Edited by Dave Armstrong; Forward by Joseph Pearce.
Manchester NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2012
$24.95, 448 pages.
It has taken roughly 100 years for the work of John Henry
Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) to begin to
find more widespread reception among the lay faithful. Much of this is due to
the excellent work of Fr. Ian Ker, unarguably the world’s foremost Newman scholar,
who has written numerous substantial and accessible works on Cardinal Newman,
including
the definitive biography, collected sermons and essays, topical
books, and new editions of Newman’s own books. Newman has recently been raised from
Venerable to
Blessed by Pope Benedict XVI, and many are calling for him to be enrolled as a
Doctor of the Church. As his stature grows, works such as
The Quotable Newman will be useful to an increasing number of readers.
Newman is an intriguing figure and very much a man of his Victorian age; he is also in many ways a man for our own age. Newman started as a hardline Calvinist, moved
toward Evangelicalism, became dissatisfied with the subjectivism of evangelical
Christianity and as he studied the early Church he moved into Anglicanism
wherein he was ordained deacon and priest. He finally converted to Catholicism
as lay man in 1845, having been convinced of the Apostolic origins of the
Catholic Church, and increasingly convinced that the Church of England was in
schism. On the eve of his conversion, he famously wrote, “To be deep in history
is to cease to be a Protestant.”
Newman was ordained
a priest in 1846, and later a Cardinal in 1879. It is interesting that Newman petitioned to remain a priest, rather than be consecrated as bishop, in order to
be elevated to the Cardinalate, which was granted by Pope Leo XIII who
installed Newman as Cardinal-deacon (the lowest of ranks in the Sacred College). His was the first major and public conversion to Catholicism
among the British intellectuals, a path soon followed by Fr. Frederick Faber and Henry Edward Cardinal
Manning, and later by such leading intellectuals as Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ, Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson, GK Chesterton,
Fr. Frederick Copleston SJ, and Evelyn Waugh. Newman’s departure caused
an immense furore among the nascent Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, and
throughout the rest of his life he was having on occasion to deny allegations
by others that he was seeking to leave the Catholic Church.
The life of Newman is a life pertinent to our own age: the
present day contentions between Protestants and Catholics, and the general
hostility of the secular world to Christianity, are in many ways paralleled to
that of mid-19th century England. It was only in his life that Catholicism was even made legal in
Great Britain, and Newman himself was deeply embroiled in the crass
anti-Catholicism of the British establishment, both in religious and political
circles – notably in his legal defeat against libel charges in the Achille
case. In an of age of claims of pernicious popery even against the Anglo-Catholics, the anti-Catholic polemics of Joseph Blanco White, popular stories of the Black Legend and the myths of Bloody Mary, and the scandalous and pornographic fictions of Maria Monk, Victorian
broadsheets and religious pamphlets could be every bit as fear mongering,
distorting, crass, and widely disseminated as anything found on the internet
today. Today, regardless of what is now lost in
erudition, articulation, careful thought, and eloquence in current polemics, it
is neither greater nor lesser than the vitriol and antagonistic energy against the Church as in
Newman’s era. To see the way Newman navigated these treacherous waters can be
instructive for us today.
Dave Armstrong’s new edition of his selections of quotes from the vast body of
Newman’s writing is an excellent introduction for the lay reader. It is perhaps not "quotable" in the sense of a collection of pithy aphorisms as one finds in books like
The Quotable Chesterton, for Newman has too much gravity to be taken lightly. It must have been a
daunting task to sift through the dense prose of Newman’s writing, and to
systematically organize it for practical use. It is particularly helpful that
Armstrong treats each topic by the major category (e.g., Development (of Doctrine), The Eucharist, Papal
Infallibility) ordered alphabetically, and then chronologically so that we can
understand Newman’s own growth and development as a thinker. This all the more
so since Newman’s own formulation of “development of doctrine” is now widely
accepted, and we can see it in microcosmically his own life as he grappled to
find truth and clarity for expressions of the faith as he grew to embrace and understand it.
Consider, for instance, the change in his understanding of
the Eucharistic presence of the Lord in the Body and Blood. As a Protestant
writing in 1834, he held that:
“It seems so very irreverent and profane a thing
to say that our Saviour’s own body is carnally present on the Altar. That He is
in some mysterious incomprehensible way present I fully believe; but I do not
know what way –and since that way is not told us in Scripture or the ancient
fathers I dare pronounce nothing.” (p. 144)
It was not out of ignorance either, but a
faith position grounded in Protestant methodology:
“The Roman Church, we know,
considers that the elements of Bread and Wine depart or are taken away on Consecration,
and the Body and Blood of Christ take their place. This is the doctrine of
Transubstantiation … what neither our Church, nor any of the late maintainers
of her doctrine on the subject, even dreams of holding.” (1838, p. 144)
A few years before his reception into the Catholic Church,
Newman could write:
“Without going so far as to speak of miracles, which I do
not mean to do yet really things have happened to me in connexion with the Most
Holy Sacrament which quite prove to me it is a reality and not an empty show.”
