Category Archives: Newman

Newman and a White Rose

19 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Newman

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Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, with their friend Christoph Probst, in 1943

Here most of us admire the Blessed John Henry Newman quite a lot, as we should. After all, most of us who write here are orthodox Christians of one flavor or another. Nor are we alone.

A couple of weeks ago, I was involved in a discussion of The White Rose, one of the main resistance groups in Nazi Germany, and how it was almost completely driven by Christian ideals, although its leadership was a combination of Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox.

But how did that come to be, can we see the roots of this? Why yes, yes, we can.

An article in Catholic Herald last week by Paul Shrimpton tells how a goodly share of what Hans and Sophie Scholl believed and would lead them to the guillotine, seventy-five years ago yesterday, came from Newman.

From their letters and diaries we know that they were strongly influenced by St Augustine’s Confessions, Pascal’s Pensées and George Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest. Now it has become clear that their lives were also shaped by the writings of Blessed John Henry Newman.

The man who brought Newman’s writings to the attention of the Munich students was the philosopher and cultural historian Theodor Haecker. Haecker had become a Catholic after translating Newman’s Grammar of Assent in 1921, and for the rest of his life Newman was his guiding star. He translated seven of Newman’s works, and on several occasions read excerpts from them at the illegal secret meetings Hans Scholl convened for his friends. Strange though it may seem, the insights of the Oxford academic were ideally suited to help these students make sense of the catastrophe they were living through.

Haecker’s influence is evident already in the first three White Rose leaflets, but his becomes the dominant voice in the fourth: this leaflet, written the day after Haecker had read the students some powerful Newman sermons, finishes with the words: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace! Please read and distribute!”

When Sophie’s boyfriend, a Luftwaffe officer called Fritz Hartnagel, was deployed to the Eastern Front in May 1942, Sophie’s parting gift was two volumes of Newman’s sermons. After witnessing the carnage in Russia, Fritz wrote to Sophie to say that reading Newman’s words in such an awful place was like tasting “drops of precious wine”.

In another letter, Fritz wrote: “We know by whom we were created, and that we stand in a relationship of moral obligation to our creator. Conscience gives us the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.” These words were taken almost verbatim from a famous sermon of Newman’s called “The Testimony of Conscience”.

The White Rose, which Hans and Sophie led, has become the most famous anti-Hitler resistance in Germany today, saving only the Zwanzigsten Juli conspiracy itself, in which the Rev Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was implicated. This founder (amongst others) of the Confessing Church would surely have also agreed with much of what Hans and Sophie learned from Newman’s writing.

In fact, I’m quite sure he was familiar with it, if in no other way, because of his friendship with Bishop George Bell of Chichester, now subject to a witch hunt led by his own church, to whom Bonhoeffer’s last message from Flossenbürg was addressed. Of course, Bonhoeffer was hanged a few weeks before the camp at Flossenbürg was liberated.

When Fritz visited Sophie’s parents, he gave them a collection of Newman sermons translated by Theodor Haecker. Haecker himself also visited the Scholls, and signed the visitor’s book with Newman’s own motto, Cor ad cor loquitur (“Heart speaks to heart”).

So does it still.

Higher Education and the Philistine

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Education, Faith, Newman

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pexels-photo-356086.jpegThe UK Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds, wishes to see a new ‘value for money’ test applied to universities, which, he says, will see cuts to the fees charged to students doing Arts and Social Sciences subjects.

Mr Hinds, who got a First in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, seems to think in terms of the first and third of those subjects. Mr Corbyn is offering to abolish fees, so politically the Tories need to do something to appeal to the young. One might expect a man with an Oxford First to realise that offering something for nothing is always going to trump offering something from which you have to pay; especially with anyone economically illiterate enough to believe the Labour leader. Economically, he seems to think it an easy matter to put a value on a degree. Does it lead you to a good job?

Mr Hinds was educated at a Catholic Grammar School. One presumes he did not come across the Blessed John Henry Newman’s Idea of a University there, or, indeed, elsewhere. But that he went through a Catholic education and should have come out with such a utilitarian view of the purpose of higher education is a disappointment. Managing to study Philosophy at Oxford and still having a purely instrumentalist view of higher education ought to be surprising.

But one does not need to be a philosopher to question whether Arts and Humanities subjects are of lesser value than more vocational ones. That well-known leftist Think Tank (that is joke by the way), The World Economic Forum, has articulated the qualities it thinks desirable in national leaders. Not one of the qualities, which are needed among more than just the ‘leaders’, is discipline specific. All of them require what the Minister himself seems to lack, which is the ability to take the skills one learns at university, skills such as critical thinking and empathetic understanding, and apply them to the task in hand. One hopes Mr Hinds will remember some of those skills before it is too later.

