Many things were accomplished during these ceremonies, but perhaps the most important was this: Benedict has reclaimed and reaffirmed the real John Henry Newman.
And not a moment too soon.
For decades, “progressives” in the Church have tried to claim Newman as one of their own, depicting him as some kind of anti-papal rebel, who supposedly would have been at home with every type of modern dissent. One would think, listening to the Catholic dissidents, that were Newman living today, he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Charles Curran and Hans Kung. The strategy to remake Newman a modern liberal is familiar: take a few isolated citations from Newman’s voluminous writings (particularly on the role of conscience and the laity), rip them from their proper context, distort their meaning, then re-deploy them to justify dissent from authoritative Catholic teachings.
In his book, Newman’s Challenge, the late Fr. Stanley Jaki, winner of the Templeton Prize for Religion, demonstrates just how dishonest these efforts really are, analyzing Newman’s actual words, where liberals misuse them, with devastating effect. More recently, Ian Ker, Newman’s great biographer, has done the same against those who would pit Newman against Benedict. But some people just won’t listen, and among them is the famously unreliable John Cornwell, who has made a last-ditch effort to salvage Newman for the anti-papal crusaders, but without success. During their excellent coverage of the papal trip to Britain, EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo, Fr. Robert Sirico and Joseph Pearce did a masterful job refuting Cornwell, point-by-point; and, with the message getting out, spirited letters have appeared in the press, contradicting Cornwell’s claims, and documenting Newman’s “unequivocal submission to the Pope.”
Cornwell’s attempt to debunk the miraculous healing of Deacon Jack Sullivan, credited by the Church to Newman’s intercession, was also swiftly answered; and it was fitting that Deacon Jack himself got the final word, when he spoke at the beatification, mentioning the “other-worldly” powers that he believes led to his healing.
The elevation of Newman also marks a personal triumph for Pope Benedict, who has long championed the great Cardinal in his writings and lectures. Contrary to Professor Eamon Duffy, who offensively claimed that Newman’s vision of the Church, is “the antithesis” of the current pontiff’s, Benedict is very much in the Newman mold. The similarities are striking: a personal piety and humility; belief in the harmony of faith and reason; a love for learning and scholarship; a defense of the objective moral order revealed by God; a determination to oppose every form of relativism; a belief in the continuity of essential Catholic teachings; aproper understanding of conscience, led and fortified by the Magisterium; and above all, a defense of the supernatural against the onslaught of secularism.
Newman’s traditional credentials are so secure that an entire book of his sermons was published some years back with the appropriate title, “Newman against the Liberals.” Any one of the texts therein would shock the sensibilities of a religious progressive; even the ones delivered as an Anglican are fierce: “Does not our kindness too often degenerate into weakness, and thus become not Christian charity, but lack of charity, as regards the objects of it?” he asked in “Tolerance of Religious Error.” He continued:
“Are we sufficiently careful to do what is right and just rather than what is pleasant? do we clearly understand our professed principles, and do we keep to them under temptation?
“. . . I fear we lack . . . firmness, manliness, godly severity. I fear it must be confessed, that our kindness, instead of being directed and braced by principle, too often becomes languid and unmeaning; that it is exerted on improper objects, and out of season, and thereby is uncharitable in two ways, indulging those who should be chastised, and preferring their comfort to those who are really deserving. We are over-tender in dealing with sin and sinners. We are deficient in jealous custody of revealed Truths which Christ has left us. We allow men to speak against the Church, its ordinances, or its teaching, without remonstrating with them. We do not separate from heretics, nay, we object to the word as if uncharitable; and when such texts are brought against us as St. John’s command, not to show hospitality toward them, we are not slow to answer that hey do not apply to us.”
If any Anglican divine or Catholic priest, let alone a pope, preached words like that today, would not they be denounced as frightful reactionaries by liberals? Yet this is what Newman believed, drawing his strength from the Gospel, and he never shrank from saying so.
Progressives who claim Newman for themselves have not listened to his own words honestly: “For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion,” he declared upon receiving his Cardinal’s hat. “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.”
