, as well as in the minds of the trial’s jurors, how could the prosecution allow itself even to be suspected of racial prejudice in making its case? And if the lawyer playing the race card was rebutted too strenuously by the other side, in this case the white legal establishment, the response would have seemed insensitive to the socially tender topic of racism. It is as if “playing the card” puts the player, the defense lawyer in this case, in an unchallengeable position. I am interested in the somewhat analogous situation of “playing the conscience card” where the card player comes to enjoy an unassailable position. Here is a little conversation that shows how it goes. A person does something which strikes others, maybe many, as being reprehensible. Say a parent withholds certain pediatric vaccinations from her young child and the child contracts a serious infection and dies. Listen to the authorities who want to arrest her and charge her with a crime: “Why did you withhold needed injections?” The mother: “I am against all injections.” “But they are needed to stave off fatal illnesses.” “It goes against my conscience to allow it.” “How did you ever arrive at this manner of thinking about medicine?” “It is the way I think God talks to us in the Bible. It is about trust and believing that God is sufficient to protect you from all evils.” The authority figure might say, “Well, I believe in the Bible, too, and I don’t see where it mandates this fear of medicine.” “That’s your conscience, and you need to follow it, but my conscience, my sense of God’s voice to me, differs. And I must follow my conscience or sin gravely.” The inviolability of conscience seems as sacrosanct in today’s culture as avoiding racial prejudice. There is something about the American character, as distinct from the British character for instance, that causes these conscience situations to

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arise with unsurprising frequency on our shores. It seems ingrained in our heritage. The United States is the only country of which I am aware that saw fit, even felt impelled, to insert a statement of individual rights immediately after formulating the Constitution that regulated the social and political life of the original thirteen States in 1789. Following immediately after the Federal Constitution hammered out by the nation’s founders, there are ten Amendments shielding and enshrining individual rights from incursions by the new federal government. The first is famous and here is a portion of it: “The Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is where the mother above sees her right to her own biblically-driven conscience as protected by that most sacred of American political documents. Although many similar appeals to religious conscience continue to occur, America has no exclusive claim to playing the conscience card in the name of religion. The Taliban of eastern Asia do it. “It is clear to us from the Qur’an that Western influences are Satanic and must be annihilated with whatever force.” In sixteenth-century England, the case is easily made that the Dissenters to the Established Church claimed the inviolable rights of conscience, first in fleeing to the Netherlands to avoid compulsory Anglicanism and then, in returning, eventually taking over Parliament under Cromwell. The first time I viewed the western façade of Wells Cathedral, my Catholic imagination was so saddened to see all those medieval statues ripped from their niches, but then I had to recall the conscience-driven Puritans who defaced the cathedral. Could they, at that moment in time, have been persuaded by any kind of argument, made by any churchmen or by any royals, to cease and desist? Playing the conscience card is a powerful move and unimpeachable motive, seemingly. Even when the excesses of conscience and the wrongfulness of playing the conscience card are recognized, or at last suspected, it is not always clear how to argue the counterpoint or to strike the balance. The Second Vatican Council offered a case in point when it came to formulate its Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae. The preceding church tradition was clearly wrong and needed changing. It took the following form: When Catholics constituted the majority in a nation, Spain for example, Catholicism ought to be the officially recognized religion, and other religions ought to have curtailments placed upon them, because they, after all, were false religions. When Catholics were a minority in a nation, Catholics ought to have the full, free, exercise of their religion. Such a doctrine, still existing in the 1960s, was disgraceful to Protestants and an embarrassment to most of the Catholic bishops at the Council.

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The majority was determined to change the teaching. These bishops wanted Catholic teaching to espouse religious liberty for all religions, not just for Catholicism. But the challenge was how to make the argument to change a long-standing position. How does one best make the case? I take the phrase, “making the case,” from the Jesuit Council expert, John Courtney Murray, who led the bishops through the thicket. Before Murray became involved in the document’s working committee, it had been attempting to argue from the rights of conscience. There were two problems with this approach that the drafting committee could not solve. First, a church teaching tradition on the rights of conscience was lacking. There were not older theologians and older church synods treating the topic. (One must remember that it is a Catholic instinct to seek warrants from its Church tradition of teachings for any proposed doctrine). The second was the ambiguity of the phrase rights of conscience. People could claim rights of conscience to do just about anything they chose. Thus, without ever knowing the phrase, the bishops were fearful of “playing the conscience card” mentality. Enter Murray. He proposed that religious liberty ought to be based on the ancient church teaching on the dignity of the human person. Going back to its foundation in Genesis 1, that men and women are created in God’s very likeness, there is abundant church teaching on human dignity, not only from Jesus and the New Testament but also from the Fathers of the Church and from their great medieval commentators. And notice that the topic lends itself to analysis and argument. What are the dimensions of human dignity? What are its rights and responsibilities? Answers are based on the nature of human nature. A case can be made on such grounds. On the other hand, “following one’s conscience” is a topic that is too individualistic; it is too idiosyncratic. It is based on an individual’s claim, or a group’s claim in the name of the individuals in the group, that freedom to follow one’s conscience cannot be abridged, to use another word from the American First Amendment. Enter Newman. He was quite alert to the difficulties that simply following one’s conscience brought with it. Let me quote at some length a famous passage in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience to dispense with conscience, to ignore a Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a licence to take up any or no religion, to take up this or that and let it go again, to go to church, to go to chapel, to boast of being above all religions and to be an impartial critic of each of them. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has

Introduction

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been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self-will.1

While Newman identifies one’s self will quite accurately as the Achilles’ heel of playing the conscience card, he does not develop one’s human dignity as the justifying foundation for his teachings on conscience. He discourses on the workings of conscience as such. How does he avoid the impasse that the Vatican II bishops encountered? It was Newman’s writing strategy to assume that ideas are complex and multifaceted. As such, each “idea” has many aspects to it, the idea of a university, for example, about which notion he wrote a famous lengthy book. Consequently, each aspect of an idea is to be thought through, to be arranged vis-à-vis other aspects. An idea grasped in its full truth should possess some centering point around which the aspects achieve a harmony and balance. And so it is that there are many aspects to one’s quest to understand what the true idea of conscience is, that is to say, to be able to reach adequately what a teaching on the genuine exercise of conscience entails. Enter this book, this collection of essays about Newman’s understanding of conscience. The book is a sort of Newman mosaic. When a mosaic comes from the hand of one artist, the final product has no repetitions or overlaps. This is not quite the case here. There are ten essayists, and a homily-generated epilogue coming from an eleventh contributor. Some Newman texts will be repeated in different essays. But even these are at the service of a different Newmanian aspect that the particular essayist has chosen to elaborate. Besides, when a particular Newman text comes to be repeated in this or that essay, as the text I have just utilized will be, one could conclude, and I hope our readers will conclude, that one is meeting key words from Newman that have achieved a sort of classical status on the topic of conscience; Newman scholars gravitate to them as if to lodestones in order to advance the cases they are making for this or that aspect of the full “idea” of conscience, that is to say, of grasping its balanced totality. Before introducing the arrangement of the essays, let me say something about the book’s title and something about the event that was the occasion for the essays that you are about to meet. Selecting as our title Conscience the Path to Holiness: Walking with Newman is meant to achieve a certain ring reminiscent of titles Newman himself chose for his sermons. Some essayists incorporate quite liberally passages from Newman’s Anglican 1

Diff., 2, 250.

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sermons, and our title seeks to echo the rich trove of Newman’s thinking in those sermons. Here is one such sermon title, among many of Newman’s titles, in the cadence intended: Obedience to God the Way to Faith in Christ.2 The Annual Conference of the Newman Association of America, August 9-11, 2012, was the occasion for fine scholarly presentations on Newman, and these essays evolved from some of those presentations. The venue was St. Mary of the Lake University in Mundelein, Illinois; the university functions as the seminary of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. In fact, its archbishop, Cardinal Francis George, is the honorary chairperson of the Newman Association of America. As convention coordinator, I advertised its theme quite simply: In the Way of Holiness, inviting presentations on Newman’s own holiness, its expressions and causes, its relevance for today, and the challenges to holiness presented by Newman’s culture and our own. Finally, I sought presentations on Newman as a guide and teacher of holiness; the latter angle, understandably, became the primary focus in many proposals sent me. Newman’s teachings on holiness are practically synonymous with his teachings on conscience because the path to holiness is, for him, the living of a conscientious life in that full range of its aspects that his idea of conscience entails. Accordingly, the Walking with Newman in our title is not only extending the metaphor of a pathway, it underlines also the oneto-one correspondence of conscience and holiness throughout Newman’s writings. The overlap of the two topics is akin to someone writing a book entitled Dieting and Exercise, the Path to Weight Loss. In both cases, they are the path to get there. The rightful nature of conscience leading to holiness must be kept in mind because the mantra of religious fanatics, whether Al-Qaeda or Nigeria’s Boko Haram (to whom one of our essayists from Nigeria adverts) sounds the same: “I am wearing this suicide bomb vest, or I am abducting these young Nigerian girls, because God has called me to do it, and if I die doing it, I will go immediately to heaven.” It is time for a few comments on the arrangement of the essays and on their gist. Our collection of essayists has an international flavor. They hail from Northern Europe, Africa and, in the Western Hemisphere, from Canada and the United States. To the elaboration of the aspects of the idea of conscience, they bring a certain cultural diversity. Thomas Norris’s essay is the closest approach to a systematic elaboration of Newman’s teachings on the nature of conscience, what German scholarship might call Newman’s Gewissenlehre. Fr. Norris, a 2

P.S., VIII, 202 ff.

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Introduction

well-known theologian and member of the papal International Theological Commission, is the person to undertake it. Among the array of aspects with which Norris illuminates Newman’s full idea of conscience is that aspect of the idea that Newman terms the role of real apprehension, as in Newman’s contention that the internal testimony of conscience to a Moral Judge provides a real apprehension of God’s existence. This internal testimony or voice, at times ambiguous or faint, raises the wonder and even the expectation that God speaks to humanity in a clearer manner, that is, in a supernatural revelation such as Judaism and Christianity came to claim. But regarding Newman’s central assertion that the voice of conscience leads to real apprehensions of God, such apprehensions take their vivid life from the work of our imaginations. This feature of imagination other essayists will treat more directly. Accordingly, the Norris contribution serves as the leadoff essay. Two essays follow that treat influences on Newman’s understanding of conscience when viewed through the prism of holiness. Nathan Lunsford reaches back to the influence on Newman of the Fathers of the Church, but it is not the well-known and customary treatment of the Apostolic Church so appealing to the Tractarians, and especially to Newman. It was, rather, the Patristic teachings on asceticism that enable Lunsford to describe a middle path Newman later walked between a rationalistic approach to religion and a one-sided emotional and over-enthusiastic approach. Newman’s study of St. Antony of Egypt, that paradigm desert ascetic of the Patristic Period, led Lunsford to describe a strategy of “reserved enthusiasm,” or “elasticity,” that portrayed Antony’s life as avoiding the dangers of an excess of emotion on one side and an excess of rationalizing on the other side. St. Antony represents a via media, and Lunsford reprises Newman’s description of the saint’s life as Antony’s “calm” life of holiness. Robert Christie, using terminology from earlier research that he developed with the help of Bernard Lonergan and others, undertook to describe the necessary elements for Newman’s “unconditional conversion” to Roman Catholicism in 1845. Christie perceives those elements embedded in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, a retreat and meditation strategy that Newman followed at some length during his last Anglican years at Littlemore just before his conversion. The Ignatian Exercises served to harmonize and promote the contributions of intellect, affections, and the imagination to the molding of Newman’s will away from “willfulness” to an unconditional submission to God’s will, expressed in a decisive act of faith.

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Patrick Manning also examined Anglican conversions to Roman Catholicism at the same time that Newman made his choice to convert. Depicting how painful were the sacrifices that the converts had to endure (loss of respect, loss of an adequate livelihood, immersion into a different religious culture), Manning identifies why converts made such a leap “across the Tiber” in the one and only place the identification could be located that would not make their choice a foolhardy one. That place was in the conscience of the converts, which in turn was driven by their wish for personal holiness that they did not find for themselves in the Church of England. Their wish for personal holiness impelled the consciences, and their consciences impelled their leap. Much testimony about the quest for holiness from Newman’s Anglican sermons is marshalled together, so that the sacrifices involved in the converts’ quest are not foolishly undertaken when viewed within Newman’s teaching. Continuing with influences, Hans Urs von Balthasar is enlisted as an influence, not on Newman of course, since von Balthasar wrote long after Newman was dead. John Crosby enlists him as an influence on our reading of Newman, particularly on one teaching from Newman that troubled Professor Crosby. “Dare We Hope That All People Be Saved?” is a question that one can pose to Newman, and von Balthasar does it in a small essay of the same title. He thinks Newman is too pessimistic about the number of the saved, too Augustinian in such pessimism, while the number of the damned is quite large. Scripture is not crystal clear on the matter; there are texts that read generously about the number of the saved while other texts seem stingy about it. In line with our book, Crosby is indirectly treating the topics of holiness (saved or not) and conscience (at fault or not) but his direct aim is von Balthasar’s critique of Newman’s seeming pessimism. Nonetheless, von Balthasar detects in Newman the same two accents one finds in the Scriptures: the difficulty of being saved on the one hand, and the power of God’s redemptive generosity on the other. Crosby outlines several points of contact between the two theologians in which he finds von Balthasar attempting to eliminate an unnecessary pessimism in Newman, using Newman’s own words. An encyclical of Benedict XVI is also enlisted to support a larger hope in the number of the saved at world’s end. (Readers will find a refreshing tone in Crosby’s essay that appreciates Newman but refrains from lionizing him.) Three essays, each in its own manner, look at the tension that comes with any affirmation of conscience much as Newman did in words we have already met: on the one hand, conscience as a “stern monitor,” a divine dictate, and on the other hand, conscience as self-serving “right of self-will.” Fr. Idahosa Amadasu begins with Newman’s fundamental

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theme, namely, that a life of faithfulness to conscience leads under God’s direction to genuine holiness. But does this work for an aberrant conscience, one that is erroneous in its choices? The teaching from Thomas Aquinas is well known: A person must follow his or her conscience, even if unwittingly it happens to be a conscience in error. Other principles in Aquinas save his position from ever being tantamount to the “right to self-will” that Newman justly criticized. This Thomistic balance Amadasu recognizes, but his major effort is to enlist Joseph Ratzinger’s appropriation of Newman’s doctrine on conscience. Ratzinger, writing earlier as a theologian and not as pope, presents a common voice with Newman in the matter of “following one’s conscience” when rightly understood, with both of them opposed to a subjective and relativistic sense of personal conscience. The key to the harmony between the two of them is to perceive the polarity that operates in the theological systems of both, conscience as a moral sense and a sense of duty in Newman, and Ratzinger’s double sense of anamnesis (remembering), that of creation (the internal sense of memory) and that of faith (the external hearing of the word of revelation). Amadasu concludes with the manner that healthy polarities function in the theological systems of Aquinas, Newman, and in Ratzinger’s Augustinianism. Emeka Ngwoke approaches the same fundamental problematic as does Amadasu, but he does so in more concrete fashion. Conscience, enjoying the sovereign nature of a divine dictate, as Newman famously noted, never should become a doctrinaire injunction whose intimations in life’s complexities are always clear to us. Accordingly, Ngwoke poses an interesting heuristic question for getting at the matter. If Newman were to be thrust into contemporary complexities calling for conscientious decisions, or calling for judgments about decisions others make, how would he respond? What strategy might he devise to hear God’s interior voice (conscience) clearly within these social complexities? One such situation is the hostility between radicalized Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. The author was surely prescient when he brought to our awareness at Mundelein in 2012 the tendencies of the Boko Haram then and who, in 2014, appear to outdo earlier atrocities. The author’s main contemporary preoccupation, however, is President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and certain of its mandates that unsettle the American Catholic bishops and many but not all Catholic laity. This essay, more than any other in the book, is tied to events unfolding at the present time. Rather than parsing multiple texts from Newman’s own day and context, save for Newman’s argued openness in the 1860s to the loss of the Papal States that was then anathema to conservative ecclesiastics, the author brings a

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measure of courage to his effort to present how he thinks Newman would size up the matter, and how Newman might argue to persuade American Catholic opinion, faced as we are today with particular provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Ono Ekeh is attuned to the difficulties presented by the notion of conscience from a very different perspective than that of the other writers. Recalling that in Newman’s scheme the voice of conscience can lead to a real apprehension of the existence of God Creator and Moral Judge, nevertheless the God whom one experiences never ceases to be shrouded in mystery. The very word mystery preoccupies Professor Ekeh. Newman, he says, uses the word to refer to our reaching the limits of our expressive capabilities, such that we reach an inability to articulate what we encounter and may even sound linguistically contradictory when we try talking about it. But a cynic might say to a believer in God, “If this is what you mean by saying that God is and remains a mystery, then all your words are simply nonsense. I am just quoting you back to yourself.” Ekeh uses insights from Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner to defend the mysteriousness of God from amounting to sheer nonsense. Mystery signals our inability to comprehend the whole reality of something, not simply our inability to speak of it meaningfully. (I propose an analogy to help us follow Professor Ekeh’s deep thinking. I am a mystery myself. I never comprehend my totality. Yet I can speak about myself, my real self; I can make decisions like “I am in a false position, and I need to remove myself from it.”) Mystery is our sense that the full reality is beyond our full grasp yet not beyond suggestive language about it that does not mislead. A cluster of statements about God might appear, as statements, to be logically inconsistent, considered merely as language, such as saying that God is both merciful and just. But if statements are expressive of a unified reality, such as about God in God’s Oneness, the cluster points to the substrate reality behind the statements. They are not a cluster of nonsense statements shooting aimlessly into the dark. Ekeh’s essay provides justification that an unsophisticated believer, without having to be a theologian, can pray and make meaningful statements about the deep mystery of God, and Newman is on that person’s side. The last two essayists share a common background and a common topic. Both of them have their doctorates in English literature. Both of them have chosen to write, not surprisingly, about the imagination. I begin with Sr. Mary Brinkman, SCL. She adopts a more abstract approach to her analysis of imagination, but her treatment is laced with many excerpts from Newman’s sermons that show imaginative writing at work. It is not simply the role of imagination but the notion of the analogical imagination

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that she contends is Newman’s strategy behind his phase real apprehension. She is indebted to David Tracy’s book, Blessed Rage for Order, for the phrase analogical imagination and her understanding of it. An analogical image is no mere metaphor “standing in” for a complex idea. Nor is it a simile, born of a mental comparison. An analogical image evokes the thought of a relationship (italics hers). Her thesis is that the analogical image expresses a personal language possessing a force that an analytic statement or figure of speech does not. It depends upon the experience of a relationship between two terms, one person and another, a person and God, or a person and nature. What might have been a more conceptual grasp between two distinct terms sinks into the imagination as a vivid realization joining both of them together. When happening between a person and God, as painted in Newman’s sermons, such real apprehension is called faith in God. Modern culture with its emphasis on a scientific and empirical way of thinking, argues Jane Rupert, presents tough obstacles to the type of thinking most suitable to enabling religious belief. Religion and even the humanities have become “domains imperiled in an empirical era.” Religious belief requires reasoning infused with the contributions of imagination. Religious thinking, accordingly, is similar to the thinking used in poetry and other forms of literature. She introduces testimonies from two noted practitioners of empirical thinking who came to confess the truncation of their own minds because they allowed the imaginative side of their lives to atrophy. After presenting Newman’s defense of the role of imagination in religious thinking in contrast to the very different sort of thinking going on in the empirical sciences, Dr. Rupert concludes with illustrations of poetic thinking from Newman’s study of the Benedictine religious tradition. “The most poetical of religious disciplines” was Newman’s arresting phrase for Benedictine life. This, then, is the arrangement of essays in this book and the tack each essayist takes. In an epilogue, the book contains a reflection from Fr. John Ford, CSC, professor at the Catholic University of America. John Ford can rightly be thought of as the dean of Newman studies in the United States, having been working at it so long and so well. I had invited Fr. Ford to deliver the homily at our concluding Mundelein liturgy. He preached on the manner in which Divine Providence brought forth in Newman’s experience unexpected blessings from life’s deep disappointments. His reflection at the conclusion of this book is an outgrowth and further development of that homily, and it speaks for itself. (If the reader is unfamiliar with the basic contours of Newman’s life, I suggest reading Professor Ford’s epilogue after reading this introduction.)

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11

To this introduction I wish to add a personal sort of postscript. Had I not been occupied with what convention people call housekeeping duties, I might have made a convention presentation myself at Mundelein. That was never to be, but I did mull over what I might have delivered were I not heavy laden. It is an aspect of Newman’s doctrine on conscience that does not get full treatment by our essayists, though it is certainly implied here and there. It is the required notion of patience if God’s voice is to be heard clearly, if it is to be discerned rightfully. Mine is a postscript to this Introduction, not an eleventh essay, so I will be very brief. And I will use Newman’s own life and words in 1844 and 1845 as an illustration of the role of patience. When 1845 opened, Newman was living at Littlemore, three miles outside Oxford, in a kind of retreat milieu with other like-minded university men.3 Newman had two years earlier, in September of 1843, given up Anglican ministry and would be resigning his Oriel Fellowship the following October. From a comment he made in an 1864 newspaper that became part of his Apologia, he says that he had begun working on his Essay on the Development of Doctrine at the beginning of 1845 and was hard at it until October. “As I advanced, my difficulties so cleared away that I ceased to speak of ‘the Roman Catholics,’ and boldly called them Catholics. Before I got to the end [of my research project], I resolved to be received, and the book remains in the state in which it was then, unfinished.”4 This statement has led many Newman readers, among whom I include myself when I first began reading him seriously, to conclude that his conversion process was rather intellectual and went something like this: It had already become clear to him that the Anglican Church was in schism from the one divinely-constituted Roman Church. It is more probable, he noted frequently to friends, that Anglican Christianity veered into schism than that recent Roman doctrines have veered from the apostolic teachings. But the latter needed proving. So beginning in early 1845, Newman began researching the history of Roman Catholic doctrines, and he came to identify certain principles that distinguished true doctrinal developments from specious ones. Thus armed with principles, Newman’s October 1845 conversion had unfolded in syllogistic fashion. Rome’s Tridentine dogmas seem to be novelties. However, they meet the tests for 3

Some of these “younger men” of the Movement, as Newman called them, included Dalgairns, Lockhart, Bowles, Bridges, St John, Meyrick, Balston, Walker, and Coffin. Very much against Newman’s wishes, Lockhart’s early departure from them to become a Roman Catholic unsettled Newman deeply. 4 Apo., 234.

12

Introduction

genuine doctrinal developments. Therefore, this last obstacle to becoming Catholic has now been removed by my just completed essay proving the minor premise.5 But Newman’s confidential letters to friends in 1844 and especially 1845 present a different picture of what held him back from becoming a Catholic. “As to the Fathers…I do now think, far more than I did, that their study leads to Rome. It has thus wrought in me,” he wrote fellow Tractarian leader Edward Pusey at the very end of 1843.6 But was he deluding himself in so thinking? Why did no other leading lights of the “Movement” see what he was seeing, he wondered? Writing to Henry Edward Manning almost a year later, he says that his salvation depends on joining the Church of Rome, but “what keeps me yet, is what has kept me here long—a fear that I am under a delusion.” In this same letter, he tells Manning that he does not see greener grass on the other side; in fact, “I have no existing sympathies with Roman Catholics. I hardly ever, even abroad, was at one of their services—I know none of them. I do not like what I hear of them.”7 Newman had a constant conviction that, as an Anglican, he was in schism. And he had an apprehension he did not want to die in a state of schism. But was it all a delusion? This fear of being deluded is what held him back from going over to Rome. How was the fear of delusion finally whisked away? The answer is simple: By patience and by obedience to conscience! Time alone can show whether a view will hold—but then there is this consolation, that, if time has shown the untenableness of one, it will do the like service to another, if it be untenable. Time alone can turn a view into a conviction—It is most unsatisfactory to be acting on a syllogism, or a solitary, naked, external, logical process. But surely it is possible in process of time to have a proposition so wrought into the mind, both ethically and by numberless fine conspiring and ever-recurring considerations as to become part of our mind, to be inseparable from us, and to command our obedience.8

As for obedience to one’s conscience, “I have always contended that obedience even to an erring conscience was the way to gain light, and that it mattered not where a man began, so that he began on what came to hand 5

Some of this description is reprised from my book review of Volume 10 of Newman’s Letters and Diaries that appeared in The Thomist 72/3 (July 2008), 517-23. 6 L.D., 10:63. 7 L.D., 10:412. 8 L.D., 10:190.

Conscience the Path to Holiness: Walking with Newman

13

and in faith—that any thing might become a divine method of Truth, that to the pure all things are pure, and have a self-correcting virtue and a power of germinating.”9 Readers knowing Newman’s famous 1870 Grammar of Assent will detect working here in 1845 the same very twin principles, patience and conscience, that galvanize what Newman came to call years later the illative sense in making judgments in concrete matters. It is the hard-todescribe mental process that unerringly tells someone, within a discernment process, “enough is enough” and “now is the time to decide and to act.” This is what happened to Newman by late summer, 1845, and his letters then begin to forewarn friends of an imminent move. Newman’s final two years at Littlemore are a sort of existential commentary on his later Grammar of Assent.10 Although it remains true that overcoming his fear of delusion was the final obstacle to hurtle for what essayist Robert Christie terms Newman’s unconditional conversion, his 1845 research into the history of Christian doctrines was not a nugatory task. Before ever laying down his pen that October on the research that became his famous book on doctrinal development, Newman had already achieved a sense—let us call it an illative sense—that his conscience impelled him to become a Roman Catholic. This is why he wrote friends in the summer of 1845 that he was about to do so. Therefore he already was convinced personally that Tridentine doctrines were not novel additions to the ancient faith. But it remained for the public case to be made that recent Catholic teachings were not novelties. By October he had made the case sufficiently, and then he laid down his pen. I would propose that Newman’s Essay on Development is not the cause of his conversion but rather a kind of appendix to what his conscience had reached earlier, after suitable patience. The Essay on Development brought to conclusion the making of the case that others could read for themselves. But as for entering into his innermost conscience, that was for God to do, not for others to require. It is thus evident that Newman’s conversion did not spring from some intellectualized eureka moment in October 1845 when the doctrinal issues were cleaned up. It sprang, rather, from a discernment of God’s will for him, for him personally and not as a paradigm for others such as an intellectual syllogism might serve. It took patience. It involved a period of time that Newman could neither control nor predict. All he could do was pray, mull over issues, and test his feelings, such as coming to a 9

Ibid. This is an insight I owe to Frank McGrath, the successor to Gerard Tracey as editor of the Letters and Diaries. 10

14

Introduction

provisional decision and seeing if peacefulness ensued. At some moment, seemingly in the summer of 1845, his conscience told him that he was not under a delusion thinking that he ought to become a Roman Catholic. And this decision to become a Roman Catholic he then began sharing with friends.

CHAPTER ONE THE ROLE OF CONSCIENCE IN THE ADVENTURE OF HOLINESS ACCORDING TO BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN FR. THOMAS J. NORRIS

“There is one archetype of the Christian man, and this model is consecrated by the Church herself. It is the saint.”1 —Georges Bernanos “Certainly, I have always contended that obedience even to an erring conscience was the way to gain light, and that it mattered not where a man began, so that he began on what came to hand, and in faith; and that any thing might become a divine method of Truth.”2 —John Henry Newman

Introduction As a young man, John Henry Newman chose as the mottos of his life, “Holiness rather than peace,” and “Growth the only evidence of life.”3 The occasion of his doing so was his reading of Thomas Scott, an Evangelical Anglican clergyman and the man to whom he felt he owed, under God, the salvation of his soul. He describes this great moment in his life in the Apologia. From the time of his first conversion at the age of fifteen, this very philosophical teenager aimed at obedience to the Word of God and the following out of the Will of God in the circumstances of life. Since Christianity is the presence of Persons, the goal of Christian life has to consist in looking unto Christ, “the leader and perfecter of faith” (Heb 1

George Bernanos, Lettre aux Anglais (Paris 1942), 245, quoted in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Bernanos. An Ecclesial Existence (San Francisco 1996), 313. 2 Apo., 206. Any exceptions to Newman’s Uniform Edition will be indicated. 3 Ibid., 5.

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12:2). Obedience, not a frame of mind, is what matters. And since in the Kingdom of God those who have will receive even more and they will become rich (Mt 13:12), Newman’s life advances from one degree of insight to another, since he had the grace not to betray the kindly light that led him. Students of Newman identify his three conversions, one as a teenager in 1816, the second as a Fellow of Oriel in 1828 when he started to prefer intellectual to spiritual achievement, and the third in 1845 when he made the ultimate ecclesiological shift in entering the Catholic Church. From the time of his youth, there was another concern that rose up before him. It was the spectre of an intellectual movement against religion of such depth and magnitude as to challenge all believers and to require an appropriate response. Christians would have to give an account of the hope that was in them (1 Pt 3:15). The response to that challenge is so much the context and leitmotiv of Blessed John Henry Newman’s life as to constitute a key hermeneutic of his voluminous writing.4 From the moment he entered Holy Orders, he set before himself a clear ministerial objective: to form Christians.5 “That goodly framework of society which is the creation of Christianity”6 was under threat. Accordingly, Newman dedicated much of his long life to proposing and designing a response to this subtle, ongoing and erosive marginalization of Faith. Against the same threat, Pope Benedict XVI voiced more recently similar alarm. The retired pope spoke of a “faith fatigue” affecting much of the West. If an eminent theologian such as Karl Rahner could contend that the first Pentecost was “a communal experience of the Holy Spirit clearly conceived, desired and experienced in a general way” and “not an accidental local gathering of a number of individual mystics, but an experience of the Spirit on the part of a community as such,”7 then John Henry Newman could be seen as a glowing personification of that principle, especially through the witness of a life spent building up various communities. 4 See Stray Essays on Controversial Points, privately printed (London 1890), 104; quoted in C. S. Dessain, John Henry Newman (London: A. and C. Black Ltd, 1966), 30. 5 See Christopher Dawson, “Newman and the Modern World” in The Tablet, 5 August 1972, 733-4. It is interesting that the title of his very first sermon is “Holiness necessary for Future Blessedness,” in P.S., I, 1-14. 6 Newman’s words near the end of his life, in the Biglietto Address. See Add., 65. 7 Karl Rahner, “Spirituality of the Future” in The Practice of the Faith (London 1985), 18-26; see his “The Theology of Mysticism” in Karl Lehmann and L. Raffelt, eds., The Practice of Faith: a Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality (New York 1986), 70-77; and The Shape of the Church to Come (New York 1974), 108.

The Role of Conscience in the Adventure of Holiness

17

His two great works on faith and belief, the Oxford University Sermons and A Grammar of Assent, cover almost forty years of reflection and writing between them. There one might expect to find his most mature and explicit thinking on the assimilation and personal appropriation of divine revelation. That expectation is in fact borne out upon reading these seminal texts. Accordingly, it is to these two works we turn, in particular the latter, which has his most mature insight as to how we realize the reality of God and personally appropriate the riches of divine revelation. As with other topics he tackled, Newman goes directly to the core of the matter. The question, in other words, is: “How we gain an image of God and give a real assent to the proposition that He exists.”8 Newman proposes conscience as the preferable route to such an assent, because conscience is a “first principle” and “we have by nature a conscience.”9

What is Conscience? In the Grammar, and somewhat surprisingly in the chapter concluding the first half of that original work where he is dealing with the apprehension of faith, he addresses formally the topic of conscience. Conscience is as real an endowment of our humanity as memory or intellect or will or imagination or the aesthetic sense. Conscience for its part is both a moral sense and a sense of duty, a judgment of reason and a magisterial dictate. In the second volume of the Philosophical Notebook he defines conscience in these terms: “By conscience I mean the discrimination of acts as worthy of praise or blame. Now, such praise or blame is a phenomenon of my existence, one of those phenomena through which, as I have said, my existence is brought home to me. But the accuracy of praise or blame in the particular case is a matter not of faith, but of judgment. Here then are two senses of the word conscience. It either stands for the act of moral judgment, or for the particular judgment formed. In the former case, it is the foundation of religion, in the latter of

8

G.A., 105. Ibid. For further references to conscience in Newman, consult the following: Johannes Artz, Newman-Lexikon (Mainz 1975); Newman-Studien, volumes IX (1974) and XI (1980) for various articles; S. A. Grave, Conscience in Newman’s Thought (Oxford 1989); John Finnis, “Conscience in the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,” in Newman after a Hundred Years, eds., I. Ker and A. Hill, (Oxford 1990), 401-418; Gerard J. Hughes, “Conscience” in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, eds., I. Ker and T. Merrigan, (Cambridge 2009), 189-220. 9

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Chapter One

ethics.”10 Conscience as a moral judgment makes it the source of ethics, while its second dimension makes it the key to the realization of the reality of God and, in a second instance, of realizing the mysteries of divine revelation. Newman concentrates on the second aspect. Why does he? First, “this is its primary and most authoritative aspect; it is the ordinary sense of the word. Half the world would be puzzled to know what was meant by the moral sense; but every one knows what is meant by a good or bad conscience. Conscience is ever forcing on us by threats and by promises that we must follow the right and avoid the wrong.”11 A second reason for his preference has to do with his focus on how we reach real or imaginative apprehension of God, and, specifically, the question, “Can I believe as if I saw?” He will show that this primary sense of conscience is the very place where we access the reality of God initially and later also the truths of divine revelation. For in conscience as a sense of duty we encounter “the dictate of an authoritative monitor bearing upon the details of conduct as they come before us.”12 The whole world, Newman contends, knows what is meant by a good conscience and a bad conscience, whereas only a few would know what the “Moral Sense” is. We speak of conscience as a voice, since the imperative side of the act of conscience enables us realize that we are being addressed. “If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear.”13 Already in the sermon, “Dispositions for Faith,” Newman brought out vividly the theonomous dimension of conscience when he explains that its “very existence carries on our minds to a being exterior to ourselves; for else whence did it come? and to a Being superior to ourselves; else whence its strange troublesome peremptoriness? I say, without going on to the question what it says…its very existence throws us out of ourselves, and beyond ourselves, to go and seek for him in the height and depth, whose voice it is.”14 To the degree that we listen, obey, and act consistently with that voice, our realization of both the being and the attributes of God deepens and sharpens.

10

Edward Sillem, ed., The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry Newman, vol.2 (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1969-70), 47 (Proof of Theism). 11 G.A., 106. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 109. 14 O.S., 65.

The Role of Conscience in the Adventure of Holiness

19

With characteristic pedagogical skill, he sets before us the two sets of “feelings” or “emotions” that accompany the good and bad conscience. These sets of feelings are such as require an “exciting cause.” In that way, “the phenomena of Conscience, as a dictate, avail to impress the imagination with the picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive, and is the creative principle of religion, as the Moral Sense is the principle of ethics.”15 In that way, conscience in its imperative dimension “is a connecting principle between the creature and his Creator.”16 This God is holy but demanding. He is perceived as such because conscience as a dictate impresses the picture of a “holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive” Judge. Only with divine revelation shall we encounter the God whose mercy mocks his justice. Now this process, though “independent of the written records of Revelation,”17 impresses on the mind the reality of a Supreme Being, a Person, who speaks to us and addresses us. Conscience in that fashion is a discovery of our identity as a You before the living God who says to us, “Do this”, and “Do not do that.” In the process, our minds arrive, “not only at a notional, but at an imaginative or real assent to the doctrine that there is One God, that is, an assent made with an apprehension, not only of what the words of the proposition mean, but of the object denoted by them.”18 It is ever important to realize the context of this exposition on conscience. It comes at the conclusion of the first half of the Grammar which deals with our apprehension and access to what is real. In this fifth chapter called “Apprehension and Assent in the Matter of Religion,” he applies the insight gained in the first four chapters. A key distinction worked out at length had been that of notional and real or imaginative apprehensions and assents. They differ from each other in terms of direction of attention and depth of impact. In real apprehension, we focus our attention on the entire object, while in notional apprehension we focus on an aspect of the object. Furthermore, in real apprehension, the object exercises maximum impact on the perceiving subject by engaging the imagination as well as the moral sense.

15

G.A., 110. Ibid., 117. 17 Ibid., 118. 18 Ibid., 119. 16

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Chapter One

“Can I believe as if I saw?” Newman asks this famous question at a key moment in the Grammar as he considers our perception of God and his divine attributes.19 The imperative side of conscience enables him to follow up his own question vigorously. There is a parallel between the function performed by the mind with regard to the external world and the function performed by conscience with regard to the Supreme Being. The fact is that “from the perceptive power which identifies the intuitions of conscience with the reverberations or echoes (so to say) of an external admonition, we proceed on to the notion of a Supreme Ruler and Judge, and then again we image Him and His attributes in those recurring intuitions, out of which, as mental phenomena, our recognition of his existence was originally gained.”20 This explains why he identifies conscience as the great internal teacher of religion and as “a connecting principle between the Creator and the creature,” as we have seen. The implications of this connection should be noted. The objection circulates widely today that conscience disconnects, and so alienates, a person from the true self, setting Another over against the deepest self. This contention is clearly present to Newman, especially in the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk where, with the hindsight of four further years from the completing of the Grammar, he sees the mounting resistance to conscience and, in particular, the tactic of reducing of its primordial sense. He already addressed that contention in the Grammar by highlighting the fact that conscience is the voice of God and that this voice constitutes a call to our deepest humanity. “For Newman the encounter with God in conscience is a profoundly religious experience, indeed it is for him the foundational religious experience.”21 This has to be so since conscience is “a dutiful obedience to what claims to be a divine voice, speaking within us.”22 The significance and priority of conscience in the human access to God is a distinctive component in all of Newman’s thinking. It enjoys precedence over the classical proofs of the existence of the Supreme Being. It also operates very powerfully within each person, and so it is not 19

Ibid., 102. Ibid., 104. 21 John F. Crosby, “What is Anthropocentric and what is Theocentric in Christian Existence? The Challenge of John Henry Newman,” Communio 2(1989), 253; see also his “The Encounter of God and Man in Moral Obligation” in The New Scholasticism 3(1986), 317-355. 22 “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,” in Diff., 2, 255. 20

The Role of Conscience in the Adventure of Holiness

21

reserved to theologians who have the time and the opportunity to formulate and defend the classical arguments. In the Apologia he explains vividly the reasons for its importance for his thinking. The passage deserves quotation in full, not least for the clarity with which he articulates his method and his argument. Starting then with the being of a God, (which, as I have said, is as certain to me as the certainty of my own existence…) I look out of myself into the world of men, and there I see a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress. The world seems to give the lie to that great truth, of which my whole being is so full…If I looked into a mirror, and did not see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me, when I look into this living busy world, and see no reflexion of its Creator…Were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist when I looked into the world. I am speaking for myself only; and I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, drawn from the general facts of human society and the course of history, but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice.23

“Conscience is a stern Monitor”24 “Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself.”25 It is rather a messenger from God, a God who addresses us with peremptory candor and evaluates our actions one by one with stern impartiality. In that way, “its very existence throws us out of ourselves, to go and seek for him in the height and depth, whose voice it is.”26 Our inconsistency in obeying the imperative of conscience prods us and goads us, assesses us and challenges us. In practice this means that “the more a person tries to obey his conscience, the more he gets alarmed at himself, for obeying it so imperfectly.”27 The experience of one’s moral fragility, that experience so incomparably described by St Paul in chapter seven of the Letter to the Romans, is a searing one indeed. “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (7:19). This searing experience brings us face-to-face with our moral and human fragility, an experience that pierces and leans upon us. The result is that “[T]he voice 23

Apo., 241. Diff., 2, 250. 25 Ibid., 248. 26 O.S., 65. 27 Ibid., 67. 24

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Chapter One

of conscience has nothing gentle, nothing of mercy in its tone. It is severe and even stern. It does not speak of forgiveness, but of punishment. It suggests to him a future judgment; it does not tell him how he can avoid it.”28 Now it is precisely this experience that Newman explores in order to investigate the appropriateness, or rather the necessity, of the gift of divine revelation. The God of natural religion who speaks in and via conscience is a demanding God so that we feel “thrown between” the holy God and our unholy selves. It is precisely this “being-thrown-between” the holy God and one’s unholy self that engenders the desire that God might speak a word of pardon to us!29 Conscience in that fashion puts us on the lookout for the word of pardon and the grace of mercy. In fact, it shows us the anthropological truth of our being by which we are expectant hearers of a possible Word of Grace and Mercy! As he phrased the issue in the Grammar, “those who know nothing of the wounds of the soul, are not led to deal with the question, or to consider its circumstances; but when our attention is roused, then the more steadily we dwell upon it, the more probable does it seem that a revelation has been or will be given to us.”30 Men and women are either the potential or actual hearers of the Word of the revealing God!31

“A resolute Warfare against the rights of Conscience”32 Newman was acutely alive to the religious, philosophical and cultural conditions of his time. The principal strand in that scenario was what he called “doctrinal liberalism” together with the accompanying and rising tide of worldliness. This war on revealed religion, wherein doctrines are portrayed as nothing but religious opinions that happen to be held by groups of people,33 represented the greatest evil and challenge of the day for the Oxford Movement in general and for Newman in particular. C. S. Dessain read Newman’s long life as a response to that evil. In fact,

28

Ibid. See Heinrich Fries’s fascinating comparison of Newman with Karl Rahner in Newman-Studien, vol. XI, Sigmaringendorf, 211-215. 30 G.A., 423. 31 Here one recalls a certain convergence of the thinking of Newman with that of Karl Rahner’s Hearers of the Word, trans. by Michael Richards, (New York 1969). 32 Diff., 2, 249. 33 See his Note A on “Liberalism” in the Apo., 285-297 where he gives a précis of the principal tenets of doctrinal liberalism. 29

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“Newman had a remarkable mission, the revival of so much of the Revealed Religion of Christianity.”34 On the continent of Europe, that religion was in the process of being explained away in the philosophy of contemporary thinkers such as Ludwig Feuerbach. It is not man who is made in the image and likeness of God, but it is God who is made in man’s own image! As the prototype, human beings should reclaim their ontological priority over these “projections”! Historically we have projected upon God “qualities that rightly belong to the human species as a whole.” Now this causes our selfestrangement that consists in “the limitations that humiliate man personally.”35 In thinkers such as Feuerbach one sees man in revolt against his creaturehood and weaknesses, both ontological, moral and historical. The result is a Promethean appropriation of the role of divinity for humanity! God becomes deposed in preference for a redivinized human family! The weakening of faith, inevitably consequent upon the undermining of divine revelation, would motivate and stimulate a further attack on the reality and meaning of conscience. Those who failed to see revelation as the provision of the word of Grace and Pardon, the Grace and Pardon which conscience longs for and reaches after, even if anonymously, were likely to manipulate and reduce conscience in various ways. Why tolerate this imperious monarch, this annoying prophet, this stern monitor any longer? In 1874, in reply to Prime Minister William Gladstone’s expostulation against Vatican I’s proclamation of papal infallibility, Newman writes of a “warfare” and “conspiracy” against conscience. “Literature and science have been embodied in great institutions in order to put it down. Noble buildings have been reared as fortresses against that spiritual, invisible influence which is too subtle for science and too profound for literature. Chairs in universities have been made the seats of an antagonist tradition. Public writers, day after day, have indoctrinated the minds of innumerable readers with theories subversive of its claims.”36 In that way, a “miserable counterfeit”37 subverts the true meaning. 34

C. S. Dessain, John Henry Newman (London 1966), 44; see his Biglietto Speech on the occasion of the Cardinalate in Add., 66. “The Biglietto Speech” can also be found in John Henry Newman: Doctor of the Church, (Oxford: Family Publications, 2007), 315 as well as in Campaign, 396. 35 See L. J. Lekai, “Feuerbach: Ludwig Andreas,” in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. V (New York 1966), 905. 36 Diff., 2, 249. Gladstone’s attack occasioned Newman’s above-cited Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. 37 Ibid., 257.

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Many philosophers proffered a phalanx of “reductions.” Newman read these reductions as the academic fashions of the time. Thus conscience is but a twist in primitive and untutored man. Its dictate is an imagination. As to the notion of guilt, it is irrational since we are never quite sure of our freedom and consequent responsibility, caught as we are in a network of cause and effect. Newman “simply rejects without elaboration the whole gamut of ethical theories current in his day: Hobbesian egoism, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, Darwinian selection and the rest. But the rhetoric does not make it easy to disentangle exactly what it is that he most dislikes, let alone to see the reasons he might have given for his rejection.”38 But this was his assessment of the prevailing thought of the philosophers. As to the ever increasing evaporation of the reality of conscience in the popular mind, people talk about “the rights of conscience.” Alas! This rhetoric in no sense means the rights of the Creator, nor the duty to him, in thought and deed, of the creature. They mean “the right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, according to their judgment, or their humour, without any thought of God at all….In this century conscience has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self-will.”39 One does not have to know the truth in order to act! It’s enough to will in order to act. “It’s my entitlement!” Blessed John Henry Newman’s life can only be understood against this twofold background of doctrinal liberalism and the gradual counterfeiting of the inner light of conscience. His own journey represents an original, personal and strikingly relevant itinerary during which he had to respond to these twin dangers as they threatened his times. This is the living context of his work, his “meaning” in the most personal sense of the term.40 “Never was a mind so unceasingly in motion. But the motion was always growth, never revolution,” writes an eminent Anglican scholar.41 The cumulative character of that growth, issuing as it did in an exceptional itinerary, is due in the main to his fidelity to conscience. From that fidelity there issue a consequent accumulation and convergence of insight and discovery. Most of all, however, it is the key to his holiness.

38 Gerard J. Hughes, “Conscience,” The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman (Cambridge 2009), 189-220, here 191. 39 Diff., 2, 250. 40 See opening paragraphs of Apo. 41 Owen Chadwick, Newman, Past-Masters Series (New York 1983), 5.

