The Real John Henry Newman

Those fortunate enough to have taken in Pope Benedict’s celebration of Cardinal Newman—at both Saturday’s  prayer vigil , and the  Mass and beatification early Sunday—were not disappointed. The solemnity of the occasion, the readings and beautiful hymns sung, the sacred processions and tributes, all hit a note of perfect synchronicity. It is difficult to see how the two-day event could have been any better.

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; a proper 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.”