St John Henry Newman ora pro nobis

09 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Newman

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A year ago today I stood about a hundred feet from Pope Francis as he declared that Cardinal John Henry Newman was now officially canonised. It was a wonderful moment, and it was significant that in addition to our own Cardinal Nichols being there with our own bishops, there was a high-powered delegation from the Anglican Church. Newman, at one time the great champion of the idea of the Via Media, remains a figure as admired by Anglicans as by Catholics.

This moment was one which Newman himself not only could not have foreseen, but which he never thought could happen as he had, in his own words, “nothing of the saint” about him. His own estimation was based on a shrewd knowledge of himself, but as we all do, he saw through his own eyes and not those of God. God decided otherwise.

Newman began as an evangelical Anglican and ended as a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, but from beginning to end he was a man who divided opinion. From his earliest memories he was a Christian, and he underwent what we might call a conversion experience in early adolescence. At Oxford he soon became a divisive figure. To the undergraduates, his sermons and indeed his very presence, at the University Church of St Mary was an event in itself; it is said that some Colleges changed the times of dining to try to lure students away from his siren-like presence.

What came to worry the Dons was Newman’s developing view that the Anglican Church was the via media, the middle way, between their own Church and Rome. Newman, like Keble and Pusey, genuinely believed that what the Reformation had done was to purge the Church in England of the abuses and corruptions that had developed across the centuries, and in particular, allowed it to escape from the control of cabals of corruption around the Pope of the day (a not unfamiliar theme among Catholics in our own time).

But where Keble and Pusey continued to hold this view, and helped lead a Catholic revival in the Church of England, Newman’s scholarship led him to follow the inexorable logic of history. Studying the Arian controversy of the fourth century, he came to realise that the “reasonable” semi-Arians, who took a moderate position between Arius and St Athanasius were the spiritual forebears of the Anglicans. Their position was sensible, moderate and nuanced, but it was not that of Anthansius and therefore, not that of the universal church. So, he converted.

The conversion cost him much in worldy terms. He left his beloved Oxford, never to return. In a society where anti-Catholicism was rife, Newman incurred deep suspicion and distrust by his move. He made himself an outcast from his old social circles, but failed to acquire satisfactory replacements. Catholicism, despite an impressive intellectual history, was not, in the days of Pius IX, a welcoming environment for an intellectual theologican. Converts can be unpleasantly susprised to find that their new home is not altogether welcome. It is not simply the suspicion that often attaches to someone who “switches teams”, it is also a matter of culture. It is interesting that it was another convert, Manning, who complained that Newman remained essentially an English gentleman Oxford Don. Manning was a smoother operator, a skilled bureaucrat who both saw the opportunities offered to one of his skills, and who was, partly for that reason, more easily welcomed into the nascent English Catholic hierarchy. Newman never quite “fitted”, and his new Church was, to be frank, even more useless than his old one in finding a use for him.

And yet, for all that, quality will out. Newman was not only one of the finest writers of English prose, he was the finest English theological intellect since at least Lancelot Andrewes, and possibly ever. He will one day be a Doctor of the Church. It is, ironically, in part the way in which he bore the frustrations and difficulties of his new Church which show how deep his faith was. There were constant runours that he would revert, to which he responded by saying that he never:

had one moment’s wavering of trust in the Catholic Church ever since I was received into her fold. I hold, and ever have held, that her Sovereign Pontiff is the centre of unity and the Vicar of Christ. And I ever have had, and have still, an unclouded faith in her creed and in all its articles; a supreme satisfaction in her worship, discipline and teaching

As I stood in the Italian sunshine on that October morning a year ago, I reflected on how wonderful God’s Providence is. Newman may have thought that, in the end, he had not accomplished that ‘definite work’ for which God had marked him out, but in reality, the process had hardly begun. Newman’s influence on the Church has been profound and will long outlast his earthly fame.

St John Henry Newman, ora pro nobis

Newman and development

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Newman

≈ 28 Comments

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, Doctrinal Development, John Henry Newman

newman_john_everett_millais

Inevitably, whenever Newman’s ideas on the developing understanding of doctrine are mentioned, there will be those who see in it an excuse for justifying any change in doctrine; that is usually a sure sign of one of two things: they have either not read Newman’s essay, or they have not understood it. Newman was a great opponent of what he called ‘liberalism in religion’ – that is the idea that dogma and doctrine did not matter; it was because they mattered profoundly that he crossed the Tiber – even though, from every earthly personal point of view, that was a step away from the fame he had enjoyed in the Church of England.

Newman’s thinking on the developing understanding of doctrine was anchored in his Patristic studies, not least in his great work on the Arian crisis. What he saw, as he worked out the ways in which Christians had tried to make sense of what it meant to say Jesus was the Word Incarnate, was at the basis of his idea of development. As he put it:

The development of an idea [like Christianity] is not like an investigation worked out on paper, in which each successive advance is a pure evolution from a foregoing, but it is carried on through and by means of communities of men and their leaders and guides; and it employs their minds as instruments

As he wrote in 1868:

the apostles had the fulness of revealed knowledge, a fulness which they could as little realise to themselves, as the human mind, as such, can have all its thoughts present before it at once. . . in an apostle’s mind great part of his knowledge is latent or implicit. . . I wish to hold that there is nothing which the Church has defined or shall define but what an apostle, if asked would have been fully able to answer and would have answered, as the Church has answered, the one answering by inspiration, the other from its gift of infallibility

By this he meant that, had someone asked the Apostles if they believed in the Trinity, they might have asked for an explanation of the word (which is used nowhere in Scripture), but would have understood what it meant and affirmed the doctrine.