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“Revelation does but enlighten, strengthen and refine Conscience”42 As our internal monitor, conscience disposes the person to listen out for and welcome divine revelation. One and the same God speaks via conscience and addresses us in divine revelation in addition. This explains why there is not a conflict between conscience and revelation though at times there might be the appearance of conflict. On the contrary, “coming from one and the same Author, these internal and external monitors of course recognize and bear witness to each other.” It will be worthwhile to look at this unique reciprocity of conscience and divine revelation where Newman’s thinking has gained for him praise as the “great synthesizer of interiority and church.”43 The God of creation is also the God of the new creation (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15). The Creator has gifted the human creature with conscience which “is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives.” The truth is that “Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas.”44 Conscience is the specific gift which, assisted by grace, enables the creature to perceive the light and the life of divine revelation. Newman loved to unfold the form and content of divine revelation. With Christ’s coming, that revelation reaches its climax. “…the Invisible God was then revealed in the form and history of man, revealed in those aspects in which sinners most required to know him, and nature spoke least distinctly, as a Holy yet Merciful Governor of His creatures. And thus the Gospels, which contain the memorials of this wonderful grace, are our principal treasures. They are (so to say) the text of revelation.”45 As the summit of “salvation history,” the Gospels record and preserve the centre and the core of divine revelation. The Holy Spirit of God illumines this history of God’s involvement. “The birth, the life, the death and

42

H.S., 3, 79. E. Przywara, “Newman möglicher Heiliger und Kirchenlehrer der neuen Zeit?” Newman Studien III, (Nurernberg 1957), 3; quoted by Terrence Merrigan, “Newman’s Catholic Synthesis,” Irish Theological Quarterly 1(1994), 43. 44 Diff., 2, 248. 45 P.S., II, 155; italics added. 43

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resurrection of Christ, has been the text which he has illuminated. He has made history to be doctrine.”46 C. S. Dessain noticed the concrete character of divine revelation precisely as addressed to each person. Since that revelation is the “Presence of Persons—to know Christ and through him, the Father,” fidelity to the light of revelation as it engages with conscience is the way to life and its fullness. As Dessain, quoting a Newman sermon, puts it, “The whole duty and work of a Christian is made up of these two parts, Faith and Obedience; ‘looking unto Jesus’, the Divine Object as well as Author of our faith, and acting according to his will.”47 As the Vicar of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford, John Henry Newman set forth the riches of divine revelation for his congregations. With winning perspicacity, he expounded the “inscrutable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8). Always, however, he feared “unreality” as the lack of obedience to the word of God. A Newman contemporary identifies his pastoral anxiety in these terms. “Evangelical theology had dwelt upon the work of Christ, and laid comparatively little stress on his example, or the picture left of his personality and life. It regarded the Epistles of St Paul as the last word of the Gospel message.” With the arrival of Newman, however, there was a dramatic change. “The great Name stood no longer for an abstract symbol of doctrine, but for a living Master, who could teach as well as save….It was a change in the look and use of Scripture, which some can still look back to as an epoch in their religious history.”48 Newman motivated his hearers and readers not only to listen to the Word of God but also to live by that Word. In a sermon bearing the title, “The Incarnate Son, a Sufferer and Sacrifice,”49 one encounters the standard emphasis of the man as he says, “Here, then, revelation meets us with simple and distinct facts and actions, not with painful inductions from existing phenomena, not with generalized laws or metaphysical conjectures, but with Jesus and the Resurrection….Facts such as this are not simply evidence of the truth of the revelation, but the media of its impressiveness.” The net impact of divine revelation on conscientious hearers of the word of revelation may be seen in the fact that “the life of Christ brings together and concentrates truths concerning the chief good and laws of our being, which wander idle

46

Ibid., 227. C. S. Dessain, John Henry Newman (London 1966), 22, quoting P.S., II, 153. 48 R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement (London 1892), 191-92; reprint (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970), 134. 49 P.S., VI, 69-82. 47

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and forlorn over the surface of the moral world….It collects the scattered rays of light.”50 A healthy conscience is, as we have seen at the very outset, one that does what it judges to be right and avoids what it judges to be wrong. Or at least it aspires sincerely in that direction. This is the key to the recurring emphasis Newman places upon the need for believers to be obedient to the light of faith, the gift of the word and the wonder of divine grace. In a Catholic sermon he describes the Christian call to holiness in these words: “If we were created, it was that we might serve God; if we have his gifts, it is that we may glorify him; if we have a conscience, it is that we may obey it; if we have the prospect of heaven, it is that we may keep it before us; if we have light, that we may follow it; if we have grace, that we may save ourselves by means of it.”51 Those believers who obey their faith-enlightened consciences, and in that fashion walk worthy of their vocation (Eph 4:1), will gradually but surely learn a new language. It is “that new language which Christ has brought us. He has interpreted all things for us in a new way; he has brought a religion which sheds a new light on all that happens. Try to learn this language. Do not get it by rote, or speak of it as a thing of course. Try to understand what you say. Time is short, eternity is long; God is great, man is weak; he stands between heaven and hell; Christ is his savior, Christ has suffered for him. The Holy Ghost sanctifies him, repentance purifies him, faith justifies, works save.”52 These great facts vouched for in revelation become imperatives as he immediately stresses: “That a thing is true, is no reason that it should be said, but that it should be done; that it should be acted upon; that it should be made our own inwardly.”53 The Grammar draws out, in a formally philosophical and theological treatise, his understanding of the logic of faith and its development. The key to that intriguing text is the distinction between assent and inference. In assent, the apprehension of the terms is necessary and the conclusion is simply unconditional. By contrast, inference does not presuppose the apprehension of the terms, and the conclusion is always conditional upon the truth of the premises. With regard to conscience in the believing subject, however, it is the role of apprehension and assent that deserves our attention. Newman famously distinguishes notional and real apprehension as well as notional and real assent. The testimony of conscience in fact is the key to the real, providing as it does access to 50

U.S., 27. Mix., 121-22. 52 P.S., V, 44-5. 53 Ibid., 45. 51

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imaginative apprehensions and imaginative assents in religion. Newman even shows how this access to the theology of the Trinity functions. There theology attempts a global grasp of the great and first mystery of faith.

Conscience and real apprehension: How believers ‘realize’ their faith It is important to dwell further on his insights in this area. An important point is the distinction between theology and religion already hinted at. “Religion has to do with the real, and the real is the particular; theology has to do with what is notional, and the notional is the general and the systematic.”54 Newman does us the courtesy of applying those distinctions to the central doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, chosen as the pivotal doctrine of faith but with a view to illustrating the role of conscience in realizing and assenting to the mystery. Convinced that “this doctrine of the Trinity is not proposed in Scripture as a mystery,”55 he aims at showing how sincere believers may attain an imaginative or real apprehension of the truths composing this sublime mystery of faith. For “the New Testament and the Liturgy bring home to us, as concrete realities, and in living images, that the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God.”56

Conscience and Revelation: the Imperative of Holiness Since the principal meaning of conscience is seen in the fact that it is the Voice of God speaking to us, urging the doing of the good and the avoiding of what is bad, divine revelation for its part stands out as the very intensification of that address. “For the God who said, ‘Let there be light shining in the darkness,’ has shone in our hearts, shone with the light of glory on the face of his Son, Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). In Newman’s first Sermon, “Holiness necessary for future Blessedness,”57 it is clear at once that he “wants us to hear the Word of God…as it should be 54

G.A., 140. P.S., I, 210. 56 C. S. Dessain, ibid., 22. 57 P.S., I, 1-14. See Bishop Philip Boyce, “The Birth and Pursuit of an Ideal of Holiness” in Cardinal John Henry Newman. A Study in Holiness, published by The Guild of Our Lady of Ransom (London 1980), 11-26, being a reprint from John Henry Newman. Commemorative Essays on the occasion of the Centenary of his Cardinalate, 1879-May-1979. By courtesy of the Centre of Newman Friends, Rome, Via Aurelia 13-60. 55

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understood and accepted:…as the voice of our Lord and Saviour, who calls out to us in order to draw us away from the paths of sin and death, in order to bring us to the one way of life, in holiness.”58 In fact, the unique focus of all of those memorable sermons that Newman delivered in St Mary the Virgin is, according to Louis Bouyer, “to make us realize what it means to be called children of God and to make us become such in fact in Christ.”59 At the core of revealed religion, doctrine lies as the kernel of his preaching. God’s revelation to us and for us is even earlier a revelation of what God is in himself, namely, the life of infinite love among infinite Persons. It is this life that is the light of humanity (Jn 1:4). The issue is quite dramatic: to enjoy the beatitude of heaven, it is simply necessary to prepare by means of conversion of heart and of life. Divine revelation, following upon and so “intensifying” conscience, tells us that life is the very season of repentance in order to be ready for communion with the Triune God in a happy hereafter. Someone gaining admittance to heaven without preparation would not be happy there! “Nothing will prove eventually ‘good’ if we have not first of all met with God—and, of course, on His own terms. And that, once again means surrendering to his design of making us holy just as He is holy. This can be expressed better still by saying that our life will be a success or a failure according to our response to the offer of his love; more exactly still, to His stupendous offer of making us able to love as only he can.”60 This then is the converging message of conscience speaking on behalf of natural religion, and of revelation speaking on behalf of the Christian religion. “Both Scripture and conscience tell us we are answerable for what we do and that God is a righteous Judge.”61

Newman: Doctor Conscientiae? John Henry Newman is renowned for his insight into the nature of making judgments due to his breakthrough insight that inference and judgment are different operations of the human mind. He worked out this distinction in the context of the religious drama of the day which he perceived as the reduction of reason to one of its operations, namely, that of science and demonstration. He expounded on the topic at length in the 58

Louis Bouyer, C.O., Newman’s Vision of Faith (San Francisco 1986), 17. Ibid., 18. 60 Ibid., 34. 61 P.S., I, 21. 59

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Grammar, particularly in chapter eight on the “Illative Sense.” This contemporary reduction of reason undermined the unconditional character of judgment or assent by situating them under the guidance and probation of formal inference. Consequently, there had to follow the undermining of the unconditional character of the act of faith.62 Inevitably it generated an advancing aversion, in the academy and in society at large, to Christian and Catholic faith. In the course of his work in founding the Catholic University in Dublin, Newman spoke of this reduction as “a form of infidelity of the day.”63 Its advance would inevitably lead to a dislike, even a detest for, the dogmatic teacher. Would it be an exaggeration to see in the widespread aversion in the West to any version of a clearly defined doctrinal Christianity in our times the perfect verification of Newman’s prophetical insight? There is, however, a further and perhaps still more significant score on which Newman’s claim to a unique originality may be based. It is his insight into conscience, an insight running through all his writing. As we have seen, he contended that our most “real” and “imaginative” grasp of moral and revealed truth comes through conscience in its imperative dimension. That contention grew out of his own appropriated experience. There lay the “the kindly light” that led his steps to obey and so to live by the truth he sought out over the long decades of his theological and spiritual journey. The authority of conscience is undeniable. However, Newman saw its authority being subverted: “the right of self-will” had appeared on the horizon. It radically reduced the dignity and authority of conscience. Conscience now becomes the right of thinking and acting independently of the truth. The way towards “the dictatorship of relativism” (Pope Benedict XVI) opens up and beckons. With his typical sense of the concrete and the historical, Newman both articulated the nature and the task of conscience in the drama of humanity and humanity’s access to God. He analyzed the emerging attack on this prophet, priest and monarch of our concrete humanity. But it was his dovetailing of conscience with revelation, itself his very personal and innovative formulation of the rapport between nature and grace, which highlights the higher echelons of his thought. And it did drive him to choose, as the guiding motto of his long life, “Holiness rather than peace.” In the judgment of the Church he has attained holiness of life. Might not this gift-achievement well qualify him for the title, Doctor Conscientiae? 62

See Thomas Norris, “Faith,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, eds., Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan (Cambridge 2009), 73-97. 63 See Newman’s essay “A Form of Infidelity of the Day” in Idea, 381-404.

CHAPTER TWO SEEKING A RESERVED ENTHUSIASM AS VIA MEDIA: NEWMAN, HOLINESS, AND THE ASCETICISM OF ANTONY OF EGYPT NATHAN A. LUNSFORD

In the life and writings of John Henry Newman, the theme and reality of holiness rise to special prominence. Even in his early teens, prior to his well-known conversion experience of 1816, Newman admits that he had hoped to find happiness in a life of virtue, despite an early distaste for being “religious”1 and a fear that the soul might not be immortal.2 Following this conversion at age fifteen, Newman’s life was colored by an awareness of living in the presence of a holy God. This “great change of thought” engendered in Newman a restless thirst for holiness and led him to adopt two maxims that served as guiding proverbs: “Holiness rather than peace” and “Growth the only evidence of life.”3 Holiness for Newman is a practical and vital concern, the purpose of all intelligent life.4 Addressing his Oratorian confrères in his first Chapter Address of 1853, Newman emphasizes this guiding motif: “Our only life, as a body, consists in our sanctification, as individuals.”5 Here Newman 1

L.D., 1:154. Apo., 4. 3 Apo., 5. 4 See Philip Boyce, “Holiness: The Purpose of Life according to Newman,” in Christliche Heiligkeit als Lehre und Praxis nach John Henry Newman, eds.,Günter Biemer and Heinrich Fries (Sigmaringendorf: Regio Verlag Glock und Lutz, 1988), 137. 5 Newman the Oratorian: His Unpublished Oratory Papers, ed. with Introductory Study on the Continuity between his Anglican and Catholic Ministry by Placid Murray, O.S.B. (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1969), 239. 2

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brings the maxims adopted from his youth to bear on life in the Birmingham Oratory. Holiness is not only the telos toward which all intelligent life is ordered, but it constitutes the vivifying energy that sustains Christian life. For Newman, those “who keep generally from mortal sins and live in God’s grace” face a seductive danger: standing still.6 He therefore exhorts his Oratorian brothers to live with ever-greater Christian fervor and to not settle for an easygoing course, for “motion alone keeps us alive; but when the struggle is over, where is the motion?”7 This struggle he sees as constituting the duty of every Christian and not only of Oratorian priests and brothers. In an earlier Anglican sermon, Newman charged that a “rigorous self-denial is a chief duty, nay, that it may be considered the test whether we are Christ’s disciples, whether we are living in a mere dream, which we mistake for Christian faith and obedience, or are really and truly awake, alive, living in the day, on our road heavenward.”8 In other words, the Christian is necessarily an ascetic, and must strive anew each day to live a disciplined life of obedient faith. It is this ascetic dimension of Newman’s thought, bound up with his conception of Christian holiness, which will be the focus of what follows. There is admittedly no shortage of scholarship discussing the importance of the Fathers of the Church for Newman’s thought. Even so, such scholarship has tended to focus on Newman’s interaction with the doctrines of the early church rather than this ascetic-monastic aspect of his patristic thought. Instead, we will examine Newman and his engagement with the figure who, according to Benjamin King, “provided the example for the ascetic disciplines of Newman’s life,”9 Antony of Egypt. Redressing this lacuna uncovers several significant streams of Tractarian10 thought converging on the figure of Antony: the emphasis on holiness, the general influence of the Desert Fathers upon Newman and his fellow Tractarians, and their nuanced position on the place of the affections in the life of the believer, the latter having consequences for the church at large—i.e., a place for the so-called “enthusiast.” The first issue to be addressed, accordingly, is the role of the Fathers of the Church in Newman and Tractarian thought, with particular attention given to the importance of 6

Ibid., 240. Ibid. 8 P.S., I, 66. 9 Benjamin John King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 2. 10 The terms Tractarian Movement and Oxford Movement are being used interchangeably. 7

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the Desert Fathers. This will contextualize Newman’s remarks on Antony. Moreover, given the polemical undercurrent in his discussion of Antony, the religious context of Newman’s own day must also be assessed. Though Newman came to deeply disagree with the Evangelical system of his youth, he nonetheless nurtured a sympathy for the Evangelicals’ quest for something more than the “high and dry” religion offered by the High Churchmen of his day. When seen within Newman’s contemporary religious context, his remarks on Antony evince an understanding that the affections are part of the means of attaining holiness and, further, are themselves reformed by that process. Antony embodies for Newman the pinnacle of interior renovation that he understood to be at the heart of the Christian vocation—the result of that prudent indulgence that he understood to constitute the “genius of the Gospel system.”11

Newman, the Fathers of the Church, and Desert Monasticism The writings and thought of the church’s Patristic Era fascinated Newman from his early teenage years until his death. He writes in his Apology that, at the age of fifteen, he read Joseph Milner’s The History of the Church of Christ, and he was “nothing short of enamoured” with Milner’s long extracts from St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and other Fathers.12 Despite this early predilection toward the Latin Fathers,13 the Church Fathers who would prove most important for his thought were those from Greek-speaking Alexandria: Clement and Origen, Athanasius and Cyril. Though they were not his first love, “nevertheless the Greek Fathers, especially those from Egypt, became his lifelong companions.”14 Discerning the role played by the Fathers within the thought of Newman, however, is not a simple task. That Newman studied the Fathers carefully and was strongly influenced by their thought is well known. King, for example, notes three distinct periods in Newman’s interpretation of the Alexandrian Fathers, indicated by his oscillating attitude toward Origen. “In each of these periods,” writes King, “a causal connection will be revealed between the patristic theology Newman was reading and his own

11

H.S., 2, 95. Apo., 7. 13 It is worth noting that Newman early emphasizes the Latin Fathers, this being a reflection of the emphasis of Milner’s history. 14 King, op.cit., 2. 12

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theology.”15 At key points in his life, Newman reassessed his own thought by turning to the Fathers. Difficulty arises, however, when one wishes to speak—in the strict sense—of the Fathers influence on Newman’s thought.16 In at least two places, Newman says rather that the writings of the Fathers served to confirm his own ideas. In his Apology Newman recalls, “the broad philosophy of Clement and Origen carried me away….Some portions of their teaching, magnificent in themselves, came like music to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas, which, with little external to encourage them, I had cherished for so long.”17 Likewise, in The Idea of a University, Newman states that the Fathers confirmed his educational ideas.18 What is clear, however, is that Newman presumes a certain continuity and affinity between the ancient church and that of his own times, such that he uses the one to understand the other. Newman’s Arians of the Fourth Century, for example, in addition to narrating the history of the ecclesial challenge posed by Arianism, looks to the fourth century in order to understand and explain the nineteenth, grappling especially with contemporary theological issues of doctrinal history.19 Likewise, in his introduction to The Church of the Fathers, Newman states that the same conflicts and vicissitudes face the church regardless of era: “It is so in every age; it is so in the nineteenth century; it was so in the fourth.”20 In fact, in his first chapter on Antony, Newman criticizes those who draw too hard a line between the condition of the church in their day and that of the first age. In discussing the fourth century, Newman again employs the example of the early Christians as an interpretive lens for his own time. In this way, as Benedicta Ward has noted, Newman stands within that tradition of scholarship that engages the thought and experiences of the past in order to understand and stabilize the

15

Ibid., 3. See Vincent Ferrer Blehl, “The Patristic Humanism of John Henry Newman,” Newman Studien 10 (1978), 60. 17 Apo., 26. 18 Idea, 4. 19 Among others, Newman notably targeted the historiography of Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, which supported Mosheim’s biblicist views by arguing that the ancient Alexandrian church fell into a corrupt “eclecticism” of Platonism and other “Oriental” doctrines. For a good discussion of these issues, both Newman’s context in writing Arians and the groundwork it laid for Newman’s later work, see Rowan Williams, “Newman’s Arians and the Question of Method in Doctrinal History,” in Newman after a Hundred Years, eds., Ian Ker and Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 263–285. 20 H.S., 2, 1. 16

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present.21 On the basis of this unity between past and present, the life of the early church can inform and renew contemporary thought and practice. Ward has shown that Desert Fathers like Antony were a significant resource in the Tractarian effort of retrieval-stabilization. Writes Ward: “The ideal of a Christianity which is a challenge to the world, which is in the margin of culture, a scandal and an offence, they found in the early Church, in the lives of the martyrs but also and perhaps especially in the accounts of the monks.”22 At root, Newman and his fellow Tractarians were frustrated with a growing attitude among their fellow Christians: a “liberalism” in which they saw a Christianity that assimilates—and is assimilated by—the trends and culture of the age rather than transforming those trends. Against this tendency, these Oxford dons upheld their ascetic-patristic vision of authentic Christianity; the monastic ideal informed their protest against the established liberalism of their age. Regrettably, apart from Ward’s article, this monastic core of the Oxford Movement has often gone unnoticed.23 Yet, the writings proffered by Newman, Keble, and Pusey to their contemporaries consistently came from a monastic milieu; nearly every Christian writer they held in esteem—patristic or medieval—was a monk. Consequently, the core of the Tractarian renewal should be understood as a direct inheritance from the desert ascetics. This was no abstract past ideal; monasticism was central to the Tractarians’ own lives. Newman, a celibate priest who as an Anglican founded a community at Littlemore and later entered the Oratorians as a Catholic, clearly resonated with the ascetic disciplines of the early monastics. Likewise, Pusey “saw the consecrated life of the priest as a total and monastic dedication and after the death of his wife undertook it as such.”24 In short, the desert ideal of living one’s whole life in an asceticism united to the Cross, of seeking conversion in a life patterned on 21

See Benedicta Ward, “A Tractarian Inheritance: The Religious Life in a Patristic Perspective,” in Tradition Renewed: The Oxford Movement Conference Papers, ed. Geoffrey Rowell (Allison Park, Pennsylvania: Pickwick Publications, 1986), 216. This is true not only of Newman but of all the Tractarian leaders. 22 Ward, ibid., 218. 23 Another notable exception is René Kollar, “The Oxford Movement and the Heritage of Benedictine Monasticism,” Downside Review 101, no. 345 (1983), 281–290. Additionally, Placid Murray, OSB, has addressed Newman’s understanding of holiness as it is drawn from St. Benedict in his article, “Newman’s Concept of Holiness according to Saint Benedict,” in Christliche Heiligkeit als Lehre und Praxis nach John Henry Newman, eds. Günter Biemer and Heinrich Fries (Regio Verlag Glock und Lutz, 1988), 65–72. 24 Ward, op.cit., 219.

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the repentance and joy25 enjoined by the gospel, lies at the center of the revival spearheaded by Newman and his fellow Tractarians. The significance of the contents of Newman’s The Church of the Fathers should not be lost: In the same collection in which Newman expounds the typical greats among the Fathers—i.e., Basil, Gregory Nazianzus, Augustine, etc.—we find Abba Antony. In fact, one may legitimately argue that, particularly in light of the above, the inclusion of Antony is crucial to understanding what holds together the various figures in his patristic ensemble of “historical sketches.” It is their asceticism. Though Newman is undeniably concerned with other matters, such as correct Christological doctrine, the common thread running through each of these tapestries and undergirding their legacy is their ascetic discipline. Such is the context in which we must locate Newman’s discussion of and relationship to Antony.

The Affections and Holiness: Newman between Evangelicalism and High Church The movement initiated by Newman and his Tractarian confrères grew out of the so-called “High Church” group within the Church of England. Owen Chadwick, as a means of distinguishing the Tractarians from their High Church compatriots, notes a foundational element of the movement: The figures of the Oxford Movement were moved more by an impulse of the heart and conscience than by intellectual concerns as such. Chadwick explains: It was this element of feeling, the desire to use poetry as a vehicle of religious language, the sense of awe and mystery in religion, the profundity of reverence, the concern with the conscience not only by way of duty, but by growth towards holiness, which marks the vague distinction between the old-fashioned high churchmen and the Oxford men.26

25

See Ward, “A Tractarian Inheritance,” 222–223. Despite a proclivity toward a grave demeanor, given their frequent focus on interior repentance, the Tractarians also knew the joy of Abba Antony, who was reported to spend time relaxing with the brothers. Thus, argues Ward, we must even understand Keble’s reprimand of Pusey when Pusey proposed to cease smiling, and Newman’s delight in telling stories to children, as an ascetic discipline. 26 Owen Chadwick, The Mind of the Oxford Movement, (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1960), 28.

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This is a difference in “atmosphere” rather than doctrine; the Oxford Movement at all times emphasized dogma’s essential relationship to worship, to the transcendent, to the inner workings of the human heart, as well as to the conscience and moral concerns.27 Apart from such referents, they argued, Christian dogma cannot be rightly comprehended. In this regard, the Tractarian Movement was part of the contemporary reaction against the rationalism of the Age of Reason. The Tractarians were distrustful of too great a role being assigned to reason in the practice and understanding of religion. Instead, they wanted to make room for imagination, for poetic-aesthetic judgment. Further, as Chadwick notes, “against the irreverent or sacrilegious hands of critical revolutionaries for whom no antiquity was sacred,” they sought to create a space for historical tradition.28 But Newman and the other leaders of the Movement were not as severe in their hostility to reason as their opponents at times believed. Newman, for all his fear of what Hume’s thought might portend, and his strong misgivings concerning the New German theology and historical criticism, still affirmed that reason is a means of expositing and— partially—confirming faith.29 Reason is not faith’s contrary; the danger is to be found in reason apart from faith. This Tractarian quest for something more than the “high and dry” religion offered by Anglican High Churchmen also served as a point of unity between the Tractarians and Evangelicals. Admittedly, there are other sources from which these high Anglicans could—and likely did— learn to embrace the affections, particularly the English Romantics.30 With respect to religion, however, it is the Evangelicals who taught the Tractarians not to fear their feelings. To borrow Chadwick’s turn of phrase, there is a “continuity of piety” between the Oxford Movement and the Evangelical movement.31 Newman in particular, with his Evangelical background, imbued Tractarian thought with significant aspects of the

27

Ibid., 28, 11. Ibid., 12. 29 Frederick H. Borsch, “Ye Shall Be Holy: Reflections on the Spirituality of the Early Years of the Oxford Movement,” Anglican Theological Review 66/4 (1984), 348–349. 30 For example, see King, op.cit., 7. “When Newman accused the older High Churchmen of being ‘High and Dry’, immune to feeling in their religion, overly rationalistic, and unwilling to appeal to the imagination, he was speaking the sentiments of a Romantic.” 31 Chadwick, op.cit., 27. 28

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Evangelical ethos and language.32 Granted, Newman would come to outgrow his Evangelicalism, averring in retrospect that he had never really been a genuine Evangelical: “the Evangelical teaching,” writes Newman biographer Anne Mozley, “considered as a system and in what was peculiar to itself, had from the first failed to find a response in his own religious experience.”33 Even so, Newman himself credits the formative influence of his Evangelical roots with converting him to a spiritual life and of forming in him habits of devotion. Throughout his life, Newman maintained this characteristic understanding of Christianity as fundamentally a religion of the heart, instilled in him by his Evangelical background. Additionally, Newman’s lifelong concern for holiness also has its origins in the formative Evangelical years of his youth. Recall, for example, those two proverbs that Newman adopted after his teenage conversion: “Holiness rather than peace,” and “Growth the only evidence of life.” These maxims are, in fact, a distillation of Newman’s apprehension of the doctrine of Thomas Scott, the influential Evangelical writer who, Newman says, “made a deeper impression on [his] mind than any other.”34 Many other Evangelical figures also made their mark on Newman, for example Walter Mayers’ stress on holiness and his teaching on “the religious use of excited feelings.”35 From this Evangelical context, Newman learned to value and to embody his faith as a quickening principle of the heart, as a lively zeal for holiness. While thus nurturing a clear sympathy for Evangelical fervor, Newman’s thought nevertheless evinces a concomitant distrust of an excessive emotionalism in religious matters.36 Newman and his Tractarian comrades actively resisted the “stiffness” of the High Church position, making use of strong sentiment in their prayers, poems, and sermons. Still, they remained suspicious of the function of overt excitement or passion in 32 Chadwick notes that Pusey also contributed to this Evangelical sensibility. Op.cit., 27. 33 Moz., 1, 108. 34 Apo., 5. 35 See Geoffrey Rowell, “The Roots of Newman‘s Scriptural Holiness: Some Formative Influences on Newman’s Spirituality,” Newman Studien 10 (1978), 13– 20, here 15. 36 To be clear, Newman’s distrust of emotional excesses in matters of religion constitutes only a single aspect of his overall criticism of the Evangelical party. A comprehensive treatment of Newman’s objections to the Evangelicals of his day (e.g., his severe criticism of their doctrines, of their biblical societies, etc.) is not here intended.

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the life of the church and in a believer, particularly as a means of substantiating religious conviction. In a 1837 letter addressed to Lord Lifford, Newman deplores the “mischief” wrought by an Evangelical system that endeavors to discern the state of one’s heart or “spiritual temper” via such well-meaning questions as “Do you love Christ? Do you hate sin? Do you feel that he is the pearl of great price?” As Newman explains, “such questions are either mere generalisms meaning nothing at all, or they lead to a direct contemplation of our feelings as the means, the evidence of justification.”37 Frederick H. Borsch describes well Newman’s dilemma: “Newman, whose sermons could enthrall with their intensity of passionate feeling suppressed in a web of delicate argumentation, yet found in neither emotion or intellect a path to the confirmation of faith and relationship with God that were his life’s preoccupations.”38 These Tractarians, with their well-trained minds and intense feelings, who saw the dangers of an over-emphasis on either reason or emotion, lived in the tension between the life of the mind and the life of the heart. Accordingly, they sought a via media, eschewing both a dry intellectualism and an unbridled emotionalism. This forging of a middle way, neither High Church nor Evangelical, with respect to the proper role of religious fervor, is central to Newman’s understanding of holiness. Newman, in an unpublished manuscript from 1822 or 1823, notably identifies holiness as “a certain state of the heart and affections.”39 Holiness is to be found in this interior via media. But if the manifestation of holiness is a reserved enthusiasm, then how does one account for and embody the apparent contradiction without losing the full force of either its passion or its calm? Newman takes Abba Antony as a vivid example that such a manner of life is indeed possible. It is wellknown that Newman was an occasional writer, requiring a definite call from without to which he could then respond. This difference between the Oxford men and the High Church establishment, consisting especially in the generally positive place and role assigned to religious fervor by the Tractarians, constitutes the dominant criticism motivating Newman’s discussion of Antony. However, one must also understand this critique 37

L.D., 6:130. Emphasis is Newman’s own. Frederick H. Borsch, “Ye Shall Be Holy: Reflections on the Spirituality of the Early Years of the Oxford Movement,” Anglican Theological Review 66/4 (1984), 349. 39 Quoted in Michael Culhane, “Conversion in Newman’s Theology,” in Christliche Heiligkeit als Lehre und Praxis nach John Henry Newman, edited by Günter Biemer and Heinrich Fries, (Sigmaringendorf: Regio Verlag Glock und Lutz, 1988), 190. 38

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within Newman’s simultaneous aversion for an excessive emotionalism. Newman employs Antony, first, to challenge the High Church’s distrust of the “enthusiast,” and second, to assure them that he understands the dangers of enthusiasm run amok by demonstrating the all-pervasive calm of Antony.

“The Genius of the Gospel System”: Antony against the “High and Dry” In the historical sketches of The Church of the Fathers, Newman divides his discussion about Antony into two chapters: “Antony in Conflict” and “Antony in Calm.” Broadly speaking, these two parts also correspond to the two aspects of authentic holiness that Newman is concerned to balance and unite—zeal and reserve, passion and order— without losing the force of either element. In the first chapter, Newman is concerned primarily with the saint’s “history,” narrating the enthusiastic course that Antony took in pursuing his life of asceticism. Newman’s second chapter is an exposition of Antony’s character. One might say that Newman’s first chapter focuses on the process while his second focuses on the result. Throughout both chapters, Newman is at pains to display the authentically Christian character of Antony’s disciplined enthusiasm, highlighting both his exuberant asceticism and his enduring calm. First, the enthusiastic Antony, as Newman understood him. From the start, Newman’s embrace of Antony’s religious fervor takes place within his scathing criticism of the “sensible Protestants,” the High Churchmen of his day who have no sympathy for Antony’s desire “to live above the common course of a Christian.”40 Writes Newman: Enthusiastic he certainly must be accounted, according to the English view of things; and had he lived a Protestant in this Protestant day, he would have been exposed to a serious temptation to becoming a fanatic. Longing for some higher rule of life than any which the ordinary forms of society admit, and finding our present lines too rigidly drawn…he might possibly have broken what he could not bend.41

In positing such hypotheticals, Newman is not condoning an impulsiveness that flouts church unity and order; he is denouncing the “tyranny”42 of the too-rigidly-drawn line that misguidedly “forbids all the higher and more 40

H.S., 2, 96. Emphasis is Newman’s. H.S., 2, 98. 42 H.S., 2, 96. 41

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noble impulses of the mind.”43 Newman continues his critique via several pointed questions, asking whether there are not minds with ardent feelings, keen imaginations, and undisciplined tempers, who are under a strong irritation prompting them to run wild,—whether it is not our duty (so to speak) to play with such, carefully letting out line enough lest they snap it,—and whether the Protestant Establishment is as indulgent and as wise as might be desired in its treatment of such persons.44

Newman does not mince words. The “Protestant Establishment” is acting less-than-wisely, failing in its Christian duty to meet the legitimate spiritual needs of such persons, failing to provide them a place within the Church of England. On an ecclesial level, unity is threatened. In failing to understand those with “ardent feelings” and “keen imaginations,” the establishment not only “lets them run to waste” but even “tempts them to dissent,” and is thereby weakened by the loss.45 In the development of monasticism, the ancient church provided an approved and recommended outlet for such enthusiastic expressions of piety as those seen in Antony. This spiritual need has not disappeared, argues Newman. The gap left by the absence of a monastic system in the Church of England is instead “filled by methodism and dissent.”46 By enforcing a contrived conformity and “moulding all minds upon his one small model,” the “sensible Protestant divine” frustrates the search of a not-insignificant segment of his flock seeking something divine and transcendental, leaving them little option than to turn to the Wesleyans or Independents.47 Whereas Antony is upheld by his biographer as embodying an ideal Christian character, the unhappy enthusiast of the nineteenth-century—the kindred spirit of that ardent desert ascetic—is made to feel like an alien and fanatic in the Established Church. Against this failure of a rigid and narrow establishment, Newman contrasts “the genius of the Gospel system,” a respectful and prudent leniency to which the earliest Christians are witnesses. Innate to the Gospel itself, this dynamism consists in that elastic and comprehensive character which removes the more powerful temptations to extravagance, by giving, as far as possible, a sort of 43

H.S., 2, 95. H.S., 2, 98. 45 Ibid. 46 H.S., 2, 102. 47 H.S., 2, 96. 44

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indulgence to the feelings and motives which lead to it, correcting them the while, purifying them, and reining them in, ere they get excessive.48

Newman champions such judicious indulgence as foundational to the “Catholicism”—that is, an authentic and universal or “comprehensive” Christianity—that he opposes to the established, allegedly “sensible,” ecclesial attitude. Contrary to the “one small model” holding the Established Church captive, Newman argues that “the mind of true Christianity is expansive enough to admit high and low, rich and poor, one with another.”49 In marked contrast to Protestant “tyranny” and “intolerance,” Catholicism “deals softly with the ardent and impetuous.”50 Through a delicate act of balance, whereby such elasticity can also serve to correct and purify, this “genius” of Christianity not only holds the means of correcting the High Church failure to make room for the enthusiastic Christian, but also is notable for simultaneously transforming the potential dangers of extravagant emotions. Newman, too, sees the need for ecclesial limits whose ultimate goal is to curb the excesses into which the enthusiast can be swept—a sobering of enthusiasm Newman is concerned to show in his chapter examining Antony’s calm. Yet, notably, Newman’s first illustration of the mechanics of this firm-but-flexible quality of genuine Christianity highlights the potential “extravagance” of reason; this is a dynamism directed toward the renewal of both intellect and heart. To best appreciate his humane and nuanced perspective on this corrective “give and take,” Newman’s prose is worth quoting at length: Thus, whereas our reason naturally loves to expatiate at will to and fro through all subjects known and unknown, Catholicism does not oppress us with an irrational bigotry, prescribing to us the very minutest details of thought, so that a man can never have an opinion of his own; on the contrary, its creed is ever what it was, and never moves out of the ground which it originally occupied, and it is cautious and precise in its decisions, and distinguishes between things necessary and things pious to believe, between wilfulness and ignorance. At the same time, it asserts the supremacy of faith, the guilt of unbelief, and the divine mission of the Church; so that reason is brought round again and subdued to the obedience of Christ, at the very time when it seems to be launching forth without chart upon the ocean of speculation.51

48

H.S., 2, 95. Ibid. 50 H.S., 2, 96. 51 H.S., 2, 95-96. 49

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In this way is Christianity concerned to preserve human freedom even as it continually calls the believer to submit to Christ in the obedience of faith. Respecting the human drive to seek out knowledge in detail as a God-given impulse, a truly catholic Christianity is neither irrational nor oppressive. Throughout history, the church has remained clear and firmly rooted in its creed, but cautious in developing doctrinal pronouncements and clarifications; it does not dictate the believer’s each and every opinion, but is nonetheless firm in its guidance. Newman upholds the inner logic of the Christian religion itself as structured to both respect and direct the exercise of human freedom. Though Newman’s work on Antony is clearly polemical, which he readily admits,52 it is far from merely reactionary. Eschewing any facile countermeasure, his balanced diagnosis and prescription indicate another, deeper cause for the unfortunate but symptomatic plight of the enthusiast. As we have seen, Newman’s overarching challenge to the failure of the High Church party takes the form of calling for a more expansive view toward the value of religious ardor, whereby the enthusiast may be granted a sanctioned means of expressing his or her piety within the Church of England. Yet immediately after introducing the need to recover this accommodating character of authentic Christianity, and just before applying it to matters of enthusiastic conduct, Newman turns to the intellectual temptation to excess: the expatiating tendency of reason. Newman’s arrangement is unlikely to be incidental—recall the Tractarian suspicion of rationalism. By doing so, Newman underscores that an overemphasis on reason constitutes a key part of the larger problem and must be addressed as part of the solution.53 Newman examines the dangers of reason’s tendency to launch out “without chart upon the ocean of speculation” in order to aid his efforts to demonstrate to the establishment their need for the enthusiast. Even so, Newman is doing more than simply reiterating the general Tractarian criticism of the High Church group’s over-reliance on reason. His critique of the High Church party’s denigration of religious fervor 52

See Newman’s “Advertisement,” H.S., 2, xi–xii. Of his “historical sketches,” he writes, “it is plain that, though mainly historical, they are in their form and character polemical, as being directed against certain Protestant ideas and opinions.” 53 Recall also that the Tractarian stress on the importance of the affections is part of the contemporary reaction against the Enlightenment emphasis on reason. Newman here recognizes that the tendency of reason to “expatiate to and fro” can easily overrun the space—within an individual or within the church at large—that should be safeguarded for the affections.

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entails a corresponding criticism of their over-reliance on reason; the excesses of reason tend to encroach upon the sphere of operations proper to the affections.54 Further, the same dynamic that undergirds Newman’s understanding of how to bring such extravagant excursions of reason into line also serves to gradually rein in the emotional conduct of the enthusiast.55 This parallel solution suggests a parallel problem: Newman seems to be suggesting that the extravagance that threatens to propel one into ecclesiastical schism is not limited to the realm of emotion but also pertains to one’s exercise of reason. By virtue of their over-reliance on reason, the establishment is guilty of the same fault for which they denounce the enthusiast: an undisciplined excess, simply in another area. For Newman, what holds true for the mind, holds true for the heart; in the same way that the excesses of emotion contribute to disorder, so too can the intemperate use of reason. Thus, it is in the recognition of the need to curb both the excesses of reason and of the affect that the forging of Newman’s proposed via media can take place. Having identified the mechanism by which this Christian elasticity disciplines the mind and—especially—the affections, one wonders: How, then, does Newman understand such principles to operate in Antony’s archetypal case? In adopting a life characterized by austerities and prayer, Antony was unquestionably earnest, seeking that “higher rule of life.”56 Eager to imitate the Apostles who gave up all their possessions to follow Christ, Antony did exactly the same; he gave away his ample inheritance and commenced his life as an ascetic six months after his parents died. Newman, praising Antony for “how ardently he pursued an ascetic life as in itself good,”57 highlights the gusto with which Antony sought out other ascetics in order to imitate and exemplify the best of each. Antony imitated “the refined manners of one, another’s continuance in prayer, the meekness of a third, the kindness of a fourth, the long vigils of a fifth, the studiousness of a sixth.”58 Unlike a mere “enthusiast” who would have 54 The reverse is also true for Newman: the affections can encroach upon the realm proper to the intellect, with similarly unfortunate consequences. Within his work on Antony, directed as it is against the faults he finds with the High Church establishment, it is Newman’s polemical focus that leads him to emphasize reason’s tendency to overrun the domain reserved for the exercise of one’s affective dimension. 55 H.S., 2, 96. 56 H.S., 2, 98. 57 H.S., 2, 100. 58 Athanasius, Life of Antony, §4 in H.S., 2, 101.

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returned to the world when faced with the assault of temptation and flagging spirits, Antony’s faith continued unfailingly, sustaining his fervent and continual ascetic exercises.59 “Day by day,” reports Athanasius, “as if ever fresh beginning his exercise, he made still greater efforts to advance, repeating to himself continually the saying of the Apostle, ‘forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before.’”60 Antony eventually moves out into the desert, ever-deepening his asceticism and continuing to advance on his journey toward holiness. Antony’s “enthusiasm”—that is, his lively-expressed faith—served as his sustaining motivation, undergirding his efforts to live a holy life and thereby making his extraordinary and praiseworthy life possible. Moreover, not only did Antony’s enthusiastic asceticism transform the whole of his life, his example “was like a fire kindled in Christendom, which ‘many waters could not quench.’”61 Thus, for Antony—and Newman—an energetic faith plays an important, if obvious, motivating role in the ascetic process at the heart of the Christian life. Newman’s other essay, “Antony in Calm,” examines the results of such asceticism. Antony’s example demonstrates the manner in which such “enthusiasm is sobered and refined by being submitted to the discipline of the Church, instead of being allowed to run wild externally to it”62—thereby continuing Newman’s critique of the Protestant establishment. Admitting his dissatisfaction with the term, Newman has nonetheless characterized Antony as an enthusiast for the sake of his argument: “if he were not an enthusiast, or at least in danger of being such, we should lose one chief instruction which his life conveys,”63 i.e., the ascetic means of refining enthusiasm. Further, by touching on the various aspects of Antony’s character that Newman singles out for praise, we will glean a richer portrait of what precisely is meant by Newman’s

59

H.S., 2, 102. Athanasius, Life of Antony, §7 in H.S., 2, 103. 61 H.S., 2, 125. 62 H.S., 2, 103. This aspect of Newman’s criticism of the Protestant establishment, along with the fact that he locates his discussion of the superiority of the knowledge given by faith in his chapter on Antony’s calm (i.e., criticizing their understanding of reason), indicates something of the qualitative difference Newman means to convey in his understanding of both the affections and reason, “enthusiasm” and calm. 63 Ibid. 60

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interiorized definition of holiness as “a certain character of mind, a certain state of the heart and affections.”64 Newman begins his exposition of Antony’s character by highlighting the general efficaciousness of his prayers. Though his prayers were not always successful in obtaining their desired end, regardless of outcome Antony neither boasted nor complained but instead “gave thanks himself to the Lord, and exhorted the sufferers to be patient.”65 Newman also praises Antony’s faith as a faith that was “the instrument of gaining the knowledge of truths which reason could but feebly presage, or could not even have imagined.”66 This characterization of faith, emphasized by Newman in the context of Antony’s “calm,” serves as (though it is not limited to) another demarcation of the limits of the rationality upon which, at least in Newman’s mind, the High Church group is over-dependent.67 Newman then briefly touches on Antony’s humility before directly addressing the chapter’s major theme: Antony’s calmness. Whereas his first chapter highlighted the depth of Antony’s fervor, Newman now explicitly contrasts Antony with the stereotypical enthusiast: considering how extravagant and capricious the conduct of enthusiasts commonly is, how rude their manners, how inconstant their resolutions, how variable their principles, it is certainly a recommendation to our solitary friend to find him so grave, manly, considerate, and refined,—or, to speak familiarly, so gentlemanlike, in the true sense of that word.68

To be clear, Antony’s calmness is not contrary to enthusiasm, rightly understood. His refined calm is rather the organic outgrowth of his enthusiastically embraced asceticism, shaped over time by that dynamic Newman termed “the genius of the Gospel system.” By way of illustration, Newman quotes from the account of Antony’s first appearance following 64

His entire sermon, “Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness,” P.S., I, 1-14 defines holiness, here 8. 65 Athanasius, Life of Antony, §56 in H.S., 2, 112–113. Emphasis Newman’s. 66 H.S., 2, 113–114. 67 For example, the superiority of knowledge brought about by the exercise of faith is expressed in Antony’s rebuttal to some philosophers who had come to discourse with him. “They, then, who possess the operative power of faith can supersede, nay, are but cumbered with demonstration in argument; for what we apprehend by faith, you are merely endeavoring to arrive at by argument, and sometimes cannot even express what we apprehend” (Athanasius, Life of Antony, §77 in H.S., 2, 114). 68 H.S., 2, 116. It is also worth noting that Newman, in his early Chapter Addresses to the community at the Birmingham Oratory, would again propose the ideal of the gentleman as a guiding image for their formation as Oratorians.