At the moment the UK’s universities stand second only to those of America as an international success story. In the last five years they have faced a revolution in the context within which they work. From a situation where they had to deal with a Government-imposed cap on the number of students they could take, and low fees, they were pushed into a free market where they could take as many students as they could get, and charge up to £9k a year (now £9.25K) to each of those students. The market worked as the market tends to. Many students went where they thought they could get the best value for that money. They based that judgment of ‘value’ on many things, but not money alone. Universities adapted with speed and agility to the new situation. But now, just as they are coming to terms with it, HMG seem determined to change the rules of the game – again.

If Mr Hinds’ views are economically reductionist, they are also regressive. Children from backgrounds where there is enough social capital to realise the value of Arts and Social Science subjects, will continue to do them, but at a reduced price; children from other backgrounds will be deterred. So, within a generation, Arts and Humanities and Social Science subjects will be the the preserve of a social elite at a few “top” universities. Let’s return to the 1930s, it was so much better then.

But above all, Hinds expresses a deeply philistine view of education. Wilde defined a philistine as one who knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Value and ‘values’ as not the same thing. What value a society of educated people able to think and make informed decisions about political and economic issues? But let’s not worry, seems to be the argument, ‘value for money’ can be defined in narrow utilitarian terms.

If, as Mr Hinds claims, he wants to continue widening access to Higher Education – a line I support, let us widen it for all subjects, not just the ones a current generation think economically useful, especially when the yardstick used is the wrong one. That a Conservative Catholic should be so confused about the value of higher education is deeply depressing.

Newman defends Papal Infallibility

24 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Newman

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It was well-known that Newman had lively doubts about the wisdom of pronouncing on Papal Infallibility, so there was some surprise when, in his response to Gladstone’s critique, he did just that.

Newman’s defence of Infallibility deserves to be read in full, as it remains one of the best I know. That those who were making extreme claims for the dogma were as dissatisfied with it as those who disliked it; but as time has shown, Newman had it about right.

Gladstone had claimed that since the Pope was infallible in matters concerning faith and morals, and since there was no area of life which did not involve at least one of these, he was, in practice, able to command the civic and public allegiance of his subjects: ‘therefore Catholics are moral and metal slaves, and every convert and member of the Pope’s Church places his loyalty and civic duty at the mercy of another.’[iv] Far from shying away from the duty of obedience to those set in ecclesiastical authority, Newman, in the best Protestant style, cited the relevant passage from St. Paul (Hebrews 13: 17) enjoining submission to those placed in positions of authority and challenged Gladstone directly: ‘Is there any liberalistic reading of this Scripture passage?’[v] Catholics held that the Pope was the successor of St. Peter; that being so the obedience paid to him was only that demanded by Holy Scripture itself – and Newman denied utterly that obedience to that authority amounted to ‘slavery’. He drew an analogy between divine and human law. The Law, he argued, was ‘supreme’ and those under it were bound to follow its direction, but no one would claim it ‘interferes either with our comfort or our conscience.’ Newman attempted to correct the English obsession with the power of the Pope. Catholic consciences, like those of any Christian, were regulated by an ancient system of moral theology deriving from sources common to all: the Ten Commandments; the Pauline injunctions of Faith, Hope and Charity; and the practices of fasting, sabbatarianism and tithing; the Pope had little, if anything, to do with these matters. The Pope’s jurisdiction lay in matters ecclesiastical, not in civil affairs; Gladstone’s evident confusion of the two was, Newman commented wryly, the origin of his alarm.

Nor did Newman shy away from Gladstone’s attempt to link Infallibility and the Syllabus. He denied that any of the Pope’s words could be construed as releasing subjects from their allegiance to the State, or as condemning either freedom of the press or of conscience. Failing to anticipate where arguments for the latter would lead, Newman asserted that that no one would say that everything should be published, or that people had the right to unrestricted liberty; every State provided, in its laws, for limits to these things; it was the abuse of such liberty, not the liberties themselves, which the Pope condemned. It was the ‘liberty of self-will’ which was being anathematised, not liberty per se. The Syllabus was, Newman reminded Gladstone, a collection of propositions already condemned in the writings of previous Popes; it had been sent by Pius IX to his bishops, and could only be properly understood in that context; it contained no new matter by the Pope. None of this justified Gladstone’s equating the Syllabus with ex cathedra pronouncements of the Holy See: ‘Utterances which must be received as coming from an Infallible Voice, are not made every day, indeed they are very rare; and those which are by some persons affirmed or assumed to be such, do not always turn out what they are said to be.’ Patience was the ‘sine qua non’ when it came to the interpretation of documents emanating from Rome. It was quite untenable, in Newman’s view, to attribute Infallibility to the Syllabus; from this came all Gladstone’s errors.

Newman’s words are as wise and relevant now as they were then, treading a line between the claims of the Ultramontanes and the liberals. Understood aright, Infallibility is the guard against Christ’s Church teaching error; no more, no less.

