The exhange between Gladstone and Newman needs to be seen in context, and the next few posts from me will be designed to provide that.
The Vatican Decrees of 1871 were controversial before and after the Council. Many Catholics, Newman included, had considered it inopportune to make any declaration about Papal Infallibility. Newman had aroused some controversy at the time when the contents of what was meant to be a private letter to Bishop Ullathorne were leaked the press. ‘Why’, he asked, ‘should an aggressive and insolent faction be allowed to make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord had not made sorrowful?’[i] Newman had not meant the letter for publication, but when it got into the press, he refused to retract his remarks, preferring instead to resort to his characteristic device of explaining with precision whom he had not meant by the offending comments. Many had supposed him to be referring to Manning and his Ultramontane colleagues; this Newman refused to confirm – or quite deny. By 1874 the controversy caused by the Decrees had quietened down, at least in the UK. But in November of that year Gladstone, who had lost power in the General Election six months earlier, published a pamphlet which poured petrol on the smouldering embers.
Gladstone’s The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation was a sizeable publication of seventy two pages. In it, he denounced ‘Vaticanism’ and all the works of Pius IX. In highly inflammatory language, he argued that henceforth no Roman Catholic could be considered a loyal subject of the Queen. The pamphlet was a best-seller, twenty five thousand copies were bought in the month after its publication in January 1874; by the end of the year 145,000 copies had been printed. Gladstone acknowledged that his language had been a little ‘rough’, but justified it by the seriousness of the matters under review, chief amongst which was ‘the question whether a handful of the clergy are or not engaged in an utterly hopeless and visionary attempt to Romanise the Church and people of England.’[ii] Not since ‘the bloody reign of Mary’ had such an enterprise been possible, he declared, but this was especially true now, because Rome had substituted ‘for the proud boast of simper eadem, a policy of violence and change in faith’, and had ‘refurbished and paraded anew, every rusty tool she was fondly thought to have disused’, and when ‘no one can become her convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another; and when she had equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history’[iii] He listed eighteen propositions from the Syllabus to prove his last point, denying that his words were aimed at ‘Roman Catholics generally’; his target was ‘the Papal Chair’ and ‘its advisers and abettors’. The only fault of individual Catholics lay in their submission to such a tyranny, which rejected ‘the old historic, scientific and moderate school’ of Catholics epitomised in the contents of Newman’s letter to Ullathorne. In citing Newman, Gladstone was trying to ‘strengthen and hearten’ the moderate Catholic party generally.[iv] His way of going about this was, to say the least, most unfortunate; nothing was less liable to achieve such an aim than quoting Newman’s letter.
Gladstone’s pamphlet was welcomed by the Protestant world, not least by those Anglicans who had been pressing the Disraeli Government to pass legislation against Ritualism in the Church of England. Given the fact that Gladstone was himself a High Anglican, and that he had said little about Papal Infallibility at the time, despite the fact he had been Prime Minister then, the timing of his publication needs explaining before moving on to the question of why he mentioned Newman’s letter to Ullathorne.
[i] C.S. Dessain and T. Gornall, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, volume XXV, (Oxford, 1975), pp. 18-20, letter to Ullathorne, 28 January 1870.
[ii] W.E. Gladstone, The Vatican Decrees ion their bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Politicanal Exposulation (1874), pp. 4-5.
[iii] Op. Cit. p. 6.
[iv] Ramm, Gladstone, Granville Corr. volume II WEG to Granville, 7 December 1874, p. 461.
NEO said:
Fascinating stuff, which goes to the heart of much.
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chalcedon451 said:
I hope so, Neo. I think it an interesting episode, which reveals much.
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NEO said:
I do as well. Not to mention that it is a cast of very interesting characters as well, whose motivations are current enough for us to at least somewhat understand them.
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chalcedon451 said:
Glad that you like it Neo; there are two more to come 🙂
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NEO said:
Quite sure I will enjoy them greatly, as well. 🙂
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chalcedon451 said:
I hope so – they may be a trifle dry.
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NEO said:
Perhaps, mine also tend that way, on occasion, and you have an interesting group of characters, at any rate. 🙂
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chalcedon451 said:
Yes, they are certainly that 🙂
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NEO said:
I’m doing a bit of rereading just as background, which I intended to do anyway. 🙂
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chalcedon451 said:
I hope it will help. I am sure these will not help Jessica’s figures, but I sense I am not alone in wanting to get back to AATW’s more familiar tone.
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NEO said:
You are not, some of the comment streams have become rather tiresome, as well as the occasional post.
I hope they do as well.
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chalcedon451 said:
I had a sense of it, and from Jessica too. A bit of knockabout now and then is one thing, but enough is enough.
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NEO said:
Precisely, and I did from her as well.
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chalcedon451 said:
I had a sense of it. Let us now move on 🙂
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NEO said:
Indeed so. 🙂
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Tom McEwen said:
Much of this hate and fear lies at the feet of the Church and its love of temporal power, we err’d for lack of love. The rebels in the north fueled the fear, by rebellion and it was not helped by a Papal Bull that was issued in 1570 that severely criticised Elizabeth as a usurper of the throne; she was referred to as “wicked” and a “heretic” in the Bull. It sanctioned the right of Catholics to “deprive her of her throne”. Mary is given as a reason, but her father Henry VIII was a far far worse horror, for me he burn the libraries of the monasteries, taking out of the world priceless knowledge and destroyed some of the best art in the western world, He filled the streets with the poor and beggars who would have been kept by the monasteries. The English were strongly catholic and the church betrayed them by the Bull, putting them in a place they had to chose. History was cleanse of all that pain caused by Henry VIII, but Mary is never forgotten nor forgiven. Elizabeth I had a remarkable secret service, everyone was watched and none trusted, she had reason to have paranoia, that paranoia is now the DNA of the nation, the DNA is the Catholic Church, sad. The world opened up for discovery and the rise was credited to Her and Protestantism. The English have forgiven the Spanish for their armada because they failed, but never the church, who they feel is still circling the camp to fall on the innocent.
Maybe Francis can change the mindset, He does love, which the Pope should have done, he had all the time in the world to love.
The founding fathers said, “We hang together or we hang separately” the world is in a sad state, perhaps we, the Church can love the nation and they will love us, so we can hang together. To have Britain as a Catholic nation is the greatest thing I can imagine in my life. The church is a gift not a threat.
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chalcedon451 said:
There is much in this, Tom.
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David B. Monier-Williams said:
I’ve always referred to her as “Good Queen Mary” a most efficient lass. A mere 280 Protestants in five years. While “Bloody Elizabeth” executed about 98 Catholics, unless of course, you dismiss the !.5 million Irish starved to death or put to the sword as not being human.
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Struans said:
But why doesn’t the church of Rome rescind those politically inspired, abrasive, yet redundant (so RCs tell us) documents that it has issued.
It’s lack of will causes suspicion. RCs try to have their cake and eat it on this one.
Let us see whether Francis will move on this matter when HMQ graciously visits him this Springtime.
S.
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Mark said:
Perhaps someone can help, I have it in mind that one of the reasons Newman converted was something to do with parliament overruling a decision by the C of E to give some one a living (or some such thing), I think it upset a few Anglicans at the time I just can’t remember any details, any ideas anyone?
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chalcedon451 said:
That was the Gorham case, and it was why Manning went. The Privy Council ruled on a theological issue to do with baptismal regeneration, and for Manning and others, that was enough. Newman went earlier for other reasons, which I will cover in a later post. C
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Mark said:
Thanks Chalcedon, take a gold star and have a cyber pat on the back
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chalcedon451 said:
Thank you 🙂
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