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his twenty-year self-seclusion: His mind “was serene, neither narrowed by sadness nor relaxed by indulgence, neither over-merry nor melancholy. He showed no confusion at the sight of the multitude, no elation at their respectful greetings.”69 Those twenty and more years of asceticism had produced in Antony a disposition that neither over-reacts nor under-reacts. Antony’s calm also manifests itself as a faithful concordance or correspondence between his inner life and its outward expression: “For, being unruffled in soul, all his outward expressions of feeling were free from perturbation also.”70 Furthermore, this calm that Newman attributes to Antony does not constitute either a grave demeanor or the absence of deep emotion, but rather a disciplined and transformed inner life: “the joy of [Antony’s] soul made his face very cheerful.”71 Antony “was never agitated, his soul being in a deep calm,—never changed countenance, from his inward joyfulness.”72 Newman sought in this way to display “the subdued and Christian form which was taken by [Antony’s] enthusiasm, if it must be so called.”73 Yet, precisely how did this change come about? Newman’s answer: The practical mechanism for this transformation, by which the impetuous nature of the affections is refined (and the expatiating tendency of reason reined in), is found in Antony’s asceticism. This desert monk unites Newman’s concern for and understanding of holiness, as explicated above, with his privileging of the monastic-ascetic means for attaining it. The humane elasticity that characterizes authentic Christianity—firm-yetflexible, disciplined-but-understanding—undergirds Newman’s understanding of asceticism. Recall Newman’s lifelong emphasis on the connection between holiness, spiritual life, and ascetic struggle—seen in his early maxim, “Growth the only evidence of life,” and his later exhortation to his Oratorian community: “motion alone keeps us alive; but when the struggle is over, where is the motion?” The ascetic life, the “rigorous self-denial” incumbent on every believer, is the struggle that functions to sustain one’s life and growth as a Christian, the sign that one is truly alive and striving toward holiness as Christ’s disciple. The emotional energy of the enthusiast provides the motivation to persevere in this ascetic struggle. The judicious indulgence comprised by the “genius of the Gospel system” guides this energy, recognizing the value of religious fervor in inciting and sustaining the struggle for holiness. As mentioned, Newman affirms the 69

Athanasius, Life of Antony, §67 in H.S., 2, 117. Athanasius, Life of Antony, §67 in H.S., 2, 120. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 H.S., 2, 99. 70

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Christian aspiration to do great and uncommon things.74 Further, this discerning leniency removes the more serious temptations to extravagance that would hinder one in the pursuit of holiness by providing both sufficient freedom and adequate direction to the enthusiast’s energy, purifying it through an authorized, corrective outlet. In Antony’s case, his monastic form of life was the concrete form taken by this dynamic process, providing an outlet for his religious zeal that is also innately ordered towards inculcating an ongoing conversion. As a result, Antony’s enthusiasm was subdued over time—or rather, it became better focused. By speaking of a progressive “reining in” within a limited but real freedom, Newman suggests that Antony’s calm is in fact best understood as a working with—rather than against—those limits in step with an increased exploration of the liberty within the flexible-yet-firm boundaries set by the discipline of the church. Newman is contending for a particular view of Antony’s enthusiasm: “It was not vulgar, bustling, imbecile, unstable, undutiful; it was calm and composed, manly, intrepid, magnanimous, full of affectionate loyalty to the Church and to the Truth.”75 An Antony who is manly, intrepid, and magnanimous is not less enthusiastic, but his enthusiasm has become far better directed. Antony’s refined calm is actually the working out of his enthusiasm as he embraced his asceticism, an enthusiasm sublimated over time by the “genius of the Gospel system” rather than an enthusiasm abandoned or repressed. .

Conclusion A convergence thus emerges in Newman’s thought, which at length finds clear expression in the figure of Antony of Egypt. Holiness is a practical and vital concern, comprising for Newman the purpose of human life and the goal of the Christian life. Newman’s lifelong concern for understanding and embodying holiness had already given him an inclination toward the ascetic life. The desert Fathers—Abba Antony chief among them—resonated strongly with Newman’s critique of the “high and dry” group within the Church of England. In a concrete and representative way, Antony led Newman to discern the path to an interiorized via media between an excessive intellectualism and an unbridled emotionalism, as well as its implications for the lived expression of one’s religious life, both individually and within the larger church. Newman’s criticism of the High 74 75

See H.S., 2, 96. H.S., 2, 99.

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Church, couched in his appeal to Antony, is at root really a call to make allowances for—even encourage—the possibility of a transfigured religious zeal through that judicious forbearance encapsulated in the “genius of the Gospel system” idea. Further, if holiness subsists in a reserved or “purified” enthusiasm, then Antony serves as an example that such a manner of life is indeed possible, and that such ascetic enthusiasm is not only effective but needful. Newman holds the affections to be a necessary part of the ascetic means of attaining holiness even as they are themselves reformed by that process into their proper and sanctified unity. Antony’s refined calm is nothing less than an organic development of his religious enthusiasm, fashioned over time by means of his asceticism. Antony provides a model accordingly: the Christian life is necessarily ascetic, and one must strive each day anew to live a disciplined life as the means to achieve that “certain state of the heart and affections” that Newman called holiness.

CHAPTER THREE NEWMAN’S JOURNEY TOWARD ROME: FROM WILLFULNESS TO HOLINESS VIA THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES DR. ROBERT C. CHRISTIE

Overview and Introduction The observations to follow derive from my larger study of Newman’s conversions in which I developed a theory of conversion and applied it to Newman.1 These remarks will briefly reference that framework, but the present focus is on the role played by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola in Newman’s final conversion stage of his journey that ended in Rome. In my theory of conversion, there are four elements of consciousness and each require conversion to attain its fullness: the affections, the intellect, the aesthetic (which is a sense of the whole), and the will. Each has its unique functions and objectives, and there are numerous principles by which each operates. Primary among the operative principles is that the four elements are reciprocally influential and that they are interpersonalist in nature.2 This complexity makes what I call the final state of unconditional 1 The Logic of Conversion: The Harmony of Heart, Will, Intellect, and Affection in John Henry Newman, (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1998). A major influence on my theory is the work of Bernard Lonergan and a number of his followers, Bernard Häring, James Fowler, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. In his masterwork Method in Theology (New York: Herder, 1972), Lonergan described three major conversion stages, the intellectual, the religious, and the moral. He subsequently acknowledged a fourth stage, the affective, proposed by one of his followers, Robert Duran, and also termed by Duran psychic conversion. See Robert M. Doran, Psychic Conversion and Theological Foundations (Chicago: Scholars Press, 1981). 2 My theory of Christian conversion, ever so briefly stated, is the ever-deepening realization that one is loved by God, a love mediated through the fact, revelation, and image of Jesus; this love defines the fundamental condition of one's existence

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conversion of the self to God a very complicated and arduous process, since all four dimensions must be both maximized and harmonized. In line with the interpersonalist principle of my theory, the Jesuit author Philip Sheldrake defines spirituality as the ongoing development of relationship between the human person and God.3 This simple yet complicated description is the foundation for my analysis of the final stage of Newman’s long spiritual journey from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. But in personal terms, the relationship between the human person and God is subject to the laws and principles of interpersonal relationships that are inherent in the nature of the imago Dei. Thus, my analysis probes the four elements of consciousness as they are transformed in the experiences of Newman. In particular, my analysis focuses on how one very important relationship with the Irish Catholic cleric Charles Russell led Newman to discover and benefit from the practice of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, a critical stage in the unconditional conversion of his lion-hearted will from self-centeredness to submission to an Other divine Person as the primary focus and concern of his life. This is why Newman is a classic case-study in the dynamics of conversion and its attendant spiritual development.

Newman and Russell My investigation begins with evidence drawn from 1841, when Newman became acquainted with Russell, about whom he wrote that Russell “had more to do with my conversion than anyone else.”4 Therein Newman described the affective influence of Russell: “He was always gentle, mild, unobtrusive, uncontroversial. He let me alone.”5 At this time he also experienced the series of “three blows” which broke him between July and November, 1841,6 and which plunged him into the depths of a and meaning. This realization implicitly requires loving God in return, by mediating this truth of love to all creation, especially others. 3 Philip Sheldrake, Spirituality & History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 60 4 Apo., 194. Charles William Russell (1812-1880) was an Irish priest who became a professor at Maynooth College, specializing in Church History. He followed with great interest the progress of the Oxford Movement. Dismayed by Newman’s remarks on Transubstantiation in Tract 90, he began a correspondence with Newman in 1841 to explain the true nature of Catholic teachings. In 1857 he became President of Maynooth 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 139. (1) the recurring image to him of the Church of England in schism; (2) the English bishops’ condemnation of his Tract 90, Newman’s “catholicized”

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great dilemma regarding the authentic Church. If Rome were obviously corrupted by its additions to the primitive creed, as he had held for many years, but the Church of England were in schism, where then might he find the true Church? As Newman traversed this unsettling path, his relationship with Dr. Russell deepened. The affective nature of their relationship, that is, the affinity of affections between them, led to perhaps the most important discovery of all in relation to Newman’s intellectual conversion, which was the certain knowledge that Rome was the true heir to the apostolic Church. Newman’s relationship with Russell exposed Newman to Roman Catholic doctrine and devotional practices for the first time, a direct result of their relationship. But it was the effect of their affectionate relationship which began Newman’s turn toward Rome in earnest, and of which Henry Tristram wrote: “Not to take into account the effect of Dr. Russell’s personal influence upon him would be a fatal omission….Dr. Russell, for ever afterwards his ‘dear friend,’ and he alone, won, and retained until the end, not only his esteem, but his affection.”7 Newman’s final two University Sermons on “Wisdom” and on “The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine,” written during this period, carry the influence of his relationship with Russell. Furthermore, Newman dedicated his 1874 edition of his novel about conversion, Loss and Gain, to none other than Russell, and as Tristram again notes, “it is a temptation to think that in Loss and Gain he was the prototype of the priest whom Charles Reding met in the train on his way to London after his last farewell to Oxford.”8 Even though the effects of Newman’s relationship with Russell eventually led to his intellectual conversion, evidenced in his fifteenth University Sermon on the Development of Religious Doctrine in early 1843, a major problem persisted beyond the intellectual dimension. Newman lacked the faith necessary to convert his intellectual conclusions into convictions, a problem of trust and will. This prolonged crisis of faith lasted two years, until October 9, 1845, when he finally submitted his will in an act of trust and converted to the Church of Rome. But let us start at the beginning and examine the importance of Russell’s impact in the early days of their relationship, commencing in the spring of 1841. interpretation of the Articles of the Church of England; and (3) the Anglican Church’s accommodation of Protestantism by agreeing to participate in the creation of an interdenominational Jerusalem bishopric. 7 Henry Tristram, “Dr. Russell and Newman’s Conversion,” The Irish Ecclesiastical Record 66(Sept. 1945), 189200. 8 Ibid.

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The Effect of Their Affectionate Relationship on Newman’s Religious Intellect Russell first wrote to Newman in the spring of 1841, having read of Newman’s objections to various Roman doctrines and practices, and he wished to correct Newman’s misunderstandings. Russell and Newman exchanged six letters between April 8 and May 5, 1841, each writing three.9 Russell wrote respectfully, even apologetically, and expressed great regard for Newman and the Oxford Movement. His tone is generoushearted, and his letters were grounded in his affection for Newman: “I can scarcely account, even to myself,” he wrote, “for the strangely powerful impulse by which I am drawn towards yourself, personally a stranger in all except your admirable writings.”10 Newman, always impressed by people of affection, immediately engaged Russell’s intellectual themes, including the contention that Newman was incorrect in many of his assumptions about Roman doctrine and practice. Their correspondence caused Newman to investigate and change his mind regarding specific doctrinal objections, but Newman continued to rebuke Roman devotions: “O that you would reform your worship, that you would disown the extreme honors paid to St Mary other Saints, your traditionary view of Indulgences, and the veneration…to Images!”11 Russell responded by sending Newman Catholic devotional literature; these Newman studied and concluded that they were in truth Christ-centered, a fact that led Newman to again reverse his stance. But Newman was not easily swayed. He wrote Russell: “That my sympathies have grown towards the religion of Rome I do not deny; that my reasons for shunning her communion have lessened or altered it would be difficult perhaps to prove. And I wish to go by reason, not by feeling.”12 The context of this comment is that for Newman feelings alone would not suffice; he needed intellection confirmation.13 We must recall 9

L.D., 8:171-88. Ibid., 172. 11 Ibid., 174. 12 Ibid., 188. Later quoted in Apo., 189 13 Terrence Merrigan offers an example of such cleavage of affectivity and intellect: “The realisation of Newman’s determination to go by reason, not imagination, and to bow only to arguments, not sympathies…is also…important testimony to the place of intellection in his religious development.” See “Newman’s Progress toward Rome: A Psychological Consideration of his Conversion to Catholicism,” The Downside Review 104(April 1986), 105-6. It is suggested by both our hypothesis and our analysis of Newman’s conversion 10

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that Newman was still wincing over having been intellectually deceived by the uncritical faith he placed in Anglican divines regarding the 39 Articles, only to discover that his trust in them was misguided. He was not about to make any such decision again on feelings alone without intellectual validation. This flurry of correspondence transpired in the three months between the writing of Tract 90, published on February 27, 1841, and Newman’s fourteenth University Sermon on June 1, 1841, and the latter indeed shows the influence of Russell. Regarding Newman’s intellectual conversion of early 1843, three stages occur during this period beyond intellectual conversion and prior to what I term his unconditional conversion in 1845. First, the continuing relationship and influence of Russell provided ongoing intellectual and affective momentum. Second, as an apparent result of these factors and touching on the raison d’être of this essay, Newman’s discovery and practice of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius had a profound impact, which he noted in the Apologia.14 Thirdly, Newman’s final major document of this period, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, shows Russell’s influence through references to the Exercises; it provided the intellectual assurance Newman required to validate his belief and feelings before he could once again make a major act of faith. Newman was now moving into the final stage of his conversion journey, the challenge of faith to submit to God’s oracle, the Roman Church. After he resigned as Vicar of St. Mary’s on 18 September 1843, because of his waning faith in the Anglican Communion, he wrote: I had one final advance of mind to accomplish, and one final step to take. That further advance of mind was to be able honestly to say that I was certain of the conclusions at which I had already arrived. That further step,

experiences that the two elements of intellect and affectivity interact, in the conversion process, in a simultaneous and reciprocally influential way, much as Rousselot noted. Merrigan’s statement, “and not by sympathies,” implies otherwise. 14 Apo., 195-96. “What I can speak of with greater confidence is the effect produced on me a little later by studying the Exercises of St. Ignatius. For here again, in a matter consisting in the purest and most direct acts of religion,—in the intercourse between God and the soul, during a season of recollection, of repentance, of good resolution, of inquiry into vocation,—the soul was ‘sola cum solo;’ there was no cloud interposed between the creature and the Object of his faith and love. The command practically enforced was, ‘My son, give Me thy heart.’”

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imperative when such certitude was attained, was my submission to the Catholic Church.”15

Faith includes a movement of the affections that impels the will to trust. This was a two-year process for Newman, which could not have completed any sooner, as he said, “with any true conviction of mind or certitude.”16 Such was Newman’s state of mind “between the autumns of 1843 and 1845.”17 It remains now examine the nature of his final conversion movement and the pivotal role that the Spiritual Exercises played in this process, linked to Newman’s ongoing relationship with Charles Russell and his influence on what I call Newman’s unconditional conversion. The link between Russell and Newman’s acquaintance with the Exercises is evidenced by Newman’s mention of them in a letter to Russell as early as February, 1843. Between that date and June of that year, three more letters contain references to the Exercises and another to the Jesuits.18 Given that Russell had sent Newman devotional material as early as October, 1842, and that they were of sufficient import to affect Newman’s Retractation statement and his Fifteenth University Sermon, such literature was apparently either the direct or indirect source of Newman’s introduction or reference to the Exercises. This is not only quite possible, but likely, since Newman had virtually no other acquaintance with Catholics or Catholic devotional literature. In early 1844 Russell sent Newman a volume of St. Alphonsus’s sermons and Catechetical Instructions, along with a “packet of little books” representative of common Italian devotions that were, according to Henry Tristram, “identical with those referred to by Newman in the (Essay on) Development”19 where he discusses them in the same section along with the Exercises. Russell’s major contribution to Newman’s spiritual development and ultimate conversion is arguably his introduction to Newman of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and Newman’s use of them. This is recorded in his diary, in the Apologia, and in his final major 15

Ibid., 214. Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Daniel Patrick Huang, “The Spiritual Exercises and the Conversion of John Henry Newman,” America 29(July 1995), 25-27. In his letter of November 22, 1842, Newman extended an invitation to Dr. Russell to visit him in Oxford. See L.D., 9:156. Russell did so on August 1, 1843, his one and only visit. See Tristram, op.cit., 196. 19 Tristram, op.cit., 197. 16

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work of the period, his Essay on Development; it links together many of the factors involved in Newman’s final and unconditional conversion. It remains, then to examine the influence of these Exercises on Newman’s unconditional conversion.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and Newman’s Unconditional Conversion In the Apologia Newman discusses the Exercises together with some devotional material he received from Dr. Russell; though the source of the Exercises is not stated, neither is any other source referenced.20 Two significant facts emerge from this account. First, through the devotional literature and then especially through the Exercises, Newman was led to understand the true nature of Catholic belief as consisting in the primacy of an affective relationship with God, which he summarized thusly: “Only this I know full well now, and I did not know then, that the Catholic Church allows no image…to come between the soul and its Creator. It is face to face, ‘solus cum solo,’”21 But his affections, or feelings, impressed with the “stain on the imagination” against Rome from decades of prejudice, resisted the lead of his intellect. Newman’s struggle with his will, and his battle between self-will and God’s will, is borne out by his diary entries during two specific Ignatian retreats he made in 1843. “For here again,” Newman remarked about the Exercises, “the soul was ‘sola cum solo.’”22 In April, 1843, Newman made a six-day Lenten retreat, and then another five-day Advent retreat in December, and Newman’s diary specifically listed the Exercises he performed.23 Newman’s reflections during the first retreat disclose his problems with willfulness and self-centeredness, which 20

Apo., 196. Ibid., 195. 22 Ibid., 196. Newman’s reference here is strikingly similar to the phrase which Edward Copleston, encountering Newman in a moment of reflection during the latter’s early Oxford days, stated to him, and which I subsequently used to describe Newman’s first conversion in 1816: “Nunquàm minus solus, quàm cùm solus.” See Christie doctoral thesis (UMI, 1998). 23 A.W., 222-28 for Lent, 228-233 for Advent. Exercise topics: On the end of man, On Sin, on Death and Judgment, on Tepidity, On the two Standards, On the Passion of Christ. The retreat went from April 8 to Good Friday, April 14. L.D., 9:304-06 makes no mention in its diary entries about the Lenten retreat. Newman wrote no letters during the retreat. L.D., 10:64-68 contains the 1843 Advent Exercises. 21

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even extended into the following reflection on his work in the Oxford Movement: “If disobedience is against nature, I am, in the sight of Angels, like some odious monster….I have acted hardly ever for God’s glory….My motive in all my exertions during the last ten years, has been the pleasure of energizing intellectually….How little I have used my gifts in God’s service….Self-love (has) been my motive, and that possibly is the sovereign sin in my heart.”24 Newman closed his reflection with an acknowledgment of his spiritual need to surrender to God: “At the end I solemnly gave myself up to God to do what he would with me—to make me what he would—to put what he would upon me.”25 He reiterated this theme in his notes following another Exercise: “Also I renewed my surrender of myself in all things to God, to do what he would with me at any cost.”26 In this entry he also noted a related thought: “Various great trials struck at me….[one of which was] having to join the Church of Rome.” The second day saw a repetition of the theme of willfulness. He wrote, “I cautioned myself against acts of willful impetuosity or obstinacy.” The third day contained a repeat of his lament over self-centeredness in the Oxford Movement: “Taking the ecclesiastical movement of the last 10 years as a whole, it has not in any sense been performed (on my part) with a pure intention towards God.”27 On the fourth day the ecclesiastical and submission themes return: I was led on to meditate on the fortunes of the Church at present, and especially in England, and on my own duties regarding it….I prayed that in all I did, I might have before my eyes the example of Christ’s subjection to his parents. This picture of Christ’s subjection seemed to me a very striking one, and likely to be affecting.28

Here we find the interaction of Newman’s imagination (the aesthetic dimension), affectivity, and will. On the fifth day, Newman again confessed his willfulness in the form of attachment to fame and envy: “I seem unwilling to say, ‘Give me utter obscurity’; partly for a hankering after posthumous fame, partly from a dislike that others should do the

24

A.W., 223. Ibid. The exercise “On the End of Man.” 26 Ibid., 224. 27 Ibid., 224 and 226. 28 Ibid., 227. 25

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work of God in the world, & not I.”29 Newman closed the fifth day with a reference to “St. Alphonso,” indicating Russell’s influence. The second retreat’s diary notes disclose a similar theme of willfulness. On the first day Newman again prayed for the grace to submit his will to God. Then contemplating his end, he makes a very relevant reference: “Chief thoughts 1. That I am created here and now…surely not for myself. 2. how God in time past has chastened me & guided me. E.g. in 1816, 1827-8. Is it to be for nothing?”30 He closes the first day with an acknowledgment of his sin of “self conceited thoughts.”31 On the final day Newman prayed for what he described as “obedience to Christ & a reliance on His power & grace to bring me through.”32 In sum, these retreats disclose Newman’s confrontation with willfulness, self-love, disobedience, self-centered intellectualism, and attachment to worldly fame, yet seeking the grace to surrender his will in obedience to God. But to understand better what Newman was experiencing, let us now look at the nature of the Exercises.

The Nature of the Spiritual Exercises in Relation to Newman’s Conversion Various commentators on the Exercises point out numerous facts that are relevant to Newman’s conversion experiences. The aim of the Exercises is to produce a decision to follow Christ in service to the Church.33 Newman’s reflections indicate a preoccupation with this 29

Ibid. Ibid., 229. Also, and notably, L. Bouyer, Newman: His Life and Spirituality (New York: Kenedy, 1958), 196, noting Newman’s 1845 conversion to Rome as “this second conversion of his, which we may call his conversion to the Church.” Bouyer also cites the primacy of the intellectual element in this process characterized by “an even greater independence of view, an even completer intellectual autonomy than characterized by his first conversion, to God.” Our thesis agrees with Bouyer’s analysis but with an added distinction. What might be distinguished as Newman’s general Church conversion commenced in 1827-8 and came to fruition in 1833. Then began Newman’s intellectual conversion, or search for the true Church, which culminated in 1843, followed by his act of unconditional conversion to the Catholic Church, a distinction within his Church conversion, or a further development thereof. 31 Ibid., 230. 32 Ibid., 233. 33 The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Antony Mottola, with intro. by Robert W. Gleason, (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 15. 30

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subject.34 Another aim is “subjection to God…by conquest of self-love through love of Christ,” and this was Newman’s primary challenge during the retreats and throughout this phase of his conversion.35 Another objective is to produce submission of the will, which is linked to the love of Christ, through conversion of the affections by means of the “forming of pictures in the imagination.”36 From the very design of the Exercises, as Newman recounts them, intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and affective elements interact to foster “service of the Church through complete conformity to the will of God.”37 These elements are consistent with my conversion hypothesis. The success of the Exercises, however, is essentially dependent upon that fundamental predisposition or temper, which Gleason calls “fundamental attitude,”38 embedded at the outset of the Exercises, the purpose of which is to conquer oneself39 by fostering a state of “indifference” in order, as this commentator puts it, “to desire and choose only that which is more conducive to the end for which we are created.”40 As Gleason writes, the Exercises, then, function to change “Fundamental attitudes underlying the faults and failures discovered and altered. The soul in itself is in readiness for a metanoia, a new conversion.”41 An examination of the Exercises themselves reveals this basic structure and purpose. A particular image or picture is suggested as the focus of contemplation, and after an imaginative reflection upon the vision, one is moved “to deeper emotions by means of (the) will.”42 The exercitant moves to a decision or “election” of “amending and reforming one’s life and state.”43 This decision or “election” is produced through successive

34

Ibid. The meditation “On the two Standards,” which Newman noted as one of the most effective for him, “is aimed at a decision which the exercitant is to make: the following of Christ in service to the Church.” 35 This is the theme of two major exercises which Newman recorded, the Two Standards and the Kingdom. 36 Ibid., 25. 37 Ibid., 21. 38 Ibid., 16, in the Principle and Foundation. 39 Ibid., 47. “The purpose of these Exercises is to help the exercitant to conquer himself.” 40 George E. Ganss, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), 32. 41 Op. cit., Spiritual Exercises, 28. 42 Ganss, op.cit., 41. 43 Op. cit., Spiritual Exercises, 87.

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meditations on the “Consideration of the States of Life.”44 Here important imagery is employed to facilitate the process: (T)he example which Christ our Lord has already given us for the first state of life [is] the observance of the commandments, in the meditation on His obedience to His parents. We have also considered the example that he gave us for the second state of life, that of evangelical perfection, when he remained in the temple, leaving His foster father and His Mother according to nature, that He might devote Himself entirely to the service of His heavenly Father. We will begin now to contemplate His life, and at the same time, to investigate and to ask in what kind of life or state His Divine Majesty wishes to make use of us.”45

Newman made particular reference in his 1843 retreat diary to this specific imagery of Jesus’s submission to his parents, reinforcing the contention that affection in the form of loving family relationships was always of primary significance in Newman’s religious development. Hugo Rahner offers two major insights on the Exercises which support my thesis, especially in relation to the nature of Newman’s conversion experience. First, the Exercises indicate the presence of the four conversion elements—the intellectual, the aesthetic, the moral, and the affective—and their developmental process. Therein lies the relationship, and even the grounding, of knowledge in the aesthetic dimension, beginning with this experience of Ignatius himself: These [religious] visions strengthened him greatly…and produced such a firmness of faith in him that ever after he often thought to himself, “If he had no knowledge of these mysteries of our holy religion from the Scriptures, he would still be ready and resolved to die for them, for no other reason than that he had beheld them in these visions.”46

Hugo Rahner holds that these visions provide “an insight into the relationships among all the divine mysteries.”47 For Ignatius, vision and insight are ultimately grounded in the affections:

44

Ibid., 75-87. Meditations on the “Consideration of the States of Life.” Ibid., 75. 46 J.F.X. O’Conor, The Autobiography of St. Ignatius Loyola (New York 1900), 25, in Hugo Rahner, The Spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola, trans. Francis John Smith (Westminster: The Newman Press, 1953), 88-89. 47 Rahner, op.cit., 89. 45

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And this leads directly to the heart of the theology of the Spiritual Exercises…. “The love which moves me and makes me choose something has to descend from above, from the love of God; so that he who makes the choice must first of all feel (sienta) within himself that this love, be it greater or less, which he has for the object of his choice, is for his creator and Lord alone.”48

Christological imagery is the means “by which the exercitant makes the life of Christ present in his mind and heart and then, in the light of this imagery, sets about ordering his own life.”49 This reciprocal relationship of mind and heart is most evident in the Exercises, which Rahner some pages later describes as “a simple yet sublime way of making conceivable what is beyond conceiving.”50 [A] “small earthly thing conveyed by word, image or gesture suddenly presents itself to us as the whole—God, both hidden and disclosed. The whole is apprehended in the movement of the spiritual senses towards the object seen, heard, and touched….Everything which is perceived in [sic] seen as coming from God.”51 Here affectivity and intellect coalesce in the moral dimension of the Exercises. Doing begets knowing, as Rahner notes: “The Exercises are to be made….They are not a book.”52 In addition to facilitating the harmonization of the four elements of consciousness, the Exercises culminate in the interpersonal relational dynamic of unconditional surrender to God, which is the core of the election in the Exercises. The election, however, requires a solid intellectual ground for maximum effect, as Rahner cautions: “It will be impossible to understand and especially to guide the election, the masterpiece of the Spiritual Exercises, without deep theological study,”53 confirming the reciprocal influence of the elements of consciousness. Newman was in just such a state of intellectual reflection when he made the Exercises, and thus we find a correlation between Rahner’s analysis, Newman’s experience, and my conversion hypothesis: the exercitant moves toward an election through a reflective or intellectual stage. This promotes what Rahner calls the “basic rule of the Exercises concerning the surrender of self-love and one’s own will and interests.”54 48

Hugo Rahner, Ignatius the Theologian, trans. Michael Barry (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1968), 7, citing Monumenta Ignatiana II. 49 Ibid., 101-02. 50 Ibid., 189. Exercise on the Application of the Senses. 51 Ibid., 209-10. 52 Rahner, op.cit., Spirituality of Ignatius, 91. 53 Ibid., 96. 54 Ibid., 95.

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The election is, he says, “The ‘supernatural decision’…when the exercitant comes to see the will of God for his own life.”55 Rahner culminates his description of the election with the very element which completes my conversion hypothesis, what he calls “unconditional service.”56 Following the Ignatian commentator Nadal, Rahner states, “‘Ignatius began to probe deeply into his soul’….Ignatius here discovered the connection between his own spiritual battle and the Church,” and eventually he “subordinated all mysticism to this visible organization.”57 As an example of this principle, Ignatius subjected the Exercises to the dogmatic control of the Church.58 This principle is incorporated into the Exercises through the election made therein. This decision should likewise be subordinate to the “certification and guarantee” of the Church.59 In conclusion, Rahner’s analysis has helped us to understand better Newman’s experience leading to his unconditional conversion, one which harmonized the four major elements of conversion, since the Exercises “exercise a tremendous power and influence upon the internal conversion of our souls.”60 Hugo’s brother and fellow Jesuit Karl Rahner makes a similar observation about the goals of the Exercises. “We should surrender ourselves to this Lord unconditionally,”61 and immediately commenting on the degrees of humility, he states that one “is completely subject to the unconditional disposition of God.” It is this challenge of unconditional commitment which characterized Newman’s final two years, and the importance which he placed on the Exercises in the development of his final conversion stage confirms that he was indeed primarily involved in this struggle of submission of his own will to God’s will. Newman’s problem with relinquishing his strident self-will had manifested itself throughout his life, from the conflict with his father over his early evangelical spirit, to the dispute with Edward Hawkins over the Oriel tuition, to his “dark night of the soul” in Sicily, to his self-centered conduct during the heady days of the Oxford Movement, and finally in the struggle of his intellect and will over the challenge to submit to what he knew to be the one true Church. It was brought to a head between 1843 55

Rahner, op.cit., Ignatius the Theologian, 230. Ibid., 237. 57 Ibid., 218 58 Rahner, op.cit., Spirituality of Ignatius, 89. 59 Rahner, op cit., Ignatius the Theologian, 231. 60 Ibid., 92. 61 Karl Rahner, Spiritual Exercises, trans. by Kenneth Baker (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 188. 56

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and 1845 because the other elements of affectivity, aesthetic, and intellect were all coalescing. They required, however, harmonization that would finally resolve the dissonance which Newman had felt for so long. As his will began to transform, he approached that state of conversion which harmonized all its elements. He wrote: “Then, I had nothing more to learn; what still remained for my conversion, was, not further change of opinion, but to change opinion itself into the clearness and firmness of intellectual conviction.”62 Newman here described his final movement as the challenge of faith, “the necessity of passing beyond private judgment and of submitting one’s will and intellect to a divinely accredited organ or oracle of religious truth.”63 In sum, the Exercises serve to harmonize the intellect, affections, and imagination by converting the will to an unconditional submission to God’s will, expressed in a decisive act of faith. For Newman this was his unconditional conversion to God through his submission to God’s “oracle of truth” on earth and heir to the apostolic community, the Church of Rome. Newman’s Apologia account of the effects of the Exercises indicates a further conversion of the imagination.64 Again, an act of the analogical imagination helped to resolve Newman’s difficulty with Catholic devotions. Newman began to see that just as human affection through the love of others complements the love of God, so can religious devotional affection function likewise. Thus, this aesthetic element was accompanied by the realization of an affective element, as Newman himself wrote: “The command [of the Exercises] practically enforced was, ‘My son, give Me thy heart.’”65 An even greater aesthetic element emerged as Newman perceived that the devotions were therefore part of a much more elaborate scheme: “The harmony of the whole, however, is of course what it was. It is unfair then to take one Roman idea…out of what may be called its context.”66 These affective and aesthetic elements produced an intellectual insight in Newman: “I saw that the principle of development…was in itself a remarkable philosophical phenomenon, giving a character to the whole course of Christian thought….It served as a sort of test, which the Anglican could not exhibit, that modern Rome was in truth ancient 62

Apo., 200. Avery Dulles, “Newman: The Anatomy of a Conversion,” Newman and Conversion, ed. Ian Ker (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 34. 64 Apo., 196. In the form of a new perception, an analogy of the Roman devotions to the affection for loved ones. Neither, he writes, “are inconsistent with that supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen.” 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 196-7. 63

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Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople.”67 This insight led Newman to explore the nature of an “idea” in the mind, the basis of the Essay on Development, to which we now turn. But the facts indicate that the Exercises promoted aesthetic, affective, moral, and intellectual conversions in Newman, all converging on his final unconditional conversion.

The Exercises in the Newman’s Essay on Development One last piece of evidence remains in investigating the effects of the Exercises on Newman’s conversion process. Newman makes numerous references in the Essay to the Jesuits, and in Chapter 12, as he was nearing his unconditional conversion, he refers to the Spiritual Exercises, which were discussed at length, immediately followed by a discussion of the Italian devotional books obtained from Russell. Newman credits the Jesuits with bringing into “singular prominence” a principle which is the key to unconditional conversion: obedience: The great Society…has been still more distinguished than any other Order before it for the rule of obedience….It may be fairly questioned, whether, in an intellectual age, when freedom both of thought and of action is so dearly prized, a greater penance can be devised for the soldier of Christ than the absolute surrender of judgment and will to the command of another.68

This was Newman’s final challenge: to submit himself to God through the authority of the Roman Church. In the Apologia Newman wrote that “I profess my own absolute submission to its claims,”69 the chief of which is “a power, possessed of infallibility in religious teaching…for smiting hard and throwing back the immense energy of the aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy intellect.”70 Intellect, imagination, affections, and finally will coalesced in an act of unconditional submission to the “oracle of revealed truth.” Thus, it was this step beyond intellectual certainty, when Newman unconditionally submitted his will to the Church of Rome by acquiescing to its truth-claims, that Newman brought to a close the final stage of his conversion to Rome. As these events bear out, Newman’s final

67

Ibid., 198. Dev., 399. 69 Apo., 250. 70 Ibid., 245-46. 68

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stage was one of faith development and the decision to trust once again, befittingly called his unconditional conversion.

CHAPTER FOUR THE SPIRITUAL SUMMONS TO ROME: THE OXFORD CONVERTS’ CALL AND RESPONSE TO HOLINESS FR. PATRICK MANNING

Introduction About the year 167 BCE, the Scriptures record a clash of wills between Antiochus IV Epiphanes, then king of the Seleucid dynasty, and a Jewish family who refused to violate their consciences: “It happened that seven brothers with their mother were tortured with whips and scourges by the king to force them to eat pork in violation of God’s law. One of the brothers, speaking for the others, said, ‘What do you expect to learn by questioning us? We are ready to die rather than transgress the law of our ancestors’” (2 Mc 7:1-2). The king then ordered pans and cauldrons to be heated and, as his mother and brothers looked on, the son who had spoken was scalped, had his hands and feet cut off, and his tongue cut out. Still breathing even then, he remained defiant in the presence of the powerful monarch. The story unfolds ever more gruesomely in its details, the horror of it only to be outshone by the courage, bravery and faith convictions of the entire family as they were all martyred for their faith and their adherence to conscience. The last son dies as his brothers did, “undefiled, putting all his trust in the Lord. Last of all, after her sons, the mother was put to death” (2 Mc 7:39-42).”1 Love in English is, unfortunately, an undifferentiated word, unlike the nuance we find for it in the Greek of the New Testament. One might hear 1

Translation from the New American Bible Revised Edition. The two books of Maccabees, called deuterocanonical, are accepted as inspired by Catholic and Orthodox Christianity but are of respected though lower rank for Judaism than its scriptures in the Tanak.

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in the same conversation variations of expression from “I love pizza” to “I love my wife.” Or, again, “I love going to the beach” and “I love God.” The above Scripture passage, and other examples of selflessness, suggests at least one characteristic that helps differentiate the nuances of this word love. It is the element of sacrifice. Quite simply, one can measure the depth of care, commitment, and love involved in any human undertaking by discerning the costs to the person involved. The more it is costing, the more one has to sacrifice what is comfortable for the sake of addressing the needs of another. In this manner the word love approaches its proper and noble meaning. In secular circumstances, such as a wartime battlefield, and in sacred circumstances as above, history has provided examples of heroic persons giving their all, while refusing to count the cost. An unbeliever in battle, out of the simple but profound conviction of the value of his or her comrades’ lives, can throw him or herself on a grenade in order to preserve the lives of others at the cost of one’s own life. Most everyone, upon reflection, is able to muster an example or memory of someone who has evidenced care for another in almost heroic proportions, much of it unnoticed and unsung. From the person who has set aside everything to care for a terminally ill or failing parent, to the parent who day and night has to care for a physically or emotionally challenged child, to the person who has made a life-long commitment to stand by another who is mentally or emotionally challenged, these commitments inspire the rest of us to do whatever is loving, even at a great cost.

Holiness and Conversion The call to holiness is a complex, deep-seeded, spiritual and personal matter; it is the pursuit of sanctity through the following of one’s conscience. And not infrequently does fidelity to the voice of one’s conscience involve significant sacrifice. This essay proposes to illustrate how conscientious sacrifice in the pursuit of holiness played out in midVictorian Britain, both in the lives of not a few converts from the Anglican Church, and in the life of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, an Anglican priest whose life, in his embrace of the Church of Rome, reveals the sacrifices such obedience to one’s conscience demanded of him. One would do well to keep in mind the lessons learned from the sufferings and the patience in the lives of these converts and, in particular, in the life lessons of Newman’s spiritual and professional journey. The sacrifices of these converts are indeed a reminder that obedience to one’s conscience is

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an integral part of one’s call to holiness from which severe hardships cannot be avoided.

Church vs. State: The Tractarian and Oxford Movements Persons who make decisions that involve sacrifice and serious consequences are clearly conscientious. Their consciences impel them to make the difficult choices involved. It is a serious enterprise indeed when the consequences are grave and the costs quite high in order to respond to the call of one’s conscience, the innate, God-given moral compass referred to by Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman as “the aboriginal Vicar of Christ”2 importuning us from within. In the previously cited passage from II Maccabees, the martyrs involved are not simply good ethnic Jews; the whole family is responding to the call of conscience with such unshakable resolve because of the weight that obedience to the Mosaic Law of God occupied in their hearts. (Christians would call such witness to conscience as this family displayed as living the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love in God.) Among others, two important themes in spirituality and vocation are alluded to in the Scripture passage referenced above. These themes are not unconnected to the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love. With a deep faith in God, a deep hope to be with God after death (by the time of the Maccabees, the conviction of an afterlife with God for the righteous had emerged in Jewish thinking), and love for what they know is right (motivated by a love for a God who, they are convinced, loves and cares for them), the mother and sons embrace unspeakable suffering. The implicit themes that are operative here are the importance of the quest for holiness and the duty of following one’s conscience by observing the Law of Moses. These two themes are inextricably related. Both of them are particularly pertinent for our present topic: It is the price one must often pay in following one’s conscience in the pursuit of holiness, of remaining undefiled. Religious interests, movements and conflicts in mid-Victorian England were much at the forefront of English society. In particular, the disaffection of some, especially the more conservative clergy who perceived unwarranted intrusion of the state into the affairs of the Established Church (the Church of England), gave rise to a more organized protest against secular interference in properly church affairs. The Movement, termed later both Tractarian or Oxford, (while not originally intending it) 2

Found in Newman’s “A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on the Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation,” Diff., 2, 248.

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helped carry the day for many (both clergy and lay persons) who eventually left the Established Church and converted to Roman Catholicism when their Tractarian ideals could not be sustained. But those who made this bold move, following their consciences, did so at a great cost. They suffered in many ways, often being ostracized and disenfranchised from society; they had to sacrifice in ways they never expected because they listened to the voice of conscience within them, “the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.” One would have hoped that the treatment they received by their former coreligionists would have the intention of reconciliation (such as one meets in the fraternal correction passage in Mt 18:15-20). But reconciliation was not what they experienced; the punishment they received was at times intentionally punitive. Many Anglicans, of course, hoped that these defectors would see the error of their ways in having “crossed the Tiber,” and some Anglicans did hope for their return to the Established Church. Sanctions placed upon the Catholic converts were quite grave: for example, the complete erasure of any evidence of their presence at the great universities (in particular Oxford and Cambridge). The political, social, cultural, familial, emotional and even material alienations were, in the main, intended to serve as more of a punishment than being any attempt at a conducive motive for them to return to the Anglican Church. It remains, then, to reflect on these two dynamic and integral themes in the lives and the spirituality of the committed converts: their pursuit of holiness, and the following of their consciences, that caused them to endure so many painful consequences.3

Cases in Point Of course, no one can know the mind and heart of another, but one can only imagine how difficult a decision it might have been for an Anglican, especially an Anglican clergyman, to leave the church of his youth and upbringing for Roman Catholicism, a church most English people held in disdain. Because the lines between church and state were so blurred in 19th century England, to be excised from the church community was tantamount to being excised from society. The ramifications go far deeper than anyone might imagine, as the consequences of such a decision 3

This essay is indebted to an Oxford University B.Litt. thesis (1977), recently published: Pauline Adams, English Catholic Converts and the Oxford Movement in Mid 19th Century Britain: The Cost of Conversion, (Bethesda, MD: Academia Press, 2010). I wish to thank Dr. Kenneth Parker of St. Louis University who directed my attention to Adams’s research.

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influenced one’s financial stability and potential as well as actual employment opportunities; Anglican Church identity determined one’s social standing, friendships, educational options and teaching opportunities (or lack thereof). The consequences go on and on. The emotional and personal sacrifice endured by those who made the move to leave and join Rome can only be imagined. On some of these experiences this essay seeks to reflect. About the midpoint of the nineteenth century, the incidence of conversions to the Church of Rome and growing disaffection with the Church of England was on the minds of not a few people. It divided families. Mr. G. W. Wilkinson wrote the following to his son Thomas upon hearing of his conversion to Rome: You have chosen to ally yourself with a Church which I can never cease to regard, not merely as the Enemy of that pure and reformed Establishment to which you had professed to dedicate yourself, but as the Great Instrument of Spiritual pride and Thraldom, and (so far as its power will admit) the Abettor of political Tyranny throughout the world – I say nothing of doctrinal questions….4

The father was grieved not only with the son’s conversion, he seemed to view the move as an embrace of heresy and an act of rebellion. Even more, the son was surrendering his opportunity for life immortal. But quite miraculously and certainly as a rare exception, the passage of eighteen months softened the father’s heart toward his son: It will give me no particle of unhappiness to know that you, my very dear son, are engaged in the exercise of the duties of your Priesthood, albeit at so near a point to my abode….On the contrary, any arrangement that will give me more frequent opportunities of seeing one of the most dutiful and exemplary of the many good children, with whom it has pleased Almighty God to bless and sustain my declining years, must needs be a source of consolation and joy to me. And to see that son engaged in dispensing to his poor and humble brethren in Christ those blessed hopes of everlasting happiness, which can alone flow from the sacred Word of the Redeemer and Mediator, must needs heighten those feelings of inward gratification – however much, and unalterably, I may be of opinion, that the great Truths of Christianity & the Living Word of God may be far more purely and

4

Ushaw: Wilkinson MSS OS/H 4 G. W. H. Wilkinson to his son Thomas, 12 Jan. 1847. In Adams, ibid., 49-50.

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effectually conveyed thro’ other channels of Faith & Doctrine, than those adopted (conscientiously, He knoweth) by my much beloved Child.5

Pauline Adams notes a somewhat opposite turn of events in the case of Michael Watts-Russell when he converted to Roman Catholicism. WattsRussell wrote to John Henry Newman of his relief at first upon telling his father about his conversion: He has been most kind and affectionate to me, has uttered no reproach, but on the contrary expressed his conviction of my sincerity, though at the same time he was unhesitating in condemning the step in contemplate – He was moved to tears at the prospect of our separation; but there was a gentleness in his sorrow which it gives me pleasure to reflect upon, and inspires me with hope for the future.6

But family relations soon soured; father and son became alienated. Even Watts-Russell’s sister, upon her conversion to Catholicism, had a similar fate. When the local Anglican bishop insisted that she “sign an undertaking that she would make no effort, direct or indirect, to convert any person in the neighborhood,”7 she refused, and her father insisted she leave their home. Similar stories abound about the trials families experienced as members chose to leave the Established Church for Rome. In addition, conversion decisions of significant consequence had to be weighed by the Anglican priests who were celibate. To this end, Adams notes that vowed religious communities were especially attractive to such priests who felt their absence in the Established Church and were attracted to the strict discipline and missionary zeal such religious orders offered. Adams notes that the Society of Jesus was especially attractive to many who found in the Jesuits a much smoother entry into Catholic culture and church life.8 The converts entered other orders as well, such as the Cistercians, Redemptorists, Passionists, Dominicans and Benedictines. Interestingly enough, although he eventually decided to become a member of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, Newman himself may have, at one time, contemplated entering the Society of Jesus, as he noted some of the virtues 5

Ibid, Adams, 50. Ushaw: Wilkinson MSS OS/H 4 G. W. H. Wilkinson to his son, 2 Oct. 1848. 6 Ibid, Adams, 50-51. Michael Watts-Russell to Newman, n.d. [1845]. The Watts letter is not in L.D., but Newman’s letter of 8 October 1945 to him, on the eve of Newman’s own reception is. See L.D., 9:10. C.S. Dessain, in the Index of Persons at the end of L.D. 8, provides a sketch of Watts-Russell. 7 Ibid., 51. 8 Ibid., 79.