[iv] Ibid., p. 39

[v] Ibid., p. 40.

The politics of anti-Catholicism

16 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by in Anglicanism, Faith, Newman, Politics

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Two main motives can be discerned in the timing of Gladstone’s actions. In the first place, his Government had been brought down, at least in part, because of the refusal of the Catholic bishops to support his education and Irish policies; Gladstone’s hopes that Cardinal Manning would back him had come to naught, and he had become convinced that the reason was because the Catholic bishops were being guided by the Vatican; that would have been reason enough to be concerned that a foreign power was wielding undue influence on British politics. But that does not explain why he was exercised by the Tractarian influence. For that, we have to look closer to home, so to say.

In August 1874 Gladstone’s wife, Catherine, received a letter from Lady Ripon, the wife of a former ministerial colleague of Gladstone’s; it contained the news that her husband was about to convert to Catholicism. Gladstone was ‘stunned’ by the news. How was it, he asked Lady Ripon, that Ripon ‘can have gone through those processes of long and long-tested enquiry, which are the absolute duty of such a man as he is, before performing that tremendous operation of changing his religion, and becoming a sworn soldier in the army banded to destroy the Church that had been his home?’ He found it unintelligible that, after the Syllabus and the declaration of Infallibility, any man of intelligence and spirit could take such a step. ‘There is not a man who is more sensible than I, of the hollowness of the popular arguments against Romanism; nor is there one who is more profoundly convinced that the Romanism of today is the best ally of unbelief because it continually drives off from faith, wherever it has sway, the awakened and the searching, even if reverent, mind of man.’[i] Ripon’s conversion was, to Gladstone, ‘a deplorable calamity’. It also triggered concerns even closer to home.

That September Gladstone visited Cologne where his sister, Helen, another convert to Rome, was living.  His purpose was the usual one, a brotherly attempt to win her back for Anglicanism.  Whilst there he talked with his old friend, Dollinger, the leader of the old Catholics who had broken with Rome over Infallibility.  He also followed closely the attempts of the Bismarck Government to bring the Catholic Church under state control – the Kulturkampf.  It was out of this maelstrom that Gladstone’s pamphlet emerged.

It ought to be noted, however, that, it did not emerge without consultation with his old friend, Lord Acton, the great white hope of liberal Catholics. It was natural, given the mutuality of their admiration for each other, and their dislike of the Vatican Decrees, that Gladstone should have turned to Acton for assistance. On 19 October he wrote that: ‘Circumstances have made it necessary for me to say a few words … with respect to the actual Church of Rome in its relations to mental freedom and civil loyalty’; the next day he began writing a pamphlet on the theme.[ii] Acton, who thought that Ultramontanism was ‘incompatible with Christian morality as well as with civil society’, replied that ‘no reproach can to be too severe’, because ‘Real Ultramontanism is so serious a matter, so incompatible with Christian morality as well as with civil society, that it ought not to be imputed to me who, if they knew what they are about, would heartily repudiate it.’ There were, he feared, too many Catholics ‘who know not what they adhere to, and are unconscious of the evil they are really doing, besides many who take a more or less honest refuge in inconsistency.’ [iii] Thus encouraged,Gladstone pressed ahead with his pamphlet.

But when he actually saw the text, Acton was taken back: ‘The result is to demand of the Catholics security against Ultramontanism under pale of losing their claim to Liberal, to national respect and support – in reality, under pain of a tremendous No Popery cry.’ Gladstone was ‘deaf’ to Acton’s ‘political, spiritual and other obvious arguments against publication.’ [i] Since one of his intentions was to divide the Ultramontanes from the liberal Catholics, the fact that Acton of all men was driven to say ‘I should meet his challenge on my own account’, ought to have given him pause for thought; that it did not is a sign of the headwind behind the former Prime Minister.

As he explained to Granville: ‘My proper and main motive has been this: the conviction that I have that they (Roman Catholics) are waiting in one vast conspiracy, for an opportunity to direct European war to the re-establishment by force of the temporal power … I desire in homely language to do the little in my power to put a spoke in their wheel’. He acknowledged that ‘the priest party will be furious’, but he hoped to embarrass the ‘moderate men’ into doing ‘their duty.’[ii] Had Newman ‘possessed will and “character” enough, he ought to have been in the same noble conflict for the truth’ as Döllinger;[iii] Gladstone’s pamphlet might smoke him – and others – out. It was an indication of the effect of ant-Catholicism on his thinking that Gladstone failed to see that ‘the simple fact of the matter was that if a Catholic accepted Infallibility, he was one of those attacked … Protest as he might, Gladstone had thrown the gauntlet down before all Catholics, including his liberal friends.’[iv]

[i] McElrath, The Syllabus of Pius IX, p. 228, Acton letter, 4 November, 1874.

