"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Friday, November 23, 2018

Confessions of a Convert by Robert Hugh Benson, Part 2

You can find Part 1 of my posts on  Robert Hugh Benson’s confessional memoir, Confessions of a Convert, here.  I presented this little chapter by chapter summary on that post but I think it’s a handy enough guide to post again.

Chapter I: Describes his upbringing and spiritual development.
Chapter II: His first doubts about the Church of England.
Chapter III: His four years at the Community of the Resurrection gave him an appreciation for Roman Catholic type of devotions.
Chapter IV: In 1902, while writing one of his books, “The Light Invisible” he began to realize the inherent contradictions within Anglican theology and began realizing the harmonious integration within the Roman Catholic Church.
Chapter V: While reading various theological treatises, and then especially finding the claims of Rome as having primacy among churches in the New Testament itself, Benson was satisfied that the Church of Rome had full authority concerning doctrine.
Chapter VI: Having come to that realization, Benson is now thrown into a state of uneasiness and tries to give the Church of England another chance at resolving his intellectual and spiritual crises. 
Chapter VII: He makes a final decision to renounce the Church of England and enters the Roman Catholic Church.
Chapter VIII: His full expression of joy in joining the Church Christ instituted and what it has meant to him.

Here are my comments from chapters three through seven.  Chapter Eight is such a magnificent piece of writing that I will dedicate an entire final post to it.  So stay tuned.

On Chapter III.

(1)
"Benson spends four happy years with the community of Mirfield Brethren, a religious community whose “external life was a modification of the old Religious Rules and resembled, so far as I understand, a kind of combination of the Redemptorist and the Benedictine.”

It's hard to imagine what a "combination of Redemptorist and the Benedictine" community would be like. Redemptorist are missionary while Benedictine are monastic.

(2)
It was his time in Mirfield that set him into doubt about the Church of England. This passage I think is very important:

Originally, as a "Moderate High Churchman," I had held that the Church of England, in her appeal and in her supposed resemblance to the "Primitive" Church, was the most orthodox body in Christendom; that Rome and the East on the one side had erred through excess; and the Non-conformist bodies on the other through defect, and these, further, through their loss of episcopal succession, had forfeited any corporate place in the Visible Body of Christ. But this doctrinal position had long ago broken down under me. First, I had seen the impossibility of believing that for about a thousand years the promises of Christ had failed—between, that is, the fifth or sixth century and the Reformation period—and that corruption during all this space of time had marred the original purity of the Gospel. Next, I had begun to perceive that in the Church of Christ there must be some Living Voice which, if not actually infallible, must at least be taken to be such—some authoritative person or Council who could pass judgment upon new theories and answer new questions. I had attempted, strangely enough, to find this Living Voice in the Book of Common Prayer and the Articles—to seek in them, that is to say, a final immediate interpreter of remote Primitive and Apostolic Faith. But now I had learned the fallacy of such an attempt, since even these formularies could be, and were, taken in completely divergent senses: the Ritualist, for instance, finds that the Prayer Book Catechism teaches the Objective and Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, and the Low Churchman claims it as teaching Receptionism. Then, when I had looked despairingly to the only elements in the Church of England which bear any resemblance at all to a Living Voice—the decisions of Convocation, the resolutions of Pan-Anglican Conferences, and the utterances of Bishops—I found, either that these were divided amongst themselves, or that they refused to answer, or, at the worst, that they answered in a manner which I could not reconcile with what I was convinced was the Christian Faith. The "Moderate High Church" theory, then, had broken down so far as I was concerned, and I had been forced, it seemed to me, both by logic and the pressure of circumstances, to seek some other theory as the foundation of my faith. This I found, for the time, in the Ritualistic School. It was as follows.

It's probably hard for us to understand what a "moderate High Church" is, but the fact of such a fine categorizations existed I think shows the turmoil that the CofE was undergoing. There was an incredible tension within its theology. If it became too Papist, the congregants saw the error of its ways; if it became too Calvinist, it didn't feel theologically sound. So it tried to create fine distinctions.

On Chapter IV:

(1)
“I was an official of a church that did not seem to know her own mind even on matters directly connected with the salvation of the soul.”

Yes, that is what I was referring to when I gave that outline of Anglicanism. The inherent contradiction between the low church (Evangelical from Calvin) with the high Church Catholic.

Joseph Pearce, who has written many books and is a great scholar and I believe a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism has often talked about how deeply Roman Catholic England was before Henry VIII. It wasn't just Catholic, it was as devout as any country. Even Henry VIII was supposed to be "defender of the faith" before he became completely egotistical. Somehow I suspect he lost his sanity. But it caused an incredible convulsion in English life from which it could only stabilize with an theologically flawed religion.

One of the great old Catholic shrines in England is that of Our Lady of Walsingham. You can read about it here.  

I still hold out hope that the land of Catholic William Shakespeare will one day return to its proper faith. OLofW, pray for us and pray for the British people.