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of the Jesuits in a letter of 25 July 1847 to his sister Jemima (Mrs. Thomas Mosley): They are like the first class men at Oxford – and it is a very curious fact that the first class men who have become converts have become Jesuits, [George] Tickell, [Charles] Collyns, [Albany] Christie, and [Thomas] Meyrick. They have certainly very clever men among them in this sense; but tact, shrewdness, worldly wisdom, sagacity, all those talents for which they are celebrated in the world they have very little of.9

Challenges were particularly keen for the married converts, whether clerics or laypersons. For some, financial reasons, such as outstanding debt, were a sword of Damocles hanging over them. The transition posed specific and difficult challenges to married Anglican clergy. For example, three of them involved in The Rambler magazine, John Moore Capes, Richard Simpson, and James Spencer Northcote, had to turn to the Catholic press to eke out a living and find expression for their formidable intellectual skills.10 Adams cites the strange case of Pierce Connolly who, with his family, converted to Catholicism in 1836. Determined to be ordained, Connolly encouraged his wife, Cornelia, to enter a convent, which she reluctantly did. Both took a vow of perpetual separation, witnessed by the Vatican, and thereafter took a canonically binding vow of celibacy. The children were sent to boarding schools. Pierce became a chaplain to a Lord Shrewsbury, and Cornelia, at Bishop Wiseman’s urging, was to establish an order of nuns. Connolly eventually abandoned the Catholic Church, fled to Italy with the children, and sued his wife for restitution of conjugal rights. After a long and losing court battle, he established St. James Episcopal Church in Florence, and she founded and became the superior of a teaching order of vowed religious women, The Society of the Holy Child Jesus.11 With married Anglican clergy being refused ordination in the Catholic Church, the more common scenario and the more likely sentiments were feelings of being unappreciated, thus feeling lost and like “fish out of water.” This is well articulated in a letter of T. W. Allies to Newman. “I used to always think a turtle laid on its back an unfortunate animal,” and 9

L.D., 12:103. John Patrick Manning, John Henry Newman and The Rambler: A Model of Theological Integrity (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1998). 11 Op. cit., Adams, 106-107. In 1992, Cornelia Connolly was accorded the title “Venerable.” 10

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he continues, “but this is nothing to an ex-Anglican minister with a wife and children.”12 About a year later, again in a letter to Newman, Allies was speaking for no small number of converted Anglican clergy, who could not become priests because they were married, when he wrote: I am sometimes grieved at feeling that there is not a religious sect of importance in England, as, for instance, the Puseyites, the Evangelicals, the Scotch Free Church, or the Wesleyans, who, as a body, would have treated the converts as the Catholic body have done. Whether it is powerlessness, or apathy, or want of perception, or disunion, or that many who have the will have not the means, while the few who have the means have not the will, but it is that I see us (for I may speak as one of a class) simply let fall to the ground. I speak here, of course, of the married ex-parsons, for their “occupation’s gone” – and it is a sheer impossibility to find another.13

There was much at stake and great deprivation for someone like Allies. He lost livelihood, security, income, status, and friends. Further, the future was bleak for one who had to join not only a minority church but a minority culture as well, a culture scorned by the church and society he had just renounced. English Catholicism became replete with gifted members, newly joined, for whom the church had no idea how best to utilize. On this topic Cardinal Wiseman had written: We cannot without deep emotion contemplate the very painful, and sometimes even hopeless condition of converted Anglican clergymen, who, in prompt obedience to the call of divine grace, have entered into the Catholic Church. Withdrawn, in many cases, from a position of ease and comfort, they find themselves immediately after their conversion in a state of most critical, and sometimes in absolute destitution, with no means of maintaining themselves, or of providing for the needs of their families. By birth, by education, and by their habits of life, they are wholly unprepared for such enormous sacrifices; and when these privations are added to the cruel anguish of broken friendships and social isolation, it is hardly a matter of surprise if some find their courage fails them.14

12 Ibid., 107. Newman responded to Allies a few days later on a different matter. See L.D., 14:246-47. 13 Ibid., 107-08. Allies wrote Newman on 15 March 1852. 14 Ibid., 109-110, where Adams quotes Herbert Vaughan, “Leo XIII and the Reunion of Christendom,” (CCTS Pamphlet, 1896), 19-20.

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The Oxford (Tractarian) Movement It is important to appreciate that the Oxford Movement was one of both the heart and the head. Brilliant as his mind may have been, it was no accident that John Henry Newman chose as his motto Cor ad Cor Loquitur [Heart Speaks to Heart]. We are aware of the intellectual journey of conversion Newman took, but we need also be aware of the deep spirituality of the great Cardinal who experienced a profound conversion as a teenager, one that certainly cannot, if one has read the Apologia, identify as simply an intellectual conversion, or a philosophical change of thought on a specific spiritual topic, or a casual assent to a set of fixed doctrinal propositions. The Oxford converts, in the main, possessed indisputable intellectual abilities but also a very real and undeniable spiritual zeal and deep faith convictions. This combination of creed and prayer, the need for doctrinal authority and faith, were the foundation of the movement in general and the spirit behind the Oxford converts in particular. Both the converts and many who did not convert but hoped to stay the course in the Established Church in order to set aright a wayward ship saw serious problems in the Anglican community. Their call to holiness and the voices of their consciences (as well as a collective conscience, incarnated in the movement) would not allow them to accept the Anglican status quo. There had been some dissatisfaction among many Anglicans, and especially Anglican clergy, about the state of the Established Church at the turn of the 18th and into the 19th Century. Many, including John Henry Newman, saw the formal call to reform in Dr. John Keble’s 1833 sermon on “National Apostasy,” which Keble delivered just as Newman was returning from the Continent. Keble is an example of one who did not convert to Catholicism but who wished to reform the Established Church. Among other issues that motivated the writers of the Tracts was a disjuncture they experienced in the national church. An over involvement of the civil government in spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs as well as the Established Church seeming to drift from its apostolic roots caused the early leaders of the movement no small concern. A further cleft between traditional Christian spirituality and the prevailing influence of British Empiricism effected a sort of separation in the Established Church of creed (statements of belief as in a sort of philosophical logical positivism) and a life of prayer (both personal and communal); this fissure seemed to be infiltrating British culture as well, primarily through the influence of persons of prestige who had studied at the great universities and who had insistently been advocating more secular values (e.g. empiricism).

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Dogmatic beliefs were important, but the Church, for many members at the time, seemed to have lost a sense of the numinous, the spiritual. The movements of the heart in religion, which feed holiness and drive conscience, seemed to have faded into the distance. Therefore this movement—it came to be called the Tractarian Movement because of the tracts and pamphlets its devotees wrote—was concerned more with holiness and religious practice than it was with such things as intellectual assent or clarification of dogmatic propositions. In other words, the Oxford call to holiness dealt as much, if not more, with the impulses of the heart than it did with eliciting assent from the intellect. The movement did not disdain the use of reason; instead, it pushed back against the deification of rationalism. The work of Romantic poets writing at the time, such as John Keats and Percy Bysse Shelley, perhaps unknowingly functioned in the background as a call for more of the poetic and aesthetic in religion than the heady approach of intellectuals. Though the Oxford converts may not have phrased it so, it would seem that, in their approach to church reform, they were seeking a much more balanced (theological) anthropology. Part of the hope for the Established Church was a re-appreciation (and, in some sense, re-appropriation) of history and antiquity. Newman’s Patristic studies and his return to Church Antiquity fueled his tilt toward the Church of Rome. This more balanced (and rectified) anthropology insists that the physical order could never be superior to the spiritual order, and that the spiritual and older authority of the Church needed to be reclaimed. Just as the political order maintained its own power in its proper sphere, so too should the Church in its sphere. Since the consequences and goal of Church authority are eternal, transcendent and trans-temporal, the authority of the Church cannot and should not be subordinate to the political authority of civic powers. It was not so in the early Church, nor should it be so in the first half of the 19th century in the Church of England. As Newman eventually asks in his “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,” if the Church of England has a lawful claim on every Englishman because it is the Established Church, are converts to Roman Catholicism de facto traitors? Whether judged so or not by others, the call to follow their consciences as the path to holiness possessed the converts as it did the Jewish family mentioned earlier. In mid-Victorian England, becoming Catholic was not only politically suicidal, those who converted were also joining a Church community that for centuries, Josef Altholz reminds us, had suffered intolerance,

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persecution and exclusion from the life of a nation.15 The converts in English society were moving from the center to the fringe, from participation to exclusion. Making this seemingly irrational move, which necessitated significant sacrifice, can only be viewed as a generous and bold response to both a call to holiness and an arresting respond to the voice of God as it is manifested in one’s conscience. Though initially Fr. Nicholas Wiseman, who came from Rome in 1835-1836 and was later to become Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, gave a series of lectures which had resulted in a number of conversions, Newman maintained that he and the converts he knew had converted themselves: “Catholics did not make us Catholic; Oxford made us Catholics.”16 Such personal testimony is not due to clever persuasion, such as Wiseman might elicit, but to an answer to a call of holiness and conscience.

Holiness and Conscience An additional source of alienation the converts experienced was not simply a new faith tradition but the fact that many Catholics in England had little education and, large numbers being Irish immigrants driven out by the Potato Famine, were culturally not as sophisticated. Furthermore, the converts had to surmount the fact that the “Old Catholics” (those upper-class families who retained their Catholicism after the Reformation) and the newly established hierarchy “feared that they (themselves) might be displaced by the more active and able Oxford converts. And many more of the hierarchy honestly feared that the newly arrived converts ‘would lead the Church into unfortunate courses.’”17 Still, in response to the call to holiness and to the call to obey one’s conscience, most converts persevered in their choice. Some few did not; once having joined the Church of Rome, they changed course and returned to Anglicanism, as in the above-mentioned case of Cornelia Connelly’s husband, Pierce Connelly. The call to holiness and the following of one’s conscience caused the converts to remain insistent that the Church, Roman or Anglican, possessed a divine authority separate from civil authority. Newman 15

Jozef L. Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England: The Rambler and Its Contributors (Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1960), 2. 16 L.D., 19:352. Newman addressed these words to Canon Edgar Edmund Estcourt, the priest secretary to Bishop Ullathorne. 17 Op.cit., Altholz, 4.

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himself was appalled at an incident in an Anglican parish, where the civil officials supported a complaining congregation over an orthodox bishop. Dr. John Keble’s Assize Sermon of 14 July 1833 on “National Apostasy” is generally recognized by students of the Oxford Movement as the event that initiated it. In this sermon, Keble called for a recovery of ancient ways; he and other churchmen of similar bent viewed the Church as “The Authentic Representation of His Master.” If she needed care or defense, this was a matter of conscience.18 Keble and like-minded colleagues gathered at Aldenham in Hertfordshire to set strategy. They were surely about the preservation of the Church’s holiness as well as the pursuit of their own; furthermore, this gathering took place in response to the call of their personal and collective consciences. Their aim was to reclaim the Tradition, as Newman was to discover later in his analysis of the Catholic nature of the 39 Articles in his Tract 90, and they were set on recovering the Disciplina Arcani, the catechumenal call to live morally first, then offer assent to the creed.19 At the time, the political component of the Church seemed relatively well-established, while its ecclesiastical roots seem to have been lost and its morals had become lax. This secular age seemed to call into question the utility of ancient institutions. The Oxford Tractarians responded to this crisis in the context of a common baptismal vocation to holiness with a complementary faith-driven and innate dictate to follow their consciences. As Chadwick reminds us in his The Mind of the Oxford Movement, those gathered at Aldenham (the gathering wherein the “Tracts for the Times” were initially conceived) and subsequent Oxford men who joined the cause, knew that an individual conscience may falter in judgment and stray therefore into simple human authority. Human authority is fallible and is certainly inadequate to lead one to infallible truth.20 Even the Scriptures are faith documents, not dogmas, and cannot be understood apart from a governing faith; reason alone cannot parse them. Sanctification comes from living in a faith community; it does not arise from one’s national identity. The spiritual authority of the Church cannot be replaced by the workings of civil authority; moreover, a spiritual authority is needed to explain the Scriptures for they are not selfexplanatory. Stacked against current secular powers such as the British nation, the Christian Church had been guided over 1800 years by the Holy

18

Owen Chadwick, The Mind of the Oxford Movement (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 1960), 31. 19 Ibid., 36. 20 Ibid., 37.

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Spirit. The allegiances of the Keble party can be readily surmised if forced to choose. For Keble and his colleagues, holiness was to be found in the communal Christian life. Chadwick notes that Keble insisted that it be based on tradition, which expressed itself in three principles: (a) Always approach Sacred Scripture with the Church in mind (a system and an arrangement of the fundamental articles of faith); (b) Scriptural hermeneutics are important and have a history, therefore keep in mind what the early Church taught (i.e., tradition); (c) Adhere to the discipline formularies and rites of the Church (the Bible cannot do this on its own).21 Keble saw Tradition as not only conservative and preservative, but innately embedded in it is a continual call to reform. To assess true holiness, the Church of the present day ought to be compared to the Church of antiquity.22 Whence the pressing question: Which Tradition represents the Apostolic Church of earliest times? Roman Catholicism will become Newman’s answer. It was a response to the call to holiness and to the promptings of conscience to reclaim and, in a sense, revive the apostolic Church that animated those in the Movement. As Owen Chadwick suggests, the Tractarians tried to make the Fathers accessible to the masses, much as the Reformers had tried to make the Bible widely accessible.23 Newman and like-minded participants in the Oxford Movement believed that the wisdom of the Church’s tradition needed to speak to the contemporary mind and not have the contemporary mind interpret the teaching of the early Church. Newman addressed it in his Tracts 38 and 41, and in his Lectures on the Prophetical of the Church.24 Part of this movement to the numinous and transcendent dimensions of faith and Tradition, a holy community above human political jurisdiction, was a move away from the centrality of preaching, as found in a Protestantized Anglicanism, and movement toward houses of devotion and prayer. We are not, the Tractarians would contend, in a church community to be argued into an assent to creeds or simply to be exhorted to moral duties. Part of this “turn to holiness” was evidenced by a turning to the architecture and appointments of medieval churches for inspiration, and a return to dignity in worship. Spirituality in general and sanctity in particular, the converts thought, had been undervalued by the Church of England. Certain visible, external, and generally speaking “sacramental” 21

Ibid., 38. Ibid., 39. 23 Ibid., 40. 24 Ibid. 22

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helps to pursue holiness were thus resurrected.25 The intent of this “sacramental turn” was to avoid shallowness in worship that consisted mainly in preaching at this time. This reclamation of the externals, the symbolic or, more precisely, the sacramental, was a way to recover the “mystery” of religious experience; it sought an encounter with “the Holy.” Perhaps this attempt to recover the Holy and the sense of Mystery, thus a more balanced and more spiritual anthropology, is best expressed by a piece penned by Frederick Oakeley in the British Critic in the Spring of 1840. We are for carrying out the symbolical principle in our own Church to the utmost extent which is consistent with obedience to the rubric.”26 Chadwick explains Oakeley to mean “that every church should be furnished with a prominent cross (not a crucifix); stained glass in the windows; penitential ornaments for the altar in Lent and rich hangings for a festival; flowers and two candlesticks upon the altar (but lighting them ‘might give offence in these days and we do not advise it, though inclined to regard it as strictly Anglican’); bowing to the altar; facing east when consecrating the Holy Communion.27

All of these, of course, were intended as spiritual aids on the path to holiness. Oakeley, to Chadwick’s understanding, insists on appreciating how the external serves the internal in the pursuit of holiness, in what contemporary Catholicism would term “The Sacramental Principle.” Oakeley writes: If to anyone some of these suggestions should seem trivial, let us remind that care about minutiae is the peculiar mark of an intense and reverent affection. Nobler task there can be none for a rational being than that of providing, with the punctilious exactness, for the due celebrating of the Creator’s honour; nor any worthier dedication of the offerings of nature and the devices of art, all alike His gift, than in the seemly adorning of His earthly dwelling place. At the same time we desire nothing less than that matters like these should be taken up without constant reference to “weightier” things; that were indeed to begin at the wrong end; nay, we would go farther, and say that there is something quite revolting in the idea of dealing with the subject of External Religion as a matter of mere taste.28

25

Ibid., 55. Ibid., 56, quoting Frederick Oakeley’s article in The British Critic (JanuaryApril, 1840), 270. 27 Ibid., 56-57. 28 Ibid., 57 referencing Oakeley. 26

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Newman on Holiness Newman makes it very clear that conscience operates on concrete human affairs and not on propositional statements. The changes in the lives of mid-Victorian converts were nothing if not of the concrete order. They experienced the full and often burdensome impact of doing God’s will and following their consciences in every aspect of daily life. If conversion was, as it were, a first response to obeying God’s will, then in following God’s will, the pursuit of holiness was in no small measure for them also the way of cross. When he was old, Newman heard that others referred to him as a saint, prompting him to remark, “I have no tendency to be a saint – it is a sad thing to say. Saints are not literary men, they do not love the classics, they do not write the Tales. I may be well enough in my way, but it is not the ‘high line.’ Yet it is enough for me to black the saints’ shoes – if St. Philip uses blacking, in heaven.”29 Just as Newman did not fancy himself a theologian but merely a controversialist, he eschewed any thought that he should be called a saint. But saint of course is English for sanctus, which is the Latin form of the Greek and Hebrew words meaning “one set apart for God.” Indeed he was of the opinion that holiness is unequivocally foundational to the life and mantle of virtue for a follower of Christ. The very first entry in the very first book of his eight-volume Parochial and Plain Sermons is entitled “Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness.” In that sermon he writes, “It is told us again and again, that to make sinful creatures holy was the great end which our Lord had in view in taking upon Him our nature, and thus none but the holy will be accepted for His sake at the last day.” He continues: “The whole history of redemption, the covenant of mercy in all its parts and provisions, attests the necessity of holiness in order to achieve salvation; as indeed even our natural conscience bears witness.”30 Newman describes holiness as “an inward character.” He then cautions: “But I fear there are those, who, if they dealt faithfully with their consciences, would be obliged to own that they had not made the service of God their first and great concern; that their obedience, so to call it, has been a matter of course, in which the heart had had no part; they have acted uprightly in worldly matters chiefly for the sake of their worldly interest.”31 Would this not be among the chief temptations of those called to leave the Established Church for the Church of Rome and make them pause? With so much to lose, to forego such a radical move is an 29

L.D., 19:419. P.S., I, 1. 31 Ibid., 12. 30

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understandable temptation. In the same sermon Newman insists that “to obtain the gift of holiness is the work of life,” to which he appends encouraging words: “Let no one say I propose a task to him beyond his strength.” The sermon concludes: “Narrow, indeed, is the way of life, but infinite is His love and power, who is with the Church, in Christ’s place, to guide us along it.”32 Newman adopts a parallel theme in the third sermon, noting that “it seems a very trite thing to say, that it is nothing to know what is right unless we do it; an old subject about which nothing new can be said.” But here is the essence of holiness for Newman. It is the doing of God’s will, even and especially when it comes at great cost. He warns that to “feel” and “to talk of” religions will never take the place of self-denial. He notes how ironic it is that “religion which is so delightful as a vision, should be so distasteful as reality.”33 Whether for the celibate or married Anglican priest or for an Anglican layman, nay for anyone called to a significant conversion, the call from God is always personal and individual, but the call comes wrapped in God’s grace. And that grace is manifested in a particular way in the community of the Church. Newman, in his own life, knew the experience of going against the current and being a sign of contradiction. So, too, would be the path for the other converts to Rome.

Newman on Conscience Much that John Henry Newman wrote on the nature of conscience is found in his response to Gladstone’s questions in the latter’s 14 January 1875 pamphlet, “The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation.” As Gladstone read the teaching of Vatican I on Papal Primacy and Infallibility, he doubted whether Catholics in England could be faithful Catholics and loyal to the British Crown. For the converts of mid-Victorian England, crossing over to the Church of Rome meant to many fellow Englishmen, like Gladstone, not only a spiritual betrayal but political one as well. The then Prime Minister was trying to prick the consciences of those who were converting or even considering converting, warning them that a Catholic cannot possibly be a good English citizen because Catholics abandon all nationalism and civil allegiance and are, as he writes, “mental and moral slaves” of the Pope.

32 33

Ibid., 14. “Knowledge of God’s Will Without Obedience,” P.S., I, 27, 30.

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Newman felt called to answer Gladstone for two reasons: (a) It was a blatant attack on converts, not only himself but those he influenced to Rome. He needed to defend them and their decision as part of a call to holiness and integrity in response to the promptings of conscience; (b) Newman was convinced that what Gladstone was addressing was really not a political issue solely, it was a spiritual issue as well, and not in the least an issue of conscience and its supremacy.34 Furthermore, it was an issue of truth. In his “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,” which was Newman’s public response to Gladstone, Newman suggested that attacking the pope would have called for something (from Gladstone) more dignified than “a pamphlet written as if on an impulse, in defense of an incidental parentheses in a previous publication.”35 Newman saw Gladstone’s piece as an indictment of converts for having followed their consciences in pursuit of personal holiness. It was an assault on all religions and moral agendae, and not simply, as Gladstone would have his readers believe, a “Political Expostulation.”36 Newman was convinced further that Gladstone’s work was an assault on the rights of the Divine Teacher over men’s mental and moral powers, claiming hold of their consciences. Gladstone saw the issue as the here and now; Newman saw the issue as timeless. Gladstone saw the issue as the consequence of the natural inclinations of humankind; Newman saw the issue as grounded in the supernatural, which is what the call to holiness entails. The primacy of the call to holiness necessitates that one follow God, first in the promptings of one’s conscience, and only secondarily in the right demands and just laws of the state. And this “following” of one’s conscience must make a difference in one’s concrete life; it must be experienced in the here and now of this moment in time. Five years after Newman published the “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,” Gladstone himself praised the document as “the work of an intellect sharp enough to cut the diamond, and bright as the diamond which it cuts.”37 Gladstone knew the havoc spiritual convictions and religious enthusiasm could wreak on a society. He envisioned the fabric of his own culture weakening because of the large number of converts to the Church of Rome. In a later work entitled “Vaticanism,” Gladstone wrote the following of Newman’s defection to papism: “In my opinion, his secession 34

Stanley L. Jaki, ed. with intro., Conscience and the Papacy: [Letter to the Duke of Norfolk] (Pinkney, MI: Real View Books, 2002), xxxvi-xxxvii. 35 Diff., 2, 218. Gladstone was influenced by Cardinal Mannings’s excessive interpretations of Vatican I. 36 Op. cit., Jaki, xxii-xxiii. 37 Ibid., xxii.

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from the Church of England had never yet been estimated among us at anything like the full measure of its calamitous importance.”38

Conclusion Conscience, then, has a weight and an authority that, in following it and pursuing holiness, offers a context for all other authority, even the exercise of papal authority. As innate and created by God, it is not ever to be ignored. In fact, Newman refers to conscience as “the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”39 He explains the matter (and here one can understand the gravity of attending to the call of one’s conscience in the pursuit of holiness): This law, as apprehended in the minds of individual men, is called “conscience;” and though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience.40

Newman warns that conscience is “not a fancy or an opinion,” but the divine voice speaking within one that commands obedience. As noted, it is not an abstract summons and bears upon personal conduct, which made all the difference for what a convert faced in Newman’s day. Conscience, according to Newman, “bears immediately upon conduct, on something to be done or not done.”41 And that conduct is quite likely, at times, to demand great sacrifices of a person. Only the nature of love perfected by sacrifice can make sense of all this. As to church teaching and conscience, or what might be called the possibility of dissent, Newman insists that the burden of proof is high. Opting against what the Church teaches is a matter of conscience, true, but he also warns his readers that one “must vanquish that mean, ungenerous, selfish, vulgar spirit of his nature, which, at the very first rumour of a 38 Ibid. “The Jesuit Thomas Harper, a convert and able philosopher, who had heavily criticized Newman’s Grammar of Assent, wrote on January 17 to William Todd: ‘I look upon it [the Letter] as Newman’s chief chef-d’oeuvre. It is gigantically grand, built up on a sound accurate, deep Theology; and what strikes me perhaps most of all, he seems to have written with one eye raised to God, the other fixed on his pen….There is not one sentence in it (on a first perusal), to which I could not heartily subscribe….There is a furore about it.’” (pp. xxii-xxiii).” 39 Diff., 2, 248. 40 Ibid., 247. 41 Ibid., 256.

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command, places itself in opposition to the Superior who gives it.”42 To this he reminds his readers that there is such a reality as a “counterfeit” conscience, the name he gives to the rule of self will. In terms of what is called the pietas fidei, meaning “the great probability of the truth of enunciations made by the Church,” a person is still under the mandate to always follow one’s conscience.43 Is it possible that the temptation to “self will” is actually a not-so-cleverly disguised aversion to the duty to obey the exigencies of one’s conscience and the sacrifices such fidelity might involve? In terms of following his own conscience and knowing that he would have to answer to the Lord for the things he did or did not do in life, Newman remarked on his public response to Gladstone in a letter to Gladstone himself: “I could not help writing it, I was called upon from such various quarters, and my conscience told me, that I, who had been in great measure the cause of so many becoming Catholics, had no right to leave them in the lurch, when charges were made against them, as serious as unexpected.”44 He continued: “To be tacit would imply the accusation was well founded and leave the impression that I made a mistake in conversion and would change it if I could.” He goes on to write of the rumor of his imminent return to the Established Church: there was “as much of a chance of returning to Anglicanism as being the King of Clubs.”45 It is fitting to conclude with the words of Newman himself, written to Louisa Simeon on 29 April 1869, describing his position and that of his contemporaries, who similarly followed their consciences and answered the call to holiness: We were gradually brought into the Church – we fought our way – all difficulties of whatever kind met us – were examined and overcome – and we became Catholics as the last step of a long course, with little difficulty because it was only the last difficulty of a series. But you find yourself a Catholic suddenly, so to say, just as you are plunging into a world of opinion and into conflict of intellectual elements all new to you. You have no will to disbelieve, but that reason, the gift of God, which brought us into the church, is yours as well as ours, and claims to have part in the work of grace, and it is according to God’s ordinary providence that it should have part.46 42

Ibid., 258. Ibid., 345. For Newman’s direct words on self-will, a “counterfeit” conscience, see Diff., 2, 250. 44 L.D., 27:193. Newman wrote Gladstone on 16 January 1875. 45 Op.cit., Jaki, xxxvii. 46 L.D., 24:248. 43

CHAPTER FIVE DARE WE HOPE THAT ALL MEN BE SAVED? RESPONSES FROM NEWMAN, URS VON BALTHASAR, AND POPE BENEDICT XVI DR. JOHN F. CROSBY

In his little book, Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? Hans Urs von Balthasar sharply criticizes Newman for his thought on the number of the damned.1 Von Balthasar is a Catholic theologian of immense breadth and stature, and he is not accustomed to making frivolous or ill-founded criticisms of major Catholic thinkers like Newman. Students of Newman should take seriously the challenge of von Balthasar and should offer von Balthasar a serious response.

1 Let us begin with the teaching of Newman that is the target of von Balthasar’s objections. Newman holds that the number of those who are eternally lost is very great. Thus in the second of his Discourses to Mixed Congregations Newman says: “O misery of miseries! Thousands are dying daily; they are waking up into God's everlasting wrath...and their companions and friends are going on as they did, and are soon to join them. As the last generation presumed, so does the present….And thus it is that this vast flood of life is carried on from age to age; myriads trifling with God's love, tempting His justice, and like the herd of swine, falling headlong down the steep!”2 And in the sixth of his Discourses to Mixed Congregations he says: “The world goes on from age to age, but the holy Angels and blessed Saints are always crying alas, alas! and woe, woe! over 1

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dare We Hope That All Be Saved? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 24-27. 2 Mix., 41.

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the loss of vocations, and the disappointment of hopes, and the scorn of God's love, and the ruin of souls. One generation succeeds another, and whenever they look down upon earth from their golden thrones, they see scarcely anything but a multitude of guardian spirits, downcast and sad, each following his own charge, in anxiety, or in terror, or in despair, vainly endeavouring to shield him from the enemy, and failing because he will not be shielded.”3 It is clear that Newman means that most of those souls bewailed by the angels “fall headlong down the steep” into hell. In a letter of 1871 to a Dominican nun friend, Newman surmises that at any time in history the elect are just 7000 “and never more.”4 He never put this number into print; he mentions it only in a personal letter in which he was perhaps just expressing to a friend a “pious surmise.” Or perhaps it was his symbolic way of expressing the fact that only relatively few are saved. When Newman wrote that letter in 1871 the population of the world was about 1.5 billion, which means that, if the elect amount to only 7000, only one in every 200,000 human beings is saved; so he could have used the number simply to express the idea of “small remnant,” of a “very few,” and thereby to express something that most Christian writers since Augustine have held, namely that the number of the elect is small in comparison with the number of the damned. Newman did not take this lightly; he shuddered at this conception of hell, as we can see in his poem from 1833, “The Wrath to Come.” After expressing the delight he took in most of the teachings of the Church, he says that the doctrine of hell struck him differently. Yet one there was that wore a mien austere, And I did doubt, and, startled, ask’d to hear Whose mouth had force to edge so sharp a sword.5

He goes on to answer his question by saying that hell, by which is meant a populated hell, is clearly revealed in scripture, and indeed revealed through the mouth of Our Lord Himself. Newman is thinking of texts such as the last judgment as presented in Matthew 25. When Jesus says here that the king “will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I 3

Ibid., 122. L.D., 25:453-454. Mary Imelda Poole converted in 1845, became a Dominican sister of Stone soon thereafter, and eventually succeeded Mother Margaret Hallahan, O.P., as provincial in 1868. She is the unnamed person to whom Newman refers in Apo., 218. 5 V.V., 175, poem CII. 4

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was hungry, and you gave me no food….’” (Mt 25:41), he certainly seems 0to imply that there will be at least some to whom these fearful words are addressed. The passage does not seem to make sense if those on the king’s left, the goats, after all make up an empty category. In fact, one could plausibly think that the class is not just not empty but indeed well populated, when we consider the grounds for the king’s condemnation; these are sins of omission, like failing to feed the hungry, that bring about condemnation. Is there no one on the last day who will be found guilty of a critical mass of such sins of omission? And there are other texts of scripture that speak for Newman’s position, such as this one from Matthew: “...the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few” (7:13-14). What does this mean if not that relatively few are saved? So it was above all else the authority of the word of God that led Newman to overcome his reluctance and to acknowledge a multitude of the damned. This testimony of scripture must have seemed to Newman to be reinforced by the theological tradition of the Church, for according to von Balthasar, from Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas down to the counterReformation doctors of the Church, almost every major Western theologian held for a well-populated hell. There was something else that gave Newman a natural receptivity to this idea of hell. Consider his mission in the Oxford Movement; he strove to awaken people from their religious slumber, he strove to challenge the religious mediocrity of established English Christianity; he denounced with the fierceness of an Old Testament prophet “the religion of the day” that tended to displace in most English people a living faith in Christian revelation. Now this “religion of civilization” is averse to the idea of hell. Its adherents think that every human being at bottom means well and hence is certain to be saved. They think that everyone makes mistakes but that no one really commits grievous sin. In his fight against this religious harmlessness Newman found it natural to appeal to the words about the narrow gate and to insist on the reality of hell and the real possibility of each of us taking the broad way that leads to hell. Thus it was that his prophetic role in the Oxford Movement strongly inclined him to make his own the tradition of the well-populated hell. So if Newman were asked the question that forms the title of von Balthasar’s book, dare we hope that all men and women will be saved? he would have certainly answered by saying no. This is not a possible object of Christian hope. Of course, if von Balthasar’s question were asked not of

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all men but of any one given man or woman, Newman would say that we can indeed hope that he or she will be saved. But he would say that, since we know that many--whoever they are–are lost, we cannot hope that all will be saved.

2 Von Balthasar defends the thesis not only that we can dare to hope that all are saved, but also that we are obliged to hope that all are saved. But he does not say that we know that all are saved; he makes a great point of saying only that we hope that they are, and that we are obliged to hope for this. It seems to me that this distinction is lost on many readers of von Balthasar, whom they wrongly treat as holding that all will be saved. Like Newman, he appeals to scripture for his position. He finds, in addition to the scriptural texts that support the traditional view deriving from Augustine, another set of texts that supports a more “universalist” hope of salvation. Jesus says, “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself” (Jn 12:32). In the eucharistic discourse He says, “and this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day” (Jn 6:39). Another text teaches that God “is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). St. Paul writes to Timothy that God “wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:4). To the Colossians St. Paul writes that God was pleased, through Christ, “to reconcile all things for him...whether those on earth or those in heaven” (Col 1:20). Von Balthasar also mentions Romans 5, seemingly a passage particularly powerful in its universalist implications. St. Paul says there that through Adam “sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all” (5:12). He then explains that the redemptive work of Christ is more powerful than the sin of Adam. He says: “But the gift is not like the transgression. For if by that one person’s transgression the many died, how much more did the...gracious gift of the one person Jesus Christ overflow for the many” (5:15). This sounds right! The death and resurrection of the God-man must surely be immeasurably more powerful than the sin of Adam. But if the sin of Adam leads all human beings to death, whereas the redemptive work of Christ saves only a remnant of the human race, leaving most of the human race as a massa damnata, then Christ is not immeasurably more powerful than Adam. He only mitigates

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the disaster wrought by the sin of Adam. The universality of death, that is, death reigning over all descendants of Adam, must be matched by a salvific power of Christ that is also universal, a power that is as efficacious in redeeming as Adam’s sin was in leading to death. It must be as St. Paul says to the Corinthians: “For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all shall be brought to life” (1 Cor 15:22). So von Balthasar acknowledges the scriptural passages that support the Augustinian idea of most people being lost and that move Newman to share this idea, but he also acknowledges another set of passages that point in a different direction. At this point von Balthasar makes a very significant move in his theological reflection; he says that we must not try to harmonize the two sets of passages, but should let them stand next to each other, with the tension between them unresolved. He thinks that it is a theological rationalism that leads theologians to offer a “unified theory” of hell and redemption. He thinks that from the threatening passages we should learn that hell is a real possibility for each of us and that this real possibility should impress on us the supreme seriousness of our decision for or against Christ; and that from the “universalist” passages we should learn to hope for the salvation of all. If we try to “know” that hell is empty, or that it is populated, we are going beyond what is given us in revelation; we are going too far in trying to reconcile all the scriptural texts on hell and salvation. There is one attempt at reconciling the passages that is very well known and was known to Newman and was accepted by him. It goes like this: The universalist passages express an offer of salvation that is extended to all human beings, but that since God respects the freedom of His rational creatures, some of them reject the offer, as seems to be implied in Matthew 25. In other words, God saves all on the condition that all accept His salvation; since some do not accept it, He cannot save all. God has granted to human beings a “veto right” with respect to their salvation, and to judge from scripture and from our experience of people, it seems that not a few choose to exercise their veto right. In this way one tries to capture the truth in the universalist passages while persisting in holding a populated hell. In response to this attempt at harmonization, von Balthasar acknowledges and indeed affirms the truth that God respects the freedom of human persons, and God does not redeem them “over their heads” and against their wills. But he thinks that it is possible that the grace of God is so penetrating, and that it is exercised so suaviter et fortiter, and with such a power of love and with such an extravagance of mercy, that it elicits a fully free “yes” to God from every human being before he or she dies.

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Matthew 25 can be understood as speaking of the real possibility of damnation; it need not be speaking of a reality of damnation that would be in contradiction with a universal triumph of God’s grace in every human heart. So von Balthasar rejects this harmonization attempt as rationalistic, and he continues to hope for the salvation of all. I referred above to von Balthasar’s criticism of Newman in the first pages of his book; we now see what is behind that criticism. Von Balthasar thinks that Newman claims to know too much in knowing that many are lost, and that he thereby deprives himself of the full range of Christian hope. And I must say that I find some merit in von Balthasar’s criticism of Newman.

3 Let me now set Newman and von Balthasar directly in relation to each other. The obvious contradiction between them is not the last word; there is plenty of basis in Newman for a significant dialogue with von Balthasar. I will now try to discern a different way in which the truth in von Balthasar might be introduced into the world of Newman and even find there a certain resonance. (1) Recall that one of the chief sources of Newman’s thought is the Greek fathers of the Church. According to von Balthasar, most of these theologians held some version or other of the idea of hoping for the salvation of all. Besides Origen, von Balthasar names Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen, all “heroes” of Newman. None of them, apparently, taught anything like Augustine’s massa damnata. So von Balthasar is not asking Newman to accept some modern novelty, but to think with those Greek fathers to whom Newman was so indebted. (2) The anti-rationalism of von Balthasar should be very congenial to Newman’s mind. How often do we not hear Newman say that certain truths of revelation cannot be harmonized to our satisfaction, and they do not have to be harmonized for us to be able to live the Christian life. This is what is behind his principle that “10,000 [unresolved] difficulties do not make one doubt.” Newman shows an exceptional willingness to live with unresolved difficulties; it is not his way to demand more intellectual clarity than is given to us in revelation. If von Balthasar is right that Newman is expecting more clarity on hell than is really given to us, he is making a point for which Newman would have a natural receptivity. (3) The fact that von Balthasar does not say that all are saved, but only that we have to hope that all are saved, would be very important for

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Newman. For if von Balthasar had said that all are saved, and that therefore people can live thinking that, whatever they make of their lives, they will be saved, Newman would have said that von Balthasar has made it very hard to take a principled stand against the religious harmlessness of the “religion of the day.” But the position that von Balthasar in fact holds—the position of hoping for the salvation of all—preserves the real possibility that I may not be saved, and leaves intact the supreme seriousness of my decision for or against God. Thus he can take just as resolute a stand against the “religion of civilization” as Newman takes. (4) Let me now point to a profound reflection from Newman that could be adapted to the hope of von Balthasar. Well known is the great Anglican sermon, “Christ Manifested in Remembrance,” in which Newman wants to show that “the more secret God’s hand is, the more powerful–the more silent, the more awful.”6 He continues: Wonderful providence indeed which is so silent, yet so efficacious, so constant, so unerring! This is what baffles the power of Satan. He cannot discern the Hand of God in what goes on; and though he would fain meet it and encounter it, in his mad and blasphemous rebellion against heaven, he cannot find it. Crafty and penetrating as he is, yet his thousand eyes and his many instruments avail him nothing against the majestic serene silence, the holy imperturbable calm which reigns through the providences of God.7

In this passage Newman thinks of the sovereign silent power of God being exercised in judgment and condemnation. But in the same sermon he also thinks of it being exercised in gentle mercy, as when he says: Such are the feelings with which men often look back on their childhood, when any accident brings it vividly before them. Some relic or token of that early time, some spot, or some book, or a word, or a scent, or a sound, brings them back in memory to the first years of their discipleship, and they then see, what they could not know at the time, that God's presence went up with them and gave them rest. Nay, even now perhaps they are unable to discern fully what it was which made that time so bright and glorious. They are full of tender, affectionate thoughts towards those first years, but they do not know why. They think it is those very years which they yearn after, whereas it is the presence of God which, as they now see, was then over them, which attracts them.8

6

P.S., IV, 265. Ibid., 259. 8 Ibid., 262. 7

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Now if the Spirit of God can possess the mind of a child like this, if it can, while remaining silent and hidden and exercising no coercion, leave this imprint of itself on the mind of the child, filling the child with a mysterious aroma of the divine and with longings for God, why could this same Spirit of God not so act in every human soul as to draw the soul to itself? Is it not possible that the Spirit elicits in the end from every soul a yes to God, in spite of the disordered appearance of many lives? St. Edith Stein, whom von Balthasar cites for his position, says that she thinks it “infinitely improbable” that God’s grace does not in the end win some kind of acceptance from every human being.9 But even if we do not go so far as to say “infinitely probable,” even if we just say that this outcome is “possible,” do we not have sufficient grounds for hoping for this outcome? In this way one could take a train of thought in Newman and develop it so as to arrive at the hope of von Balthasar. (5) Here is a different kind of point of contact between Newman and von Balthasar: the hope defended by von Balthasar can help to overcome a certain oppressive strain in Newman’s preaching. Consider the following mournful passage; it seems to have something oppressive precisely because of the weakness of Christian hope in it. In the sermon on perseverance in the Discourses to Mixed Congregations Newman says: What a scene is this life, a scene of almost universal disappointment! of springs blighted,—of harvests beaten down by the storm, when they should have been gathered into the storehouses! of tardy and imperfect repentances, when there is nothing else left to be done, of unsatisfactory resolves and poor efforts, when the end of life is come! O my dear children, how subdued our rejoicing in you is, even when you are walking well and hopefully! how anxious are we for you, even when you are cheerful from the lightness of your conscience and the sincerity of your hearts! how we sigh when we give thanks for you, and tremble even while 9

Edith Stein writes: “All-merciful love can thus descend to everyone. We believe that it does so. And now, can we assume that there are souls that remain perpetually closed to such love? As a possibility in principle, this cannot be rejected. In reality, it can become infinitely improbable–precisely through what preparatory grace is capable of effecting in the soul.” She also writes: “Faith in the unboundedness of divine love and grace also justifies hope for the universality of redemption, although, through the possibility of resistance to grace that remains open in principle, the possibility of eternal damnation also persists.” Edith Stein, Welt und Person. Beitrag zum christlichen Wahrheitsstreben (Freiburg, 1962), 158 ff. Von Balthasar quotes at the end of his book the long passage from which these sentences are taken; he presents this passage of St. Edith Stein as recapitulating the argument of his book.

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we rejoice in hearing your confessions and absolving you! And why? because we know how great and high is the gift of perseverance.10

Newman then tells of Hazael coming to the prophet Eliseus, who looked at him and broke out into tears at the premonition he had of the crimes that Hazael would commit in the future as king of Syria. ...the tears which the man of God [Eliseus] shed, what if some Angel should be shedding the like over any of you, what time you are receiving pardon and grace from the voice and hand of the Priests of Christ! O, how many are there who pass well and hopefully through what seem to be their most critical years, and fall just when one might consider them beyond danger! How many are good youths, yet careless men…. How many, when led forward by God's unmerited grace, are influenced by the persuasions of relatives or the inducements of station or of wealth, and become in the event sceptics or infidels when they might have almost died in the odour of sanctity! How many, whose contrition once gained for them even the grace of justification, yet afterwards, by refusing to go forward, have gone backwards, though they maintain a semblance of what they once were, by means of the mere natural habits which supernatural grace has formed within them! What a miserable wreck is the world, hopes without substance, promises without fulfilment, repentance without amendment, blossom without fruit, continuance and progress without perseverance!11

One wants to ask why Newman cannot discern here what he discerns in the other sermon, namely “the majestic serene silence, the holy imperturbable calm which reigns through the providences of God.” Why cannot God be present in silent power in the midst even of these distressing human failures? Why can He not be writing straight even with these crooked human lines? Why does Newman’s hope almost disappear here? Newman is aware that his listeners may be overwhelmed with fear as a result of his presentation of the extreme difficulty of persevering to the end. Consider how he encounters their fear; he says that “fearing will secure you from what you fear,”12 that is, fearing for our final perseverance is salutary insofar as it can help us to avoid what we fear. Why does he not say with St. Paul that God is greater than our heart? Why does he not say to his congregation that with God everything is possible? Why does he not say that the exceeding love of Christ, as shown in His death and resurrection, is always more powerful than sin and death? That 10

Mix., 140-41 Mix., 141-143. 12 Mix., 143. 11

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the new Adam is immeasurably greater than the first Adam, and that the gift given by the new Adam is immeasurably more powerful than the sin bequeathed to all of us by the first Adam? Why does he not invite his listeners to throw themselves on to the divine mercy, and most of all when they experience their manifold brokenness and failure? Why does he not awaken in them hope in God rather than just appealing to their fear of losing God? Now I ask whether there is not an obvious connection between Newman being overwhelmed in this passage by the godforsakenness of human existence, on the one hand, and his acceptance of a very large number of lost souls, on the other. Does this teaching not limit and weaken his hope? Does it not tend to overstate the power of human perversity and to understate the power of the love of Christ? Von Balthasar shows this understating of the power of Christ when he questions the following from Newman: “It broke the heart of Thy sweet Son Jesus to see the misery of man spread out before His eyes. He died by it as well as for it.”13 Von Balthasar: “How does Newman know this–not only that Jesus died on the cross for all sinners, which is dogma, but also that He died because He was incapable of redeeming them, since hell was and will remain stronger than him?”14 Here, then, is the fifth point of contact: a certain oppressive tendency in Newman to constrict the flow of hope, a tendency that makes itself felt in many other passages too. This might be overcome if we were to free Newman from the massa damnata theology and were to infuse into his thought some of the hope for which von Balthasar pleads. In this way von Balthasar could help to “purify” and to “develop” Newman’s rich religious teaching, that is, help to eliminate certain elements that are foreign to what is deepest in Newman. (6) Finally, let us ask whether there is anything in Newman that already tends directly towards this hope. I am not aware of anything like this at the level of his direct teaching, but if we look at the level of his lived faith we can perhaps find certain deeds that in fact cohere better with the von Balthasar position than with the Augustinian position. Recall that Newman’s brother Charles fell away from the Christian faith as a young man and to all appearances died an unbeliever at age 82. If one thinks that most people are lost, and especially if one thinks that the elect number is somewhat small, the “7000” as it were, one could hardly imagine poor Charles among the elect. And yet when Newman composed an inscription 13 14

Mix., 41. Von Balthasar, Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? 26.

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for Charles’s tombstone he used this from psalm 137: “Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever, reject not the work of your hands.” He held out hope for his brother. And if Newman could hope for this brother of his, why not for all men and women?

4 The reader will have noticed the name of the retired Pope Benedict XVI in the title. He has not yet been mentioned, but it is time to bring him into the conversation. In his encyclical on Christian hope (Spe Salvi),15 he takes a position on hell and salvation that seems to provide exactly the correction of Newman that one perceives in von Balthasar, and yet to provide it without the controversy that surrounds the talk of hoping that all may be saved. When at the end of the encyclical he speaks of hope in relation to salvation, hell, and purgatory, the pope seems at first to speak more somberly about the possibility of damnation than von Balthasar does: “There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves….In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell” (para. 45). Pope Benedict does not affirm that there are any irrevocably wicked human persons such as he describes, but he also does not speak of hoping for the salvation of all. He may well believe that there are some who have put themselves in hell and that we can therefore not hope for the salvation of all. Let us assume that this is what he believes. We can still find in this encyclical an approach to the number of the damned that seems to me to constitute the needed corrective of Newman’s view. Pope Benedict goes on to say: “For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God” (para. 46). This means that the great majority of people is destined for purgatory, not for hell. The pope develops this idea by appealing to St. Paul’s mysterious words about the fire that will test our works: “If anyone builds on this foundation [Jesus Christ] with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, the work of each will come to light, for the Day will disclose it. It will be revealed 15

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_benxvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html

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with fire, and the fire [itself] will test the quality of each one’s work. If the work stands that someone built upon the foundation, that person will receive a wage. But if someone’s work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). The Pope teaches that most of the sin found in most human persons is such as to be able to be burned away by this fire even as the persons themselves are saved. This means that, if we must speak in terms of a “remnant,” it is a small remnant that is lost, not a small remnant that is saved. Newman’s “7000” is better suited to number the lost, not the elect. Thus we do not need to affirm with von Balthasar that we should hope that all be saved; we can avoid this controversy by affirming the somewhat weaker version of hope taught by Pope Benedict. And yet by basing ourselves only on Pope Benedict’s Spe salvi we can still say enough to correct Newman’s pessimism about the number of the saved.16

16

Many thanks to Edward Jeremy Miller and Terrence Merrigan for the thoughtful critical comments that they gave me on an earlier draft of this paper.