(1841, p. 146).
And after his conversion and toward the end of his life, he
would write:
“Catholics believe that ‘totus Christus,’ our Lord in body and
blood, in soul, in divinity, in all that is included in His Personality, is
present at once whether in the consecrated Host or in the Chalice. Indeed, how
else can his presence be spiritual? He who partakes of either species receives
Him in His whole human nature as well as in His Divine…” (1883, p. 149).
Armstrong’s method allows us insight into the shifts in Newman’s thinking over
time, both in his long range conversion from a Protestant to a Catholic, and
even in a more condensed fashion as in the case of papal infallibility, which
was being discussed and discerned in his lifetime, and was a topic with which
he personally grappled. Given the momentous occasion of the Benedict XVI’s
resignation in our present day, and the vastly widespread and obvious confusion
in the media (even among “religious” journalists), it is instructive to read
Newman’s own thoughts on this question of infallibility before it was actually promulgated. While still a Protestant, Newman
understood the need for some sort of final authoritative voice in the Church,
and the need for some infallible office of which the only evident possibility
was the Pope of Rome (4 May 1843, p. 281). Even after his conversion, we can
read of his hesitancy and concern for any formulation of such a doctrine
throughout the 1850s and 60s, but also of a certain resignation and sense of
submission to the authority of the Church:
“If it be God’s will that some
definition in favor of the Pope’s infallibility is passed, then I should at
once submit –but up to that very moment I shall pray most heartily and earnestly
against it.” (20 March 1870, p. 286).
Again,
“My rule is to act according to my best lights as if
I were infallible before the Church decides; but to accept and submit to God’s
Infallibility, when the Church has spoken. The Church has not yet spoken.” (15
April 1870, p. 287).
To gain a sense of Newman’s serious concern,
“When it is
actually done, I will accept it as His act; but, until then, I will believe it
impossible.” (April/ May (?) 1870, p. 287).
After the promulgation of the Dogma by the First Vatican
Council that same year, we can read of Newman’s filial assent, and how he works
systematically through the dogma to his own resolution (27 July 1870, pp.288-289;
March 1871, pp. 290-91), of how he thought one could morally withhold assent
until the Council concluded (8 August 1870, p. 289), and of how he criticized
the manner with which the dogma was promulgated:
“It is impossible to deny that
it was done with an imperiousness and overbearing willfulness, which has been a
great scandal” (c. Oct. 1871, p. 292).
He also makes a whole series of qualifications as to the limits of
infallibility, particularly how it is pertinent
to matters of “the Deposit of Faith originally given” (which is to say,
that it can only be a clarification and articulation of a doctrine entrusted to
the Apostles from the Lord as part of the Traditio of written and oral
revelation and the inspiration of the NT writers), and that it is limitation more than a power – binding against
error, not power to create new doctrines. The development of Newman’s own thinking, and
his resolution of previously held positions against the positive teachings of
the Church, are instructive for us both as to his method and as solid
catechesis for our own understanding.
My only minor criticisms of the book are twofold: indices
would have made the texts more accessible, even though Armstrong does as best
as possible to treat the subjects topically and in alphabetical order. An
subject index would have helped the reader who was looking for specific topics
that might be buried in other categories that Armstrong assigned based on the
major theme; and an index of contents that cross referenced the various sources
would have been helpful as well.
Secondly,
the modern reader might well have appreciated quick translations from the
occasional Latin passages with which Newman peppers his writings. Newman wrote in an age where any educated
person could read, and even speak, Latin. For instance, writing in respect to
the way the Universal Church speaks definitively against error through history,
in the words of St. Augustine, Securus
judicat orbis terrarum (“the verdict of the world is conclusive”) such words flowed
effortlessly from the pen of Newman to the minds of his contemporaries. For us
today, phrases such as Meo periculo (“at my own risk”), Fieri non debuit,
factum valet (“It should not have been done, but it is valid”), pro re nata,
pro hac vice (“for the occasion as it may rise, for this time only”), and such
really ought to have been translated.
As Newman’s stature grows his
thoughts and ideas will find a growing audience. And they should. Dave Armstrong’s book will be a helpful aid
for both the serious and casual reader of Newman, and it deserves its place on
the shelf next to the more comprehensive works of Fr. Ker, other compilations
and anthologies by Fr. Francis X. Connolly, Fr. Louis Bouyer of the Oratory, Fr. James
Tolhurst, and Newman’s own writings.