[ii] Ramm, Gladstone-Granville Corr. II,  p. 458.

[iii] McClelland, Gladstone and Manning, p. 161.

[iv] McElrath, p. 229.

 

[i] Josef L. Altholz and John Powell, ‘Lord Ripon, and the Vatican Decrees, 1874’, in Albion, vo. 22, no. 3, 1990, pp.450-451.

[ii] Gladstone diaries VIII, p. 537.

[iii] J.Altholx and D. McElrath (eds.), The Correspondence of Lord Acton, volume I, (Cambridge, 1871), p. 46.

Vaticanism

15 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by in Anglicanism, Anti Catholic, Newman

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On Tuesday I began what is going to turn into a series of posts about Catholicism and intellectual freedom. The locus classicus of this discussion for me is the debate between Gladstone and Newman caused by the former’s attack on what he called ‘Vaticanism’. For Gladstone, as for many Englishmen, Rome was the home of the a black legend of persecution and intellectual slavery. High Churchman though he was, Gladstone was never tempted to follow Newman or Manning across the Tiber; he was inoculated from their ‘Roman fever’ by his view of history. English history was the tale of moving from the darkness of feudal Catholicism to the light of Anglican constitutional government. He was no democrat, regarded it as a debased form of government where the mob might rule at the whim of a populist dictator. He was, he said, an ‘out and out inegalitarian’. If American democracy was at one end of the spectrum, the Vatican was at the other end. In his eyes what happened in Rome in 1871 was the revival of the old enemy of Papal absolutism. The dispute between Gladstone and Newman has to be seen against the background of the First Vatican Council (as it began to be called after its successor).

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] This, clearly, was aimed as much at the Tractarians in the Anglican Church as it was at Rome.

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.

Catholicism and intellectual freedom

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Faith, Newman, Politics, Pope

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The charge has often been, and sometimes still is made that Catholics cannot be fully loyal citizens of any nation or Empire – or even a secular organization, because their primary loyalty lies elsewhere. In modern times we saw it with John F Kennedy when he stood for the Presidency of the USA in 1960, but perhaps the classic statement of it came in 1874. Writing three years after the Vatican Council which had declared the Pope infallible, the British former Prime Minister, Gladstone, wrote (1):

That no one can now become her [the Catholic Church] convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another.

In expressing this view, he was saying out loud, so to say, what many British people thought. Embedded deep into the national psyche, not least by two hundred years worth of anti-Catholic black propaganda, was the idea that to be a Roman Catholic was profoundly un-English. Edward Norman has eloquently described the potent, and toxic, mix of patriotism, prurience and Protestantism which made up the mental image of the Catholic for the average Englishman. All of this Gladstone now evoked. At the very least, he demanded, Catholics should give some kind of oath of fealty that they would not vote as their priests told them to.

Gladstone was appealing to feelings which, as recently as 1851, had resulted in a wave of pubic hostility against the restoration by Rome of a diocesan structure in England and Wales, described by the then Prime Minister, Lord John Russell as ‘Papal Aggression’. When Newman converted in 1845, he knew that he would be considered as though he were dead by many of his old friends; indeed, for some of them, death would have been preferable to crossing the Tiber and surrendering his mental faculties to a celibate old Italian bigot.

Newman’s response to Gladstone, which took the form of a letter to the leading English Catholic layman, the Duke of Norfolk still deserves reading as the best, and most reasoned example to a line of argumentation (it would be doing it too much honour to call it an argument) which is not unfamiliar to readers of this site.

Newman first reminded Gladstone that States had ever sought to bring Christianity under their control and, from Britain through to the lands of the East had largely succeeded in either subduing or massacring Christians:

Such is the actual fact that, whereas it is the very mission of Christianity to bear witness to the Creed and Ten Commandments in a world which is averse to them, Rome is now the one faithful representative, and thereby is heir and successor, of that free-spoken dauntless Church of old, whose political and social traditions Mr. Gladstone says the said Rome has repudiated.

Rome, and it alone, stood out against the ‘spirit of the age’, as it always had and must, as Christ’s Church, always do. Where Anglicans:

do not believe that Christ set up a visible society, or rather kingdom, for the propagation and maintenance of His religion, for a necessary home and a refuge for His people

Catholics did; it was their Church, which alone resembled that of Rome of old. But did that, as Gladstone alleged, mean that Catholics could not vote according to their own consciences? Were they, as British politicians had urged since the days of Elizabeth, spies and agents of a foreign power which was hostile to the freedom which was the heir of every Englishman?

The main point of Gladstone’s Pamphlet was that, since the Pope claims infallibility in faith and morals, and since there were no “departments and functions of human life which do not and cannot fall within the domain of morals,”(2) and since “the domain of all that concerns the government and discipline of the Church,” were his, and he “claims the power of determining the limits of those domains,” and “does not sever them, by any acknowledged or intelligible line from the domains of civil duty and allegiance,” therefore Catholics are moral and mental slaves, and “every convert and member of the Pope’s Church places his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another.