CHAPTER SIX CONSCIENCE AND HOLINESS: JOSEPH RATZINGER/POPE BENEDICT XVI’S RECEPTION OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN FR. IDAHOSA AMADASU

Introduction The theme of conscience pervades Newman’s writings. This essay does not, however, wish to treat conscience and its various ramifications in Newman’s thought. It limits itself to the relationship between the phenomenon of conscience and holiness. More specifically, it argues for the connection between the experience of conscience, which calls for submission to the will of God, and Newman’s understanding of holiness of life. As the title states, the choice of this topic is motivated by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI’s appropriation of Newman. Newman’s description of conscience as the first principle or unproved assumption of our existence and that it is the “echo of the voice of God” parallels Ratzinger’s conception of conscience as anamnesis [Greek for remembering]. Unlike his major studies of other thinkers such as Augustine and Bonaventure, Ratzinger has not published extensively on Newman. But there exists important references to Newman in his writings that can warrant the claim that significant aspects of his thoughts have been influenced by Blessed John Henry Newman.1 It is not only in the contents of their theological thought that one can find parallels between Newman and Ratzinger, there is also a similarity 1

For some of these writings see Joseph Ratzinger, On Conscience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 11-41. Joseph Ratzinger, "Presentation: The Theology of Cardinal Newman", 1990 http://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/rtznewmn.htm (accessed July 21, 2012 2012). There are also some speeches, addresses and homilies of Pope Benedict XVI on Newman. We will refer to some in this essay.

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between their contexts. Newman wrote at a time when neo-Scholasticism was the dominant theological system of the nineteenth century, although he did not find his theological motivation and style in that system. Instead, Newman’s attention to history and the human subject distinguished his own theological method. This led Newman to be critical of the prevalent theological style at Rome when he studied at the Lateran University, then called the Roman College. In one of his letters from Rome he wrote, “There is a deep suspicion of change, with a perfect incapacity to create anything positive for the wants of the times.”2 He saw the prevailing theological system as being closed to the new challenges of the age. He was also concerned that his own view of the historical development of the faith would be misunderstood by the Jesuit authorities of the university.3 Similarly, the theology of Ratzinger, as influenced by the ressourcement movement, was also marked by an attention to history against the static tendency of certain neo-Scholastic methods. This attention to history, which influenced his dynamic understanding of revelation in contrast to the prevailing static conception, was unwelcomed by some German associates. In fact it even provoked the disapproval of one of the academic readers of his Habilitation to the extent that his academic career was almost derailed at its very beginning.4 The writings of a scholar who takes his context seriously may often be characterized by different emphases and shifts in accents. This is evident in Newman’s writing, a corpus that is marked by the presence of seemingly opposing perspectives and points of view. To underline the fact that these differences do not mean a lack of coherence and consistency, the Louvain tradition of Newman research would speak of the polar character of Newman’s vision, which describes how apparent conflicting perspectives in Newman’s thought are held together in a synthesis.5 2

L.D., 12:104. Emphasis original. Ibid., 102-05. Cf. François-Xavier Dumortier SJ, "Newman and the Search for God: Introductory Reflections," Louvain Studies 35(2011), 233-234. 4 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, trans., Erasmo LeviaMerikakis (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius 1998), 103-114. The German Habilitation, derived from the Latin word habilis meaning fit or suitable, is a further independent work of scholarship, after completing one’s doctoral thesis, that enables a person to become a professor in German universities. 5 Terrence Merrigan, who currently leads the research on Newman studies at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, describes polarity as “a ‘theoretical model’, that is to say, a conceptual device which enables one to structure the variegated phenomena of Newman’s theological system.” Merrigan adopts the theory of polarity from an earlier Louvain Newman scholar, Jan Hendrik Walgrave (1911-1986). Walgrave had developed this insight from a Louvain predecessor, 3

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This essay aims to show that such a polar character, which is a unity in tension, is also present in the theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. His work, too, is characterized by a complementarity of perspectives that does not dissolve into an undifferentiated synthesis.6 It remains, first, to treat the topics of conscience and anamnesis, wherein it is shown how Newman’s idea of conscience is reflected in Ratzinger’s concept of anamnesis. The connection between conscience and holiness in both authors then follows, after which some concluding reflections are drawn.

Conscience and Anamnesis In 1816, when Newman was only fifteen years old, he had two tragic experiences: an illness and the financial bankruptcy of his father. These events may well have played a role in his first conversion.7 In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, written many years later in 1864, Newman described what had happened to him in that conversion. He wrote about how certain childish imaginations isolated him from the objects of his surroundings and led him to mistrust the reality of material phenomena. But he found repose in “the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously selfevident beings, myself and my Creator.”8 While Newman doubted everything around him, two things he could however not doubt were his own existence and the existence of his Creator. This awareness of his existence and the fact that he has been created by God was made possible by the phenomenon of conscience, which he described as nearer to him than any other means of knowledge9, and “a connecting principle between the creature and his Creator.”10 In the experience of one’s conscience, the individual not only apprehends himself or herself as subject but also apprehends himself or herself as subject in relation to God. Newman describes the conscience as the “special feeling, which follows on the commission of what we call right or wrong,” and in this special feeling Paul Sobry (1895-1954). Terrence Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts: the Religious and Theological Ideal of John Henry Newman, Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs (Leuven: Peeters, 1991), 1-19. Citation at 10. 6 In this essay reference is made to Joseph Ratzinger or to Pope Benedict XVI depending on use of his private writings as theologian or his magisterial writings as pope. 7 See Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, 2009), 3-4. 8 Apo., 4. 9 G.A., 389. 10 Ibid., 117.

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“lie the materials for the real apprehension of a Divine Sovereign and judge.”11 Newman further describes conscience as characterized by two indivisible but distinguishable dimensions: a moral sense and a sense of duty. As a moral sense conscience is manifest in the experience that there is right or wrong, which is however not the same as knowing what is right or wrong in particular instances. As a sense of duty conscience is manifest as a “certain keen sensibility,” that is to say, a sense of obligation and responsibility to do good and avoid evil.12 Newman speaks of these two dimensions as “a rule of conduct” and “a sanction of right conduct” respectively.13 These dimensions of conscience also show its psychological nature, which makes it “something more than a moral sense.”14 This nature is evident from the fact that the conscience “is always emotional,” because unlike “inanimate things that cannot stir our affections,” our conscience bears intimately on our affections and emotions.15 We therefore have feelings of self-approval and hope or of compunction and fear upon the performance of certain actions. Only an intelligent being can excite these feelings of remorse or satisfaction in us through our emotions because if the “cause of these emotions does not belong to the visible world, the Object to which our perceptions are directed must be Supernatural and Divine.”16 Even though Newman claims that the conscience has a “legitimate place among our mental acts,”17 he does not think that the phenomenon of conscience, as Merrigan explains, is “the product of a rational analysis of our experience.”18 That we have a conscience by nature constitutes an unproved assumption, a first principle, such that the rejection of that first principle renders further discussion meaningless. If you trace back your reasons for holding an opinion, you must stop somewhere; the process cannot go on forever; you must come at last to something you cannot prove, else, life would be spent in inquiring and reasoning, our minds would be ever tossing to and fro, and there would be nothing to guide us. No man alive, but has some First Principles or other.19 11

Ibid., 105. Ibid. 13 Ibid., 106. 14 Ibid., 109. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 110. 17 Ibid., 105. 18 Merrigan, op.cit., 38. 19 Prepos., 279-281. Citation at 279. 12

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Newman’s argument that we can apprehend God through the experience of our conscience is not based on a supernatural revelation or any mystical encounter with God. A person, as in the case of a child who has not experienced any hostility to religion or moral behavior, can spontaneously apprehend God in the sanction and the attendant emotions that accompany the person’s decisions.20 It is for this reason that Newman describes conscience as the voice, or more appropriately, “the echo of the voice” of God in us. This voice is “imperative and constraining, like no other dictate in the whole of our experience.”21 It is because of its role in the generating of the image of God in us that conscience is described by Newman as the “creative principle of religion.”22 Ratzinger thinks that the significance of the human subject in Newman’s analysis of conscience, in contrast to the “objectivistic neoscholasticism of the nineteenth century,” gives such personalism “an attention that it had not received in Catholic theology perhaps since Augustine.”23 Ratzinger, who was first introduced to the thoughts of Newman by a fellow student, Alfred Läpple,24 maintains that Newman’s teaching on conscience is the foundation for a theological personalism that permeates “our image of the human being as well as our image of the Church.”25 By theological personalism, Ratzinger is referring to the individual’s relationship with God.26 In receiving Newman’s teaching on conscience, Ratzinger takes exception to the use, by others, of the scholastic term synderesis to refer in blanket fashion to conscience.27 Even 20

G.A., 112-116. Ibid., 107. 22 Ibid., 110. 23 Ratzinger, On Conscience, 24. Emphasis original 24 See Ratzinger, Milestones, 43. Alfred Läpple wrote his doctoral dissertation on Newman. See Alfred Läpple, Der Einzelne in der Kirche : Wesenszüge einer Theologie des Einzelnen nach John Henry Kardinal Newman, Münchener theologische Studien (München: Zink, 1952). In a 2006 interview, Läpple made a telling remark of their college days when he remarked that “Newman was not a topic like any other. It was our passion.” See Alfred Läpple, "That new beginning that bloomed among the ruins," http://www.30giorni.it/articoli_id_10125_13.htm. (accessed July 25 2012). 25 Ratzinger, "Presentation: The Theology of Cardinal Newman",1990 http://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/rtznewmn.htm. 26 Ibid. 27 In his Summa Theologiae (I, q. 79, a. 12 and 13) Thomas described two levels of conscience, synderesis and conscientia, the latter being a moral act of judgment bearing on a concrete situation based on the propensity to do good and avoid evil (synderesis) in the first place. 21

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though the term is often used to refer to the first principles of human action, he thinks it is unclear. Accordingly, he proposes a clearer alternative, rooted in the Platonic concept of anamnesis. For Ratzinger, the concept of anamnesis is linguistically and philosophically clearer, as it also harmonizes key biblical and anthropological meanings of conscience.28 The word anamnesis refers to the original memory of the good and the true that has been implanted in us. It shows “that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine.” Ratzinger continues: This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the god-like constitution of our being, is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is, so to speak, an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.29

Ratzinger traces the biblical root of the term to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans where the apostle spoke of the law written in the heart of the Gentiles: “For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves….They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness….” (Rom 2:14-15). For Ratzinger the “word anamnesis should be taken to mean exactly that which Paul expressed”30 in this text. He also thinks that the word anamnesis can be understood in what St. Basil refers to as “the spark of divine love which has been hidden in us.” The monastic rule of St. Basil amplifies this meaning further by noting that “the love of God is not founded on a discipline imposed on us from outside, but is constitutively established in us as the capacity and necessity of our rational nature.”31 From the foregoing there emerges some common ground between Newman’s understanding of conscience and Ratzinger’s use of the word anamnesis to describe the same thing. The common ground includes the contention that conscience is an innate capacity in us,32 that it is pre28

Ratzinger, On Conscience, 31. Ibid., 32. 30 Ibid., 31. 31 Basil, Regulae fusius tractatae, Resp. 2, 1: PD 31, 908. Cited in ibid., 31. 32 This could also imply a common Platonism between Newman and Ratzinger, without prejudice to the English and German contexts of their respective Platonic reception. For a discussion of Newman’s Platonism see Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, 23-29. 29

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conceptual and experiential in character, and that it is our guide because through conscience, the individual is able to apprehend God. But while Newman would speak about conscience from an existential perspective, Ratzinger, in addition, reflects more explicitly on the ontological dimension of conscience.

Holiness through Faithfulness to Conscience The polar character of Newman’s idea of conscience manifests itself in the fact that God is not only a Law giver, but He is also a benevolent ruler. God also reveals himself as one who wills and orders our happiness.33 In other words, one who truly hears the voice of conscience to do good and avoid evil will also hear the merciful and benevolent voice of God who has his or her interest at heart. It is from this experience that natural religion is born, showing itself in prayer and hope. We are able to hope because we believe that God wills something good for us, even in the midst of difficulties. Prayer is the means for expressing this hope.34 Merrigan explains that the hope of which Newman speaks is “an irrepressible existential longing or perhaps even the anticipation that the One who calls us to perfection will also come to our aid.”35 This is because “the gift of conscience raises a desire for what it does not itself fully supply.”36 The expectation of a revelation, which is the initiative of God, is therefore an “integral part of Natural Religion.”37 For Newman it is only the Christian religion that could satisfy this religious expectation that has been aroused by the experience of the conscience.38 It is on this basis of adherence to the dictates of the conscience coming from God that one can understand the meaning in Newman of the holiness that derives from conscience. According to Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Newman recognized that holiness is properly an attribute of God, not of man; that men and women, created in the image and likeness of God, are called to a life of holiness and are holy in so far as they participate in the 33

G.A., 390-391. Ibid., 403-404. 35 Terrence Merrigan, "Myself and My Creator": Newman and the (Post-)Modern Subject," in Newman and Truth, Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs, ed. T. Merrigan and I. Ker (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), 19. 36 O.S., 66. 37 G.A., 405. Cf. Merrigan, "Myself and My Creator," 19. 38 G.A., 389. See also Newman's "A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk" in Diff., 2, 249. 34

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Because holiness describes God, and God calls us to participate in His holiness through the dictates of conscience, response to the call of God thus demands faithfulness to conscience. Obedience to the voice of conscience is indispensable for a holy life. If we hear the echo of the voice of God in our conscience, the faithful response that would lead us to holiness of life is submission to the will of God, because conscience is manifesting it. When the voice of conscience is obeyed, its dictates become clearer to us. But this submission is not simply an adherence to an arbitrary external rule; rather, it is one that perfects our well-being because the will of God is also oriented towards our happiness. Hence Newman affirms that the voice of conscience that stirs us to action is the evidence of divine providence.40 Through his divine providence, which God achieves through his selfdisclosure in conscience, he guides us and leads us to holiness of life in our existential situation. It is for this reason that Newman regards conscience as “our great internal teacher of religion.”41 He also adds that “conscience is a personal guide, and I use it because I must use myself.”42 In one of his sermons he notes that “God speaks to us in two ways, in our heart and in His Word.”43 These two ways, which could also be understood as manifestations of God’s particular and general providential guidance, are inseparable.44 In other words, conscience requires some external sanction if its injunctions are to be duly honored, adequately interpreted, and effectively implemented.45 Submission to the will of God through conscience also requires an act of faith. It is a faith that involves a willingness to learn, an openness to a pedagogical process within the Christian community that bears the historical responsibility for transmitting 39 Vincent Nichols, "Newman and the Mission of the Church: Introductory Reflections," Louvain Studies 35(2011), 408. 40 For a discussion of Newman’s idea of divine providence see Terrence Merrigan, "'One Momentous Principle Which Enters Into My Reasoning': The Unitive Function of Newman's Doctrine of Providence," Downside Review 108(1990), 254-281. Also Kathleen Dietz, "Newman and Divine Providence," Louvain Studies 35 (2011), 396-403. 41 G.A., 389. 42 Ibid., 390. 43 P.S., II, 103. 44 See Dietz, "Newman and Divine Providence," 398. 45 See Merrigan, "One Momentous Principle," 268.

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the Word.46 Seeking holiness of life is therefore never an isolated affair in Newman’s assessment. Furthermore, a life of holiness requires personal struggle and on-going conversion. After his first conversion in his teenage years, he adopted two fundamental principles. “Holiness rather than peace”47 captures the first. Pope Benedict XVI remarks that this principle shows Newman’s “determination to adhere to the interior Master with his own conscience, confidently abandoning himself to the Father and living in faithfulness to the recognized truth.”48 The second principle, “Growth the only evidence of life,”49 expresses his belief in on-going conversion. Newman summed up his own experience of constancy in on-going conversion with those famous words he used in his book on the Development of Christian Doctrine: “Here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”50 This personal endeavor for conversion should be carried out with the confidence that one is assisted by the grace of God and that the Church complements the divine voice that speaks within us. In this way, conscience and revelation recognize and bear witness to each other.51 The support of historical revelation for constant conversion is necessary because conscience is not always crystal clear in its dictates and commands. It can be influenced by other motives, such as self-will, and there is additionally a need to discern what comes from conscience and what is influenced by selfish desires and motives. Thus the image of God, which conscience apprehends, needs to be expanded, deepened, and completed “by means of education, social intercourse, experience and literature.”52 This way of understanding the human subject in his or her social reality is precisely what distinguishes Newman’s emphasis from that of an autonomous self-subject that was common with the modernism of his time.53

46 See Michael Paul Gallagher, "Newman's Pedagogy of Formation towards Faith," Louvain Studies 35 (2011), 300-308. 47 Apo., 6. 48 Benedict XVI, "Message of His Holiness Benedict XVI on the Occasion of the Symposium Organized by the International Centre of Newman Friends," Louvain Studies 35 (2011), 221-222. 49 Apo., 6. 50 Dev., 41. 51 See Merrigan, "One Momentous Principle," 269, 273. 52 G.A., 116. 53 For a discussion of the understanding of subject in Newman and in modernism and postmodernism see Merrigan, "Myself and My Creator", 1-31.

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Ratzinger, like Newman, sees a certain anticipatory character in anamnesis. In fact, he thinks that the possibility of mission rests on this “anamnesis of the Creator, which is identical to the ground of our existence.”54 For Ratzinger, when St. Paul says that Gentiles are a law unto themselves, it is not in the sense of the modern liberal notion of subjectivity that precludes the transcendence of the subject. Paul intends a much deeper sense. The self becomes the site for encountering the source and the goal of that which profoundly surpasses the self. Here we see the idea of a conscientious life, in submission to the will of God that is the hallmark of holiness in Newman, emerging in the thoughts of Ratzinger. Ratzinger holds that the anamnesis instilled in our being needs assistance from without, so that it can become more aware of itself. As Newman does, Ratzinger also thinks that this assistance from without is not something that is set in opposition to an inner anamnesis; rather, the latter is ordered to it. It does not impose anything foreign from the outside, “but brings to fruition what is proper to anamnesis, namely, its interior openness to truth.”55 Furthermore, Ratzinger makes a distinction between the anamnesis of creation and the anamnesis of faith. Thus far, the anamnesis under consideration, which is instilled in our being, is that of creation. The anamnesis of faith, on the other hand, refers to Christian memory. It derives from the original encounter of Jesus and his disciples, which all later generations receive in their foundational encounter with the Lord in Baptism and the Eucharist. Like the anamnesis of creation, the anamnesis of faith also unfolds in a constant dialogue between within and without. It is the memory of the simple faith, the sensus fidei. It signifies the sureness of the Christian memory, which proceeding from its sacramental identity, discerns from within between what genuinely unfolds its recollection and what destroys or falsifies it. In this regard, the teaching on the primacy of the pope is not simply extrinsic; it is a correlation to Christian conscience. From this perspective, Ratzinger defends Newman’s assertion to the Duke of Norfolk that he would first toast conscience before toasting the pope. He argues that since the true sense of the teaching authority of the pope consists in being an advocate of the Christian memory, the pope does not impose his teachings from without but rather elucidates the Christian memory (anamnesis) and defends it.56 Ratzinger also maintains, as Newman does, that one is bound to follow one’s conscience even when it is erroneous, since one may not act against 54

Ratzinger, On Conscience, 32. Ibid., 33-34. Citation at 34. 56 Ibid., 35-36. See Newman's "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," Diff., 2, 261. 55

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his or her convictions. But the fact that one is bound to follow personal convictions at the moment of acting does not signify a canonization of subjectivity. That it is never wrong to follow one’s conviction does not preclude the fact that “it can very well be wrong to have come to such askew convictions in the first place, by having stifled the protest of the anamnesis of being…in the neglect of my being which made me deaf to the internal promptings of truth.”57 It is in this sense that Newman writes in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk that “conscience has rights because it has duties.” He insists, however, that these rights exclude the “right of self-will.”58 Ratzinger rejects a reading of St. Thomas which would claim that the obligation to follow an erroneous conscience is normative. He thinks that such a misreading of St. Thomas often begins by citing Thomas’s article in the Summa, “Must one follow an erroneous conscience?” but ignores the following article where the Angelic Doctor also asked, “Is it sufficient to follow one’s conscience in order to act properly?”59 Ratzinger’s attempt to offer an interpretation of Thomas reveals something of the background of his theological motivation. He stands basically in the Augustinian and Bonaventurian tradition, but his theology is in constant dialogue with Thomas Aquinas because his fundamental criticism of certain neo-Scholastic tendencies is that they promote a “truncated Thomism.”60 It is instructive to see that his reception of Newman plays a significant role in his criticism of neo-Scholasticism.

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Ratzinger, On Conscience, 38. “When men advocate the rights of conscience, they in no sense mean the rights of Creator, nor the duty to Him, in thought and deed, of the creature….Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience to dispense with conscience, to ignore the Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations…. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior before to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it if they had. It is the right of self-will.” Diff., 2, 250. 59 See Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 19, art. 5-6. Cited in Ratzinger, On Conscience, 81, n.19. Ratzinger adds that such interpretation of erroneous conscience was that of Abelard and not Thomas. “That means imputing the doctrine of Abelard to Thomas, whose goal was in fact to overcome Abelard. Abelard had thought that the crucifiers of Christ would not have sinned if they had acted from ignorance. The only way to sin consists in acting against conscience. The modern theories of autonomy of conscience can appeal to Abelard but not to Thomas.” Ibid., 81, n.19. 60 “verkürzten Thomismus.” See Joseph Ratzinger, "Gratia praesupponit naturam," in Dogma und Verkündigung (Donauwörth: Erich Wewel Verlag, 2005) 4th reprint, 157. 58

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Ratzinger’s reception of Newman is also marked by a polar character that one detects in Newman. As noted, Ratzinger is most appreciative of Newman for the unparalleled attention Newman has given to a person’s subjectivity. Pope Benedict XVI is keen to note that the role of the subject in Newman is not “a self-assertive subjectivity.”61 For Newman, obedience to the voice of conscience is not the same as being self-willed, nor is it the same as being an autonomous self-subject, nor is it an obedience that is defined from extrinsic and objectively defined concepts. In this polarity of subject and object, Ratzinger’s vision of holiness of life is based on an encounter with an event, a Person who is at the heart of the Christian message. It is a moral choice to be sure, but more than a moral choice. It is the anamnesis of creation finding meaning and fulfillment in the anamnesis of faith. Only from the grace which faith makes available does the obligation of conscience not turn into a meaningless burden: “Where this center of the Christian message is not sufficiently expressed and appreciated, truth becomes a yoke that is too heavy for our shoulders, from which we must seek to free ourselves. But the freedom gained thereby is empty.” The incarnation of Jesus Christ meant that the yoke of truth has in fact become easy (cf. Mt 11:30). As Ratzinger continues, “Only when we know and experience this from within will we be free to hear the message of conscience with joy and without fear.”62 Newman’s position is thus far clear: The connection between the phenomenon of conscience and holiness is the faithful response to the echo of the voice of God that individuals hear from their consciences. Through his divine providence, which he manifests to us in conscience, God makes known his will; this is for our own good and happiness. A faithful response to the voice of conscience therefore demands submission to the will of God. This faithful response is opposed to arbitrary self-will. In order to apprehend this voice correctly and completely, the assistance of divine revelation comes to our aid, which the experience of conscience already anticipates. Accordingly, revelation is not foreign to conscience but rather complements its voice. It is along similar lines that Ratzinger speaks of the anamnesis of creation that is instilled into our being. It is the seat of the affirmation of our being, which includes the transcendental dimension of the subject. A faithful response to the inner voice of this anamnesis is opposed to an autonomous self-will. The anamnesis of 61 Benedict XVI, "Address on the Occasion of Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia," December 22, 2010 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2010/december/docume nts/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20101220_curia-auguri_en.html (accessed July 21 2012). 62 Ratzinger, On Conscience, 41.

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creation is complemented by the anamnesis of faith, which is the Christian memory of its Lord and scriptures. In this complementary role of the anamnesis of faith to that of creation, the obligations that the voice of conscience make known to us do not become a burden; rather, in the encounter with the Christian gospel, holiness of life is experienced as a path to joy and liberation.

Concluding Reflections In the concluding part of a threefold series of lectures that were first published in 1923, the German Jesuit Erich Przywara advocated a balanced philosophy, die Philosphie des Ausgleichs, for a comprehensive Catholic intellectual life. He called this balanced philosophy a philosophy of polarity, die Philosophie der Pölarität, that synthesized the historical and metaphysical aspects of Catholic tradition.63 Przywara saw Newman representing the historical and subjective counterpart to the objective metaphysical system that Thomas Aquinas represents.64 In the mid-1880’s, one of Newman’s defenders responded to a charge that Newman had laid excessive emphasis on conscience at the expense of a rational explication of the faith by remarking: “He [Newman] spoke of conscience and the world listened. Would it have listened to metaphysics?”65 Granting that Newman had explicitly not set out to unfold his thoughts in the metaphysical system of his day, this is not to say that he did not make use of objective conceptual schemes or propositions to elucidate his thoughts. Newman once asserted: “Dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion.”66 For this reason Przywara contends that the hidden traits of personalism in the philosophy of the object-in-itself in Thomas is fully developed in the personal philosophy and existential world of Newman, such that in Newman, what we find “…is only a rebirth of the Object-philosophy of the Doctor universalis.”67 Przywara advocates 63

See Erich Przywara, Religionsphilosophische Schriften (Einsiedeln: JohannesVerlag, 1962), 215. The lectures were originally published as Erich Przywara, Gottgeheimnis der Welt: drei Vorträge über die Geistige Krisis der Gegenwart (München: Theatiner Verlag, 1923). 64 Ibid., 241. 65 William Barry, "Catholicism and Reason: A Reply to Principal Fairbairn," The Contemporary Review 19(1885), 673. Cited in Gallagher, "Newman's Pedagogy of Formation towards Faith," Louvain Studies 35(2011), 303. 66 Apo., 49. 67 “...ist nur Neugeburt der Objekt-philosophie des Doctor universalis.“ Przywara, Religionsphilosophische Schriften, 241.

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that a true Catholic polarity is not Aquinas or Newman, but Aquinas and Newman.68 This selfsame polarity is also manifest in the theology of Ratzinger, and this is why one can find significant points of convergence in the way Ratzinger and Newman perceive the relationship between conscience and holiness. When Przywara advocates the model of Newman and Thomas for Catholic intellectual life, he was not calling for a fusion of both their theological systems such that each one becomes a clone of the other. Przywara invites us to see how each theologian represents the best of the other, even in their different theological methods. This amounts to a recognition of the polar character of their theologies, such that in seeing how they complement each other, this complementarity is not reduced to eclecticism or an undifferentiated synthesis. Similarly, their differences should not be viewed as contrarieties. Ratzinger basically stands in the Augustinian/Bonaventurian tradition of Catholic theology and not that of Thomas.69 He does not proceed with the traditional analysis of metaphysical concepts to arrive at his theological conclusions as Aquinas is wont to do. As shown above, he hesitates to use the scholastic term synderesis, which Thomas used to describe the first level of conscience. Yet he sides with the conclusion of St. Thomas on conscience that does not see the obligation to follow an erroneous conscience as normative for moral action. That Ratzinger does not stand in the Thomistic scholastic tradition does not, consequently, make him anti-Aquinas for he is always in dialogue with the conclusions of Thomas. This highlights the polar character of Ratzinger’s theology. Such a polarity is not eclecticism. Nor does it prevent one, who basically reflects from a particular philosophical or theological standpoint, from being in dialogue with other perspectives. It is characterized by a complementarity of perspectives that does not dissolve into a neat synthesis. This feature of polarity characterizes how Ratzinger and Newman unveil their thoughts on conscience and holiness. For Newman, holiness of life comes from a faithful response to the 68

Ibid., 242. See Terrence Merrigan, "Newman and Religious Experience," in Divinising Experience: Essays in the History of Religious Experience from Origen to Ricoeur, ed. Lieven Boeve and Laurence Hemming (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 133. 69 For discussions on Ratzinger’s theological orientation see John Allen, Pope Benedict XVI: A Biography of Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Continuum, 2000), 45-88. Joseph Komonchak, "The Church in Crisis: Pope Benedict's Theological Vision," Commonweal 132/11 (2005). Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 2829, 151.

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dictates of conscience in which God speaks to us, not only as Moral Governor but also as one who is benevolent. For Ratzinger, holiness comes from the faithful response to the inner voice of the anamnesis of creation which is assisted by an anamnesis of faith that is not foreign to but in dialogue with the anamnesis of creation. Unlike Newman, Ratzinger explicitly speaks about the metaphysical and ontological meaning of conscience as seen in his explanation of anamnesis, yet like Newman, Ratzinger’s theological reflections proceed from and are grounded in a strong existential awareness of personal subjectivity. In this manner, Ratzinger’s reception of Newman offers an important key for understanding his own theology. For both of them, the link between conscience and holiness is grounded on submission to the will of God as manifested to us by conscience, with the support of the revealing Word of God to insure happiness and fulfillment. Consequently, holiness of life and faithfulness to the voice of conscience become an integral part of the apo-logy for the faith, the rational ground offered for belief.

CHAPTER SEVEN OBEDIENCE TO CONSCIENCE IN NEWMAN’S SPIRITUALITY: LESSONS FOR OUR TIMES FR. EMEKA NGWOKE

“The characteristic of the great doctor of the Church, it seems to me, is that he teaches not only through his thought and speech, but rather by his life, because within him thought and life are interpenetrated and defined. If this is so, then Newman belongs to the great teachers of the Church, because at the same time he touches our hearts and enlightens our thinking.” —Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1990

Introduction Newman is now widely recognized as an important spiritual guide.1 His spirituality is framed by an abiding awareness of the divine presence and an acute sense of the duty of obedience to conscience. Conscience is a recurrent theme in many of his writings.2 The duty of obeying the voice of conscience is a fundamental dynamic throughout. These motifs require one to be mindful of two salutary cautions. As J. M. Roberts observed: Notoriously, he is a subtle writer, supremely conscious of his utterance. He is the great technician of qualifications, partial releases, and let-out clauses. He often holds a much less entrenched position than at first appears. Much 1 A cursory look at some recent publications on Newman reveals a growing appreciation of Newman’s weight as a guide in the spiritual life. For instance, Keith Beaumont, Blessed Henry Newman: Theologian and Spiritual Guide (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010); Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint (New York: Continuum, 2010); John Henry Newman: A Selection, ed. John Ford (New York: Orbis Books, 2012). 2 See for example U.S., O.S., G.A., and his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk in Diff., 2.

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we might expect him to say remains specifically unsaid; much which seems to follow from what he does say turns out, on closer examination to be no necessary inference. What is more, he is a master architect of argument, building complex and solid foundations for his conclusions. Subordinate elements in his structure have their own value and importance, as well as contributing to the larger design. This gives him room, for instance, to appreciate and value justly the partial, incomplete, imperfect good. He reminds us, if only at times by implication and indirection, that the imperfect is derogation from the perfect, not merely something to be preferred to the absolutely bad.3

What Roberts is observing about Newman’s book, Idea of a University, applies equally to the question of conscience. In this respect, Newman’s intellectual biographer, Ian Ker, reminds us that the mind of Newman is characterized “not by contradictions but by complementary strengths, so that he may be called, without inconsistency, conservative and liberal, progressive and traditional, cautious and radical, dogmatic yet pragmatic, idealistic but realistic.”4 This essay explores Newman’s complexity on the issue of conscience—holding an exalted view of its dictates without becoming doctrinaire. The exploration unfolds in the following steps: (a) sketching out the sociopolitical context that occasioned this exploration, thus making it timely; (b) elaborating Newman’s teaching on conscience, illustrating it with scenes from his long life; (c) an exposition of the American Catholic response to the conscience issues raised by the Affordable Care Act of 2010; (d) then, using his writings and a similar incident in his life in which a defense of the Church’s rights was demanded, extrapolating on what Newman’s reaction might have been today were he faced with such a conscience challenge as Catholics are today, finally (e) concluding with some lessons for our present instruction.

The Sociopolitical Context This reflection was prompted by the strong reactions generated by the passage by the United States Congress of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and its subsequent ratification in a split decision of the United States Supreme Court in August, 2011. Across the country, critics of the new healthcare law worried about the costs of such a massive overhaul of the 3 J. M. Roberts, “The Idea of a University Revisited,” Newman after a Hundred Years, ed. Ian Ker & Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 193-222 at 193-4. 4 Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), viii.

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healthcare system; many other reacted out of an instinctive aversion for any kind of government mandate telling them what to do (even if it was good and beneficial); while some others were concerned that a federallycontrolled health insurance scheme was going to stifle competition and burden consumers with higher costs. Religious conservatives, led by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), felt outraged that the new law was to have Catholic institutions paying for contraception, abortion and sundry health procedures considered to be morally objectionable. This moral challenge came to be framed as a fight for religious liberty and conscience protection as enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, what could have been quite an enlightening conversation regarding religious freedom and the balancing of competing rights in a pluralistic, democratic society quickly degenerated into a deafening cacophony of voices echoing the shrill rhetoric and partisan demonization that have become standard features of American elections. Events elsewhere in the world evidenced that religious liberty and the rights of conscience are by no means guaranteed. Samuel P. Huntington has drawn attention to the emergence of religious and ethnic identities as major fault lines in both domestic and international conflicts following the end of the Cold War. It is a new world, he contends, in which local politics is ethnic and international politics is cultural, a world where superpower rivalry is replaced by the clash of civilizations.5 More recently, Eliza Griswold6 notes that the tenth parallel is a geographic line which runs like a tectonic fault line between Islam and Christianity, cutting across countries like Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia in Africa and in Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines; each of these areas is a live theater in an ongoing struggle between the two missionary religions. “Along the tenth parallel,” she writes, “in Sudan, and in most of inland Africa, two worlds collide: the mostly Muslim, Arabinfluenced north meets a black African south inhabited by Christians and those who follow indigenous religion.”7 The result of one of these collisions, to which the discovery of rich oil deposits in southern Sudan during the 1970s added fuel to an already tinderbox situation, led to one of Africa’s longest lasting civil conflicts and, more recently, to the partitioning of Africa’s largest country following a 2011 referendum in the south of the Sudan. 5

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 28. 6 Eliza Griswold, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). 7 Ibid, 3-4. Indigenous religions also go by the name traditionalist religions.

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Much more dramatically, in a 2012 Newsweek/DailyBeast publication, Somali-born civil rights activist and former Dutch parliamentarian, Ayaan Hirsri Ali, pointed to what she saw as “a global war on Christians in the Muslim world,” a war predicated on hatred and determined persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority nations across the world. “We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny,” she cautioned, “but, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.”8 Ayaan Ali questioned the media depiction of Muslims as the only victims: The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.9

Ayaan Hirsi Ali cited incidents in Nigeria and Sudan to illustrate her claim that Christians are under persecution. In Nigeria, the Islamic militant group Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths in the month of January 2012 alone; in 2011 they killed over 500 people, burned down 350 churches, maiming and wounding many more, using machetes, guns and gasoline bombs, accompanied by the battle cry Allahu akbar! (Allah is great!).10 In the case of the Sudan, Ali argued that what has been falsely projected to the world as a protracted civil war has been rather a clear case of official government persecution of religious minorities, culminating in genocide in Darfur that began in 2003.11 And, despite the indictment of 8 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World,” http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/02/05/ayaan-hirsi-ali-the-globalwar-on-christians-in-the-muslim-world.html. (accessed 25 May 2013). 9 Ibid. 10 As of this writing and since January 2014, Boko Haram has killed over 1000 people in a series of coordinated attacks and, in a brazen move, seized over two hundred female students from a unity school in northeastern Nigeria. This atrocity, finally, captured the attention of Western media. 11 It might be helpful to qualify Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s claims regarding the Sudan by noting that the government’s persecution of minorities seems to have as much

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Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes by the International Criminal Court at The Hague and the semi-autonomy granted to South Sudan in 2011, she laments that religious minorities in the country are still the targets of aerial bombardments, targeted killings, kidnapping of children and sundry atrocities. She is convinced that a fair-minded assessment would lead to the conclusion that “the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.”12 Ali attributes this “conspiracy of silence” both from the Western media outlets and Western government officials to two sources: a fear of providing fodder for greater violence against Christians and other religious minorities in Muslim-majority nations, and the impact of Islamic lobbyists, especially the Saudi Arabia based Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these lobbyists have succeeded in persuading leading public officials and journalists in the West that every form of anti-Muslim sentiment or viewpoint is the manifestation of a prejudice known as Islamophobia.13

Newman’s Life: A Testament to the Supremacy of Conscience In his Oxford University Sermons, published while he was still in his late twenties, Newman gives an early insight into his understanding of conscience as the voice of an external, superintendent authority over whom we have no power and who demands our habitual obedience. Conscience implies a relation between the soul and a something exterior, and that, moreover, superior to itself; a relation to an excellence which it does not possess, and to a tribunal over which it has no power. And since the more closely this inward monitor is respected and followed, the clearer, the more exalted, and the more varied its dictates become, and the standard of excellence is ever outstripping, while it guides, our obedience, a moral conviction is thus at length obtained of the unapproachable nature as well ethnic as religious basis because the Tanjaweed militias have visited as much pain on black Muslims as on their Christian and Traditionalist fellow Nigerians. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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as the supreme authority of That, whatever it is, which is the object of the mind's contemplation. Here, then, at once, we have the elements of a religious system; for what is Religion but the system of relations existing between us and a Supreme Power, claiming our habitual obedience.14

Newman’s life’s story exhibits a remarkable attempt to live in “habitual obedience” to that excellence and Supreme Power to which conscience witnesses. Born to a middle class English family in London on 21 February 1801, Newman was raised on the “Bible religion” that was the national religion of England at the time. “I was brought up from a child to take great delight in reading the Bible; but I had no formed religious convictions till I was fifteen. Of course I had a perfect knowledge of my Catechism.”15 As a child he was given to extravagant flights of fancy: wishing the Arabian Tales were true and that life itself might be a dream; or he an angel, with his fellow-angels, “by a playing device,” concealing themselves from him, and deceiving him with “the semblance of a material world.”16 In the autumn of 1816, Newman experienced a profound religious conversion that brought him under a definite creed, with intellectual impressions of dogma and an acute awareness of himself before a compelling divine presence, bringing him to rest in the thought of “two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.”17 This consciousness of divine presence and the duty of obedience to conscience would constitute the two lifelong pillars of his spirituality. According to Newman, conscience is primarily a religious faculty and not necessarily a moral guide. It is the “great internal teacher” of religion18 and a gift with which God has furnished all the children of Adam since the dawn of reason. Whether a man be born in pagan darkness, or in some corruption of revealed religion – whether he has heard the name of the Saviour of the world or not,…he has within his breast a certain commanding dictate, not a mere sentiment, not a mere opinion, or impression, or view of things, but a law, an authoritative voice, bidding him to do certain things and avoid others. I do not say that its particular injunctions are always clear, or that they are always consistent with each other; but what I am insisting on here is this, that it commands,—that it praises, it blames, it promises, it 14

U.S., 18-19. Apo., 1. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 5. 18 G.A., 389. 15

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threatens, it implies a future, and it witnesses the unseen. It is more than a man’s own self. The man himself has not power over it, or only with extreme difficulty; he did not make it, he cannot destroy it.19

In morals, conscience becomes a guide only in proportion as it happens to have been “refined and strengthened” in the individual.20 Thus, in his last published work, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Newman describes conscience as the divine law as “apprehended in the minds of individual men.”21 It is not a far-sighted selfishness nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; rather, in its moral guidance function, it is a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His Representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and, even, though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have a sway.22

In the Apologia, Newman identifies the voice of conscience as the source of his certitude about the existence of God. Yet he would admit that of the paradox touching all matters of belief, the reality of God is “encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.”23 The difficulty of believing in God comes simply from the sight of the world “filled with unspeakable distress” and which, therefore, seems to “give the lie to that great truth, of which my whole being is so full.” Of such difficult for belief in God, he continues: Were it not for this voice, speaking clearly in my conscience and heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist when I looked into the world. I am speaking for myself only; and I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, drawn from the general facts of human society and the course of history, but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice.24

19

O.S., 64. U.S., 20. 21 Diff., 2, 247. 22 Ibid., 248-249. 23 Apo., 239. 24 Ibid., 241. 20

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The general outline of Newman’s life, after the 1816 conversion, is well known and can be readily summarized. After attending Ealing School in London, he went up to Trinity College Oxford, graduating at age twenty Under the line, the phrase then for lack of honors. Two years later he made up for his undergraduate failure by winning a fellowship to Oriel College—the most prestigious fellowship in Oxford at the time. He was ordained an Anglican priest at age twenty-four and subsequently became a tutor at Oriel College and the Vicar of the Church of St Mary the Virgin across from Oriel. From 1833 to 1843 he was becoming more and more the leading voice of the Oxford Tractarian Movement, a group that sought to protect the Anglican Church from political interference by Parliament and to restore the Church’s apostolic heritage. In the course of this work, he wrote a great deal of anti-Catholic polemics, accusing the Roman Catholic Church of mutilating the apostolic faith by making unwarranted additions to it. He sought to legitimize the Anglican position on a theory of being a Via Media (middle way) between Protestantism (which subtracted from the apostolic faith) and Roman Catholicism (which made additions to it). “I had supreme confidence in our course;” he recalls: we were upholding that primitive Christianity which was delivered for all time by the early teachers of the Church, and which was registered and attested in Anglican formularies and by the Anglican divines. That ancient religion was well-nigh faded from the land, through the political changes of the last 150 years, and it must be restored. It would be in fact a second Reformation:—a better reformation.25

Newman could see clear signs of a decaying Christianity all over England: in the suppression of bishoprics by Parliament, in the confiscation of church property by the State, and in the introduction of “unsuitable occupants” into ecclesiastical sees. “We knew enough to begin preaching upon, and there was no one else to preach,” since our apostolic doctrine was “essential and imperative” and our ground of evidence was “impregnable.”26 The Movement’s strategy against the encroachments of the state was to defend the rights of bishops based on their apostolic succession to a source of authority independent of any state or parliament. In the summer of 1839, while studying the history of the Monophysites, Newman first experiences doubt regarding the continued defensibility of Anglicanism.

25 26

Ibid., 43. Ibid., 44.

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Chapter Seven My stronghold was Antiquity; now here, in the middle of the fifth century, I found, as it seemed to me, Christendom of the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries reflected. I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite. The Church of the Via Media was in the position of the Oriental communion, Rome was where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians.27

Then ensues a spirited mental struggle to find another ground on which to defend the Anglican system; for this defense, he settled on the note of sanctity or holiness of life. “Much as Roman Catholics may denounce us at present as schismatical, they could not resist us if the Anglican communion had but that one note of the Church upon it,—sanctity.”28 But it did not take long for this ground to be shattered by events: the establishment of a Jerusalem bishopric (where the Church of England had no followers) but the Anglican bishop was to minister to Lutherans and Calvinists. “We have not… a single Anglican there,” Newman complains in a letter of 12 October 1841 to John Bowden, “so that we are sending a Bishop to make a communion—not governing our own people.”29 Newman dispatched promptly a letter of protest to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to Bishop Bagot of Oxford, dated 11 November 1841, explaining why he thought the move was wrong. He concludes with an appeal to conscience as his motive for writing: On these grounds, I in my place, being a priest of the English Church and Vicar of St. Mary the Virgin’s, Oxford, by way of relieving my conscience, do hereby solemnly protest against the measure aforesaid, and disown it, as removing our Church from her present ground and tending to her disorganization.30

This incident helped remove any doubts in Newman’s mind whether the Church of England was in schism. It was. By the end of 1841, Newman admits being on his “deathbed”31 with regard to his membership in the Church of England. Following the rejection of his Catholic interpretation of the Thirty Articles in Tract 90, he suspended the publication of the Tracts for the Times, never to be 27

Ibid.,114. Apo., 150. Newman quotes from his article, “The Catholicity of the Anglican Church,” British Critic 27(January 1840), 40-88, reprinted in H.S., 2, 1-73. 29 L.D., 8:295. 30 Apo., 146. The protest, and Newman’s letter to his own bishop, Richard Bagot, are in L.D., 8:327-28. 31 Ibid., 147. 28

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resumed by anyone. He pondered his next move, and by 1843 he decided on the following principle of action: “Do what your present state of opinion requires in the light of duty, and let that doing tell: speak by acts.”32 He further observed, “I had no right, I had no leave, to act against my conscience.”33 In February of 1843, he published a retraction of his unfair polemics against the Church of Rome, and the following September he resigned his charge as Vicar of the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford; thereafter he retired into semi-monastic seclusion and solitude in Littlemore. When Henry Edward Manning wrote on 23 October accusing him of prematurely resigning his living at St Mary’s, Newman answered two days later: I must tell you then frankly…that it is not from disappointment, irritation, or impatience, that I have, whether rightly or wrongly, resigned St. Mary’s: but because I think the Church of Rome the Catholic Church, and ours not part of the Catholic Church, because not in communion with Rome; and because I feel that I could not honestly be a teacher in it any longer.34

Yet he still could not choose Roman Catholicism, which everybody who were following the events of his life thought inevitable. He had to wait for a call of duty! By the end of 1844 Newman resolved to write an Essay on Doctrinal Development and that, if at the end of it, his convictions in favor of the Church of Rome were not weaker, he would take the necessary steps of seeking admission into her communion.35 In a letter of 15 March 1845 to his sister Jemima, Newman states the personal, conscience-based reason for his decision to convert – if it came to that: “As to my convictions, I can but say what I have told you already, that I cannot at all make out why I should determine on moving except as thinking I should offend God by not doing so. I cannot make out what I am at except on this supposition.”36 Finally, on 9 October 1845 with his Essay yet unfinished, Newman sought and was received into the communion of the Church of Rome by the Passionist priest, Father Dominic Barberi. 32

Ibid., 216. Ibid., 150. 34 L.D., 9:584-86. Newman reprised the text in Apo., 221. The Newman-Manning relationship was always brittle, and in later years hostile. See Edward J. Miller, “Newman and Manning: The Strained Relationship," Horizons 35/2(Fall 2008), 228-252. 35 Apo., 228. 36 The letter to Mrs. John Mosley is in L.D., 10:595. See the Introduction of this book for the state of Newman’s mind during the summer and autumn of 1845. 33

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Behind Newman’s tortured journey from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism lies an iron cast commitment to the duty of obedience, to conscience understood as the individual’s participation in the divine law and thus ever compelling obedience. This law, as apprehended in the minds of individual men, is called "conscience;" and though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience. "The Divine Law," says Cardinal Gousset, "is the supreme rule of actions; our thoughts, desires, words, acts, all that man is, is subject to the domain of the law of God; and this law is the rule of our conduct by means of our conscience. Hence it is never lawful to go against our conscience; as the fourth Lateran Council says, 'Quidquid fit contra conscientiam, ædificat ad gehennam.'"37

Recent American Test Case In the United States, public and private reactions to the perceived threat to religious freedom from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 split the nation largely along ideological and often partisan lines. On the right stood the Republicans whose conservative ideology and strong alliance with evangelical Christians would seem to require opposition to abortion rights and to funding contraceptive medications. On the left were the Democrats whose liberal policies would favor a greater accommodation of the rights of women (including abortion and contraceptive rights) and those of sundry minorities. Harvard University professor Mary Ann Glendon is fairly representative of the framing of the debate from the Catholic side. She notes that the “fundamental rights” of Americans had seldom been seriously challenged hitherto. But recent events and political developments suggest that “the first freedom in our First Amendment may be en route to becoming a lesser right—one that can be easily overridden by other rights, claims and interests.”38 The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has largely followed Glendon’s line of reasoning on the issue. In September 2011, for example, while announcing the establishment of the USCCB’s ad-hoc committee to keep the conference alert to “present and ongoing threats to religious liberty at home and abroad and also to 37

Diff., 2,247. Roughly translated, “acting against one’s conscience is building the road to hell.” 38 Mary Ann Glendon, “First Freedom?” America (March 5, 2012), 17-20 at 17.