(2)
Well, my two cents on whether or Protestants or Catholics are more emotional is this. It depends what you're looking at. I've seen Catholics get pretty emotional in practicing their faith too. It depends on what angle you are looking at, if that makes sense.

Perhaps Benson is referring to Protestants not really having a St. Augustine or a St. Thomas Aquinas, and so not having the intellectual rigor. Or he could be referring to Martin Luther, who was pretty emotional in his breaking with the church, or even Henry VIII in his.

I've seen Fr. Dwight Longenecker, a fairly intellectual contemporary Catholic make the case that Catholicism of the last couple of hundred years has drifted into sentimentalism. He talks about it here but he's got other articles where he details it as well and perhaps more fully. 

My point being, there are elements of emotionalism to almost everything.


On Chapter V

I think this section should be quoted:

But the Petrine claim needs no digging: it lies like a great jewel, blazing on the surface, when once one has rubbed one's eyes clear of anti-Catholic predisposition. The "One Foundation" declares that on "Cephas" He will build His Church: the Good Shepherd bids the same Cephas, even after he has forfeited, it might seem, all claims on his Lord, to "feed his sheep"; the "Door" gives to Peter the "Keys." In all I found twenty-nine passages of Scripture—since then I have found a few more—in which the Petrine prerogative is at any rate implied, and I found not one contrary to or incompatible with its commission. I published these in a small pamphlet soon after my submission.


Yes, that is the justification for Rome as being the central authority of Christianity.


On Chapter VI

In this chapter Benson has a discussion with a “dignitary” from the Church of England in the hopes that he can persuaded him from conversion.  But just the very opposite happens:

The dignitary with whom I stayed a day or two, and who was also extremely forbearing did not, I think, understand my position. He asked me whether there were not devotions in the Roman Church to which I felt a repugnance. I told him that there were — notably the popular devotions to Our Blessed Lady. He then expressed great surprise that I could seriously contemplate submitting to a communion in which I should have to use method of worship of which I disapproved. I tried in vain to make it clear that I proposed becoming a Roman Catholic not because I was necessarily attracted by her customs, but because I believed that Church to be the Church of God, and that therefore if my opinions on minor details differed from hers, it was all the worse for me; that I had better, in fact, correct my notions as soon as possible, for I should go to Rome not as a critic or a teacher, but as a child and a learner.

Benson was so clear headed.  The customs are only an outward form.  The Church’s authority and validity of the doctrine is what one must weigh.  And in the next paragraph Benson spells it out.

Here was one of her chief rulers assuming, almost as an axiom, that I must accept only those dogmas that individually happened to recommend themselves to my reason or my temperament. Tacitly, then, he allowed no authoritative power on the part of the Church to demand an intellectual submission; tacitly, again, then, he made no real distinction between Natural and Revealed Religion: Christ had not revealed positive truths to which, so soon as we accepted Christ as a Divine Teacher, we instantly submitted without hesitation. Or, if this seem too strong, it may be said that the prelate in question at any rate denied the existence anywhere on earth of an authority capable of proposing the truths of Revelation in an authoritative manner, and hence, indirectly evacuated Revelation of any claim to demand man's submission.
Chapter six seems to be where Benson gave one last chance for the Church of England to make a case for him not to convert, and the Church of England couldn’t do it. 


On Chapter VII

(1)
Finally chapter VII we get his conversion.  I particularly liked how he described his conversion

I do not suppose that anyone ever entered the City of God with less emotion than mine. It seemed to me that I was utterly without feeling; I had neither joy nor sorrow, nor dread nor excitement.  There was the Truth, as aloof as an ice- peak, and I had to embrace it. Never for one single instant did I doubt that, nor, perhaps it is unnecessary to say, have I ever doubted it since. I tried to reproach myself with my coldness, but all fell quite flat. I was as one coming out of the glare of artificial light, out of warmth and brightness and friendliness, into a pale daylight of cold and dreary certainty. I was uninterested and quite positive.
(2)
I think this paragraph captures the reactions from his conversion.



And now began the inevitable consequences of what I had done. I do not know how many letters I received in the few days following the announcement in the papers of my conversion; but I had at least two heavy posts every day. These had to be answered, and what made it harder was that among them all there were not more than two or three from Catholics. This was perfectly natural, as I hardly knew more than that number of Catholics.  One telegram indeed warmed my heart; for it was from that priest to whom I owed so much and of whose conversion I had heard with such sorrow in Damascus six years before. The rest were from Anglicans — clergy, men, women, and even chil- dren — most of whom regarded me either as a deliberate traitor (but of these there were very few) or as an infatuated fool, or as an impatient, headstrong, ungrateful bigot. Many of these kindly concealed their sentiments as well as they could, but it was for the most part plain enough what they thought. From one clergyman, still an Anglican, I received an enthusiastic letter of congratulation on having been happy enough to have found my way into the City of Peace. Eight years later he also entered that city.

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