These things, Newman declared, were based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Church and of its relationship to society. He saw clearly what many still fail to see, that the secular had their own agenda and were either blind to that, or motivated by hostility to religion. We shall turn, tomorrow, the Newman’s anser.

Nicolaus responsio ad; de Purgatorio

30 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Commentaries, Early Church, Faith, Newman

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Nicholas responded to my short essay on Christ teaching the doctrine of purgatory in the Gospel of Matthew.
It needs to be clarified in accord to Catholic theology that Christ has already paid the debt of our original sin; however, as exemplified by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 13, because we are still scarred by concupiscence we may need to cleanse ourselves of sin before entering into the Kingdom of Heaven.

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building upon it. But each one must be careful how he builds upon it, 11 for no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there, namely, Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, 13 the work of each will come to light, for the Day will disclose it. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire [itself] will test the quality of each one’s work. 14 If the work stands that someone built upon the foundation, that person will receive a wage. 15 But if someone’s work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, but only as through fire.[1]


Nicholas claims that he proves a lack of clarity, of course, this is false. In regards to my prior post, I broke down Christ’s teaching in my eschatological assertion that according to Mt. 5: 5:23-26 that there will be an accuser, a judge, and price to be paid for not settling our sins here on earth. Now in the comments section, there was mention of Maccabees, but I wish to refrain from that point, as I did in the original essay for the reason that book is disputed within the canon between Protestants and Catholics. However, Luther and his contemporary reformers did keep the title in the appendixes as it does have value in understanding the beliefs of Judaism in the period.

Regardless, my response here is to disprove a lack of clarity, which as I claimed, Jesus says there will be an accuser, a judge, and penance (payment). Of course, for the purpose of showing clarity, it would be wise to seek the wisdom of the Church Fathers. I think here, as I am about to give a talk at my parish on various Church Father will state my introduction of said fathers:

““The Church Fathers are those great Christian writers who passed on and clarified the teaching of the apostles from approximately the second through the eighth centuries.”[2] I believe this to be a very distinct and thorough definition but if one is looking for a more generalized definition, Catholic Apologist provides a more generalized definition explaining, “In time, the concept (Church Fathers) came to be applied in a general way to those who shaped the faith and practice of the Church in its earliest centuries. They became “Fathers” not only for their own age but for all ages that would follow. Some of these—the ones who heard the preaching of the apostles themselves or lived very shortly after the time of the apostles—came to be called the “Apostolic Fathers” or “Sub-Apostolic Fathers.” Together with the Fathers of later ages, they were important witnesses to the apostolic Tradition.[3]

Also, as Chalcedon’s connection with John Henry Newman, as well as my budding respect for the man, I’ve included his view on the importance of what the Father’s claim:

“When they (the Church Fathers) speak of doctrine, they speak of them  as being universally held. They are witnesses to the fact of those doctrines having been received not here or there, but everywhere. We receive those doctrines which they thus teach, not merely because they teach them, but because they bear witness that all Christians everywhere then held them…they do not speak of their own private opinion; they do not say, ‘This is true, because we see it in Scripture’—about which there might be differences of judgment—but, ‘this is true, because in matter of fact it is held, and has ever been held, by all the Churches, down to our times without interruption, ever since the Apostles.”[4]


After stating the importance on the Church Fathers thought in forming orthodox Christian theology, it would be prudent to take a look at what they actually have to say about this passage, as proof that I’ve not created a supposition out of then air which lacks clarity in thought, as well as not all orthodox Christian theology is found jumping out of canon, but can be located in its subtleness. 

Fortunately, the great Saint, theologian, and scholar Thomas Aquinas has already compiled s document with views of Church Fathers in a commentary of the Gospels called Catena Aurea.

In regards to this particular passage: St. Augustine writes of the judge, which, of course, is the Son of God, The Christ Jesus:

Whosoever then shall not have been reconciled in this life with God through the death of His Son, shall be by Him delivered to the Judge, that is, the Son, to whom He has committed all judgment.[5]


In the comment section of the previous essay, as I was commenting during my breaks at work, and did not have the material readily available to make certain my assertions, I did error in regards to St. Ambrose speaking in regards to Mt. 5 23-24; however, the passage has a correlating passage in the Gospel of Luke Chapter 12:57-59 in which Ambrose does share his thoughts on the accuser. 