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help the Conference teach, communicate and mobilize its people in defense of religious liberty,” Conference president Timothy Cardinal Dolan remarked: “Never before have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith.”39 In April 2012, Bishop Daniel Jenky, CSC, of Peoria, IL, and a member of the University of Notre Dame’s Board of Fellows, captured headlines that provoked a public disavowal from 150 Notre Dame professors after the bishop was reported to have described President Obama in a Sunday homily as “seem[ingly] intent on following a similar path” as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. These faculty members found the bishop’s comments (which they allowed were protected by the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution) to be “profoundly offensive” in comparing the president’s actions with “those whose genocidal policies murdered tens of millions of people, including the specific targeting of Catholics, Jews and minorities for their faith.”40 A few months later, at a meeting of the priests of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, a young priest publicly bemoaned what he termed “the persecution” of the American Church at the hands of “pagans.” His remarks were allowed to pass without comment. Similarly, in the Co-cathedral church of the Sacred Heart in Houston, Texas, this writer witnessed a dramatization of the life of St Maxmilian Kolbe, performed inside the sanctuary just three days before the 2012 presidential elections, with a not-too-subtle message linking President Obama with Hitler. The ACA debate is fervid to be sure. The USCCB’s official response to the mandates of the ACA may be found in its April 12, 2012 document titled “Our Most Cherished Liberty,”41 prepared by the conference’s ad hoc committee on religious liberty. This document continues in the alarmed tones of earlier statements. “As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we address an urgent summons to our fellow Catholics and fellow Americans to be on guard, for religious liberty is under attack, both at home and abroad.”42 They cite a recent address of (now retired) Pope Benedict to American bishops: “Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion. Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the 39

Cited by Glendon, “First of Freedoms?” 18. “Faculty to Distance Notre Dame from Jenky’s ‘incendiary statement’” in The Observer (April 23, 2012), 7. 41 For a comprehensive evaluation of this controversial document, see Commonweal (June 15, 2012), 8-21. 42 See the statement of the USCCB at http://usccb.org/issues-and-action/religiousliberty/upload/Our_First_Most_Cherished_Liberty.pdf 40

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right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.”43 The USCCB document portrays the healthcare mandate not only as a frontal assault on freedom of conscience but also as an unjust law which ought not to be obeyed at all because it is no law.44 It calls for a repeal of the offensive law as the only acceptable option in the dispute: “It is essential to understand the distinction between conscientious objection and an unjust law. Conscientious objection permits some relief to those who object to a just law for reasons of conscience—conscription being the most well-known example. An unjust law is ‘no law at all.’ It cannot be obeyed, and therefore one does not seek relief from it, but rather its repeal.”45 Some Catholic media outlets have drawn attention to the harm that such heightened rhetoric and strenuous political activism may be doing to the church’s public witness in the country. A Commonweal editorial of December 20, 2011, for example, drew attention to how the USCCB, shortly after the election of 2008, launched a “well-financed campaign” against the Freedom of Choice Act, an act that the bishops alleged was top on Obama’s agenda in order to satisfy the president’s liberal base. As it turned out, the administration made no such effort on behalf of its prochoice allies. As a result, the bishop’s extreme rhetoric damaged their credibility. They appeared partisan, determined to cast the new administration as an unprecedented moral threat, and willing to cry wolf to accomplish this aim. The USCCB’s credibility took another unnecessary hit when it opposed the Affordable Care Act. In doing so, it advanced the most dubious arguments regarding the bill’s supposed funding of elective abortions, and turned its back on staunch prolife Democrats in Congress.46

Similarly the Jesuit magazine America editorialized on the USCCB’s apparent call for a return to the trenches, namely, the rejection of the accommodation proposed by the Obama Administration for Catholic institutions regarding the mandatory requirement for full healthcare coverage for all workers (including women’s reproductive health needs) in 43

Ibid. Ibid., 4, 5, & 7. 45 Ibid., 7. 46 “An Illiberal Mandate,” Commonweal (December 20, 2011), 5. 44

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the ACA. The accommodation, which provides for insurance companies to pick up the tab for the reproductive healthcare coverage of workers of religiously affiliated institutions that were not otherwise exempt, was first cautiously welcomed by the USCCB as “a first step in the right direction” and later rejected as “insufficient.” Commenting on this more recent and definitive position of the American bishops, which presented a “bill of indictments on the fine points of public policy,” the editors of America observed: The bishops have been most effective in influencing public policy when they have acted as pastors, trying to build consensus in church and society, as they did in their pastoral on nuclear war and the economy. The American public is uncomfortable with an overt exercise of political muscle by the hierarchy. Catholics, too, have proved more responsive to pastoral approaches. They expect church leaders to appeal to Gospel values, conscience and right reason. They hope bishops will accept honorable accommodations and, even when provoked, not stir up hostility. In the continuing dialogue with government, a conciliatory style which keeps Catholics united and cools the national distemper would benefit the whole church47

They concluded that what was now at stake was no longer an issue of liberty but of policy: the delicate task of balancing competing claims and rights in society. It is a challenge facing every leader in a pluralistic society. The editors warned also that the campaign for liberty runs the risk of abandoning two fundamental principles of Catholic political theology: the need to adjust rights claims one to the other, and the responsibility to coordinate competing rights for the common good. Citing Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, they reminded readers that the church does not seek to “impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to the faith.” The America editors end by observing that the liberty campaign “fails to admit that the administration’s Feb 10 solution, though it can be improved, fundamentally did what the Catholic social teaching expects governments to do—coordinate contending rights for the good of all.”48

47 48

Editorial, “Policy, Not Liberty,” America (March 5, 2012), 5. Ibid.

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What Would Newman Have Done? How might Newman have responded to the threats from Boko Haram terrorists in northern Nigeria or to the challenge of an apparently morally objectionable law like the United States’ Affordable Care Act of 2010? Would he have supported the methods that the American hierarchy has so far employed in defense of the rights of conscience? Would he be willing to make common cause with politicians in other to secure the supposedly threatened freedoms of American Catholics? To be sure, any answer is a kind of guess. But there are hints from his life and writings, perhaps surprising ones. First hint to be gleaned is that Newman would not have been surprised at all to find the church struggling against an adversarial cultural tide in the United States and against a militantly oppressive regime, as in the Sudan example, where organized terrorists employ violence to inhibit freedom of worship for Christians. Newman expected things like these to happen. The influence of the world, viewed as an enemy of our souls, consists in its hold upon our imagination. It seems to us incredible that any thing that is said every where and always can be false. And our faith is shown in preferring the testimony of our hearts and of Scripture to the world’s declarations, and our obedience in acting against them. It is the very function of the Christian to be moving against the world and to be protesting against the majority of voices.49

This countercultural Christian stance, he explains, has ever been the case right from the time of the Apostles up to this very day. “For Christ will never reign visibly upon earth; but in each age, as it comes, we shall read of tumult and heresy, and hear the complaint of good men marveling at what they conceive to be the especial wickedness of their own times.”50 Apropos the acts of discrimination and terror perpetrated against religious minorities on supposed religious grounds, a Newmanian perspective is gleaned from his sermon titled “St Paul’s Conversion viewed in Reference to his Office.” He observes that prior to Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus, Paul had sided with the violent party that sought to destroy the church. Saul (Paul) was the young man in the story who had acquiesced in the killing of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Stephen died praying God not to hold his murderers’ sin 49 50

U.S., 149. Ibid., 97.

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against them, while commending his soul into God’s hands. This prayer of a dying man, says Newman, was marvelously answered, resulting in the conversion of the “greatest Apostle,” because “the prayers of righteous men avail much. The first Martyr had power with God to raise the greatest Apostle. Such is the honour put on the first fruits of those sufferings upon which the Church was entering. Thus from the beginning the blood of the Martyrs was the seed of the Church.”51 Newman interprets the sin of Paul in persecuting Christians in a manner that might enlighten our understanding of the probable mindset of the perpetrators of religious terror. “Nothing is more difficult,” he explains, “as to enter into the characters and feelings of men brought up under a system of religion different from our own and discern how they may be most forcibly and profitably addressed, in order to win them over to the reception of Divine truths, of which they are at present ignorant.”52 Although a persecutor of Christians and therefore a sinner for so doing, Paul was shown mercy, despite the undeniable gravity of his sin, on account of his religious conscientiousness. Still, observe, he differed from other enemies of Christ in this, that he kept a clear conscience, and habitually obeyed God according to his knowledge. God speaks to us in two ways, in our hearts and in His Word. The latter and clearer of the informants St Paul knew little of; the former he could not but know in his measure (for it was within him), and he obeyed it. That inward voice was but feeble, mixed up and obscured with human feelings and human traditions; so that what his conscience told him to do, was but partially true, and in part was wrong. Yet still, believing it to speak God’s will, he deferred to it, acting as he did afterwards when he “was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” which informed him Jesus was the Christ. Hear his own account of himself:—“I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.”…He “verily thought within himself that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.”53

Regarding conscientious objections to provisions of the Affordable Care Act, an incident in Newman’s life could offer illumination. The loss of the pope’s temporal powers and possessions loomed. A spirited campaign was launched to mobilize Catholics across Europe to defend the pope. The Ultramontanists, who led the campaign, were determined on recruiting Newman to their cause on account of the considerable weight 51

P.S., 2, 96. Ibid., 100. 53 Ibid., 103-04. 52

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his name would lend, especially following the Apologia’s outstanding success. The papal defenders framed the matter in apocalyptic terms, warning that the very survival of the Church was at stake. Newman resisted being so used, preferring to keep his peace. An opportunity later presented itself wherein he addressed the matter. But he spoke out in a manner that would have startled not a few defenders of faith in the pope’s temporal powers. Bernard Ullathorne, Newman’s bishop, requested all his parishes on 7 October 1866 to pray for the Pope Pius IX and for sermons to instruct the “faithful on their obligations to the Holy See.” In the Oratory Church Newman preached the sermon, “The Pope and the Revolution.” on the threats to papal civil powers. He began the sermon by delving into history, recalling the historical connections between the papacy and the English people starting from the time of the country’s first evangelization. In his view, England had always been the object of special love and solicitude on the part of the popes. The pope had personally sent the first missionaries that evangelized England. More to the point, Pope Pius IX had special claims on the affections of English people for restoring their episcopacy in 1850 after a long hiatus. These deeds, plus the filial devotion which English Catholics owed the pope as his loyal spiritual children, made it especially fitting to pray for his troubled situation now.54 Newman further reasoned that Catholics ought to pray for the pope’s cause because the situation was still indeterminate; prayer could shape the outcome.55 Still, the people had better prepare their minds for either of two possibilities. Should the pope retain his temporal powers and possessions, all would be well again and they should have nothing to disquiet them. But should the pope suffer the loss of his temporal powers and possessions, what then? It is in his answer to this question that Newman is at his best in subtlety and becomes most instructive for us. According to Newman, Providence has an infinite number of means at its disposal for sustaining the church. True enough, Providence does at times adopt temporal means for this purpose, but the hand of Providence is not constrained to means which it freely adopts. “Our Lord maintains [the church] by means of this world, but these means are necessary to her only while He gives them; when He takes them away, they are no longer necessary. He works by means but He is not bound by means.”56 Using his keen sense of history, Newman further reasons that for several centuries, 54

O.S., 289-292. Napoleon III was withdrawing the French garrison from Rome, and Garibaldi thereby threatened the last of the papal territorial possessions. 55 Ibid., 309 -310. 56 Ibid., 312.

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Providence had allowed individual bishops to be sustained in their work through temporal power and possessions. Over time, they lost those possessions, or, to be more accurate, Providence withdrew them without any loss to the bishops of their spiritual authority and effectiveness. Should today it please Providence to let the pope suffer the loss of his temporal powers and possessions, he would not thereby be in any sense impaired in his duty as shepherd of the Lord’s flock. “Temporal power has been the means of the Church’s independence for a very long period; but, as her Bishops have lost it a long while, and are not the less Bishops still, so would it be as regards her Head, if he also lost his. The Eternal God is her refuge, and as He has delivered her out of so many perils hitherto, so will He deliver her still.”57 In conclusion he reassures his audience: “God will give us what we ask, or He will give us something better.”58 Looking back now, with the wisdom of hindsight, it is uncanny how prescient Newman was, though he must have sounded disloyal to Ultramontane-type Catholics of his day. This rehearsed incident does not mean to imply that Newman would have been unconcerned by the issues which disquiet the church in America today and agitate and threaten its members abroad. Rather, one imagines that Newman would have been very skeptical of political alliances even when they promise quick results and easy solutions. His anti-Erastrian distrust of any semblance of Caesaro-papism is rooted in a belief that such unions always end up in the political or ideological subordination of the Gospel to secular priorities. In tracing the development of his religious opinions in the Apologia, for example, Newman references the influence of the anonymously published volume, Letters on the Church by an Episcopalian, which was brought to his attention by a university colleague, Dr Whately, and which was commonly believed by the academic community at Oxford to have been written by Dr Whately himself, a surmise that Whatley never denied. The main points of the book are to insist that the church and state should be independent of each other, and to insist on the duty of protesting “against the profanation of Christ’s kingdom by the double usurpation, the interference of the Church in temporal, of the State in spirituals.” Newman came later to remark that “his work had a gradual, but a deep effect on me.”59 How deep this influence was can be gauged from what Newman later says of the driving force behind the Oxford Tractarian movement: “With Froude, Erastrianism,—that is, the union (so he viewed it) of Church and State— 57

Ibid., 313. Ibid., 316. 59 Apo., 13. 58

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was the parent, or if not the parent, the serviceable and sufficient tool of liberalism60….This principle deeply permeated both Froude and myself from the first, and recommended to us the course which things soon took spontaneously, and without set purpose of our own.”61 Besides, as a conscientious Christian, Newman believed that personal influence, not temporal alliances, was the means for propagating the truth. That is the means, he assures us, by which the Apostolic church gained the possession of the pagan world. Men persuade themselves, with little difficulty, to scoff at principles, to ridicule books, to make sport of the names of good men; but they cannot bear their presence: it is holiness embodied in personal form, which they cannot steadily confront and bear down: so that the silent conduct of a conscientious man secures for him from beholders a feeling different in kind from any which is created by the mere versatile and garrulous Reason.62

Elsewhere, he expresses much the same force of personal bearing, though differently, with characteristic aplomb: The heart is commonly reached not through theory but through the imagination, by means of direct impression, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.63

Conclusion Newman remains a reliable voice of religious earnestness, “an authority and a guide” for a recovery of an appropriate understanding of conscience and its imperative dictates. In his view, conscience is the voice, or an echo of the voice, of that supreme lawgiver who speaks to us, both in revelation and in nature, under a veil. It is the one and only God who 60

In his “Biglietto Speech,” Newman had famously said: “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 overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth.” Add., 64. “The Biglietto Speech” can also be found in John Henry Newman: Doctor of the Church, (Oxford: Family Publications, 2007), 314 as well as in Campaign, 395. 61 Apo., 39. 62 U.S., 92. 63 D.A., 293; Cited in G.A., 92.

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speaks. And as Newman remarks, following St Augustine, the divine will is the eternal law which commands our observance of the order of nature and forbids us from obstructing it in our conduct. The natural law is the eternal law as it is apprehended by the rational creature; as this apprehension exists within the bosom of the individual it is called conscience. It is conscience understood as commanding dictate, an imperative moral standard within each individual’s heart. Newman is thus a strong opponent of the ever present danger of a relativism that would reduce conscience to self-will. He abhors the relativization of conscience: Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience to dispense with conscience, to ignore a Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a licence to take up any or no religion, to take up this or that and let it go again, to go to church, to go to chapel, to boast of being above all religions and to be an impartial critic of each of them. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self-will.64

Personal conscience, the driving force behind Natural Religion, unmoored as if floating in solitary space, reaches for a remedy to its inherent weakness. It reaches for a clearer word from God, it seeks guidance, the remedy and fulfillment of which is Christianity,65 the religion which announces itself as an “express revelation.”66 For in Christianity, the vague and tentative intimations of conscience are confirmed by “simple and distinct facts and actions.”67 The individual is no longer left to herself, struggling to find moral direction; rather, she is guided by an infallible magisterium. This of course does not automatically resolve difficult moral questions but it certainly helps to simply matters. Other principles are needed to bring about greater moral clarity. Today we are challenged by Newman’s example to realize that there is really nothing unusually threatening or apocalyptic about the current situation facing Christians both in the United States and elsewhere across the world. He himself noted that Christians of earlier generations have always had to define and defend their faith in contrast to the prevailing cultural trend. Besides, he never thought that Christianity would ever 64

Diff., 2, 250. G.A., 487. 66 Dev., 79; G.A., 386-387. 67 U.S., 17. 65

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assume such a world-wide ascendency as might eventuate into having Christian moral rules as the civil law of nations. He would thus tend to see the church, not in the role of an enforcer of the divine order or law, but as its herald or witness in the midst of surrounding darkness. He believed firmly that it was through personal example, not civil alliances, that the early church won the conversion of the ancient empire of Rome. Similarly, through patient and diligent witnessing to the truth and beauty of the Christian life, we too may one day win over a majority of fellow citizens to Christianity. He would be suspect of any attempt to use state legislation to enforce the church’s moral teachings. For as C.S. Lewis observes regarding the Christian teaching on the permanence of marriage: “A great many people seem to think that if you were a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for everyone. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.”68 Employers who may find the contraceptive mandate in the United States Affordable Care Act 2010 morally objectionable may need to consider the following questions: Is an employer morally responsible for what his employee does with her wages? When one earns a salary, does one not immediately assume responsibility, good or ill, for whatever use one makes of one’s earnings? If the Affordable Care Act makes full healthcare coverage part of a worker’s wage package, why should the Catholic employer or any other employer who might object to the unwholesome use the employee’s wages feel morally responsible for her actions? Put another way, why should such an employer feel obligated to prevent an employee’s freedom to spend one’s wages as one chooses? Newman would distinguish between leaving someone in error and leading her into error. It would seem that rather than leading women into seeking abortions and other reproductive health procedures, such a coverage would only make more concrete the moral freedom of such adults. A freedom that cannot be utilized is no freedom at all. The woman who would rather have an abortion but who refrains from doing so simply because she cannot afford the cost, or who does not use the pill because she cannot afford it, has not yet been converted. Her external actions might be in conformity with the moral law but her heart is not. If God had withheld human freedom—what a horrible prospect—such that we never could sin, we would not be free moral agents at all. We would lack human dignity. Newman, ever the uncompromising realist, would teach us to take things as they are, not as we would rather have them. This was a bedrock 68

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 112.

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principle for him. He saw, in his time, that modernity was well-nigh arriving, that the course of history had taken a turn which was irreversible. Rather than fight its arrival, he decided to engage modernity’s complexities instead of wringing his hands in despair and pining fruitlessly for a return of the grand cohesion of the Middle Ages. We are now living in the era of postmodernity, a situation which radicalizes three key emphases of modernity, namely: recognition of our historicity, experimental knowledge as the ideal of knowledge, and tolerance of difference. Whereas modernity meant an insight into our historicity, postmodernity subjects everything we hold dear, values, religious and moral systems, etc., to the permutations of history. Whereas modernity insisted that all claims to knowledge must be empirically verifiable, postmodernity makes experience the measure of all things. While modernity emphasized a respectful toleration of difference, postmodernity means a celebration of otherness, that is, a deliberate openness to the experiences of hitherto marginalized constituencies: women, social and sexual minorities etc.69 The Affordable Care Act in the United States, for example, seems to be a clear recognition of women as full and equal citizens with men in the state. Going forward, we must expect more legislation of this sort, wherein being a woman is no longer a “pre-existing condition” precluding medical coverage. Neither the church nor society can bring back a foregone era, either by wishing it away or by whining. Finally, in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Newman was worried that his task of defending the Catholics of England from the charge of disloyalty to the English Crown was further complicated by the “chronic extravagances” and “vehement rhetoric” of the Ultramontanist party in the church.70 Similarly, the church’s social witness and influence is being undermined by the intemperate language of some well-meaning but misguided defenders of her rights and freedoms. The enormous goodwill and positive reactions that have continued to follow the young papacy of Pope Francis, on account of his earthiness and winsome humility, may well be a pointer to what influence the church might yet wield in the world, were it to become less self-referential and more engaging with the problems of the men and women of today.

69

Terrence Merrigan, “The Anthropology of Conversion,” Newman and Conversion, ed. Ian Ker (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 117-144 at 118. 70 Diff., 2, 177.

CHAPTER EIGHT THE ROLE OF MYSTERY IN EXPERIENCING GOD DR. ONO EKEH

John Henry Newman believed that it was necessary for religious precepts and doctrines to be intellectually simple and straightforward in order for someone to really apprehend and thus assent to the Christian faith.1 For this reason Newman had to deal with the problem of mysteries such as that of the Incarnation, the unity of body and soul, and the Trinity, all essential Christian doctrines in his estimation.2 Christianity, in his view, had to be simple enough for the intellectually ‘unsophisticated’ to grasp, not simply for the sake of gaining knowledge but for the sake of clarity.3 For worship to be authentic, mysteries need to be comprehensible 1

See G.A. passim. “I ask, then, as concerns the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, such as I have drawn it out to be, is it capable of being apprehended otherwise than notionally? Is it a theory, undeniable indeed, but addressed to the student, and to no one else? Is it the elaborate, subtle, triumphant exhibition of a truth, completely developed, and happily adjusted, and accurately balanced on its centre, and impregnable on every side, as a scientific view, ‘totus, teres, atque rotundus,’ [‘fully polished and rounded off’ from Horace] challenging all assailants, or, on the other hand, does it come to the unlearned, the young, the busy, and the afflicted, as a fact which is to arrest them, penetrate them, and to support and animate them in their passage through life? That is, does it admit of being held in the imagination, and being embraced with a real assent? I maintain it does, and that it is the normal faith which every Christian has, on which he is stayed, which is his spiritual life, there being nothing in the exposition of the dogma, as I have given it above, which does not address the imagination, as well as the intellect.” G.A., 126-27. 3 “There are then no terms in the foregoing exposition which do not admit of a plain sense, and they are there used in that sense; and, moreover, that sense is what I have called real, for the words in their ordinary use stand for things. The words, Father, Son, Spirit, He, One, and the rest, are not abstract terms, but concrete, and 2

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to all Christians. Using Newman as a guide, this essay will approach an interpretation or hermeneutics of mystery under three aspects: (1) mystery as presence and absence; (2) mystery as inevitable ambiguity; and (3) mystery as distinct from nonsense.

Mystery as Presence and Absence Newman chided those who reduced Christianity to a clear-headed rationalism and who mocked mysteries as if they were things that are “too deep for human reason, or inconsistent with their self-devised notions.”4 Mystery, however, is closely and primarily identified with the intellectual darkness that results from our human limitations. To proceed in this discussion of Newman and his view of mystery, one must explore how mysteries arise. The initial context for them is the interplay between presence and absence. In an 1838 sermon,5 Newman noted how we speak differently about people in their presence and absence. In the presence of people, speech is guided by the knowledge that they are aware of what is being said about them and how they would react. In their absence, he noted that one assumes a different mode of speech. For instance, we speak of the dead as absent, even though Christian faith in the afterlife accepts their actual presence there. With the dead, we believe that they are now living in a different state that evokes a sense of awe. This awe, inspired by absence, is multiplied in the case of the living God. Apply this to the subject before us, and you will perceive that there is a sense, and a true sense, in which the invisible presence of God is more awful and overpowering than if we saw it. And so again, the presence of Christ, now that it is invisible, brings with it a host of high and mysterious feelings, such as nothing else can inspire. The thought of our Saviour, adapted to excite images. And these words thus simple and clear, are embodied in simple, clear, brief, categorical propositions. There is nothing abstruse either in the terms themselves, or in their setting. It is otherwise of course with formal theological treatises on the subject of the dogma. There we find such words as substance, essence, existence, form, subsistence, notion, circumincession; and, though these are far easier to understand than might at first sight be thought, still they are doubtless addressed to the intellect, and can only command a notional assent.” G.A., 127-28. 4 “The Christian Mysteries,” P.S., I, 205. For background on this sermon see Thomas Poynor, “‘How Can These Things Be?’ Newman’s Anglican Sermon on ‘The Christian Mysteries,’” Newman Studies Journal 5/1 (Spring 2008), 51-62. 5 “Reverence, A Belief in God’s Presence,” P.S., V, 13-28, at 25.

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Chapter Eight absent yet present, is like that of a friend taken from us, but, as it were, in dream returned to us, though in this case not in dream, but in reality and truth.6

God’s mysteriousness here is tied to a sense of God’s presence, which overcomes the existential sense of God’s absence, thus pointing to certain characteristics of God that amaze the Christian. God’s mysteriousness has roots in His invisibility, not invisibility simply put, but invisibility experienced as absence leading to greater sense of presence. As will be explained, the mystery here is not the awe one feels, but the limits one experiences when one attempts to articulate the truth of experience. How can Christ be unquestionably absent, but so present that our being is dependent on him? The mysteriousness of Christ’s presence-in-absence elicits contradiction in speech: “See what an apparent contradiction, such as attends the putting any high feeling into human language!”7 This describes an essential characteristic of mystery, a situation or state of affairs that evokes wonder and evades precise articulation in human terms—in fact, it elicits an apparent contradiction when articulated. Mystery for Newman is more of a ‘negative’ attribute. It is not a word used primarily as a positive attribute or definition of God or for describing faith,8 although there are occasions in which Newman does speak of an “incommunicable attribute” of God.9 Newman invokes the word mystery 6

Ibid. Ibid., 26. On the subject of mystery and apparent contradictions, see James Anderson, “In Defense of Mystery: A Reply to Dale Tuggy,” Religious Studies 41(2005), 145-63; see also Steven D. Boyer, “The Logic of Mystery,” Religious Studies 43(2007), 89-102. 8 Karl Rahner may be viewed as a contrasting figure. Rahner had a positive view of mystery in the sense that the human subject and the transcendent ground of being we call God are both genuine mysteries. The mystery of the human person and the mystery of God were not simply hermeneutical ambiguities; rather, they referred to actual incomprehensibility. Rahner viewed God as an incomprehensible mystery. The holy mystery that is God, in Rahner’s scheme, is not God as a mysterious being, but God who in his being is understood as mystery. See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroads, 1998), 1-89. Rahner is concerned that we do not objectify God, who is absolute holy mystery, or claim to achieve mastery of God through knowledge. Newman, on the other hand, does not see acquisition of knowledge about God or clarity in expression about God as a threat to God because God has chosen to reveal himself. 9 G.A., 283. “This is the very aspect, in which God, as revealed in Scripture, is distinguished from that exhibition of His glory, which nature gives us: power, 7

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to signify that one has reached the limits of one’s expressive capabilities. Mystery in his usage primarily has to do with comprehension and the inability to articulate certain things that one encounters.10 Mystery in a theological sense, accordingly, is primarily a hermeneutical problem for Newman. For instance, he was very interested in the mystery of the union of the body and soul. The body and soul are, without question, distinct from each other, and yet form a unity. Newman asserted this as a fact of human existence. The problem, however, is the mystery that arises when we try to articulate this ‘unit’ of truth succinctly:11 Unless the soul were in every part, they would not form one body; so that the soul is in every part, uniting it with every other, though it consists of no parts at all. I do not of course mean that there is any real contradiction in these opposite truths; indeed, we know there is not, and cannot be, because they are true, because human nature is a fact before us. But the state of the wisdom, love, long suffering—these attributes, though far more fully and clearly displayed in scripture than in nature, still are in their degree seen on the face of the visible creation; but self-denial, if it may be said, this incomprehensible attribute of Divine Providence, is disclosed to us only in Scripture.” P.S., VII, 91. “First, let it be assumed as agreeable both to reason and revelation, that there are Attributes and Operations, or by whatever more suitable term we designate them, peculiar to the Deity; for instance, creative and preserving power, absolute prescience, moral sovereignty, and the like. These are ever included in our notion of the incommunicable nature of God.” Ari., 152. 10 “Mysteries in religion are measured by the proud according to their own comprehension, by the humble, according to the power of God; the humble glorify God for them, the proud exalt themselves against them.” P.S., IV, 283. 11 Another example of the problem of the articulation of mystery in the Christian life is the co-habitation of joy and fear or reverence in a believer. “How joy and fear can be reconciled, words cannot show. Act and deed alone can show how. Let a man try both to fear and to rejoice, as Christ and His Apostles tell him, and in time he will learn how; but when he has learned he will be as little able to explain how it is he does both, as he was before. He will seem inconsistent, and may easily be proved to be so, to the satisfaction of irreligious men, as Scripture is called inconsistent. He becomes the paradox which Scripture enjoins. This is variously fulfilled in the case of men of advanced holiness. They are accused of the most opposite faults; of being proud, and of being mean; of being over-simple, and being crafty; of having too strict, and, at the same time, too lax a conscience; of being unsocial, and yet being worldly; of being too literal in explaining Scripture, and yet of adding to Scripture, and superseding Scripture. Men of the world, or men of inferior religiousness, cannot understand them, and are fond of criticizing those who, in seeming to be inconsistent, are but like Scripture teaching.” P.S., V, 66-67.

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The soul, as the word is meant here, is the form of the body, thus the statement that the soul must be in every portion of the body; otherwise, it would not “form one body.” The soul is the reason why the thousands of parts that form the body are identified as part of a single person. So anything we encounter that does not house this soul is not part of the person in question. This for Newman is a fact of existence. The soul gives the body its definition and singular unity or uniqueness, but in so doing the soul is then at risk of being incorrectly defined as something divisible, which it is not. The issue here is a simple articulation of what is experienced, a problem of articulating a presence (the soul) in its apparent absence. The complexity of the body-soul union is such that any proposition or set of propositions describing the body-soul union necessarily involves contradictions. This language tangle is what makes the union of body and soul a mystery. It is not the fact of the union that is the mystery; the weakness of articulating the union makes it a mystery, as Newman uses the word mystery. Another example regards Christ. In speaking about Christ’s subservient actions as God and man, he observes: Thus He possessed at once a double assemblage of attributes, divine and human. Still he was all-powerful, though in the form of a servant; still He was all-knowing, though seemingly ignorant; still incapable of temptation, though exposed to it; and if anyone stumble at this, as not a mere mystery, but in the very form of language a contradiction of terms, I would have him reflect on those peculiarities of human nature itself, which I just now hinted at.13 (Emphasis mine)

Christ is both human and divine. He was creature in the form of a servant, all powerful and all-knowing, yet Christ appeared ignorant and 12

P.S., IV, 286. See also “You will say, How can He be present to the Christian and in the Church, yet not be on earth, but on the right hand of God? I answer, that the Christian Church is made up of faithful souls, and how can any of us say where the soul is, simply and really? The soul indeed acts through the body, and perceives through the body; but where is it? Or what has it to do with place?” P.S., VI, 127. 13 P.S., III, 166-67.

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was exposed to temptation. The grammar or logic of the case is contradictory. How can someone be all-knowing and yet appear ignorant? How can one be all-powerful and yet be exposed to temptation implying a form of weakness? But we do have Christ who in fact was the living embodiment of these contradictory ideas. The fact of the manner of Christ’s existence was real but the articulation of it yields mystery. The mystery of Christ emerges when the state of affairs is brought into articulation. It becomes a state of affairs that yields apparent contradictions linguistically when describing Jesus, fully human and fully divine. Here is mystery for Newman. The linguistic tangle rests on the assumption that there are truths given to us, either through human agency or by means of revelation. In these cases, then, we encounter a truth or state of affairs about which we have no doubt. But we are led to contradictions in our expressions; we get mystery. Mystery, then, is what it is by virtue of the inability of our reason to articulate the whole picture. Stated differently, mystery is the result of the inadequacy of human logic and grammar. If one’s reason did not strive to articulate and communicate its experiences, then no mysteries would arise because one would accept mysteries such as the body-soul union as plain facts. 14 It should be noted that the limits of reason’s articulating role are not the limits of genuine knowledge. When Newman speaks about the failure of comprehension, it has more to do with the inability to articulate fully a situation than with the ability to obtain a real apprehension of the situation. When one speaks of one’s human limitations as defining mystery, our innate ability to apprehend truth and reality is not being undermined. The limitations are with reference to articulating what is experienced. For instance, in speaking about the human state, Newman noted that there are “things in us which we know to be really and truly;” however, we are unable to put all we know “into words.” One is unable to communicate this knowledge to those who do “not experience” such things. These are a few, out of many remarks which might be made concerning our own mysterious state, that is, concerning things in us which we know to be really and truly, yet which we cannot accurately reflect upon and contemplate, cannot describe, cannot put into words, and cannot convey to another’s comprehension who does not experience them. Let a man consider how hardly he is able and how circuitously he is forced to 14

“It is certain, then, that experience outstrips reason in its capacity of knowledge, why then should reason circumscribe faith, when it cannot compass sight?” P.S., IV, 285.

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describe the commonest objects of nature, when he attempts to substitute reason for sight, how difficult it is to define things, how impracticable it is to convey to another any complicated, or any deep or refined feeling, how inconsistent and self-contradictory his own feelings seem, when put into words, how he subjects himself in consequence to misunderstanding, or ridicule, or triumphant criticism.15

Preferring description by reason over description by sight is impractical. Words cannot hope to capture the vividness and instantaneousness of sight. Nonetheless, the object of sight is not undermined because of one’s inability to express it verbally, much less express it correctly. By the same token, a phenomenological exploration of one’s feelings exposes the difficulty of the possibility of a clear explanation or description of what appears to be a limited, finite, and contained experience. Human language has its limits and must labor, or learn, to express better and more clearly the human experience. However, the limits of language do not undermine the fact of experiences and that of encounter or even apprehension. The fact that we cannot fully articulate an experience does not mean that it is not valid. It simply makes the experience a mystery in Newman’s sense. That which is present to us may still yet be beyond coherent articulation.

Mystery as Inevitable Ambiguity The presence of mystery is an essential component of human existence—mystery signals the human inability to comprehend and understand the whole. Newman sees mystery as a subjective state of affairs paradoxically ushered in by spiritual enlightenment. Mystery is initiated by absence, an absence that intensifies a presence. When this enlightenment and presence-in-absence of and by God encounters our thinking and reflective self, mystery arises. The mysteries of the Christian faith are not proposed or introduced to the faithful as mysteries qua mysteries. They are presented as what they are. The mystery of the Trinity is not mysterious in itself. The doctrine as revealed is clear, but its dimension as mystery is a function of our limitations. The mystery arises from the fact that our imperfect natures prevent us from attaining full knowledge of the revealing reality. And it is important to observe, that this doctrine of the Trinity is not proposed in Scripture as a mystery. It seems then that, as we draw forth 15

Ibid., 291.

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many remarkable facts concerning the natural world which do not lie on its surface, so by meditation we detect in Revelation this remarkable principle, which is not openly propounded, that religious light is intellectual darkness. As if our gracious Lord had said to us; “Scripture does not aim at making mysteries, but they are shadows brought out by the Sun of Truth. When you knew nothing of revealed light, you knew not revealed darkness. Religious truth requires you should be told something, your imperfect nature prevents your knowing all; and to know something, and not all,— partial knowledge,—must of course perplex; doctrines imperfectly revealed must be mysterious.”16 (Emphasis Newman’s)

The problem of mystery is essentially a problem of revelatory ambiguity. For a sharp and articulate writer and thinker as Newman is, it must have seemed improbable that God, the author of wisdom, would allow such ambiguity in essential doctrines. Thus one sees then that the burden or problem of mystery lies, not in the doctrine revealed, or in a defect in God or his revelatory capabilities, but in the human situation. Mysteries are a valid and necessary part of the Christian faith even though God’s revelation is clear and without ambiguity or confusion. But why then is there mystery? Why must it be in the nature of Christian doctrine to be unclear? Christianity depends on revelation, the fact that God calls and requires duties and obligations from us. Thus to enter into this world of divine instruction and fellowship, we must be provided with truths that are not readily apparent to human beings who do not naturally share God’s nature. This necessarily creates a situation in which we receive knowledge that is authentic and useful but seemingly incomplete. We only, at any given time, have a limited and partial grasp of the whole. Thus a situation exists in which the offer of great stores of knowledge meets the inability to accept all knowledge, thereby creating a situation of perplexity, or mystery. One then must accept mystery as an essential part of the human experience of transcendence, of religion in that sense. Mysteries “perplex.” They are, as noted above, “shadows brought out by the Sun of Truth.” The shadow is an incontrovertible indication of the true presence of its cause, a two-dimensional expression of a multidimensional reality. It reveals a truth, but it also points at a reality that transcends the expressive capability of shadows. The shadows of mystery are a revealed darkness—revealed in the sense that the shadow is evidence of its cause, light. Revelation is light. The call to revelation is an invitation to light and clarity temporarily mediated through intellectual darkness. 16

“The Christian Mysteries,” P.S., I, 210-11.

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This shadow of mystery exposes our present lack of capacity to absorb the fullness of truth. For Newman, “the light of the Gospel does not remove mysteries in religion.”17 The Gospels and the message and presence of Christ actually intensify the mystery of God and other religious mysteries. The Christian tends to focus on the shadows because of limited human capabilities even though, through Christ’s illumination, the Christian actually exists in a region of light.18 Spiritual “light” or revelation, that is, the knowledge imparted by the presence of the Holy Spirit, only serves to expose the Christian’s intellectual limitations: There is much instruction conveyed in the circumstance, that the Feast of the Holy Trinity immediately succeeds that of Whit Sunday. On the latter Festival we commemorate the coming of the Spirit of God, who is promised to us as the source of all spiritual knowledge and discernment. But lest we should forget the nature of that illumination which He imparts, Trinity Sunday follows, to tell us what it is not; not a light accorded to the reason, the gifts of the intellect; inasmuch as the Gospel has its mysteries, its difficulties, and secret things, which the Holy Spirit does not remove.19

It should be emphasized that it is not God’s intention to keep us in darkness. We do have the Holy Spirit who is given us for the precise purpose of spiritual enlightenment. But not even the Holy Spirit’s presence can automatically alleviate the ambiguity of revelation. This darkness relieves itself only through our spiritual development as one grows into a clearer sense of God’s will. While mystery is created by the interface of religious truth with our limited human nature, another way to understand mystery is that it is the interface between two types or orders of enlightenment: the light of reason and the light of the Holy Spirit. The light of reason is unable to fully interpret and translate the light of the Holy Spirit, thus creating an atmosphere of intellectual darkness. Mystery is not a restraint on one’s intellect but is rather recognition of human imperfection and inability to absorb truths superior to its capacity to receive.

17

Ibid., 205. See also Newman’s sermon, “Unreal Words,” P.S., V, 30. “We are no longer then in the region of shadows: we have the true Savior set before us, the true reward and the true means of spiritual renewal.” 19 P.S., I, 203. 18

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Mysteries Are Not Nonsense If mystery is a hermeneutical problem accordingly, then how does one distinguish between legitimate mystery and confusion? Mystery arises when our articulation of a situation contains apparent contradictory or incompatible notions. The contradictions and incompatibility are but apparent and do not reflect the situation itself. So when one encounters propositions that appear to contradict each other, is there a way to distinguish mystery from grammatical nonsense? How is it that one may legitimately claim that this one set of seemingly incompatible claims refers to a truth but that another set of seemingly incompatible claims does not? One can look to the issue of consistency in the advice from Newman. The contradictory notions that are describing a mystery are grammatical and logical issues. However, what helps one realize that religious propositions do not betray the mystery is the fact that they resonate and are consistent with the general body of revealed truths. Mystery, though a hermeneutical issue, arises only because the believer’s spiritual vision was opened to a world of faith and revelation. The believer encounters or develops a creed or body of belief statements that appear to her to contradict each other. However, if there is consistency between the truth of each statement and the general truths of revelation, then the mystery holds true and is neither confusion nor nonsense. Newman prized consistency, perhaps because it suggests internal integrity or wholeness. He noted that “the very test of a mature Christian, a true saint, is consistency in all things.”20 The perfection of a Christian’s unfolding life lies in the degree to which she is “consistent.” A man or woman serves with a perfect heart, who serves God in everything requiring duty: not here and there, but here and there and everywhere; not perfect indeed as regards its extent; not completely, but consistently.21 In his view scripture “reproves…inconsistency” and holds it as hypocrisy.22 The double-minded, insincere man is such because he is inconsistent.23 Consistency suggests internal integrity or wholeness. So, 20

“Judaism of the Present Day,” P.S. VI, 186. “The Testimony of Conscience,” P.S., V, 239. The sense of duty implies obedience to conscience, a motif throughout all of Newman’s writings. 22 P.S., VI, 303. 23 “On the other hand, a double mind, a pursuing other ends besides the truth, and in consequence an inconsistency in conduct, and a half-consciousness (to say the least) of inconsistency, and a feeling of the necessity of defending oneself to oneself, and to God, and to the world; in a word, hypocrisy; these are the signs of a merely professed Christian.” P.S., V, 224. 21

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for instance, St. Peter’s fault lay in his inconsistency. As Newman describes Peter’s fellow apostles, “They had not known Him all through His ministry. Peter, indeed, had confessed Him to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God; but even he showed inconsistency and changed of mind in his comprehension of this great truth.”24 Still, consistency was “not always the guarantee of truth.”25 Newman nonetheless believed that consistency in the Christian faith added a significant measure of assurance to the practice of the faith. Men who fancy they see what is not are more energetic, and make their way better, than those who see nothing; and so the undoubting infidel, the fanatic, the heresiarch, are able to do much, while the mere hereditary Christian, who has never realized the truth which he holds, is unable to do anything. But, if consistency of view can add so much strength even to error, what may it not be expected to furnish to the dignity, the energy, and the influence of Truth!26

This passage notes that consistency shows its natural usefulness in that it even strengthens those in error and energizes their religious ideas however wrong those ideas may be. If consistency in doctrine can strengthen and energize errors, how much more, Newman argues a fortiori, can consistency be expected to enhance the dignity, the energy and the influence of the Truth? In writing the Grammar of Assent, Newman’s desire was to defend the validity of belief or assent to a divine mystery that still remains beyond one’s full grasp. The argument in the Grammar turns on Newman’s distinction between apprehension and understanding. Apprehension is cognitive recognition of a reality, without necessarily resolving it. In apprehension, one may recognize a truth and identify it, but yet be aware that there is a depth to the truth that has not been yet grasped. Understanding, on the other hand, is recognition and resolution of an articulated situation, when one goes beyond simple recognition and identification.27 Mysteries cannot be understood, but they can be apprehended. Newman maintains that there is activity on two levels in the recognition of mystery. There is the apprehension of the state of affairs and then the conscious articulation of it. The articulation is essentially 24

Newman, “Warfare the Condition of Victory,” P.S., VI, 222-23. G.A., 323 26 Idea, xviii. 27 G.A., 19-20. 25

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linked to the situation, linked to the truth, and thus establishes its credibility. So not only must one consider consistency among the propositions that contain apparently incompatible notions, there must be a fundamental consistency between the state of affairs and the propositions. This foundational consistency distinguishes mystery from nonsense. This leads me to the question, whether belief in a mystery can be more than an assertion. I consider it can be an assent, and my reasons for saying so are as follows—A mystery is a proposition conveying incompatible notions, or is a statement of the inconceivable. Now we can assent to propositions (and a mystery is a proposition), provided we can apprehend them; therefore we can assent to mystery, for, unless we in some sense apprehended it, we should not recognize it to be a mystery, that is, a statement uniting incompatible notions. The same act, then, which enables us to discern that the words of the proposition express a mystery, capacitates us for assenting to it. Words which make nonsense, do not make a mystery.28

Mystery occurs at the level of propositions, and the propositions arise from a real encounter or experience which, when articulated, brings together incompatible notions. However, it is not every combination of incompatible notions that justify being a mystery. In fact, for the faithful, it would be important in a religion that demands belief in doctrines that sometimes seem contrary to human experience, to distinguish between mere assertions and genuine mysteries. Newman’s claim here is that a mystery is not simply inferred. It is not that one encounters an assertion or group of incompatible propositions and then works inferentially to the existence of a real thing that maps onto the assertion. Newman’s claim is that in the act of recognizing the proposition’s incompatible notions, one also intellectually registers the unity of the propositions referring to a real thing and recognize the presence of a mystery. The real thing or experience behind the propositions can also be referred to as a substrate, that is, something which undergirds the propositions. “Words which make nonsense, do not make a mystery,” he observed above; thus, one must keep in mind the underlying substrate or truth of mystery. Incompatible notions expressed in a proposition or in a system of propositions are grammatically and logically nonsense. However, incompatible notions expressed in propositions that emerge from and register a unified substrate reality, or the actual state of affairs, are mysteries. This substrate is something that is really apprehended, and this 28

G.A., 45-46.