As for his loyalty to the papacy, after becoming a Catholic, there are mountains of quotations one could pile upon the Cornwell’s of this world, none better than this from a sermon Newman preached as Rector of the Catholic University of Dublin:
“Deeply do I feel, ever will I protest, for I can appeal to the ample testimony of history to bear me out, that, in questions of right and wrong, there is nothing really strong in the whole world, nothing decisive and operative, but the voice of him, to whom have been committed the keys of the kingdom and the oversight of Christ’s flock. The voice of Peter is now, as it ever has been, a real authority, infallible when it teaches, prosperous when it commands, ever taking the lead wisely and distinctly in its own province, adding certainty to what is probable, and persuasion to what is certain. Before it speaks, the most saintly may mistake; and after it has spoken, the most gifted must obey.”
This is the real John Henry Newman, the faithful priest and theologian, not the liberal imposter too often imagined; this is the man whose intellect and witness remains a lantern to the world, and who we are now privileged to call– thanks to Pope Benedict—“Blessed.”
September 20th, 2010 | 11:15 am
Newman’s idea of “liberalism” was quite precise (see his description appended to the APVA). To align Newman with liberals today or with conservatives is fatuously anachronistic. He was forward thinking at a time when it was quite unfashionable. Manning thwarted him at every opportunity; Manning’s agent in Rome (Monsignor George Talbot) whispered poison in the ears of Pio Nono about Newman. More than once he was delated to the Vatican by his critics. He was an intellectual who spoke the truth and, for decades as a Catholic dearly paid the price. Even his great project of a Catholic Univerity in Ireland almost failed thanks to the hierarchy in Ireland and his hope to return to Oxford came to naught thanks to a jealous and small thinking cabal of those who were jealous of him. Like Mary McKillop, Newman knew the price of ecclesial fidelity.
September 20th, 2010 | 11:56 am
For the benefit of non-UK readers you may be able to “watch again” on the BBC website some of the coverage of the Pope’s visit. I haven’t tried it from overseas but the BBC keep content on their webiste for 7 days after a TV or radio programme.
September 20th, 2010 | 12:19 pm
Dear Mr. Cunningham:
I am glad you agree with me that Cardinal Newman should not be aligned with modern-day liberals, but your argument that Newman was also not conservative, and stood in some kind of theological no-man’s land, above and beyond labels, is not convincing. By any reasonable definition, particularly as regards modern-day morality, theology and the acceptance of papal authority, Newman was a conservative. It is not “fatuously anachronistic” to point the obvious out. Engaging in ecclesiastical in-fighting, and/or being the victim of jealous or over-bearing prelates, does not make one anti-conservative; but writing and speaking the way Newman did, conveying timeless Christian truths, certainly makes one a strenuous opponent of liberalism, old and new. Fr. Jaki’s excellent book, Newman’s Challenge, goes into extensive explanation as to why, with copious documentation.
September 20th, 2010 | 12:51 pm
If, by conservative, you mean a laudator temporis acti then he was not conservative but adventuresome. After all, the Roman theologians of the day were very suspicious of his notion of development. As late as the twentieth century theologians were issuing warnings about the novelty of the idea of development (see: Marin Sola writing circa 1905). I am speaking of Newman as a theologian. When the doctrine of papal infallibility was to be proclaimed Newman wrote a potential convert that when the doctrine was proclaimed two things would happen: (a) theologians would assess how the doctrine was received and (b) interpret the language of the proclamation.
Here is a little thought experiment: had Newman been alive at Vatican II would he have aligned himself with the thinking of Congar, the young Ratzinger et al or with the party of Cardinal Ottaviani?
I say this while holding that JHN was a great saint as I argued in the little volume of his spiritual writings I edited for New City Press a few years ago.
September 20th, 2010 | 2:37 pm
Dear Mr. Cunningham:
Thank you for you input, despite our differing views.
I believe Newman was “adventuresome” only within the boundaries of orthodoxy; he took painstaking care to distinguish between authentic developments, and erroneous ones.
Pointing to suspicions or excesses against Newman, from this or that isolated traditional figure, does not, in my opinion, undermine my position that he was essentially conservative.
I’m sure Cardnal Newman would have been a champion of Vatican II, as well as Pope John Paul II’s opposition to its amorphous “spirit;” and applaud Pope Benedict’s defense of the Council as something continuous with Catholic tradition, rather than a revolutionary break with it.