57 ¶“And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? 58 As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer put you in prison. 59 I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper.”[6]

 For this particular passage, St. Ambrose writes, “Ambrose. Or our adversary is the devil, who lays his baits for sin, that he may have those his partners in punishment who were his accomplices in crime; our adversary is also every vicious practice. Lastly, our adversary is an evil conscience, which affects us both in this world, and will accuse and betray us in the next. Let us then give heed, while we are in this life’s course, that we may be delivered from every bad act as from an evil enemy. Nay, while we are going with our adversary to the magistrate, as we are in the way, we should condemn our fault. But who is the magistrate, but He in whose hands is all power? But the Magistrate delivers the guilty to the Judge, that is, to Him, to whom He gives the power over the quick and dead, namely, Jesus Christ, through Whom the secrets are made manifest, and the punishment of wicked works awarded. He delivers to the officer, and the officer casts into prison, for He says, Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness. (Matt. 22:12.) And he shews that His officers are the angels, of whom he says, The angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; (Matt. 13:49.) but it is added, I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence till thou hast paid the very last mite. For as they who pay money on interest do not get rid of the debt of interest before that the amount of the whole principal is paid even up to the least sum in every kind of payment, so by the compensation of love and the other acts, or by each particular kind of satisfaction the punishment of sin is cancelled.[7]

Now there are several elements to tease out here.

#1 St. Ambrose indicates that Satan is the accuser of which Christ speaks. In fact, his protégé, St. Augustine admits it to be a possibility:
“Augustine. (Serm. in Mont. i. 11.) Let us see who this adversary is to whom we are bid to be benevolent, It may then be either the Devil, or man, or the flesh, or God, or His commandments. But I do not see how we can be bid be benevolent, or agreeing with the Devil; for where there is good will, there is friendship, and no one will say that friendship should be made with the Devil, or that it is well to agree with him, having once proclaimed war against him when we renounced him; nor ought we to consent with him, with whom had we never consented, we had never come into such circumstances,[8]”


If one takes a closer look at Aquinas’ commentary, we do not find anything in regards to the payment in Matthew’s commentary. However, in regards to Luke’s passage, we find quite a bit from the Venerable Bede on the topic in which Bede writes:

“If I paid every man every thing, I come to the officers and answer with a fearless heart, “I owe them nothing.” But if I am a debtor, the officer will cast me into prison, nor will he suffer me to go out from thence until I have paid every debt. For the officer has no power to let me off even a farthing. He who forgave one debtor five hundred pence and another fifty, (Luke 7:41.) was the Lord, but the exactor is not the master, but one appointed by the master to demand the debts. But the last mite he calls slight and small, for our sins are either heavy or slight. Happy then is he who sinneth not, and next in happiness he who has sinned slightly. Even among slight sins there is diversity, otherwise he would not say until he has paid the last mite. For if he owes a little, he shall not come out till he pays the last mite. But he who has been guilty of a great debt, will have endless ages for his payment.[9]


Again, I must assert that logically “the prison” cannot be hell because In the context of Jesus’ words when one pays the penny, they will be released, the judgment of hell is final. Furthermore, I would hope that it being heaven is quite obvious. Now, as Nicholas has concluded, the early church understanding of these topics does provide substantial evidence for the practice of penance which would also indicate, albeit, I’ll admit, circumstantial evidence of state in which penance would be needed to purify the soul. I hold firmly that all of this is more than enough evidence to point to clear theological discourse of purgatory in the Gospels. And, in the sentiment of John Henry Newman, for one to conclude that there isn’t enough evidence, let that one also claim clear and precise theological evidence for the Holy Spirit in scripture. Of course, this is not to discount the person in the Trinity, it only serves as an example that one has to look for more textural imagery for some concepts.

[1] New American Bible, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), 1 Co 3:10–15.

[2] D’Ambrosio, 2.

[3] Jimmy Akin, The Fathers Know Best: Your Essential Guide to the Teachings of the Early Church (San Diego, CA: Catholic Answers, 2010), 23.

[4] Dave Armstrong, Quotable Newman (Sophia Press: Manchester, 2012), 169-70.

[5] Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Matthew, ed. John Henry Newman, vol. 1 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1841), 182.

[6] The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), Lk 12:57–59.

[7] Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, 473.

[8] Ibid, 181–182.

[9] Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Luke, ed. John Henry Newman, vol. 3 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), 474.

Liberalism?

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Newman

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Liberalism is a much abused word. In some American contexts it seems almost to be a synonym for socialism, and in Christians contexts it is usually synonymous with unorthodoxy if not downright heresy. The latest incarnation of this phenomenon is its attachment to the word ‘elite’, in, for example, the liberal elite lost Brexit and Trump’s triumph is a revolt against the ‘liberal elite’. Our new Prime Minister, Mrs May, has joined in attacking the ‘smug liberal elite’ who sneered at those who voted for Brexit. In her case one wonders if she was referring to her immediate predecessor and his good friend the Chancellor; she is clearly not referring to herself or her hedge fund manager husband who, whilst most certainly part of the elite, and almost certainly voting against Brexit, clearly do not consider themselves liberals. There is an oddness in this. It most certainly was not a conservative instinct which led to the formation of democratic forms of government, nor was it one which advocated universal education, women’s rights, equal rights for coloured people, or, come to think of it, almost any reform you can name. Indeed, in British politics, the area I know best, where it was a Conservative who pushed some reform or other, it was usually one with a prefix ‘liberal’ such as Peel or Disraeli. One might expect liberalism to have a somewhat better reputation than it has. But perhaps it only has a bad one in conservative circles?