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mode of apprehending roots propositions in actuality.29 Mystery for Newman has a basis in history and real faith. Thus the propositions that define a mystery must arise out of a religious state of affairs and cannot be random accumulations of notional ideas with no basis in a coherent historical or real event. Simply put, mystery in Newman’s usage arises at the level of articulating experience. The idea of mystery is not the product of a philosophical exercise. It is grounded in an experience of the divine mediated through revelation. Thus when one recognizes that something is a mystery, it is because one experiences, at some level, a unity behind the mystery. Thus one can be confident in consistency, rooted as it is in the recognition of the overall wholeness and integrity of the truth experienced and its descriptive propositions. It is mystery, not nonsense.

Conclusions In the discussion thus far, one sees that our limited capacity is the reason for the ambiguity of revelation that Newman terms mystery. The question then arises: In what sense does one understand our limited capacity or capabilities? Is it a physical limitation, i.e., that one simply cannot literally see or hear spiritual things and can only translate them analogically or allegorically? Or is the limitation intellectual and spiritual so that even if one could see or hear spiritual things, one still would have this limited capability to grasp the whole of revelation? There is a spiritual aspect to our lack of capability but the present discussion will focus on our intellectual capacity to receive revelation. This focus on intellectual capacity brings the discussion to the intersection of faith and reason in Newman’s purview. The problem of the previous section was that mysteriousness arises from the situation in which complete revelation interacts with a limited capacity to receive. This can 29

Real apprehension for Newman was a cognitional recognition of a concretely existing individual thing as opposed to notional, universal or formal things. Ultimately, formal or notional statements have their roots in the apprehension of individual things. “Now, there are propositions, in which one or both of the terms are common nouns, as standing for what is abstract, general, and non-existing, such as ‘Man is an animal….’ These I shall call notional propositions, and the apprehension with which we infer or assent to them, notional. And there are other propositions, which are composed of singular nouns, and of which the terms stand for things external to us, unit and individual, as ‘Philip was the father of Alexander,’ ‘the earth goes round the sun,’…these I shall call real propositions and their apprehension real.” GA, 9-10.

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also be understood in terms of the issue of faith and reason. Christian revelation comes to us exclusively by means of faith, while reason represents the natural human capacity to know and understand our world. Thus when revelation through faith meets the natural human capacity to undertake reasoning, mystery or ambiguity in revelation arises. To understand further, one must first see how he conceives of the relationship between faith and scientific reasoning. And thus we are led on to consider, how different are the character and effect of the Scripture notices of the structure of the physical world, from those which philosophers deliver. I am not deciding whether or not the one and the other are reconcilable; I merely say their respective effect is different. And when we have deduced what we deduce by our reason from the study of visible nature, and then read what we read in His inspired word, and find the two apparently discordant, this is the feeling I think we ought to have on our minds;--not an impatience to do what is beyond our powers, to weigh evidence, sum up, balance, decide, and reconcile, to arbitrate between two voices of God,--but a sense of utter nothingness of worms such as we are; of our plain and absolute incapacity to contemplate things as they really are; a perception of our emptiness, before the great Vision of God; of our “comeliness being turned into corruption, and our retaining no strength;” a conviction, that what is put before us, in nature or in grace, though true in such a full sense that we dare not tamper with it, yet is but an intimation useful for particular purposes, useful for practice, useful in its department, “until the day-break and the shadows flee away,” useful in such a way that both the one and the other representation may at once be used, as two languages, as two separate approximations towards the Awful Unknown Truth, such as will not mislead us in their respective provinces. And thus while we use the language of science, without jealousy for scientific purposes, we may confine it to these; and repel and reprove its upholders, should they attempt to exalt it and to “stretch it beyond its measure.” In its own limited round it has its use, nay, maybe to fill a higher ministry, and stand as a proselyte under the shadow of the temple; but it must not dare profane the inner courts, in which the ladder of Angels is fixed forever, reaching even to the Throne of God, and “Jesus standing on the right hand of God.”30

Notice that Newman sets up a dichotomy between the truth of scripture with respect to the physical world and the truth we gain from philosophers. Given that Newman is a nineteenth century Victorian, we can include science in his understanding of philosophy. Philosophy deduces facts from the visible world, while scripture provides truths by means of inspiration. 30

P.S., II, 208-09.

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Both philosophy and inspired scripture are “voices of God.” However, the knowledge from both sources appears “discordant.” There is an apparent disharmony between them, and this is a good thing for us to feel. Instead of overconfidence in our ability to arbitrate between both voices, we should feel overwhelmed by both, which in turn should lead to an appropriate reverence. Scripture and science are the contrasting terms that describe faith and reason. Science, or reason, gains its truths about the world from observation. Scripture speaks of an inspired truth which is revealed and which flourishes in the hearts of the faithful.31 Because they are both “voices of God,” both languages of truth are different approximations towards the one truth. Science, or philosophy in a general sense, can probe into the nature of things. It is a genuine path to truth but is limited in scope. The use of reason is valid within the sphere of reason, but reason is out of its depth when it comes to the issues of religious mystery. Newman decried any attempt to solve spiritual mysteries by use of philosophy.32 The human intellect takes us very far in our knowledge, but not far enough, especially when the dimension of the divine is introduced. Religious knowledge, such as knowledge of the divine, is not simply a quantitative extension of knowledge; rather, it is a qualitatively new dimension of truth. In the presence of such a qualitatively new and unfamiliar dimension, the human intellect is at a loss in its approach to the data of this new world. However, even though the human intellect fails in the presence of this new dimension of faith experience, the role of the intellect is not diminished. The intellect, in the presence of mystery, takes on the new role of worship. In the very impressive Psalm from which these words are taken, this is worth noticing among other things,--that the inspired writer finds in the mysteries without and within him, a source of admiration and praise. “I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Thy works.” When Nicodemus heard of God’s wonderful working, he said, “How can these things be?” But holy David glories in what the natural man stumbles at. It awes his heart and imagination, to think that God sees him, 31

“God does good to those who are good and true of heart; and He reveals His mysteries to the believing. The earnest heart is the good ground in which faith takes root, and the truths of the Gospel are the dew, the sunshine, and the soft rain, which make that heavenly seed to grow.” P.S., VI, 136. 32 “Attempt to solve this prediction, according to the received theories of science, and you will discover their shallowness. They are unequal to the depth of the problem.” P.S., II, 210.

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wherever he is, yet without provoking or irritating his reason. He has no proud thoughts rising against what he cannot understand, and calling for his vigilant control. He does not submit his reason by an effort, but he burst forth in exultation, to think that God is so mysterious.33

At the limitations of reason, where our intellect is confounded by mystery, we should not let our perplexity “provoke or irritate reason.” In this situation, the human intellect can learn by submission in reverence. The bursting “forth in exultation” emphasizes Newman’s devotional focus that in the presence of God’s wonders, the proper response is devotion and worship.34 The submission of intellect is not a call to restrict the intellect but an invitation to the intellect to see and marvel at the wonders of the divine. In doing so, one recognizes and senses the wholeness of God and the narrowness of our comprehension. Nonetheless, it is the case that we worship in knowledge and light responding to what we know clearly and sense darkly. Thus the mysteries are accessible even if obscured due to our intellectual limits. As much as Newman recognized and proclaimed the necessity of mystery as part of the Christian faith, it was important to him that mystery not be used as an excuse to diminish devotional curiosity and theological investigations. Newman noted: But, however this contrast of usage is to be explained, the Creeds are enough to show that the dogma may be taught in its fullness for the purposes of popular faith and devotion without directly insisting on that mysteriousness, which is necessarily involved in the combined view of its separate propositions. That systematized whole is the object of notional assent, and its propositions, one by one, are the objects of real.35 33

P.S., IV, 282. “Above all, let us pray Him to draw us to Him, and to give us faith. When we feel that His mysteries are too severe for us, and occasion us to doubt, let us earnestly wait on Him for the gift of humility and love. Those who love and who are humble will apprehend them;—carnal minds do not seek them, and proud minds are offended at them;—but while love desires them, humility sustains them. Let us pray Him then to give us such a real and living insight into the blessed doctrine of the Incarnation….Blessed indeed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed. They have their reward in believing; they enjoy the contemplation of a mysterious blessing, which does not even enter into the thoughts of other men; and while they are more blessed than others, in the gift vouchsafed to them, they have the additional privilege of knowing that they are vouchsafed it.” P.S., VI, 151-52. 35 G.A., 134-35. 34

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The faith may be taught and explained “without directly insisting on that mysteriousness” that one views in one’s experience with the divine. In other words, in the encounter with God, the Christian’s mind articulates a system of propositions to express the encounter with the knowledge that the fullness of what is encountered cannot be expressed in words. Nonetheless, it is accepted that there is a consistent and useful truth that emerges in one’s intellectual probing of the encounter with God. Mystery temporarily interrupts our understanding of God, but the interruption is intended to lead us into a deeper encounter with the divine. The idea of mystery, as we have seen in Newman’s writings, is very much a hermeneutical and phenomenological problem. The fact that the Oneness of God, or the Trinity, is a mystery is not an apophatic statement but a reflection of human limitations. This essay began with the concern Newman had for the faithful who are intellectually unsophisticated. His concern was to explain mystery in such a way as to distinguish it from nonsensical assertions, thus preventing the faithful from falling into superstition while yet maintaining fervent devotion. He wants the believer to have confidence in her apprehension of a mysterious truth. Even if there are intellectual dimensions that perplex her mind, she can be confident that her words of worship are not words without meaning.

CHAPTER NINE THE ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION: A NEWMAN STRATEGY FOR HOLINESS SR. MARIE BRINKMAN, SCL

Newman’s life virtually dramatizes the significance of two ruling insights into the significance of material reality: the economy of nature; and analogy as a sign of Divine presence in the order of creation. The former brought him to a sacramental understanding of the sensible reality of material things that he half doubted in early years. The latter, the role of analogy, became a revelatory language of ordinary experience. It was captured by the memories of acquaintances and influences that he recorded in the Apologia, the 1864 classic that was a review of his intellectual and religious development written under pressure of a questioned integrity. Attachment to friends and fondness for places that shaped his thinking revealed something deeper than sentiment. The years at Littlemore,1 however, showed him in search of discernment that would test his very mettle. When, on a frequent walk in the woods after lunch, his companions saw him stop for a few moments to play the violin he often carried, they knew the music signified peace of mind and a growing resolve about the momentous decision he was soon to make. In the Introduction to an 1868 edition of Parochial and Plain Sermons, W. J. Copeland provided another measure of the power of Newman’s distinctive imagination. He wrote that retrospect was needed to understand the degree in which response to the sermons “have acted, like leaven, on the mind and language and literature of the Church in this Country, and

1

After Newman left Oxford lodgings in 1842, he took up residence with companions in the cottages at Littlemore, a village just south of Oxford, toward the end of which he wrote the “Essay on Development” to confirm a growing conviction that he must, in conscience, become a Roman Catholic. See E. J. Miller’s Introduction to this volume for the companions’ names.

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have marked an era in her History."2 Neither Copeland nor Newman could have anticipated that such impact from his writings would have both widened and deepened a century and a half later. Exploration of Newman’s employ of imagination suggests one reason for such impact. Newman’s imagination is analogical. What is called here an analogical image is no metaphor, imaginatively “standing in” for a complex idea. Nor is it a simile, born of mental comparison that wants a concrete form. That it is a verbal image, spoken or written, calls on our sense of sight and power of imagination to properly engage it, of course. In David Tracy’s philosophical analysis, an analogical image of a religious reality is not a limit-concept or, if you will, a limit-image of a transcendental mystery or wonder of nature.3 Nor is it a measure of or parallel to our understanding of what is revealed; rather, it is an opening of the mind to the depth of what one knows or believes of a given fact or truth. More precisely then, what is it? Primarily, an analogical image evokes the thought of a relationship. This is, in fact, its source. Most often this is between persons, but it can occur between a natural phenomenon and something so abstract as an era. A listener or reader recognizes or apprehends the terms of relationship and its meaning, though the speaker or writer’s intention may not yet be fully clear. Parables of Jesus come to mind. But realization follows, given a desire to understand. With an open mind, a believer perceives that the image is revelatory. When this experience repeats itself in faithful practice of reading Newman’s prose with open mind and imagination, what was once notional belief can become, by degree, real assent. This is what Copeland meant by the influence of Newman’s sermons on readers. His sermons seems to generate a quest for, a leaven for, holiness in their readers. As a test case of the role of analogical imagery in Newman’s sermons, take the eschatological mystery of the final judgment, whether that of the individual after death or the last judgment of us all. Having considered the parable of the foolish virgins excluded from the marriage feast, Newman asks, Is this all that we are told, all that is allowed to us, or done for us? Do we know only this that all is dark now, and all will be light then; that now God is hidden, and one day will be revealed? That we are in a world of sense, and are to be in the world of spirits? For surely it is our plain wisdom, our 2

J. W. Copeland, Preface to P.S. I, viii. See David Tracey, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Crossroads, 1981), chapter 9.

3

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bounden duty, to prepare for this great change; – and if so, are any directions, hints, or rules given us how we are to prepare? Now observe, that it is scarcely a sufficient answer to this question to say that we must strive to obey him, and so to approve ourselves to him. This indeed might be enough, were reward and punishment to follow in the mere way of nature, as they do in this world. But, when we come steadily to consider the matter, appearing before God, and dwelling in his presence, is a very different thing from being merely subjected to a system of moral laws, and would seem to require another preparation, a special preparation of thought and affection, such as will enable us to endure His countenance, and to hold communion with Him as we ought. Nay, and, it may be, a preparation of the soul itself for His presence, just as the bodily eye must be exercised in order to bear the full light of day, or the bodily frame in order to bear exposure to the air.4

The analogy intensifies in another paragraph that both reassures the believer even as it makes new demands. Moving beyond reasoning about how God will judge our perfections or lack thereof, Newman argues that Scripture precludes the necessity of it, by telling us that the Gospel Covenant is intended…to prepare us for this future glorious and wonderful destiny, the sight of God….And in the worship and service of Almighty God, which Christ and His apostles have left to us, we are vouchsafed means, both moral and mystical, of approaching God, and gradually learning to bear the sight of Him. 5

It is not unusual for Newman to extend an analogy to such length, particularly if his source is a parable from Scripture. But consider the extent of his terms. Is he not questioning the common conception of judgment that measures our obedience to the moral law as we understand it? If our preparation for our final judgment be a mere moral test, we might indeed be assured of salvation but would have never conceived the possibility—much less exhortation—to holiness. As Newman indicated above, the natural law of our reasoning, that trains us to obey the laws of society, trains us also to expect “reward and punishment to follow in the mere way of nature, as they do in this world."6 But passing a test is not Newman's concern. He is addressing those who profess Christianity, whose guiding symbol is the Cross. Their destiny is the sight of God, living eternally in his presence. He continues: 4

P.S., V, “Worship, a Preparation for Christ’s Coming,” 6-7. The use of the terms real and notional in this essay are explained more fully in the Norris essay. 5 Ibid., 7. 6 Ibid., 6.

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Chapter Nine I come then to church, because I am an heir of heaven. It is my desire and hope one day to take possession of my inheritance: and I come to make myself ready for it, and I would not see heaven yet, for I could not bear to see it. I am allowed to be in it without seeing it, that I may learn to see it ….We know not where we are, but we have been bathing in water, and a voice tells us that it is blood. Or we have a mark signed upon our foreheads, and it spake of Calvary.7

In a study of Newman's literary personality, Fernande Tardivel analyzed a language that describes a world of images reflecting an attitude that does not permit any resting in an identity between this physical [world] and spiritual realms that might suggest a comprehension of the spiritual. Description by images shuns explaining reality by syllogism or demonstration; the path is to be by analogy and correspondence. This attitude toward reality rests on the belief that the material world gives knowledge of God but only in shadow and vestige. Tardivel proposed that, though unconsciously, such an attitude governed Newman's choice of images. The harmony they may symbolize one moment can evaporate in the next metaphor, for shadows are meant to flit. Tardivel rightly claims, I think, that this reading of Newman's images captures his power of nuance, his subtlety of reason, his sensitivity to impressions of sense. It can, she says, with less harshness than some attempts at logical analysis, account for a puzzling ambivalence, sometimes an apparent contradiction, in the expressions of his thought. Further, it substantiates the thesis that a heavily traditional fund of images becomes in Newman an extremely personal language, analogous to the contours of his mind.8 With the latter statement one can readily agree. But so far, Tardivel leaves unanswered questions of how the linguistic phenomenon she describes can happen, and how authentic and flexible a language can be that corresponds to the absolutes of faith as revealed and as Newman professes. A statement from the Grammar of Assent may illustrate language analogous to the contours of Newman’s mind. It helps to answer the question of how authentic statements can both accurately reflect experience of one's own mind in action and lead to speculation on what the informal inference that Newman calls the illative sense can tell us. For the working of the illative sense, Newman claims not absolute certitude but 7

Ibid., 10-11. Fernande Tardivel, La Personnalité Litteraire de Newman (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne et fils, 1937), 117. See Ch. 2, “Newman Critique Littéraire,” 202-225 and 221-222.

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the beginning of a search dependent on trust in the mind’s capacity for truth and on the probative force of accumulated antecedent probabilities. The relationship here, of speaker or writer to listener or reader, is common to Newman and enables him to express in images and explain in relevant ways his claim to be no more than an educator. I am what I am, or I am nothing. I cannot think, reflect, or judge about my being, without starting from the very point which I aim at concluding. My ideas are all assumptions, and I am ever moving in a circle (My emphases). I cannot avoid being sufficient for myself, for I cannot make myself anything else, and to change me is to destroy me. If I do not use myself, I have no other self to use.9

The contention being argued is that the analogical image, as Newman uses it, is a personal language that clarifies what he says for his audience or reader rather than obscures it, and Newman drives it home with a force that an ordinary analytic statement or figure of speech could not achieve. It does so for these two reasons: (a) The image depends upon experience of a relationship between its terms—frequently one human being and another; oneself and God; oneself and nature or beauty; (b) The listener or reader recognizes in a new way the meaning of those terms; realization of the significance of both terms and their relationship sooner or later sinks into the mind and imagination and what has been a notional fact or truth assumes a reality it did not have before.10 Newman’s use of analogical images is calculated to bring someone to the doorstep of a real assent to a religious truth. Newman was a realist whose imagination served his own search for truth and therefore set the strategy how he would write in order to lead others to embrace a truth. Calculated imagery fired his sermons and much of his other prose writing. Observe the way Newman imbedded an image in the context of prose that aims to explain his understanding of truth and what it requires of the mind: Truth is the object of Knowledge of whatever kind; and when we inquire what is meant by Truth, I suppose it is right to answer that Truth means facts and their relations, which stand towards each other pretty much as subjects and predicates in logic. All that exists, as contemplated by the human mind, forms one large system or complex fact, and this of course resolves itself into an indefinite number of particular facts, which, as being portions of the whole, have countless relations of every kind, one towards 9

G.A., 347. Ibid., 351-353 passim.

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another. Knowledge is the apprehension of these facts, whether in themselves or in their mutual positions and bearings…. Now it is not wonderful that, with all its capabilities, the human mind cannot take in this whole vast fact at a single glance, or gain possession of it at once. Like a short-sighted reader, its eye pores closely, and travels slowly, over the awful volume which lies open for its inspection.11

We learn also from this passage that reality is complex and that it is composed, as it were, of facets that stand to the grasp of the total complex reality as “facts,” in Newman’s language. We cannot take in the whole all at once. Wholeness is grasped through a range of particular acts that can be captured as “facts” in a succession of images. Successive images of ordinary religious life illustrate, in the following excerpt, the interaction of his intellect and his faith. The whole suggests, as well, the power of imagination in his describing our progress to holiness. In an early sermon, “Reverence, Belief in God's Presence,” he queries: What, you will ask, are acts of faith? Such as these, – to come often to prayer, is an act of faith;…to behave in God's House otherwise than you would in a common room, is an act of faith; to come to it on week-days as well as Sundays, is an act of faith;…to come often to the most Holy Sacrament, is an act of faith; and to be still and reverent during that sacred service, is an act of faith. These are all acts of faith, because they all are acts such as we should perform, if we saw and heard Him who is present, though with our bodily eyes we see and hear Him not. But…if we thus act, we shall, through God's grace, be gradually endued with the spirit of His holy fear. We shall in time, in our mode of talking and acting, in our religious services and our daily conduct, manifest, not with constraint and effort, but spontaneously and naturally, that we fear Him while we love Him.12

What is being called the analogical image is not simply a strategy peculiar to Newman's sermons directed to ordinary parishioners, it is also employed in sermons directed to the university. Using as models of discipleship those who followed Christ in his lifetime, one of the finest examples is Mary, Jesus’ mother. It is found in his celebrated Oxford University sermon, “The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine.” Newman introduces his subject with the model of Mary in her contemplative use of reason, moved by her faith, expressed in her question to the angel calling her to be the mother of God: "How can this be since I know not man?" 11 12

Idea, 45. P.S., V, 28.

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In this brief scene, Mary is the perfect analogue for the Christian who cannot realize the power of God. Her question and thoughtful reply both mirror and exceed the seeking Christian’s questions of God, facing not infrequently an insoluble dilemma. Newman chooses her for many reasons. She is our pattern of Faith, both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she developes it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolizes to us, not only the faith of the unlearned, but of the doctors of the Church also.13

This sermon traces the triumph of the Church, that is, Christ’s new Kingdom, over the wisdom of the world. (In similar fashion and analogically, Paul represents the relationship of the believer to the Body of Christ, the Church.) From beginning to end, the reader recognizes the nature of that relationship in the triumph of the Church over the power of the world. In the total paragraph of 55 lines, Newman brings the reader to realize he is speaking of "the development of an idea." It is the idea of Christianity. Without referring to any doctrine, the image and philosophy of the cross dominate the paragraph; and the attentive reader is left with an unprecedented realization of the source and end of the commitment of his or her life. What may have been, more or less, a notional assent to the teachings of one’s faith has now taken on the marks of what Newman means by real assent. These then are the criteria of what constitute a genuine analogical image: (i) source of the image in a meaningful relationship, (ii) recognition of the terms of analogy that constitute the image, (iii) realization of the significance of the analogical relationship for one’s understanding or faith, and (iv) the effect of a deepened or real assent. These are best clarified in images of particular doctrines that Newman considered pivotal to the whole Christian Idea. It is not too much to say that Newman's purpose in the following extended image is to bring his hearers to real apprehension of what baptism and membership in the Body of Christ really entail: how we actually “fill up” what remains in the life and suffering of our Redeemer. The promise of salvation is not enough. We must somehow realize that 13

U.S., 313.

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now, having been baptized even as an infant, the sacrament commits us to participation in Christ's death upon the cross. This involves, of course, a mystery. But the beginning of its realization in the believer, though incomplete, entails progression in holiness. It assumes the desire to further understand what union with Christ may demand of us. Such realization is, in fact, revelatory. It tends to deepen the believer’s assent from an initial notional level to what Newman called real assent. Moreover, it brings the attentive listener to see the intimate relationship between daily life, its responsibilities and joys, above all its sufferings, in the light of a life in promise. It links what we call heaven and earth in inexplicable ways, not to be revealed here except to eyes of faith. Many of Newman’s analogical images concretize the reality of this relationship. It unfolds on a journey not to be explained by statements of doctrine but lived out in sacramental ritual and human relationships. Few examples must suffice. Who would consider something so privately and individually experienced as the Sacrament of Reconciliation to impact the lives of those we do not know at all? If we wish it and ask God to effect it, our humility in confessing sin and realizing its cause in ourselves can touch the spirit of another member of Christ's body who needs such charity and hope on the journey to eternal life. Least of all, who would dream of an intimate relationship with that mysterious Person of the Trinity we call the Holy Spirit? Such questions as these touch on the matter of Newman’s weekly sermons to the parishioners of St. Mary who included learned dons, Oxford students, wage-earners, parents of toddlers, and the not yet baptized. That Newman considered the mystery of the Incarnation central to the history and major doctrines of the Church is well-known. He saw that in Scripture and Tradition few words expressed the paradox of its breadth and depth. From the Gospel of John and from the Creed, quoted in the sermon on the Incarnation for the feast of Christmas, we read: Sight and hearing superseded the multitude of words; faith dispensed with the aid of lengthened Creeds and Confessions. There was silence. "The Word was made flesh;” "I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;" sentences such as these conveyed everything….But when the light of His advent faded, and love waxed cold, then there was an opening for objection and discussion, and a difficulty in answering. Then misconceptions had to be explained, doubts allayed, questions set at rest, innovators silenced.14

14

P.S., II, 27-28.

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One notes that Newman indirectly alludes above to the necessary role of Church Councils to clarify, define, and teach the beliefs that became the foundations of the subsequent church’s tradition of proclamation, developed from the Scriptures and apostolic action through which the church grew. Newman uses images of conflict and struggle that were common in his sources of Scripture and the evangelical tradition. The story of the postApostolic Church was one of internal and external conflict. The overthrow of the wisdom of the world was one of the earliest, as well as the noblest of the triumphs of the Church; [sic] after the pattern of her Divine Master, who…opposed Himself to the world’s power. St. Paul, the learned Pharisee, was the first fruits of that gifted company, in whom the pride of science is seen prostrated before the foolishness of preaching. From his day to this the Cross has enlisted under its banner all those great endowments of mind, which in former times had been expended on vanities, or dissipated in doubt and speculation….In the course of time the whole mind of the world…was absorbed into the philosophy of the Cross, as the element in which it lived, and the form upon which it was moulded.15

Even such fragments as these suggest the manner in which the theory of development of doctrine took shape in Newman’s mind. All comes from individual lives whose choices become habits of fidelity, maintained at great cost of safety of life in a pagan culture and of respect within their own communities of belief. None had credentials for their unauthorized teaching and bold actions. Newman raises personal experience into evidence of what had been foretold and promised. And this world of thought is the expansion of a few words, uttered, as if casually, by the fishermen of Galilee….Reason has not only submitted, it has ministered to Faith; it has illustrated its documents; it has raised illiterate peasants into philosophers and divines; it has elicited a meaning from their words which their immediate hearers little suspected….This is a phenomenon proper to the Gospel, and a note of divinity. Its half sentences, its overflowings of language, admit of development; they have a life in them which shows itself in progress; a truth, which has the token of consistency; a reality, which is fruitful in resources; a depth, which extends into mystery: for they are representations of what is actual and has a definite location and necessary bearings and a meaning in the great system of things.”16

15 16

U.S., 314-15 Ibid., 317-18.

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This sermon finds in Mary the analogue of the ordinary believer, not infrequently facing a humanly insoluble dilemma. Such was hers in rearing, with Joseph, her Divine Child. In her adolescent years, scarcely more than a child, she has learned from Scripture and contemplation the value of few words and the necessity of reasonable questions. This young virgin asked only how she would or could become a mother. “She symbolizes to us, not only the faith of the unlearned but of the Doctors of the Church also, who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the Gospel.”17 That Mary was “full of grace,” as the brief account of the angel’s message tells us, is much more significant than daily repetition of it reveals. In a tradition of belief, if notion and image, abstraction and metaphor, do not together continue to mean the same truth, both ways of expression lose their power of communicating what was once experienced as true by a whole community. Unless the universal abstract statements and the traditional symbols—of sacrament, devotion, or authority— continue to awaken the imaginative memory and illuminate the understanding of the individual believer, the words lose their meaning and value for vast numbers. Only the continuous informing of the tradition by personal experience—the nourishing and cultivating it with attention and effort—will keep its statement and ritual and symbolism alive. This was Newman's fundamental conviction. But, curiously, it was not for the sake of the Tradition that he believed, spoke, and acted as he did. Not verbal content of what is “handed down” but what is, that to which the words point, becomes the object of Fidelity; no extractable content of doctrine or ceremony was the subject of his sermons. He spoke of the continuing individual experience of present living truths, taking doctrinal and sacramental shapes as demanded by their character. This existential quality lay behind Dean Church’s observation that Newman’s sermons were “plain, direct, unornamented, clothed in English that was only pure and lucid…of an absolute and burning faith in God and His councils, in His love….They made men think of the things which the preacher spoke of, and not of the sermon or the preacher.”18 If symbols or analogical images really express knowledge, the 17

Ibid., 313. R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970), 93. Newman received Church’s permission to dedicate the 1871 edition of U.S. to him, then Dean of St. Paul’s in London. Newman’s appreciation of Church is palpable. “In the February of 1841, you suffered me day after day to open to you my anxieties and plans,” and how could I “lose the memory of your great act of friendship, as well as justice and courage” when Proctors Church and Guillemard 18

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“seeing” is not merely sensible, or fanciful, or notional, but an act of apprehending a Person. God’s coming to us in our own nature, our own vesture, so to speak, of flesh and bone and blood and needs, demands of us not only labor and resource, but imagination. Realization of such a wonder, “was a seeming contradiction,” Newman admits, “how good men were to desire His first coming, yet be unable to abide it; how the Apostles feared, yet rejoiced after His resurrection.” Peter’s learning the cost of faithful love with Christ’s help; Job’s declaring with full fervor, “Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him,”19 with these examples of a wholeness and depth of vision we ordinarily lack, Newman gives reason for such trust. Indeed, his patience and insight are signs of familiarity with God’s ways: Before he comes, a certain space must be gone over; all the Saints must be gathered in and each Saint must be matured. Not a grain must fall to the ground; not an ear of corn must lose its due rain and sunshine. All we pray is, that He would please to crowd all this into a short space of time;…that he would accomplish…the circle of His Saints, and hasten the age to come….Indeed it cannot be otherwise. All God's works are in place and season; they are all complete. As in nature, the structure of its minutest portions is wrought out to perfection, and an insect is as wonderful as Leviathan; so, when in His providence He seems to hurry, He still keeps time, and moves upon the deep harmonies of truth and love….When then we pray that He would come, we pray also that we may be ready;…that He may draw us while He draws near us, and makes us the holier the closer He comes.20

stopped the University Convocation action of 13 February 1845 against Tract 90 with their nobis procuratoribus non placet veto. Into old age Newman visited the Dean whenever he went to London. Church’s obituary in The Guardian when Newman died amounts to loving esteem. See L. D., 32:601-04. J. D. Earnest and G. Tracey, the editors of the 2006 edition of the U.S., summarize Newman’s analogy and Church’s support quite simply: “The faith of the ordinary believer is shown to be the foundation and model of the life of an existing, living, developing Church that is a historical fact, not just an idea. Sermon XV thus provides a fitting conclusion to the series of university sermons begun in 1826, which together validate as reasonable the spontaneous religious faith of an illiterate peasant, while at the same time justifying the efforts of a theologian.” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), cix. 19 P.S., V, “Shrinking from Christ’s Coming”, 50; and “The Testimony of Conscience”, 245-46 20 Ibid., 51.

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The analogical image which began this essay was that of the final judgment, for which Newman urged us to prepare in fear, yes, but submerge ourselves in trust in God’s love. This analogy, inspired by gratitude and wonder at the Incarnation of God the Son, concludes as well with an image of the world’s end, with its own elements of fear, suffering, and trust. Both images invite recognizing the terms of each: the first, humankind preparing and being prepared for eternal dwelling in the loving Presence of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier—the light of God’s face, our final home; the other, the image of judgment that awakens our sense of accountability and our wish to be holy. Such realization, in recognition of how God awaits our coming, is the fulfillment of faith. Some may mistake the Scriptural word glory to mean simply this eternal state of communion with these fellow-saints that we enter only when God deems us prepared for their company. We can only pray to be ready when that time of what we call death comes—though it is more of an arrival than leave-taking. At any rate, Newman preached a sermon to his parishioners at Littlemore called “The Visible Church, an Encouragement to Faith.” Indeed such was their need in a country and a century when Catholics and High Anglicans were not much admired in England. Newman vividly images their situation: Hence, in a country called Christian, the many live to the world….Outward circumstances, over which they have no control, determine their line of life; accidents bring them to this place or that place, not knowing whither they go; not knowing the persons to whom they unite themselves, they find, almost blindly, their home and their company. They do not know each other; they do not know themselves; they do not dare take to themselves the future titles of God's elect, though they be really reserved for them; and the nearer they are towards heaven, so much the more lowly do they think of themselves….The Visible Church of God is that one only company which Christians know as yet; it was set up at Pentecost, with the Apostles for founders…and all professing Christian people for members. In this Visible Church the Church Invisible is gradually moulded and matured….The true elect of God…are scattered about amid the leaves of that Mystical Vine which is seen, and receive their nurture from its trunk and branches. They live on its Sacraments and its Ministry;…walk together with its members;…they accept all as their brethren in Christ, as partakers of the same general promises.21

Even when analogy cannot accomplish its end, Newman uses Scripture to confirm mystery. Jesus sent the disciples out into the world to baptize in 21

P.S., III, “The Visible Church an Encouragement to Faith”, 238-40.

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the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He promised the Spirit who would make clear the words he had spoken to them. Yet he realized, if anyone did, the limits of intelligence and the demands of faith. He told his listeners: “We understand things unknown, by the pattern of things seen and experienced; we are able to contemplate Almighty God so far as earthly things are partial reflexions of Him; when they fail us, we are lost.”22 And yet he shared all that he understood and firmly believed: What is all this but the doctrine, that that God who is in the strictest sense One, is both entirely the Father, and is entirely the Son? or that the Father is God, and the Son God, yet but One God. Moreover, the Son is the express “Image” of God, and He is “in the form of God,” and “equal with God;” and “he that hath seen Him, hath seen the Father,” and “He is in the Father and the Father in Him.” And again, what is true of the Son is true of the Holy Ghost; for He is “the Spirit of God;” He is in God as “the spirit of a man that is in him;…He is “the Spirit of Truth.”23

With no pretense at explanation of this mystery, Newman expressed his and the Anglican Catholic belief in it as clearly as possible to aid the most profound, unshakeable belief in the Presence of God not only in Jacob and Moses and Samuel, in the martyrs and holy women and men of the early church, but also now in ourselves, a Personal Presence sealed by our baptism. Newman’s writing (and preaching) strategy has become clear: the analogical imagery is at the service of describing a relationship, a personal connectedness with God, with Jesus Christ. It is the personal relationship, not just the knowledge about it, that effects holiness. Might Newman’s analogical imagination, his way to holiness, or the graced light of his intelligence, more deeply inform our own? Reading any of his sermons, written as Anglican or Roman Catholic, or reading his prose, whether about stories of saints or of liberal knowledge in the university, or his unprecedented autobiographical Apologia, may work in the reader a blessing, awakening heart and mind and memory. Newman’s employ of the analogical imagination may become for his readers a path to their own holiness as much as it was for him.

22 23

P.S., VI, “The Mystery of the Trinity,” 356. Ibid., 358-59.

CHAPTER TEN MODERN OBSTACLES TO HOLINESS DR. JANE RUPERT

As in his own time, Newman today is a guide in the way of holiness to many who seek this path. His reflections on prayer, or on the need for prayer, his meditations on the pervasive presence of the Holy Spirit, his thoughts on grace and on conscience continue to nourish and guide seekers of holiness in a modern culture that is often inhospitable to the very idea of holiness. In the nineteenth century, Newman had recognized the nature of the specifically modern obstacles placed in the path of holiness that today continue to make our culture inhospitable to this way of life. He understood that an age of physical science that directed its attention above all to the material plane of existence risked losing its receptivity to the invisible world of the divine. The very well-springs of thought that are the portal of the pathway to holiness were in risk of atrophy through disuse. Works like Newman’s Grammar of Assent and his University Sermons represent a lifetime spent countering a reductionist idea of reason that would shut down the intellectual instruments adapted to our knowledge of God. This very literary man, the great preacher, the poet whose works have been set to music, also recognized that the erosion of religious belief had common ground with the erosion of the literary culture of the university. He perceived that the intellectual obstacles imposed on the mind receptive to God and on the mind receptive to poetry proceeded from a similar source. For this reason Newman resisted the reduction of reason that imperils the path to holiness both through his direct comments on the subject of reason and religion and through the parallel diminishment of the erosion of the long tradition of a literary culture. John Henry Newman, then, was deeply aware in the nineteenth century that our modern age of science is under the spell of the material plane of existence. More importantly, he recognized that this lure of the material

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plane changes habits of thought. In accordance with the same principle of disuse that Darwin applied in his theory of evolution, Newman understood that the functions of mind adapted to knowledge of God and to the interior human domain risk atrophy in minds that become habituated to the material plane. For minds closed to the pathways of thought suitably adapted to religious belief, religious belief is impossible. Similarly, minds closed to the kinds of reasoning required in the humanities will regard their study as a useless vestige from the past, irrelevant to the modern era’s spectacular progress in the material domain of scientific method. In other words, this eclipse of the instruments of mind engaged in knowledge of the divine and human spheres leads to the eclipse of what these instruments are adapted to perceive. Two eminent contemporaries of Newman provide poignant testimony to the erosion of reason that Newman resisted in works like An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent and in The Idea of a University. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the century’s great empirical scientist, and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), one of the nineteenth-century’s foremost empirical philosophers, both give accounts of their personal experience of a diminishment of mind resulting from their one-sided exercise of reason. In an autobiography written towards the end of his life, Darwin wrote of his regret in no longer being able to enjoy poetry, art, and music. His regret was based not only on a loss of this enjoyment, but also on a perceived diminishment of intellect and of the affective life, the catalyst for moral action. In his autobiography, he observed that his mind seemed to have become a machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. He attributed the atrophy to a disuse of the part of his brain that had once taken delight in poetry, music, and art. He said that he regretted this loss as not only as a loss of happiness but as possibly injurious to the intellect and probably to his moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of his nature. If he could live his life over again, he mused, he would make a practice of reading some poetry and listening to some music at least once a week.1 In John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, published in the year that he died, Mill also described his experience of aridity resulting from the neglect of the kind of feeling-thought engaged in poetry. As Mill reflected on the depression that he had first experienced as a young man, he recalled how he had lost the capacity to feel, including the pleasure associated with doing good. He attributed this state to the kind of schooling he had 1

Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (London: Collins, 1958), 138-39.

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received from his father, James Mill. As a utilitarian philosopher, his father confined reason to the analytical method of empirical science; the imagination connected to feeling in the concrete thought of poetry was alien to it. Mill wrote that the habit of analysis inculcated by his education, although valuable in its own right, had a tendency to wear away the feelings when no other mental habit was cultivated. He speaks of it as undermining all desires and pleasures and as a “worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues.” In other words, like Darwin, Mill suffered from the diminishment of feeling that is instrumental in educing moral conduct and from the suppression of the kind of thought that is connected to imagination and feeling in poetry. He perceived his impoverishment initially through the release of feelings he experienced in reading the moving account of a family in distress. He also says that Wordsworth’s landscape poetry touched him because it was not just a literal description but involved “thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty.”2 As a result of his experience, like Darwin, Mill realized the human importance of maintaining a balance among the faculties, recognizing that there is a need for natural complement and correction in other mental habits. He maintained that it was a prime necessity of life for the cultivation of the analytical intellect to be balanced by the internal culture of the individual. In the candor of their autobiographical accounts, Darwin and Mill reveal the nature of the looming crisis of the intellect in the West, a crisis that John Henry Newman spent his lifetime counteracting. Their experience shows how habituation to one pattern of reasoning in our scientific age estranges its practitioners from the other pathways of the mind. As the method of empirical science, mirrored in the epistemology of empirical philosophy, becomes evermore the default habit of mind in western culture, the kind of thought engaged in literature and in religion is eclipsed. Minds are disabled through the hegemony of empirical reasoning in which emotion is an impediment to observation, imagination functions only as a register of the sensate world, and reason stands aloof as an imperial judge. As a result of habituation to empirical reason, such minds become closed to other pathways where, instead, thought is harboured within the imagination and the imagination engages feeling in a way that is integral to thought. Darwin remained conscious of loss in his disaffection with poetry, music, and art. When he stated that the history plays of Shakespeare that had delighted him in his youth had become nauseatingly dull to him, he 2

John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957), 89,96.

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considered it a diminishment to the fullness of his intellectual and affective life. At least he remained aware. However, as Newman indicates in his defense of literature in The Idea of a University, other contemporary proponents of the physical sciences dismissed entirely the value of literature and denied to it any intellectual function. In the volleys exchanged in the debates on education in the period, a literary education was dismissed by its naysayers as a training in elegant imbecility. The argument of these advocates of the physical sciences is conducted on the assumption that only the method of the physical sciences cultivates the reason. Unlike the great educators of the Renaissance, or unlike Aristotle who considered that poetry was philosophical, they see no utility in a literary education which, they maintain, does not cultivate the reason at all. For them, reason means induction from sense observation only; it means, as they say, beginning with “dry and unamusing facts” and pushing them up to their first principles.3 While praising the solid, masculine reasoning of science, they exclude reason from the whole domain to which literature belongs. Literature cultivates only taste, the feelings, and the literary imagination, a faculty irrelevant to the reasoning of science and used by the promoters of science as a pejorative term. In other words, they exclude the kind of reason that functions in conjunction with the imagination and the feelings in the pattern of thought common to religion and poetry, the kind of reason that Newman was to elaborate in the Grammar of Assent.4 Because of a similar use of reasoning in literature and religion, it is not surprising that religion, too, should become alien to practitioners of the physical sciences for reasons akin to Darwin’s disaffection with poetry, art, and music. In The Idea of a University, Newman writes of the desire by advocates of the empirical sciences to exclude not only literature from the university but also theology. He places his remarks in the context of a traditional hostility between devotees of the physical sciences and religion. Newman observes that if there were scientists among his own contemporaries who inherited the religious skepticism of eighteenthcentury and nineteenth-century luminaries like Laplace, the celebrated astronomer and mathematician, or Buffon, the biologist, or Alexander von Humboldt, explorer and natural scientist, they would share the same antagonism between science and religion that had existed in antiquity.5 In support of this claim, he cites Francis Bacon, the seventeenth-century 3

Idea, 162. Jane Rupert, John Henry Newman on the Nature of Mind (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 17-18. 5 Ibid., 12 4

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philosopher of modern science, on the congeniality between atheism and science in the pre-Socratic era; take, for example, the atomist theory of the materialist philosopher, Democritus, which provided a cosmology rooted in physics for the atheist philosophy of Epicurus (341-279 BC). Since empirical philosophy, like empirical science, also restricts reason to the empirical plane, in his idea of a university Newman contends not only with the dismissal of religion and literature by empirical science but also with their dismissal by empirical philosophy. He confronts the influence of empirical philosophy on education which had led, for the first time since the rise of the university in the twelfth century, to the establishment of a secular university in England based on utilitarian principles that chose to exclude theology; Newman had in mind the University of London. And, once again, this time with reference to empirical philosophers like David Hume (1711-1776) and John Locke (1632-1704), he locates the underlying basis for the dismissal of theology and literature in their reduction of reason to the intellectual instrument meant for knowledge of the physical world. To illustrate his case, Newman cites Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, published in mid-eighteenth century, in which Hume describes empirical philosophy’s idea of reason through a philosophical dialogue. In this dialogue, Hume makes Epicurus, the atheist philosopher, the chief spokesperson. Epicurus denies categorically the legitimacy of the kinds of reason that open the path towards knowledge of God. Like modern empirical philosophers, Epicurus maintains that reason is confined instead to our literal knowledge of the material world. But as Newman points out, it follows from this limitation on reason that our knowledge of God is entirely commensurate with our knowledge of the visible world. With the gates of the mind closed firmly to religion’s and to theology’s own manner of reasoning, their divine Object becomes unknowable. When knowledge of God is confined by empirical philosophy to a materialist premise and to a method meant for physical inquiry, Newman writes that any protest in behalf of theology is nugatory. If God, he says, is only as powerful and skillful as the telescope and microscope show power and skill to be, if God’s moral law and His will are to be gathered only through the physical processes of the human body and through human affairs, then piety is only the parasitical production of philosophy and science.6 Empirical philosophers like David Hume and John Locke represented a shift in the manner of thinking at that moment, prompting their 6

Idea, 37-38.

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confinement of reason to the literal, material domain and consequently to their conscious, deliberate rejection of the channels that lead, instead, to knowledge of the Invisible, to knowledge of God as transcendent fact, and to what the human heart and mind can know only in tandem. Throughout his life, Newman observed the course of this metanouia, or change in the orientation of the mind, that was the obverse of the metanouia associated with religious conversion. When he was made cardinal in 1879, he recognized the social achievements promoted by a philosophy antagonistic to Christianity. But he also lamented the loss of the invisible bond of unity in the framework of society that proceeds from belief in the Creator and is expressed in a spirit animating education, social improvements, and public institutions. Under the new intellectual regime, physical laws and the neo-epicurean law of self-interest had become the guiding light. Material improvements in nineteenth-century sanitary experiments were, Newman says, connected to physical laws. A thoroughly secular education was “calculated to bring home to every individual that to be orderly, industrious, and sober is his personal interest.”7 Adam Smith’s law of self-interest animated trade, finance, and government. Newman saw that the western world was engaged in a great combat perilous to Christianity. As he scanned the horizon in 1879, he perceived the immanent dissolution of its Christian foundation, not only that of Europe, but of every government and civilization that came under the influence of the European mind. He himself played his part in this great combat. He wrote articles and delivered public lectures on the subject in mid-century while rector at the Catholic University of Ireland. He warned of the modern intellectual peril to religious belief as he addressed the various faculties at the University: the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, the Faculty of Science, and the Faculty of Medicine. In all these lectures and articles, Newman came to the defense of religion and the humanities as domains imperiled in an empirical era. To defend them, he distinguished their differences. He demarcated the boundaries of the broad areas of Letters, Science, and Religion as the several parts of a complete whole. Most importantly, he differentiated between the different instruments of mind required in the different domains. Of his lectures locating the physical sciences within knowledge as a whole, three were directed either to the students in the School of Medicine or the School of Science. In these lectures, Newman recognized the new 7

Add., 66. “The Biglietto Speech” when he was made cardinal can also be found in John Henry Newman: Doctor of the Church, (Oxford: Family Publications, 2007), 315 as well as in Campaign 396.

