Sunday Meditation: Zacchaeus

This story demonstrates the power of Jesus to transform anyone.

 

At that time, Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town.

Now a man there named Zacchaeus,

who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man,

was seeking to see who Jesus was;

but he could not see him because of the crowd,

for he was short in stature.

So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus,

who was about to pass that way.

When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said,

"Zacchaeus, come down quickly,

for today I must stay at your house."

And he came down quickly and received him with joy.

When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying,

"He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner."

But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord,

"Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor,

and if I have extorted anything from anyone

I shall repay it four times over."

And Jesus said to him,

"Today salvation has come to this house

because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.

For the Son of Man has come to seek

and to save what was lost."

~Lk 19:1-10

 

I love Zacchaeus.  Is it his short stature?  And while this is not a parable, so it really happened, one can get into the psychology of Zacchaeus by understanding his height.  We are never told why he his heart is moved so suddenly.  We are never told why he wants to see Jesus in the first place.  Perhaps his heart is already in the process of moving before he even meets Jesus.  In a world where strength and intimidation rules common life, Zacchaeus has succeeded despite not having the stature to intimidate.  In that stature he understands the weak and perhaps has some compassion that other tax collectors may not have. 

I have never come across Fr. Geoffrey Plant’s videos before until now.  This is quite good at fully explaining the Zacchaeus story in the context of Luke’s Gospel.  It’s a little long but worth the half hour.

 

"Today salvation has come to this house.”  But don’t miss Jesus’ last sentence: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost." 

 

Poetry Analysis; “October” by Robert Frost

Here is this lovely, relatively well-known poem from Robert Frost, “October,” perfect for this month of foliage.  First the poem, and I’ve included line numbers and segmented the poem into sections with lines.  I’ve also listed the rhyme scheme over to the right.

 

October

By Robert Frost

 

1 O hushed October morning mild,                            A

2 Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;                         B

3 Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,                               A

4 Should waste them all.                                             B

5 The crows above the forest call;                              B

6 Tomorrow they may form and go.                           C

7 O hushed October morning mild,                            A

8 Begin the hours of this day slow.                            C

9 Make the day seem to us less brief.                         D

10 Hearts not averse to being beguiled,                      A        

11 Beguile us in the way you know.                           C

12 Release one leaf at break of day;                           E

13 At noon release another leaf;                                 D

14 One from our trees, one far away.                         E

15 Retard the sun with gentle mist;                            F

16 Enchant the land with amethyst.                           F

17 Slow, slow!                                                            C

18 For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,                    B        

19 Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,            G                    

20 Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—             G        

21 For the grapes’ sake along the wall.                       B        

 

 

There is no mysterious theme to the poem.  It is what it seems, first and primary a meditation on the beautiful October foliage: “Enchant the land with amenthyst” (l. 16). One subtle theme is the slow movement of time, and the ever coming death that the change symbolizes: “Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild/Should waste them all” (3-4).  The poem is so static, it feels like a picture, but there is subtle movement.  The crows come and go (5-6) and the leaves fall ever so sporadically and one at a time over the course of a morning (12-24).  But the time is ever creeping slow: “Slow, slow!/For the grapes’ sake, if they were all” (17-18). 

What really intrigued me though was the form of the poem.  Does it have form?  It feels like it does.  The first quatrain (lines 1-4) has an ABAB rhyme scheme.  That anticipates form.  But the second quatrain (5-8) has a BCAC rhyme scheme, which does not follow the first quatrain.  The B rhyme harkens back to the first quatrain; a third rhyme, “C,” is introduced, and quatrain closes with to the very first “A” rhyme.  That does interlock, however asymmetrically. 

But what about the next quatrain?  If there were a third quatrain, the rhyme scheme would be DACE, which would not be a quatrain.  In fact, the syntax has it that a full period ends after three lines, and the following three lines is also a complete sentence.  Two three line groupings of a developed thought forms a sestet, six lines with an interlocking rhyme scheme.  If those six lines were a sestet, it would have the rhyme scheme of DACEDE.  The A and C echo back to the preceding two quatrains, the D and the E introduces new rhymes and interlock within the sestet with two E’s toward the end progressing the poem forward.  Again asymmetrical but the result is a static feel while moving the poem slowly forward. 

But wait, isn’t two quatrains followed by a sestet an Italian sonnet?  Yes, but a sonnet requires an iambic pentameter line, that is, ten syllables which consist of five two-syllable feet.  But all the poem’s lines are iambic tetrameter (eight syllables of four two-syllable feet) with two notable exceptions.  I’ll get to the exceptions in a bit.  So the first fourteen lines approximate a sonnet but it’s definitely not a sonnet.  

The following two lines (15-16) is a pure couplet of FF with no echo of the F rhyme anywhere else in the poem.  They don’t echo back and they don’t return.  The 17^th line is made up of two single-syllable words, “Slow, slow.”  Actually it’s one single-syllable word repeated.  And finally the last four lines return to a quatrain, only this time it is not an asymmetrical quatrain but a very symmetrical BGGB.  The internal rhyme of GG also does not echo anywhere else in the poem but the B sound which frames the quatrain harkens back to the first quatrain, which I think remarkably ties the poem together.

