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Reflection on Newman's
way of 'simply doing God's will'
The 'Awful Reality' of Catholicism
On 25 September 1843, the Rev. John Henry Newman, Vicar
of one of the most famous churches in England, St Mary's Oxford,
preached his last sermon as an Anglican at Littlemore, (a satellite
parish of St Mary's where he now lived in a small community of men
living in an interesting "monastic" experiment in Anglican Catholicism.)
He asked the congregation to, "pray for him, that in all things he may
know God's will, and at all times he may be ready to fulfil it". He was
still two years away from his reception into what he was to call "The
One True Fold", and which in England at that time was still generally
referred to as "Roman" Catholicism.
With his Beatification now certain, many more books and
articles will be written about Newman to add to the thousands already
written. The grounds for his conversion to Catholicism will be covered
many times over, with probably ever increasing complications and
subtleties. But I would suggest we need not over-complicate Newman's
conversion, despite it taking him the better part of seven years to make
the final step. Nor indeed do we need to over-complicate (or over-liberalise)
his Catholicism. His conversion was, as this last Anglican sermon puts
it, Newman simply doing God's will, and his Catholicism, simply his
fulfilment of God's will. It took Newman seven years to finally
determine God's will for his future
—
for many of us a lifetime is not enough.
Newman wanted certitude that what he was doing was not
the result of his own private judgement, but was God's will. He was
surrounded by a world, political and scientific, that was increasingly
positioning private judgement over God's truths. But this certitude for
Newman —
a highly skilled mathematician
—
would not come from his logical reasoning about Church history and
development
—
it could, for Newman, only come from God
—
and it led him to the Catholic Church.
He was not like so many Catholic converts, now and then,
introduced to the Catholic Church by a friend; he had little or no
interest in the rituals, per se, of Catholicism, in fact
knew nothing of them in any real detail until after his reception; he
was not at all interested in what we might call the "vestments and
vestures" drama of Catholicism as many were; nor indeed, in Gothic
revivalism, which brought so many into the Church at that time. Newman's
conversion resulted from engagement with, and acceptance of, what he
considered to be undeniable and non-negotiable, absolute, objective,
revealed truths about the supernatural not the natural world.
Put simply, and the power of this simplicity I find
overwhelming, his interest lay in being sure that the one true
Church would be the Church where he could have the certitude of knowing
that within that Church, he could save his soul.
Simple as that? Surely not? After all, we are talking
about one of the leading intellects of his day; a serious and
significant scholar; a major theologian and Oxford Don
—
the leader of a major movement to reinject Catholicism back into the
Anglican Church; the writer of numerous books and tracts and famous to
the point that rarely a day would go by without something in the
newspapers about him. Surely, his conversion has to be more complicated
that this?
At its very heart
— I
would reply no! Salvation is the key to understanding Newman's
conversion because he had come to the certain belief that the Anglican
Church was in schism and so therefore unable to be the vehicle of
Christ's salvific grace. "The simple question is", he wrote, "Can I (it
is personal, not whether another, but can I) be saved in the English
Church? Am I in safety, were I to die tonight?". What would your answer
be?
Newman's was clear. He believed he was not in safety
where he was, and so turned his back on the establishment Church in
England; a well-paid job; an Oxford Fellowship; status and standing;
family and friends. This was no lifestyle choice; no modern day
sea-change or tree-change; no new age seeking after material well-being.
This was supernatural conversion
—
not to the accidents of Catholic ritual to suit life here on earth
—
but to the substance of what Newman was to call the "awful reality" of
the Catholic Church.