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susceptibilities of the period, especially among the educated, to the kind of diminishment of mind through disuse experienced by Mill and Darwin. He emphasized that science and religion require different instruments of mind. Habituation to the habit of mind congenial to empirical science can lead to the eclipse of religious belief if religion’s endemic instrument of mind falls into disuse. The titles of Newman’s lectures indicate this purpose in delineating differences between science and religion: “Christianity and Physical Science,” “Christianity and Scientific Investigation,” and “Christianity and Medical Science.” Similarly, in a prior essay entitled “A Form of Infidelity of the Day,” Newman maintained that in a scientific age fascination with the physical sciences seduces the imagination, deadening it to religious belief and to Revelation which “presents to us a perfectly different aspect of the universe from that presented by the Sciences.” Like John Stuart Mill, Newman speaks of the intellectual diminishment effected by the exercise of only one kind of reason: “Any one study, of whatever kind, exclusively pursued, deadens in the mind the interest, nay the perception of any other.” In words that echo Darwin’s disclosure that after years of practicing empirical science, he found the arts nauseatingly dull, Newman cautions the student of science against a similar experience that could suffocate religious aspirations. He warned that the person who “has for years drank in and fed upon” the vision of Nature’s “infinite complexity, its awful comprehensiveness, and its diversified yet harmonious colouring...may certainly experience a most distressing revulsion of feeling” if he turns round “to peruse the inspired records, or...the authoritative teaching of Revelation.”8 The other lectures on science and religion are rooted in Newman’s deep perception of the modern tendency of empirical thought to disable all other kinds of reason. In “Christianity and Physical Science,” he emphasizes that different instruments of mind are required for the investigation of the physical world, on the one hand, and for apprehending the spiritual and supernatural realm, on the other. To use the noble method of the physical sciences in the spiritual domain is a mismatching of 8

Idea, 400-402. Newman also writes: “The range of the Experimental Sciences, viz., psychology, and politics, and political economy, and the many departments of physics, various both in their subject-matter and their method of research; the great Sciences which are the characteristics of this era, and which become the more marvellous, the more thoroughly they are understood—astronomy, magnetism, chemistry, geology, comparative anatomy, natural history, ethnology, languages, political geography, antiquities—these be your indirect but effectual means of overturning Religion!” 397.

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method and subject-matter. Using the wrong key in this sacred area, he warns, ruins the wards of the lock. In “Christianity and Scientific Investigation,” Newman affirms that when the appropriate instruments of mind are used suitably in areas like religion and the physical sciences, then the collisions and contradictions among these fields of knowledge will be only apparent. In his final lecture to the medical students, delivered on the very date he departed Ireland forever, he speaks of the personal danger to them from focusing on the animal or physical body because it may eclipse the less obvious but higher promptings of morals and faith. In spite of this antagonism between science and religion, he urges them not only to be competent doctors but also to be grounded in their faith, to be the links in their generation between religion and science. Similarly, in the initial discourses in The Idea of a University, Newman spoke out against the fracturing of reason itself and protested on behalf of the mind’s integrity. He defended in the clearest tones the role of speculative thought. Speculative reason had traditionally been cultivated in liberal learning. It was also the instrument of theology whose flourishing in the twelfth century had coincided with the establishment of the university. As an exercise of speculative thought, theology begins with abstract starting-points but at the opposite pole of thought from the starting-points of empirical reason located in the particular and sensate. In Newman’s own age, far removed from the speculative achievement of medieval scholasticism, the deductive reasoning of speculative thought had been superseded by the inductive method, with its dazzling successes in the domain of physical knowledge. Newman argues that because theology uses speculative reason in a deductive manner as its intellectual instrument, reasoners habituated to the physical sciences will reject it as irksome and unreasonable. Practitioners of modern science, accustomed to starting-points in things material and sensible, scorn any process of inquiry not founded on experiment and breakthroughs in the realm of empirical phenomena. They disdain a subject-matter, in which their favorite instrument of thought has no office, as an antiquated system, an eye-sore and an insult.9 In The Idea of a University, Newman also defended literature and its exercise of the second kind of reason cultivated in liberal learning. To counter those who could no longer understand the nature of literature’s reasoning and who would consign it to the effete realm of imagination and feeling, Newman draws from an earlier defense of the liberal arts at 9

Idea, 223-24.

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Oxford. This defense describes the large genus of reason exercised in the liberal arts that is common to ethical judgment, to personal religious belief, and to literature. According to this proponent of a balanced university curriculum, subjects then commonly associated with the liberal arts at Oxford all engaged this same kind of reason: “religion (in its evidences and interpretation), ethics, history, eloquence, poetry, theories of general speculation, the fine arts, and works of wit.” These varied and large divisions of learning, we are told, are “all quarried out of one and the same great subject of man’s moral, social, and feeling nature” and are “all under the control (more or less strict) of the same power of moral reason.”10 This “power of moral reason,” the genus of reasoning engaged in the broad field of Letters or literature, belongs to the same broad genus that Newman describes in relation to religious belief in his final book, the Grammar of Assent. He describes how we reason in religious belief. He notes that he has transferred Aristotle’s register of the right and wrong in ethical judgment, or phronesis, to the intellectual register of the true and false. Unlike the abstract conclusions and premises of either empirical reason or speculative thought, both of which illuminate large mental fields, this large genus common to literature, to religious belief, to ethics, and to all areas that require deliberation or interpretation, has a different purpose. It leads to an understanding of specific or concrete matters. Following this other pathway of reason, we understand particular matters through the insights that occur when everything comes together, or through a convergence of cumulative probabilities from various sources that indicate reasoning’s upshot. Newman remarks that this process of reasoning through converging probabilities is common to our everyday decisions, to religious belief, and even to the way in which theories are developed in empirical science. Darwin, for example, used this process of reasoning through probability to arrive at the theory of evolution. Because this large genus of reasoning through converging probability includes the pathway to religious belief, we find it illustrated in Newman’s sermons. In them, he touches the hearts and minds of his listeners and deepens their understanding of their faith as he walks around a single idea or a specific religious topic to examine it from several different sides: through concrete analogy, through passages selected from Scripture, through references to common human temptations, through careful examination of the meaning of words.

10

Idea, 175.

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The reasoning of the preacher, as of the literary writer, belongs to an invisible, interior, human domain. This internal domain of reasoning in both preaching and poetry stands in contrast to the external, eminently observable domain of the physical world that was coming to dominate intellectual culture in Newman’s time. Because both religious belief and literature pertain to a personal interior world, this interior world is reflected in the personal voice used in their expression, a voice that is unique to the author. For both preacher and poet, thought informs or begets words in such a way that they resonate with a writer’s interiority. Indeed, the specific defining characteristic of literature is the resonance of the interiority of an author within its language. Its nuanced, multivalent, and personal way of using language that is entirely distinct from the neutral, standardized language necessary to science is itself illustrative of the radical difference between the two different kinds of reason. But there is still another way in which the rationality of literature differs from empirical knowledge. It is its use of the imagination. The reasoner who, like Darwin, becomes accustomed to the external, empirical domain, will also become accustomed to reducing the imagination to a mere register of sensate impressions from which the reason can then abstract laws. By contrast, in the interior domain of religion and poetry, the imagination has a place of first importance. Although Newman does not consider the imagination in his reflections on literature, he devotes the first half of the Grammar of Assent to the function of the religious imagination which, he says, is like the function of the imagination in poetry. In a way that risks becoming alien to the empirical mind, the interior domains of both Scripture and literature teach us through the concrete in the locus of the imagination. The story of King Lear teaches us in the concrete what filial ingratitude is. The testimony in the New Testament teaches us in the concrete of our interior relation to God effected through the life of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, because of the effect of the concrete on the affections, in both literature and religious belief, the imagination functions in conjunction with the emotions. In science, emotion is an impediment to thought; in literature and in religion it is thought’s adjunct. Newman validates this magisterial function of the imagination, where thought is embedded in images, before an intellectual community that, increasingly, would limit the imagination to its literal, sensate register of the external world. For this mostly unreceptive audience, the imagination’s legitimate role in the path towards human and divine knowledge in the interior domains of both religious belief and poetry was being dismissed as unreal, as fantasy and fancy.

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In response to the changing intellectual climate he was meeting, Newman defended the role of the imagination, accessible alike to the educated and uneducated, as the primary locus of divine illumination. As a pastor of souls, conscious of the peril to religion in an empirical age, he validates the imagination, a place where impressions and images engage both heart and mind, as the legitimate instrument of the mind in religious belief. This is Newman’s subject in letters to The Times in the 1840’s, in an article written for the university journal at the Catholic University of Ireland, and in his final book, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. In the series of letters written to The Times, later published as “The Tamworth Reading Room,” Newman famously pleaded the cause of the imagination and its engagement of the affections that makes religious belief a living relation. He maintained that a direct personal relation to God is commonly nourished not through science and its reasoning but in the heart through the religious imagination. He indicates this primacy of place of the imagination in religion when he observes: “The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us.”11 We might more easily first shoot around corners, Newman writes, than lead people toward God through scientific reasoning. In the first half of the Grammar of Assent, Newman also emphasizes this role of the religious imagination as the locus for the knowledge that is religious belief. He observes that Scripture is largely concrete; it is a message, a supernatural history that is almost scenic, making its thought accessible to all through the imagination. Even the luminous propositions of the Creed that inform the whole of faith do not exclude the language of concrete impressiveness typical of Scripture. They, too, engage what is deepest within us through the religious imagination. Its few essential truths about the Trinitarian God use concrete language. Words like Father, Son, and One are addressed to the imagination as much as to the intellect. In the last part of the Grammar of Assent, Newman again asserts the magisterial role of the imagination in belief. He declares that the Image of Christ Himself was the center of His disciples’ preaching. After Christ left this world to return to His Father, He is found, "through His preachers, to have imprinted the Image or idea of Himself in the minds of His subjects individually." The moral instrument of persuasion of the disciples was "a description of the life, character, mission, and power of that Deliverer… 11

Newman’s “The Tamworth Reading Room” letters of February 1841 to The Times of London are found in D.A., 254-305, with referenced text at 293. Newman utilized the same text in G.A., 92.

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the Image of Him who fulfils the one great need of human nature, the Healer of its wounds, the Physician of the soul…which both creates faith, and then rewards it." This central Image or Thought of Christ is the vivifying idea of Christianity.12 In “The Mission of St. Benedict” (1858), published eleven years before the Grammar of Assent, Newman also affirmed the role of the imagination, common to both religious belief and poetry, in which reason is implicit within its images. In this instance he chooses to illustrate the mind’s instrument or organon of religious belief through the historical example of the medieval Benedictine order during its five-hundred year period prior to the rise of theology in the twelfth century. In Newman’s depiction of Benedictine monastic life, he sketches the type of the disposition of both mind and heart essential to religious belief in any period. At the beginning of his article, he first confronts the denial of this disposition of mind that is proper to religious belief, a denial asserted in contemporary positivist philosophy which claimed that the religious imagination along with speculative thought was obsolete. This claim, associated foremost with Auguste Comte, maintained that the modern world had progressed beyond religion as well as beyond speculative thought. According to Comte, humankind had evolved from its successive earlier periods, first, of myth and imagination, and, then, of reason and metaphysics, to the modern age of facts and sense, leaving behind definitively these unscientific earlier stages. In keeping with Comte’s philosophy and his denial of any non-empirical function of the mind, both religion and the liberal arts were a thing of the past. In response to this contemporary rejection of the function of mind engaged in religious belief, “The Mission of St. Benedict” describes how in fact the mind functioned in monastic life as a pathway to holiness, a pathway that is antithetical to both the empirical polarities of the physical sciences and to the abstract beginnings of speculative thought. Through a description of the way of life of the Benedictine monks, Newman illustrates the role of the imagination in lived religious experience. Because in both poetry and religious experience the affections are moved through the function of the imagination, Newman identifies the interior contemplative life of the monk with poetry. The medieval Benedictine order, he wrote, was “the most poetical of religious disciplines.” As in poetry where the concrete carries signification, where a place or thing stands implicitly for much more, Newman speaks of Benedictine life with 12

G.A., 464.

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its “poetry of ceremonies,--of the cowl, the cloister, and choir.”13 In the contemplative life, the monk’s imaginative apprehension of the Creator as the source of all made other ways of making intelligible connections unnecessary. As Newman remarks, the monk did not have to analyze because he “recognizes but one cause in nature and human affairs, and that is the First and Supreme,” referring whatever happens to His will.14 During the medieval monastic period, in a life consecrated to the salvation of his soul through divine meditation in the interior locus of the imagination, the monk subordinated, then, what is foremost in the pursuits of physical and speculative science, namely, sense data and the abstractions of the intellect. In this vein, Newman has St. Basil in mind, who spoke of the monks in the secluded natural settings of their monasteries finding the quiet needed for the heart to be prepared as wax for the impress of divine teaching through prayer, hymns, and Scripture. The concrete nature of monastic work also subordinated the intellect to the religious imagination. The poetry of the monks was for Newman the poetry of hard work and hard fare, of unselfish hearts and charitable hands. Manual labour in the gardens, the tending of flocks, or the copying of manuscripts, which was unequivocally a manual labour, were undertaken not only in service to God but as a mortification of the intellect. Their religious education was especially an education of the imagination. The impression made on the imagination of young monks, who often entered a monastery as early as the age of five, by the solemn services and the silent influence of others struck Newman when he studied their stories. Their formal religious education began with learning by heart the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the divine poetry of the Psalms whose interiorized words and concrete images remained fixed in memory throughout their lives to accompany them in their journey through the wilderness. Finally, the secular schooling of the monks, from about seven years of age to fourteen, was a literary education that cultivated the faculty of mind common to both literature and religion. Using the tools of grammar, the young monks studied carefully and accurately an extensive list of Latin poets, such as Virgil and Horace; orators, like Cicero; playwrights, like Terence; and historians. This literary education both cultivated minds receptive to the layered depths in the reading of Scripture and prepared them for their work in the transcription of the manuscripts that they transmitted to succeeding generations: the great literary classics that 13 14

“The Mission of St. Benedict,” in H.S., 2, 385, 370. “The Benedictine Schools,” in H.S., 2, 452.

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Newman describes as being free from intellectualism, the religious works, such as homilies and the commentaries on Scripture by the Church Fathers, and of course the Scriptures themselves. “The Mission of Saint Benedict,” written for the Atlantis, the journal of Newman’s recently founded university, was his final contribution to the Catholic University of Ireland. In it, he was not suggesting to university faculty and students that the clock should be turned back and that they should embark on a monastic life. Rather, he was speaking on behalf of the continuous call to holiness in all ages, a call that in his time confronted obstacles of a peculiarly modern nature in a civilization that was immersed increasingly in the material plane of existence. He understood the peril to the soul in the professional life of the medical doctor in Dublin or of the researcher in science, like Darwin. He knew that an empirical philosophy of education, which John Stuart Mill experienced, suppressed not only literature but religion. In sum, he saw the fragility of religious belief in our modern empirical age. In “The Mission of Saint Benedict,” as Newman confronts obstacles to holiness, he also provides a pattern of the perennial pathway towards holiness, as true for our own lives as in the medieval period. This pathway to holiness requires an interior recollection in the locus of the imagination in which we are mindful of the Image of Christ, of the Creator as the Source of all, and of the final end towards which we travel. In his Benedictine articles, in his University Sermons, in his letters to The Times, in lectures at the Catholic University of Ireland, and in the Grammar of Assent, Newman points to the great challenge a religiously-minded person faces in our empirical age: the need for the flexibility of mind that allows us both to follow the path towards holiness at the same time as we pursue our lives in a world so exclusively attentive to the material plane.

EPILOGUE NEWMAN’S DECADE OF DISAPPOINTMENTS: 1850-1859 FR. JOHN T. FORD, CSC

And now, my brethren, does what I have been saying apply to all of us, or only to Prophets? It applies to all of us. For all of us live in a world which promises well, but does not fulfil; and all of us (taking our lives altogether apart from religious prospects) begin with hope, and end with disappointment.1

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) preached these words in a sermon on “Jeremiah, A Lesson for the Disappointed” at St. Mary’s Church in Oxford on 12 September 1830.2 On the one hand, this sermon was one of a series about biblical figures; on the other hand, there was a personal tone to the sermon insofar as Newman had experienced a series of disappointments earlier that year: in March, he had been replaced as joint secretary of the Oxford association of the Church Missionary Society; in June, he felt compelled to resign from the Bible Society and in addition, he was removed from his position as tutor at Oriel College. In preaching about “disappointment,” Newman was preaching from experience. In fact, Newman’s life was plagued with disappointments—not only as an Anglican but also as a Roman Catholic. His life as a Roman Catholic began on 9 October 1845 when he was received into the Church by the Italian Passionist missionary Dominic Barberi (1792-1849). The event was notably private: the location was the isolated retreat that Newman had established a few years earlier at Littlemore, a village a couple miles south of Oxford. Only a handful of his closest followers witnessed his “reception” into the Roman Catholic Church. With his quest for the “true

1 2

P.S., VIII, 134-35. Diary entry from L.D., 2:290.

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church” definitively resolved, Newman embraced his new religious commitment both enthusiastically and energetically. Shortly after becoming a Roman Catholic, Newman moved to Oscott, near Birmingham, where he received the sacrament of confirmation from Bishop Nicholas Wiseman (1802-1865) on the feast of All Saints (November 1). After a series of trips during the following weeks— including a farewell visit to Oxford—Newman left Littlemore for Oscott on February 22, 1846. On June 6, he received tonsure and minor orders and after various travels during the summer, including a visit at Tenby with Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), his former colleague in the Oxford Movement, Newman left England for Rome at the beginning of September, 1846, arriving on October 28 to begin theological studies at the College of Propaganda Fide. As part of his preparation for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest, Newman began considering possible options for his future ministry in England. After weighing several religious communities, Newman and his good friend, Ambrose St. John (1815-1875), decided to introduce the Oratory of St. Philip Neri into England—a decision which Pius IX (in papal office 1846-1878) readily approved on 21 February 1847. After ordination as a Roman Catholic priest on May 30, Newman began his Oratorian novitiate on June 28. At the beginning of December, Newman and Ambrose St. John left Rome and, after visiting Loreto and Munich en route, arriving in London on Christmas Eve, 1847. The following February saw the official establishment of the English Oratory—which was soon joined by Frederick William Faber (1814-1863) along with the “Brothers of the Will of God”—a community that Faber had founded at St. Wilfrid’s at Cottam Hall, near Cheadle, Staffordshire. On October 31, Newman left Maryvale to join Faber at St. Wilfrid’s. The year 1848 also saw the publication of Newman’s first novel—Loss and Gain—which detailed with subtle humor the imaginary saga of a young Oxford student, who decided to become a Roman Catholic.3 On 26 January 1849, Newman left St. Wilfrid’s for Birmingham, where an Oratory was opened in Alcester Street. In mid-April, Newman separated the Oratorians into two groups: half stayed at Birmingham with Newman and the rest went to London, where a second Oratory, under Faber’s direction, was opened in King William Street. The year 1849 was marked not only by the successful establishment of the two new Oratories, but also by the publication of Newman’s Discourses to Mixed

3

L.G. available at www.newmanreader.org/works.

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Congregations, a collection of eighteen sermons, which he dedicated to Nicholas Wiseman, then the Vicar Apostolic of the London District. In sum, the first five years of Newman’s life as a Roman Catholic were certainly challenging, yet they remained basically congenial and personally fulfilling.

Disappointments at Mid-century The year 1850 got off to a good start. In the spring, at the invitation of the London Oratory, Newman delivered a series of Lectures on Certain difficulties felt by Anglicans in submitting to the Catholic Church; the first seven of these dozen lectures centered on the relationship between the Church of England and “the Religious Movement of 1833”; the remaining five discussed Anglican “Difficulties in Accepting the Communion of Rome as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.”4 That autumn witnessed the pope’s re-establishment of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. For Roman Catholics, the restoration of the hierarchy was the repossession of an ecclesiastical status that had been arbitrarily terminated at the Reformation; for Protestants, however, the restoration was a symbol of “Papal Aggression” that was greeted with widespread anti-Catholic polemics, accompanied by random and sporadic violence. To counter these attacks, Newman delivered “a set of Public Lectures” at the Birmingham Corn Exchange in the spring of 1851—Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England—which he subsequently dedicated to the Irish Archbishop, Paul Cullen (1803-1878).5 In the fifth of these lectures, which described “the Logical Inconsistency of the Protestant View” of the Roman Catholic Church, Newman severely criticized the stridently anti-Catholic lectures of Giacomo Achilli, a defrocked Dominican priest, who had fled Italy to avoid imprisonment for crimes of immorality. Achilli responded by filing a suit against Newman for libel. Although Newman had been assured by the new Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, that there was ample evidence to demonstrate Achilli’s guilt, when Wiseman was unable to provide the evidence of Achilli’s criminal past, the case went to trial on the 5th of November. Ironically, a week later, at the behest of Archbishop Cullen and the Irish hierarchy, Newman was appointed the first rector of the newly established Catholic University of Ireland. 4

Diff., 1. Into a second volume of Diff. Newman placed his later “Letter to Pusey” and his “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.” 5 Prepos.

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The following year, 1852, saw Newman juggling three major tasks: first, the relocation of the Oratory from downtown Birmingham to its present site in Edgbaston, then on the edge of the city in a lower-class area populated by Irish immigrants; second, an array of university administrative duties ranging from recruiting faculty to fund-raising to writing articles and lectures; third, anxiety over the Achilli trial, which finally terminated on 31 January 1853, when Newman was found guilty and fined £100—not an insignificant sum at that time. While the verdict was a personal embarrassment, Newman was supported by Catholics around the world whose generous donations paid his hefty legal expenses. Even more important, the injustice of the verdict garnered widespread sympathy among the English public who were chagrined that Newman, like many other Roman Catholics, had been unjustly victimized for his religion. The remainder of 1853 and much of 1854 saw Newman travelling around Ireland, soliciting funding for the new university, as well as shuttling back and forth across the Irish Channel between Dublin and Birmingham to fulfill his duties as rector of the Oratory. On 4 June 1854, Newman was formally installed as Rector of the University but returned to England in July to arrange the purchase of property at Rednal—some eight miles from Edgbaston—for an Oratorian retreat locale. He returned to Ireland for the beginning of the first academic year and delivered the Inaugural Lecture for the School of Philosophy and Letters. He went back to Birmingham for the Christmas holidays, but returned to Dublin for the second term. In spite of burdensome administrative responsibilities and an exhausting travel schedule, Newman wrote a series of eight letters for the Catholic Standard in the spring,6 and in the summer of 1855 he published Callista, a novel about the persecution of the Christian community in the third century that was implicitly criticizing the British government’s treatment of Catholics in the nineteenth century.7 In the background of all these activities, yet out of public sight, was an emotionally draining quarrel between Newman and Faber that eventually led to the separation of the London and Birmingham Oratories in the autumn of 1855. The following year saw the dedication of the University Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Dublin, which was funded by the unexpended donations that Newman had received for his legal expenses in the Achilli trial. Yet Newman’s tasks as university rector were not only time-devouring, but exceedingly frustrating, due in no small measure to 6 7

These letters were republished as “Who’s to Blame?” in D.A., 306-362. Call.

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Archbishop Cullen’s lack of communication on the one hand, and his tendency to micro-manage the new university on the other. In March 1857, Newman informed the Irish bishops of his intention to resign as rector of the university. A few months later, Cardinal Wiseman invited Newman to supervise a new English translation of the Bible. Attracted by a project quite suited to his talents, he promptly started recruiting authors to translate various books of the Bible. While Newman was diligently working to get the translation-project underway, Wiseman learned that the American hierarchy had also decided to commission an English translation of the Bible, and, feeling that there was no need for duplicate English translations, decided to terminate the British translation. Wiseman, however, neglected to inform Newman that the project was discontinued until after Newman had needlessly wasted a great deal of time and money. The next appeal for Newman’s assistance came from the Bishop of Birmingham, Bernard Ullathorne (1806-1889), who in the spring of 1859, persuaded Newman to assume the editorship of The Rambler, a Catholic journal of high intellectual caliber that discussed a wide variety of topics—ranging from philosophy to politics, from current events to social issues, from history to theology—topics of current concern and controversy. Under lay editorship, The Rambler had incurred episcopal displeasure due to its outspoken articles that the bishops felt were challenging their authority. Recognizing the value of such a publication and supportive of the role of the laity in the Church, Newman reluctantly agreed to assume the editorship of The Rambler on March 21 in order to keep the magazine going. He contributed an article, “On Consulting the Faith in Matters of Doctrine” that promptly created a furor among the bishops, one of whom denounced Newman to Rome. After a short stint as editor, Newman, when asked by Bishop Ullathorne to give up the position, readily complied. If Newman was both a frustrated university rector and an exasperated editor, he was still an enthusiastic educator. After relinquishing the rectorship of the Catholic University, he started planning the foundation of an Oratory School for the education of the sons of the English Catholic gentry; they wished their young sons to receive an education that was both Catholic in principle and the highest in quality—equivalent to that of the best Anglican schools. With the support of several prominent English Catholic lay leaders, the Oratory School was officially established on 2 May 1859. Once again, Newman became immersed in a sea of educational details—ranging from the recruitment of instructors to supervising

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accommodations for boarders to procuring playing fields and to coaching students in theatrical productions. Unlike Newman’s first five years as a Roman Catholic—years which on the whole had been pleasant and productive—the decade of the 1850s was a series of overlapping difficulties and disappointments: his public embarrassment at the Achilli Trial; his bittersweet experience as rector of the Catholic University; the emotionally draining separation of the Birmingham and London Oratories; the dual frustrations of the aborted Bible Translation and his short-lived editorship of The Rambler, to say nothing of his sense that as he approached the age of sixty, the best years of his life were likely behind him. As the decade ended, the future looked promising in one respect: the Oratory school seemed off to a good start.

A New Decade On 13 January 1860, Bishop Ullathorne informed Newman that his essay “On Consulting the Faithful” was under investigation in Rome. Such investigations were purportedly secret; however, Newman’s denunciation had apparently leaked out and rumors were circulating, so that some parents became hesitant about sending their sons to the Oratory School. With another debacle looming on the horizon, Newman shared his frustration in a 1862 letter to his fellow Oratorian and closest friend, Ambrose St. John; in evident consternation, Newman listed some of the disappointments that had marked each decade of his life: When I was 20 I was cut off from the rising talent of the University by my failure in the Schools, as, when 30, I was cut off from distinction in the governing body by being deprived of my Tutorship, as, when 40, I was virtually cast out of the Church of England, by the affair of [Tract] Number 90, as when 50 I was cast out of what may be called society by the disgrace of the Achilli sentence, so when I should arrive at 60 years, I should be cast out of the good books of Catholics, and especially of ecclesiastical authorities.

Newman concluded these reminiscences of his disappointments: “This appalls me in this way—viz what is to happen, if I live to be seventy?”8 While Newman was understandably disturbed by the disappointments of the preceding decade and then soon unsettled by the possible failure of the Oratory School, in fact he lived until his ninetieth year. More importantly, his future turned out to be not only a matter of longevity, but 8

L.D., 20:327-329, at 328.

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also of remarkable productivity and regained prestige. The dozen years following this 1862 letter to Ambrose St. John saw the publication of three major works: Apologia pro Vita Sua,9 An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 10and A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk.11 His Apologia established him once and for all as a pre-eminent Victorian writer whose literary style still prompts admiration. His Grammar secured his reputation as a critical thinker whose ideas continue to challenge and convince philosophers and theologians. His Letter to Norfolk demonstrated his rhetorical power as an apologist, defending the Roman Catholic Church against the public attack from the British Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-1898) of divided loyalties: Could a Catholic profess papal primacy and loyalty to the Crown? Newman, of course, could hardly have foreseen these future accomplishments when he reminisced about his decades of disappointment with Ambrose St. John. Newman’s writings, indeed like much of his life, emerged from fortuitous situations over which he was more the person reacting and responding to events rather than the person initiating and directing them. What is most surprising about Newman’s letter to Ambrose St. John, however, is not that each decade of Newman’s life had been mile-stoned by a major disappointment, nor that any one of these disappointments would have been overwhelmingly discouraging for most people. What is surprising is that—at least in this letter—Newman seemingly did not consider that if these events had turned out to be the successes that he desired at the time—the course of his life would have been fundamentally different. We, however, might conjecture that Newman would not have become the person so admired today had it not been for these major setbacks. Indeed, had his story become defined for us later on by the achievements that he wanted at the time, his life might have taken a completely different direction—one that might well have been temporarily gratifying, but basically unmemorable if not simply mediocre. But in retrospect, each of these disappointments proved fortuitous. Let us examine four of them, arriving a decade apart, pose hypothetical counterpoints to each, and reflect which of the two turned out better for him and for us.

9

Apo. Initially, the book was published in seven installments between April and June 1864 on successive Thursdays with an eighth installment a fortnight later. 10 G.A. The book culminates years of thinking through the faith and reason relationship. 11 “A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk,” Diff., 2:175ff.

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Age 20: “my failure in the Schools” Newman’s letter to Ambrose St. John indicates that forty years after the event, Newman was still pained by his “failure in the Schools.” Two months short of his sixteenth birthday, Newman enrolled in Trinity College, Oxford, on 14 December 1816. His tutor, Thomas Short (17891879), was initially suspicious of the youthful student’s abilities but soon became convinced of Newman’s talents and encouraged him to apply for a Trinity scholarship. He passed the competitive examination with flying colors and was awarded a prestigious scholarship. At the age of seventeen his future seemed bright, almost assured. A couple years later, when he began studying for his university baccalaureate examination, both the faculty and students at Trinity, as well as his family, expected him to win honors in classics and mathematics. Unfortunately, he over-exerted himself, and when he was called by the examiners a day earlier than he expected, “he lost his head, utterly broke down, and, after vain attempts for several days, had to retire, only first making sure of his B.A. degree.”12 Newman’s failure to gain a first class degree was a huge personal disappointment and apparently narrowed his occupational choices for the future. Yet suppose that Newman had gained first class honors—what profession would he have chosen? His father had long wanted him to become a lawyer and Newman apparently obliged by entering his name at Lincoln’s Inn in 1819.13 With the extraordinary success of a “double first,” Newman surely would have been warmly welcomed into the legal profession. Had he become a lawyer, one could imagine that Newman would have had a successful, even stellar, career—earning a handsome income and becoming a serjeant-at-law or even a judge or perhaps a member of the Privy Council. Yet who today can name even one British judge or serjeant-at-law of the nineteenth century? Modern readers of Newman may, of course, recall Sir John Taylor Coleridge14 or Edward Bellasis15—but would either of these once prominent lawyers be 12

Moz., 1, 40. Diary entry for 19 November 1819, at L.D., 1:69. London barristers were admitted to the bar via membership in one of four Inns of Court: Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, Middle Temple, Inner Temple. 14 Sir John Taylor Coleridge (1790-1876), a nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was a judge at the Achilli trial and author of a Memoir of the Rev. John Keble (1869). 15 Edward Bellasis (1800-1873), a barrister (1824) and serjeant-at-law (1844), aided Newman during the Achilli trial; Newman later dedicated his Grammar of Assent (1870) to Bellasis. 13

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remembered today except for their association with Newman? Had Newman become a lawyer, he likely would have enjoyed a distinguished career—but one that was quickly relegated to the obscurities of Victorian legal history.

Age 30: “deprived of my Tutorship” Equally painful for Newman was his recollection of his Oriel tutorship. In spite of his poor showing at his baccalaureate examinations, Newman had the self-confidence—though some of his contemporaries considered it audacity—to present himself as a candidate for a fellowship at Oriel College, then the most prestigious college in Oxford. Impressing his examiners with his writing ability, Newman was elected a fellow on 12 April 1822 and four years later was appointed one of Oriel’s four tutors. At the time of Newman’s appointment, a tutor was generally regarded as an instructor charged with the responsibility of preparing students for the university baccalaureate examinations. Newman, however, considered a tutor to be responsible not only for the academic instruction but also for the spiritual formation of his students; he felt that it would be wrong for an Anglican cleric to accept such a teaching position, if its purpose was purely secular and in no way spiritual. His efforts at promoting academic achievement and personal integrity brought him into conflict with the new Oriel provost, Edward Hawkins (1789-1882), who regarded Newman’s tutorial approach a form of favoritism—giving preference to the talented and neglecting the others. When Newman refused to change his tutorial method, Hawkins countered by refusing to assign Newman any more students; within a couple years— as his students graduated—Newman had no one to tutor. Although it brought a loss of income as well as a personal embarrassment—which still rankled three decades later—Newman’s dismissal from the tutorship proved to be a blessing in disguise. Without tutorial responsibilities, he had ample time for other pursuits: he published his first book, The Arians of the Fourth Century;16 he went on a Mediterranean voyage (1832-1833); and, most significantly, he had time to become involved in the Oxford Movement—which might never have turned out the way it did—had Newman remained embedded in a labor16

Ari. Hugh James Rose invited Newman to contribute a history of Councils of the Church to a theological library he was co-editing. The topic was so expansive that Newman ended up writing about the Arians between the First (325) and Second (381) Council of the Church.

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intensive tutorship that required numerous hours each week for the detailed work of instructing undergraduates. But let us suppose that instead of relieving Newman of his tutorship, Hawkins had let Newman continue as a tutor. If Newman’s new approach had been successful, then Hawkins could have basked in the reflected glory; even if Newman’s tutorial reforms had failed, Hawkins could have astutely deflected the blame on Newman. In any case, had Newman remained a tutor, he likely would have been so preoccupied with the task of mentoring undergraduates that he would have had little time for such larger and more time-consuming ventures as the Oxford Movement required. Curiously, one might even consider the beginning of the Oxford Movement to be not Keble’s Assize sermon, as Newman later proposed in his Apologia pro Vita Sua17but rather his own removal from the tutorship. Had Newman remained a tutor, he probably would have been as little remembered as Joseph Dornford (1794-1868), who continued as a tutor after Newman was eased out by Hawkins.

Age 40: “cast out of the Church of England” Relieved of his tutorial obligations, Newman devoted himself to promoting the reform of the Church of England in what became known as the Oxford Movement. In tandem with other members of Oxford University, he insisted that the Church needed to recover its apostolic and patristic heritage. Newman was able to broadcast the movement’s ideals in a variety of ways: as vicar of St. Mary’s, he became an effective and admired preacher who filled the pews and whose Anglican sermons were eventually published in ten volumes.18 In addition, he wrote a wide variety of materials, ranging from poems and lectures to thirty Tracts for the Times. In Tract 90, he attempted to show the compatibility of the teachings of the Church of England expressed in its 39 Articles of Religion with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.

17

Apo., 31. Newman’s published Anglican sermons included his eight volumes of the Parochial and Plain Sermons, his Oxford University Sermons, and his Sermons on Subjects of the Day. Five volumes of his previously unpublished Anglican sermons have appeared under the title: John Henry Newman: Sermons, 1824-1843 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991-2012), due to the editorial energy of Francis McGrath, F.M.S., the editor who completed the Letters and Diaries series begun so long ago by C. S. Dessain and who immediately undertook the task of the sermons. These sermons are soon to appear in digitalized form at newmanreader.org/works. 18

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Whatever the theoretical merits of Newman’s argument, it quickly became clear that his Catholic interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles was decidedly unacceptable to most Anglicans. In fact, the opposition to Tract XC was so strenuous that Newman agreed to terminate the publication of further Tracts, and he retired to Littlemore; there he had purchase a former stable, which he converted into a monastic retreat for himself and a few of his closest followers. During the following four years, he dedicated himself to prayer and study before eventually arriving at the decision to enter the Roman Catholic Church. Although many Tractarians, including his close associates, John Keble and Edward Pusey, remained in the Church of England, many others followed Newman into the Roman Catholic Church. One can, however, imagine a different scenario. Suppose that instead of rejecting Tract XC, the Archbishop of Canterbury had arranged for the appointment of Newman as chaplain of the “English Chapel” in Rome.19 As a curate at St. Clement’s in Oxford (1824-1826), Newman had demonstrated his talent at contacting people and raising funds; such talents were much needed by the Anglican congregation in Rome. In addition, the Roman location would have brought Newman to the center of Catholicism. Indeed, Newman might well have been persuaded to accept the position, not only out of a sense of obedience to his bishop, but also because of the attractiveness of Rome, which he has visited with fascination in 1833 during his Mediterranean voyage. In the history of ecclesiastical politics, such an appointment would not have been the first time that a prelate had resolved a clergy-problem by a presumptive promotion. Suppose Newman accepted the Anglican chaplaincy in Rome. His parishioners would have been tourists and expatriates who relished the Italian climate during frigid British winters but promptly abandoned Rome once the heat of summer arrived. Moreover, would his well-heeled Anglican congregation have been at all interested in the theological distinctions and ecclesiastical discussions of the Oxford Movement? At the same time, English-speaking Roman Catholics hibernating in Rome would have been stimulating conversation-partners and reliable information-sources, but Newman would probably have had little impact on people of either communion. In effect, Newman’s appointment as the Anglican chaplain in Rome would have exported a problem-cleric to a city where his ministry was needed, but where his influence would have been 19

See http://www.allsaintsrome.org/AHomeinRome.html for the sketch (18251887) of All Saints Church.

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minimal. Who today remembers Richard Burgess20 or any of the other expatriate Anglican chaplains of the nineteenth century working in Rome?

Age 50: “the disgrace of the Achilli sentence” Last and perhaps the most publicly embarrassing event was the guiltyof-libel verdict he received just when his contemporaries were reaching the heights of respected careers. Adding to his chagrin was that he was found guilty on the basis of false allegations and then publicly reprimanded and unjustly sentenced in a court of law. How excruciatingly painful it had to be to a person of Newman’s disposition. Nonetheless, the Achilli trial brought Newman recognition as a member of a persecuted Church in a way that no other event could have done; the sympathy and support of Catholics world-wide was evidenced by their generous donations to sustain Newman’s legal expenses; indeed the support was so generous that Newman was able to build the University Church in Dublin with the unexpended surplus. Roman Catholics throughout the world came to consider Newman as one of their own, since he had publicly experienced the sting of anti-Catholic prejudice that was widespread at the time. Parenthetically, one wonders whether funding for the university church would have been forthcoming had it not been for the Achilli trial? In any case, the unjust sentence imposed on Newman brought home to the British public that Roman Catholics were second-class citizens, subject to injustice in the legal system and to unfairness in other aspects of life as well: political, social, economic. Newman’s experience of anti-Catholic prejudice touched a chord in the Victorian mind in a way that theological arguments did not and could not. The Achilli trial convinced many Victorians that Newman was genuinely convinced of his belief. Indeed, one wonders whether the English public would have been so receptive to his Apologia pro Vita Sua a dozen years later, had people not been previously prepared by the Achilli trial to give Newman a fair hearing.

20 Newman described Burgess (1796-1881), whom he met during his visit to Rome in 1833, as “one of the most perfect watering place preachers I ever heard, most painfully so—pompous in manner and matter.” Letter of JHN to Mrs. Newman, 28 February 1833, L.D., 3:223-227, at 227; nonetheless, on Sunday, April 7, Newman “assisted Mr. Burgess in the Sacrament” (diary entry, L.D., 3:278). Burgess, an author whose publications included The Topography and Antiquities of Rome (1831), later became an opponent of Tractarianism.

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Reflections Were it not for this series of disappointments—all of which at the time of their occurrence were deeply painful—Newman’s life would certainly have been quite different, perhaps more enjoyable, yet more prosaic and less productive and certainly less influential in the long run. Indeed, without these disappointments, Newman might be completely forgotten today, like the people Newman could have replaced in the four hypotheticals above: Who remembers those who gained first class honors at Oxford? Or those who served as tutors of colleges? Or the clerics who were vicars of Saint Mary’s? Or the Anglican chaplains in Rome? Or the people who were acquitted of libel? Without the disappointments that Newman experienced—decade after decade—his life would presumably have been much less problematic and painful. But had that been the case, his life almost certainly would have been less productive and prophetic. In his sermon on Jeremiah, when he was a young Anglican cleric, Newman—ironically or intuitively, presciently or providentially— acknowledged the inevitability of disappointment: Still, that disappointment in some shape or other is the lot of man (that is, looking at our prospects apart from the next world) is plain, from the mere fact, if nothing else could be said, that we begin life with health and end it with sickness; or in other words, that it comes to an end, for an end is a failure. And even in the quietest walks of life, do not the old feel regret, more or less vividly, that they are not young? Do not they lament the days gone by, and even with the pleasure of remembrance feel the pain? And why, except that they think that they have lost something which they once had, whereas in the beginning of life, they thought of gaining something they had not? A double disappointment.21

21

P.S.,VIII, 135-136.

CONTRIBUTORS

FR. IDAHOSA AMADASU is a priest of the Archdiocese of Benin City, Nigeria. He received his doctorate in systematic theology from the Catholic University of Louvain and continued as a researcher in the Department of Systematic Theology until he accepted a lectureship in Theology, his current position, at All Saints Major Seminary, Ekpoma, in Edo State, Nigeria. He represents a new generation of Newman scholars, to which he brings a welcomed African perspective. SR. MARIE BRINKMAN, SCL, is Professor Emerita of English at the University of St. Mary in Leavenworth, Kansas, having taught thirty-eight years in the Department of English. She authored the chapter “Newman’s Personalist Principle at its Source” in Personality and Belief, ed. Gerard Magill (Univ. Press of America, 1994), and she wrote a history of her religious Congregation, Emerging from Tears: the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth (Paulist, 2008). In her retirement, she is updating an earlier book by Sr. M. P. Fitzgerald, SCL, about John Baptist Miege, S.J., first bishop of Kansas, which requires integration of new critical views of missionary work with Native Americans. The research takes her to reservations, museums, and former mission stations in Kansas and Oklahoma. DR. ROBERT C. CHRISTIE completed doctoral studies at Fordham University, working under noted Newman scholar Avery Cardinal Dulles, producing a thesis on “The Logic of Conversion: The Harmony of Heart, Will, Intellect and Imagination in John Henry Newman.” He has presented at various Newman Symposia in America and Europe that led to numerous articles. He is a Board Member of the Newman Association of America and editor of its Newsletter. Dr. Christie is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at DeVry University, North Brunswick, NJ, and he serves as Adjunct Professor of Theology at Caldwell University and at St. Peter’s University.

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DR. JOHN F. CROSBY received his Ph.D. degree in philosophy from the University of Salzburg where he studied under Dietrich von Hildebrand. Dr. Crosby has published many studies on Newman, his most recent book being The Personalism of John Henry Newman (CUA Press, 2014). His work on personalist philosophy led also to his The Selfhood of the Human Person (1996) and Personalist Papers (2004). Since 1990 he has been Professor of Philosophy, Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he established the graduate program in philosophy. He is co-founder of the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project. DR. ONO EKEH received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., having completed research on “A Phenomenological Theology of the Trinity: A Study in John Henry Newman and Edmund Husserl” under the mentorship of another essayist in this volume, Prof. John Ford. He has published numerous articles on the thought of John Henry Newman, and his current research continues his interest in Newman’s phenomenology and Trinitarian thought. He is at present an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he also resides with his wife and their four children. FR. JOHN T. FORD, CSC, a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Cross and a graduate of its University of Notre Dame. He received his Doctorate in Sacred Theology degree from the Gregorian University in Rome. For many years he has been Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America where he has directed numerous doctoral theses on Newman. He was the founding editor of the Newman Studies Journal and remained its editor-in-chief until 2013. His publications of journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews number in the hundreds and includes his recently edited John Henry Newman: Spiritual Writings (Orbis, 2012). NATHAN A. LUNSFORD is a doctoral student in Historical Theology at Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI). His research explores themes of nobility in the early Christian martyr acta. Given Newman’s orientation to patristic theology, Mr. Lunsford was drawn to Newman studies and is emerging as one of the new young scholars in America concerned with such issues as the manner in which the early church served as an interpretative lens for Newman’s approach to contemporary circumstances.

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FR. PATRICK MANNING is a priest of the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, and serves currently as Chairperson of the Department of Philosophy and Theology, Walsh University, North Canton, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. degree from Duquesne University and had studied earlier at the Gregorian University in Rome. Before coming to Walsh University, Fr. Manning served as Vice-Rector and Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus, Ohio. At present he is preparing a book on Newman’s controversial involvement with the Rambler magazine. DR. EDWARD JEREMY MILLER, the editor, is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, Gwynedd Mercy University in Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania. He studied under renowned Newman scholar Jan Hendrik Walgrave and received his Ph.D. and S.T.D. degrees from the University of Louvain. He is a Board Member of the Newman Association of America and organizer of four recent Annual Conventions of NAA, from one of which originated these essays. He has contributed chapters to many books on Newman, and his own book, John Henry Newman on the Idea of Church (Patmos Press, 1987), remains one of the few studies of Newman’s ecclesiology. FR. EMEKA NGWOKE is a priest of the Diocese of Nsukka, Nigeria. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Notre Dame where his research focused on “Newman’s Doctrine of Universal Revelation and the Challenge of Inculturation in an African Church.” At present, he occupies a lectureship in the Department of Religion and Cultural Studies of the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, and he is an Adjunct Professor in Systematic Theology at the Catholic Institute of West Africa (CIWA) in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He is the author of The Eucharist and Social Responsibility Towards the Poor (Snaap, 2005) and is completing a book to be entitled Option for the Poor and Sustainable Democracy. FR. THOMAS J. NORRIS is a priest of the Diocese of Ossory, Ireland. After completing his S.T.D. degree at the Gregorian University in Rome, he has taught in various universities, including the Irish National Seminary, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He has served three five-year appointments to the International Theological Commission, Vatican City. Among the fourteen books he has authored is his recent book on Newman, Cardinal Newman for Today (Dublin, 2010). At present, Fr. Norris is Spiritual Director of the Pontifical Irish College, Rome.

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DR. JANE RUPERT received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto. Her publications include John Henry Newman on the Nature of the Mind: Reason in Religion, Science, and the Humanities (Lexington, 2011) as well as a book inspired by Newman, Uneasy Relations: Reason in Literature and Science from Aristotle to Darwin and Blake (Marquette Univ. Press, 2010). Having retired from teaching, she now works as an independent scholar and is writing a book examining life in 1860 in Canada through the letters of the physician who accompanied the Prince of Wales during his Canadian tour that year.