Feast Day: October 9th | Patronage: Poets, Anglican Ordinariate, Converts, Theologians, Scholars | Iconography: Wearing Red Cassock (of Cardinal), or Black Cassock (as Oratorian), and Biretta (as Cleric) or Zucchetto (as Cardinal), sometimes holding Book (as Scholar)
Last time we got through Newman’s first conversion to Christianity, but his discovery (over a number of years) of the absolutely necessity for faith to be grounded on truth (and not the kind that can be interpreted however I want), as well as the reality that this truth didn’t always fit nicely between two poles; it wasn’t the nice, simple, sensible mean-between-extremes, sometimes God asks us to follow Him off the edge.
1845: Newman writes “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.” He began it as an even deeper dive into the Church Fathers to prove for himself once and for all that the doctrines, devotions, practices, and accretions of the Roman Catholic Church were aberrations from the original Christian beliefs and practices. And the more he studied the more he discovered that each and every quibble or complaint he could throw at the Roman Church could be traced back to fledgling ideas that the Church had always held.
And so, in his little study at Littlemore, having stepped back from the Oxford Movement (really, his catholic-tendencies had caused him to be driven from it), Newman fell on his knees before the fiery little Passionist priest, Fr. Dominic Barberi, and was received into the Catholic Church. Rain streamed down outside, Newman’s friends and colleagues abandoned him, and perhaps his mind went back to Malta, where he was also wet and alone … but wasn’t this far worse? He had chosen Christ, and immediately gotten the cross. Wasn’t there supposed to be a honeymoon-period?
1846: Newman studied for the Catholic priesthood in Rome. He had to re-memorize the bible because they used a different translation… He felt rather silly among the youthful, naïve seminarians… He banged his head on Pope Pius IX’s knee when trying to bow before him. You get the picture, but he was ordained a priest, and returns to England founding an oratory (after the model of St. Philip Neri) of priests to live in community.
1854: He is tapped to be the rector of the new Catholic University of Ireland, a project that was befuddled by all sorts of disagreements, and candidly Newman was a poor leader amidst those challenges. He writes a tremendous essay that orients the whole project, “The Idea of a University”, proposing that such a place of education is not merely to impart knowledge but to fashion virtuous individuals … but it still kind of went up in flames and Newman goes back to his oratory in disgrace.
1859: He writes a famous piece “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” to flesh out an idea he had floated in his magazine, the Rambler. He wasn’t claiming that the faithful defined, or dictated, the Church’s beliefs, but that one could take a read on what the faithful believed overall and discover the Church’s faith in that. Like one consults a watch, or a doctor consults the pulse of his patient, to discover what is already there. Just so, one could consider the entirety of the Church, especially her littlest and humblest members, even during the worst crises (think back to those years when Arianism ran rampant among the leadership of the Church) and find that they still had a sense of where the truth actually was. Of course, the idea ruffled feathers and raised eyebrows and Newman began to be sidelined by Catholics even more.
1864: He responds to the sarcasm and scorn of Charles Kingsley, putting words on the reason for his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. (I’ve tried to offer some of the bigger contours of this auto-biography in these articles.) This work actually restored his credibility in many ways in both Anglican and Catholic spheres. He lays bare his academic nature and quest for truth all through the history of the Church, and while whipped about by so many different controversies and challenges of his own day.
1870: He writes “An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent”, a dense work, basically describing how the things that are most important to us – the love of a friend, the beauty of autumn, the presence of God – can never be scientifically proven, nor even described. No, all these sorts of things marvelously convince and captivate us by innumerable smaller considerations in their favor, not one bullet-proof argument.
1879: years later, when made a cardinal, he would describe this entire journey: “For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. … 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.”
Sometimes our call is faithfulness. Not success, not comfort, not following the obvious road, but trudging after the Master as he takes the narrow-way. So it was for Newman, but there was grace enough on the way to carry him through!
– Fr. Dominic leaves you with another hymn that Newman wrote, this one an extract from a poem after his conversion, the “Dream of Gerontius” which follows a dying man as he makes his way through temptation, death, and purgatory and up to paradise with God. You’ve probably heard it before: Praise to the Holiest in the Height.