One can remain a conservative and disagree with Ottaviani (conservatives/traditionalists in communion with Rome have many good-faith, in-house debates); I know conservatives who did and do, including some who actually participated in the Council.
As I said in my piece, if Pope Benedict read out some of Cardinal Newman’s searing sermons today, particularly those which touch upon judgment and damnation, applying them to wayward souls, he would be denounced as a “rigid conservative,” and likely much worse. Indeed, he already is described as such by many self-proclaimed religious liberals, even though his sermons are more gentle than many of Newman’s.
Regarding Newman and the much-misunderstood doctrine of papal infallibility, which he certainly believed in, even if he disagreed with the exact timing of its definition, I think the best treatment is in Ian Ker’s biography (John Henry Newman, Oxford Univ Press, chapter 17); and also in Father Jaki, who wrote: “His (Newman’s) opposition to the advisability of the definition of papal infallibility always contained emphatic statements of his belief that the popes are infallible and therefore deserve an unreserved assent on our part to what they teach and not, to use some recent phrases of subtle evasiveness, ‘critical obedience,’ or ‘a measure of conservatism.’” In other words, Newman was committed to Catholic orthodoxy– and thus papal authority– with both feet, not one.
I don’t think that anyone who comes into even minor conflict with Rome is somewhow a daring innovator. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre felt the stern hand of Rome (justifiably, in my view), but he was hardly an innovator.
I agree with you that Cardinal Newman was a great saint. On that, we quite agree.
September 21st, 2010 | 1:25 am
[...] First Things for other Newman quotes. Also, I strongly recommend reading his wonderful [...]
September 21st, 2010 | 8:37 am
I do not want to go on ad infinitum on this topic but, in fact, Newman did blaze a new path in theology in the 19th century (as did the Tubingen theologians in a different fashion). Rather than give more examples I recommend the balanced view of Father Joe Komonchak in the Current COMMONWEAL.
As for Father Jaki’s work on Newman: too apologetic in the less flattering sense of the word.
September 21st, 2010 | 9:05 am
I have indexed the sermons in “Newman Against the Liberals” with links to them at Newman Reader.
http://weblog.theviewfromthecore.com/2004_08/ind_003918.html
September 21st, 2010 | 2:51 pm
Dear Mr. Cunningham:
You write:”Newman did blaze a new path in theology,” but I never said he didn’t.
OF COURSE Newman advanced Catholic theology, as have all the Church’s great theologians; but there is nothing inconsistent with making that statement and maintaining that John Henry Newman was essentially a conservative, as is orthodox Catholicism itself.
Two modern examples of Catholics who have advanced Catholic thinking, but who are also unquestionably conservative, are Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Joseph Ratzinger, whom we are now blessed to have as Pope. Both are disciples and champions of Newman.
Authentic conservatism, in the Catholic sense of that term, is not static– and thus quite open to development– but it IS rigorously faithful to Catholic doctrine and Tradition (never attacking or dishonoring it), and thus strongly anti-liberal, as was Newman.
When great orthodox thinkers “blaze new paths” in Catholic theology, they are not inventing “new” truths–but simply shedding light on ancient ones; truths that have always been present in the Church’s Sacred Deposit of Faith.
It is one of the great errors of liberal Catholicism to act as if revelation is ongoing, to believe that this or that theologian can invent new teachings, change essential truths, or “revolutionize” Catholic theology.
Newman’s insights were drawn from the Church’s Sacred Deposit of Faith. They were magnificently communicated THROUGH him; but they did not come directly FROM him. He is not, therefore, the independent, free-floating– much less anti-conservative– “innovator” of liberal imagination.
The path he “blazed” was always orthodox, connected to the established one before it, not a radical departure.
Cardinal Newman was, as Avery Dulles points out, in his A History of Apologetics, the foremost Catholic apologist of his time, a great defender of Catholic Dogma and Tradition. I thus find your comment about the brilliant and acclaimed Father Jaki being “too apologetic” both amusing and contradictory. Newman, too, was accused of being “too apologetic,” and by some, still is.