In Christian circles it is perhaps more understandable that those who favour reform should come under suspicion; quite often their motives, like their objectives, appear to be to replace orthodoxy with an ‘anything goes’ version of the ‘faith once given’. Yet, reform is a constant necessity. Newman’s definition of liberalism bears repeating: ‘Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another.’ This, to his way of thinking, was untrue. Either the Catholic Church and what it taught was the Church founded by Jesus, in which case its dogma were the expression of immutable truths, or they were not, in which case it really didn’t matter very much because there was no solid foundation from truth.

This was one reason Newman thought that the emphasis on the Bible alone as the foundation of your faith was misguided. Long before the later Victorian obsession with religious scepticism and source criticism of the Bible, Newman was aware, via his friend Pusey, of the work of German Bible scholars in Gottingen who were querying everything from the notion that the world was made in six days, through to the dimensions of the ark and the physics of resurrection. He knew that literal readings of Scripture were coming under question, and he looked for the remedy to the organisation which gave the world the Bible in the first place – the Church. 1900 years of the Church and of men (and a few women) reflecting on the Good News provided a rich resource for understanding the Bible in context – what Newman’s later admirer, Pope Benedict XVI called ‘the hermeneutic of continuity’. Newman distinguished between reform and development. Doctrines developed. So, the Trinity, though not called such anywhere in Scripture, is there, and the Nicene Creed reflects the long discussion within Christendom about how to read Scripture on the subject. That being so, it was not up for renegotiation in some process by which it became something else. That was one of the main reasons he crossed the Tiber. Many of us followed suite for similar reasons.

What Newman really stood for

16 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Newman

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img_0009I don’t have a lot to add here, which in fact, surprised me. On first read, I thought I’d have a wall of text of my own with a much shorter quote. But as I read through it a few times, I found it less and less necessary to pick it apart. But it is still important. There’s something here that speaks to me as a conservative both in the church (although neither Rome nor Canterbury) and as a politically aware American conservative.

I wrote the book Newman on Vatican II for two reasons. First, I hoped to settle once and for all the question that always hangs around Newman: was he a conservative or a liberal theologian? Once Newman has been canonised – which is likely to be soon now that he has been beatified – it is certain that he will be declared a Doctor of the Church, and the question therefore becomes all the more pressing.

The reason why this question comes so regularly to the fore is that it is all too easy to quote Newman selectively and out of context, especially since he expresses himself with such vigorous distinctness and trenchancy.

For example, one can quote his forthright statement in the Apologia that dogma was the “fundamental principle” of his religion – “I know no other religion”, or his insistence in the speech he made on being made a cardinal that “for 30, 40, 50 years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion” – and conclude from these two uncompromising statements that Newman was extremely conservative and traditionalist.

On the other hand, one might quote Newman’s famous words, “I shall drink – to the Pope, if you please – still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards”; or his downright assertion: “Theology is the fundamental and regulating principle of the whole Church system” – and conclude that Newman was a forerunner of the liberal, “spirit of Vatican II” kind of theologian who justifies dissent from Church teachings and advocates a parallel magisterium of the theologians.

The truth is that Newman was neither simply conservative nor liberal. He is best described as a conservative radical or reformer. This is true both of his Anglican and his Catholic periods. For example, his first book, The Arians of the Fourth Century, was clearly aimed at their contemporary equivalent, liberal Anglicans and Protestants, in cahoots with the Whig government that was threatening to force reforms on the Church of England. And yet the conservative editors of the theological library for which the book was intended were alarmed by the radicalism of several of Newman’s ideas. Similarly, the last chapter of the Apologia on the one hand unequivocally upholds the authority of the magisterium, but on the other unequivocally defends the legitimate freedom of theologians.

Well, OK, but I think the author misses something in his definition of conservative. Conservatives usually are quite willing to change things, that need to be changed, it’s the principles that we cling to. Maybe that’s why, Catholic or Protestant, we admire Newman so.

Newman’s conservative, as well as radical and reforming, theological stance was consistent with his view that the Church “changes … in order to remain the same”. In other words, he would have said the Church changed with Vatican II in order to remain the same, not to be different. To test whether a change was a development or a corruption, he proposed seven notes, which have been routinely dismissed by his commentators but to which he held fast, and which beautifully illuminate how the most controversial of the conciliar documents, Dignitatis Humanae, the Declaration on Religious Freedom, was certainly a major change but a change in continuity.

via What Newman really stood for – CatholicHerald.co.uk

There is a discussion of the seven notes here, I won’t go into them here, or we’ll have a book, but I will list them for you.