The Emperor's New Clothes
What Newman did in becoming a Catholic in a mid-19th
Century world where the privileging of man and the natural world
was taking over in all spheres of activity and thinking (as it is doing
so even more today); where unbelief was growing exponentially; where
science and engineering were the new gods. What Newman did made him
stand out from the world of Imperial privilege and status. He stood out
not because he became a Catholic as such
—
but because he stood out for the salvation of his soul over and
above everything else in the world of Anglican religious indifference
and the unbelief that surrounded him. His becoming a Catholic to save
his soul (and not because he liked the "bells and smells") was a total
indictment of, and embarrassment to, not only Erastian Anglicanism, but
also to the State itself. It was a very public celebration of the
religious over the secular.
He wrote, many years before his conversion that, "The
Church of Christ... is not an institution of man, not a mere political
establishment, not a creature of the state, depending on the state's
breath, made and unmade at its will, but it is a Divine society, a great
work of God". Sixteen years later, by the act of his conversion as a
salvific move made possible only supernaturally, he revealed the
unthinkable at this time of British Victorian supremacy of the world,
that neither of the prime English institutions, the Anglican Church or
the British Empire
—both
growing in influence and importance around the whole world
—
that neither of these bastions of 19th century Victorian security and
prosperity, was capable of saving
a man's soul.
In doing what he did, at
the time he did it, Newman broke all the rules of a Victorian England,
gloriously self-confident in its abilities to control the entire world.
He ran up to the palace gates and shouted out loudly the truth about the
Emperor's new clothes. This is not the hyper-sensitive, timid, "souffre-douleur",
as Newman is so often thought to have been. This is the act of a very
brave man
—
brave not because of his own Victorian self-assuredness
—
but because of his certitude that Catholicism, and not England and its
Church, knew how to save his soul.
Heart and Soul
At a time when Empire was
becoming the be-all and end-all of what it meant to be British; when
buildings
—whole
towns and cities
—
were being built on such a scale and solidity to scream out to everyone
who saw them, "this building and all it stands for politically,
socially, culturally and economically will last 1,000 years", Newman
stuck a pin into the balloon and blew apart the myth, in a way no one
had really done before him, that the State and its Church, were simply a
chimera and could never offer real and lasting salvation to their
people, despite all the appearances and their tub-thumping, that they
could.
And he did this
—
privileging the supernatural over the natural
—
not by writing a book about it, though reflections emerged later; not by
preaching sermons at the time; but by a simple action, taken
thoughtfully and carefully, of actually becoming a Catholic. He did
this, in the end, quickly and without fanfare. He didn't seek
instruction; he didn't call on his high status contacts like the then
Bishop Wiseman to receive him with pomp and ceremony in glorious Gothic
splendour, or map out a career path for himself as Anglican Archdeacon,
later Cardinal, Manning was to do immediately after his own conversion.
He was received by (the now Blessed) Fr Dominic Barberi, following a
cold, wet and windy night at Littlemore, on 9 October 1845 in a
converted farm shed for a Chapel.
A month later he wrote in a
letter, "Pray be quite assured that I would not have left the English
church had I thought it possible for me to remain in God's favour and
remain a member of it. To my own mind it is as clear as light that it is
a church which the Fathers would not have acknowledged. I had no
alternative but to leave it unless I gave up the Fathers, nay all
revealed religion". This is totally uncompromising. And we do Newman a
very grave disservice, and indeed the enormous power of the supernatural
action involved in his conversion, if we temper such uncompromising
statements (as many now do) to make them suit more ecumenical times.
The rite of reception in
the Rituale Romanum asks of the convert, and Fr Dominic would
have asked this of Newman, "Quid petis ab Ecclesia?" (What do you
seek from the Church?) and Newman would have answered "Fides"
(Faith). And then Fr Dominic from that same Rituale would have
asked, "Fides quid tibi praestet?" (What might that faith offer
you?). Two little words
—
that's all
—
was Newman's answer
—
"Vitam Aeternam" (Eternal Life). Nothing more. Nothing less.
Faith
and Eternal Life. As we contemplate
John Henry Newman's future Beatification do we need any more than these
three simple words
—
the very heart and soul of his conversion
—
to hold as his most powerful legacy before
us?
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