Komonchak’s “progressive” reading of Cardinal Newman is highly selective, and exactly the type of misleading interpretation I cautioned against in my initial commentary. Instead, one should read Newman himself; and a good place to begin are the sermons gathered in Newman Against the Liberals, which ELC has very helpfuly linked to above.
“What is the world’s religion now?” asked Newman prophetically in “The Religion of the Day,” continuing:
“It has taken the brighter side of the Gospel,–its tidings of comfort, its precepts of love; all darker, deeper views of man’s condition and prospects being comparatively forgotten. This is the religion natural to a civilized age, and well has Satan dressed and completed it into an idol of the Truth.”
What liberal Catholic speaks that way today? None that I know of (though many conservatives do); instead, they are embarassed by the very mention of Satan–and much else in Catholic orthodoxy.
September 22nd, 2010 | 8:48 am
Oh Dear! I think we are ships passing in the night. Of course, Newman was a “conservative” Catholic if one means holding to the Rule of Faith. I do not need to read his sermons against liberalism – I have read his sermons for years and have a clear notion of what he meant by the term; indeed the Grammar of Assent was his most subtle (and devastating) attack on liberalism.
If, however, one wishes to argue that he was a standard bearer for what passed for theology among Catholics in the nineteenth century (most conspicuously, the Roman School) then he was not a “conservative.” Had Newman lived in the twentieth century Garrigou-LaGrange and company would have thundered against him as an exemplar of the nouvelle theologie.
September 22nd, 2010 | 8:51 am
Let me add, as an addendum to the above, that one great theologian who was profoundly influenced by Newman was the late Bernard Lonergan, SJ.
September 22nd, 2010 | 12:00 pm
Dear Mr. Cunningham:
Thank you for your note.
You comment: “Of course, Newman was a ‘conservative’ Catholic if one means holding to the Rule of Faith.”
Exactly! Thats all I have been saying; thank you for affirming that–perhaps we share a measure of agreement after all.
Newman was “Roman School” enough to receive a Cardinal’s hat from a nineteenth-century Roman pontiff; and his own “thunderous” sermons against liberalism speak for themselves. They read even more powerfully today.
My point has been that modern-day liberals who reject authoritative Catholic teachings, wrongly invoke Newman as an ally, when he would have been the first to defend orthodoxy-and the legitimate papal enforcement of it– and correct their errors.
Reginald-Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964) wrote many outstanding works, but also had a tendency toward a rigid “integralism”, rather than the healthy conservatism I’ve described above. Had he, or any other self-styled traditionalist, attacked the conservative Newman, Pope Pius XII, another great conservative (and himself properly critical of certain “new,” wayward theologies), would have overruled them.
In his 1945 letter to the Archbishop of Westminster, “The Service of Truth,” Pius XII celebrated the Newman Centenary, praising the theologian for his “full adherence to the truth he had now mastered. He held it ever afterwards with unshaken consistency, made it the guiding principle of his whole life, found in it, as in nothing else, full contentment of mind.
“Beyond question, Worshipful Brother, among the many important gifts which will make a later posterity honour the greatness of John Henry Newman, this is his chief title to fame.” (Published in The Tablet, October 13 1945)
September 23rd, 2010 | 4:08 pm
Perhaps the confusion over where Newman would stand today is the use of the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ themselves. I think ‘orthodox’ is perhaps a better phrase. Having said this, Newman, once of the most innovative and orthodox theological thinkers in the last 200 years (Avery Dulles comes to mind in this context as well), clearly defined the ‘liberalism in religion’ he so rigorously and consistently opposed. The following passage of Blessed John Henry (I loved saying that!), which I cited in the EWTN commentary, leaves no doubt where he would stand in the modern debate: “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. “
September 28th, 2010 | 10:07 am
I have read the previous comments with interest.
In assessing what special message Blessed John Henry has for us today we need to ask three questions:
- What do we mean by ‘liberalism’, and what did he mean by it?
- How much did he support the status quo
vis-a-vis the official structure of the Church
and its teaching?
- In considering what might be done to give
the Church a more comfortable image
while remaining true to its roots, what concessions did he think could be made in the cause of winning souls and of Christian unity.
It doesnt seem to me that in our current discussions about Blessed John Henry these questions are
being adequately addressed.
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