Those who use the idea of development as an excuse to justify any change they want, ignore this, and they ignore the seven tests which Newman himself thought should apply to any claim of ‘development’. Those tests amounted to whether the developments could be read within what Benedict XVI called the hermeneutic of continuity. So, something, for example, like the ordination of women could not be considered an authentic development: the Church has never practised it; it is not implicit neither can it be read from Scripture or tradition; neither can it be deduced from Catholic teaching on the role of the priest at Mass; still less is it in accord with the teaching of the Fathers. To call such a thing ‘development’ would be like claiming that an ash tree could grow from an acorn.

Newman was soaked in the works of the Fathers, and it was this intimate knowledge of how Christians. Newman had studied closely the growth in the development of the understanding of Divine Truth, and his theory of development was not a systematic attempt to explain how doctrine develops, but rather how our understanding the Apostolic Deposit is advanced. Those in his own time, and later, who argue that the discontinuity between the Church of the apostles and contemporary Roman Catholicism, is too great to make it possible that the two are even connected, were, Newman argued, ignoring the fact that the acorn develops into the oak tree. To those who asked how it was possible that anyone could judge rightly between differing theological views, Newman’s riposte was twofold: first, in any Church guided by the Spirit, there would be lively debate (as had been the case from the beginning); and that the Church founded by Jesus Christ had a teaching Magisterium with the authority to bind and loose, and to make the necessary judgment as to whether a claimed development in understanding was, or was not, authentic. These were great claims to make – but not, Newman argued, to make of Christ’s Church and the successors of St Peter. It was for that reason – that he had found the authority which could make such claims, and a Church which had developed the understanding of the Apostolic deposit by it – that he left the comforts, emoluments and fame of Oxford for the discomforts, poverty and obscurity of the Birmingham Oratory. He had found the pearl of great price.

Those who have read and understood Newman, know that any attempts to employ his words to justify radical changes, are an illegitimate use of them. As he said in 1879 on receiving his Cardinal’s hat:

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy

The right reception of what the Blessed John Henry wrote is that the Church founded by Jesus Christ has nothing to fear from debate and discussion – that was the way in which the Church hammered out the doctrines of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ in one hypostasis – what the Church has to fear most, is the absence of discussion and debate – that way would lie stagnation caused by fear.

Newman worked on this assumption:

Trust me, rather than the world, when I tell you, that it is no difficult thing for a Catholic to believe; and that unless he grievously mismanages himself, the difficult thing is for him to doubt. He has received a gift which makes faith easy: it is not without an effort, a miserable effort that any one who has received that gift, unlearns to believe

Inquiry proceeded faith, and no-one, he thought, should become a Catholic without without a firm purpose of taking her [the Church] word in all matters of doctrine and morals, and that, on the ground of her coming directly from the God of Truth

Only those determined to do so, can derive from the works of the Blessed John Henry Newman an excuse for justifying the introduction of novelties into the Church.

A Willingness to be Changed

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by Neo in Faith, Newman

≈ 77 Comments

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Change, Christian, God, John Henry Newman, Resistance to change

In describing my journey in faith in the last few years (here), I noticed as I’m sure many of you did, that I spoke nearly more about Jessica, than I did myself.

And yet, it is still a valid description of my journey. Why? Because like all of us, I’m not inclined to change, not even if it’s easy, free, good for me, and even non-fattening. Most of us aren’t. Things have to get very bad indeed before we actively seek change.

On yesterday’s Newman Blog, Newman spoke to this very human tendency to resist changing on almost any account.

We are by nature what we are; very sinful and corrupt, we know; however, we like to be what we are, and for many reasons it is very unpleasant to us to change. We cannot change ourselves; this too we know full well, or, at least, a very little experience will teach us. God alone can change us; God alone can give us the desires, affections, principles, views, and tastes which a change implies: this too we know; for I am all along speaking of men who have a sense of religion. What then is it that we who profess religion lack? I repeat it, this: a willingness to be changed, a willingness to suffer (if I may use such a word), to suffer Almighty God to change us. We do not like to let go our old selves; and in whole or part, though all is offered to us freely, we cling hold to our old selves. Though we were promised no trouble at all in the change, though there were no self-denial, no exertion in changing, the case would not be altered. We do not like to be new-made; we are afraid of it; it is throwing us out of all our natural ways, of all that is familiar to us. We feel as if we should not be ourselves any longer, if we do not keep some portion of what we have been hitherto; and much as we profess in general terms to wish to be changed, when it comes to the point when particular instances of change are presented to us, we shrink from them, and are content to remain unchanged.

A willingness to be changed — NEWMAN LECTURES.

He’s right, isn’t he? He surely is for me, and I suspect many of us.

That’s the importance of a well-catechized spiritual guide, often they can make us see why we should make the effort to change, and give us the motivation to do so.

That is the back story of my love and respect for Jessica, and in addition I think, in large measure, of why she established AATW, and why so many of us still love it so much. It is place where we can learn from others, why we should, and how change can, make our faith richer, deeper, and more pleasing to God.