  • The First Note: Preservation of Type
  • The Second Note: Continuity of Principles
  • The Third Note: Assimilative Power
  • The Fourth Note: Logical Sequence
  • The Fifth Note: Anticipation of Its Future
  • The Sixth Note: Conservative Action on Its Past
  • The Seventh Note: Chronic Vigor

I have read the link, but have not digested it yet, but on first reading, it strikes me as a very viable set of rough principles in accommodating changes. Or at least I think so, which may be why I’m a blogger and someday (fairly soon) Newman will be a Doctor of the Church.

And in truth, I find them just as persuasive in a political context, perhaps especially the American one, which features unchanging dogma (so to speak) of its own, and still must always change.

Catholic higher education (2)

26 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in Education, Faith, Newman

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It would be a legitimate question to ask whether one could in all seriousness write about Catholic higher education in the UK? In the USA there are dozens of Catholic colleges, and however much some might query the aptness of the name in some cases, there is a large Catholic sector to American higher education. The UK, by contrast, has four Catholic Universities (and other ‘institutes’ and ‘colleges’), in order of foundation, St Mary’s, Twickenham, Newman, Birmingham, Leeds Trinity, and St Mary’s Belfast. All were (and Belfast still is), until recently, ‘University Colleges’ and all have distinguished histories in terms of training teachers for Catholic schools, but together, they account for no more than about 0.5% of UK undergraduates. All of them talk about their ‘Catholic ethos’, and for those in this very secular society who, seeing the word ‘Catholic’, freak out, what they say should act as some reassurance.

St Mary’s, Belfast speaks for them all when its website says:

“Wherever it is found throughout the world Catholic Higher Education seeks to integrate intellectual, personal, ethical, and religious formation; and to unite high academic achievement with service to others.”

The mission is, at one level, that of every good university, to provide excellent teaching and to do good research, but where secular universities can stop there, a Catholic one needs to go further. We have to help meet the teaching and the pastoral needs of our students in the light of the Church’s faith in Jesus Christ. So we are responsible, in part, for passing on our Catholic heritage to the next generation, not as something set in aspic, or as a museum piece to be admired but disregarded, but rather as part of a living faith engaging with the trends and fashions of the academic world. But where, perhaps, others pay obeisance to the modern faith in relativism, we do that thing academics ought to do, we approach it with a proper scepticism. We do believe in the search for truth, and though we acknowledge that search cannot be completed in this world, we know that it exists. Newman saw Catholic education as developing the following attributes: freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation and wisdom. A Catholic university is charged with developing a learning community which inculcates such values, and should strive to help form its students in such a way; but it also needs to engage its students actively in this process – there is no room for ‘safe spaces’ or for students to be merely passive receivers (even if such students existed and wanted to come to a university with a Catholic ethos).

A Catholic university places itself, Newman wrote, at the service of revealed truth (Idea of a University, Discourse 4). That gives us the immense task of trying to harmonise the spiritual, cultural and personal worlds within which we live, with a view to producing students who are not only well-educated in a secular sense, but whose spiritual needs (even if they are not Catholics) are being met, and who see an horizon wider than that of contemporary utilitarianism. Such students will go on, in whatever walk of life they follow, to be good citizens of this world, and we pray, through Grace, to reach their destiny in the next.

Whilst fulfilling all the intellectual needs students have, a Catholic university also values each one of them as a unique individual with a God-given destiny, and our job is to work with them to help them realise it. In addition to the ubiquitous ‘performance indicators’ of grades and exam success, a Catholic university will keep its eyes fixed on the wider purpose of education, and it will not neglect the spiritual yearnings of people. It is an impoverished vision of education which narrows it down to the acquisition of knowledge and worldly success; these things matter, but they are only a part of education, not its ultimate objectives. Education is not a commodity, even if the Government insists it operates in a ‘market’. A Catholic model of a university begins with the heart of the Church, and it teaches from there. Each person is made in the image of God, and we emphasise the inalienable dignity of each of us, and as God loves us, so, too must we love one another. A Catholic university is a community where teamwork consists not only of interaction between staff and students, but between both groups and the Church in the parish, the diocese and the wider world. We are, even in the modern, secular UK, part of a wider, global Catholic community. That, too, is the mark of a Catholic university. Whatever the politics of ‘Brexit’, no university in this country has, or could afford to have, an insular outlook. Where Catholic universities here have an advantage, is that although there may be few of them here in the UK, there is a global Catholic community of which we are already part. Cooperation between us offers students and staff opportunities which we need to take advantage of – not least at this point in history.