So what about the two non-conforming lines?  Line four is a four syllable iambic line (diameter), which is half the poem’s tetrameter lines.  To have just one diameter line in the midst of the tetrameter scheme is very odd, and again asymmetrical.  Because of its curtness, the line gives extra power to the death motif, “Should waste them all.”  The other non-conforming, “slow, slow,” isn’t even iambic.  It’s a spondee, two stressed syllables, and it gives extra power to the creeping temporal movement of the poem, reflecting the slow falling of the leaves.

Other observations I would like to point out.  (1) Lines one and seven repeat.  (2) All line ending words are single syllable except for amethyst.  (3) One word that ends a line is “frost,” the poet’s last name.  I’m not sure what to make of that last observation, but it is curious. 

So what are we to make of all this?  Opening asymmetrical quatrains but a closing symmetrical quatrain.  An asymmetrical sestet which with the quatrains ahead of it echoes an Italian sonnet, but a sonnet of improper line length.  Two lines that don’t follow the metrical scheme surrounded by 19 lines that do.  It is a poem that gives the appearance of fixed form but is highly non-conforming and, to repeat what I think is the most important observation of the poem’s form, asymmetrical. 

Here is what I think it means.  The asymmetrical form reflects the subject.  If you look at a wooded area in autumn, you see many colors of turning leaves, and they give the appearance of rhythmic form, but they are asymmetrically aligned.  It’s not that every other tree is yellow or that yellows and reds are in fixed repetition.  Two yellows may come at once but reds and browns alternate afterward.  It gives the appearance of harmony when you look at it as wide tapestry but it does not have a periodic cadence.  It seems balanced but it’s asymmetric!  Indeed it is harmonic but not in fixed repetition.  This is what Frost is capturing aesthetically, the woods in October.  That is the craft of a fine artist!

The pictures of the foliage are from the Staten Island Greenbelt, which is a conserved park.  I posted on a Father’sDay hike Matthew and I took in 2020.  It was spring time then.  It’s been a beautiful fall here this year.  Enjoy.

Sunday Meditation: The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

This is a great parable told by Jesus and one that resonates deeply with me.

 

Jesus addressed this parable

to those who were convinced of their own righteousness

and despised everyone else.

"Two people went up to the temple area to pray;

one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.

The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself,

'O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity --

greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.'

But the tax collector stood off at a distance

and would not even raise his eyes to heaven

but beat his breast and prayed,

'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'

I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former;

for whoever exalts himself will be humbled,

and the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

~Lk 18:9-14

 

This is just six verses long, and yet one of the most profound little parables.  Dr. Brant Pitre does a superb job of explaining every little nuance. 

The tax collector Jesus has in mind is obviously Matthew, who will become one of the twelve.  This little dramatization from a movie called Son of God conflates the calling of Matthew with this parable.  It’s not exactly how the Gospels relate the separate passages, but it is a worthy interpretation.

 

'O God, be merciful to me a sinner,’ is a verse every Christian should be in the habit of frequently saying.  I do.

Faith Filled Friday: St. Dominic Receiving the Rosary

October 7^th was the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.  Last year I wrote up a detailed post on the history of the feast day, how it was originally called the Feast of Our Lady of Victory and linked to the Battle of Lepanto.  Read that post because it was very informative.  

I know it’s a few weeks late but I took the pictures and I want to post them.  The pastor at our parish, Fr. Eugene, loves sacramental and seems to have an affinity for statues and relics.  When the feast day of a particular saint comes around, Fr. Eugene will set up a statue of that saint off to the left side of the altar decorated with flowers.  Now this year for Our Lady of the Rosary he set up a small statue of the Blessed Mother handing St. Dominic a rosary. 

Before I get to the pictures, let me tell of the legend of how we got the rosary.  In 1208, it was held that St. Dominic prayed to the Virgin Mary for help in overcoming the Albigensian heresy in southern France and she in a vision gave him the rosary.  From John Roskoski at Catholic365:

 

It was during this time that the tradition of the Rosary comes to us. The form in which it has come down to us will best be stated in the words of P. Corneluis de Snecka, a disciple of the French Dominican Alan de la Roche:

 

We read that at the time when he was preaching to the Albigenses, St. Dominic at first obtained but scanty success: and that one day, complaining of this in pious prayer to our Blessed Lady, she deigned to reply to him, saying: ’Wonder not that you have obtained so little fruit by your labors, you have spent them on barren soil, not yet watered with the dew of Divine grace. When God willed to renew the face of the earth, He began by sending down on it the fertilizing rain of the Angelic Salutation. Therefore, preach my Psalter composed of 150 Angelic Salutations and 15 Our Fathers, and you will obtain an abundant harvest.’

 

The place of the revelation was the church of Prouille and the time was 1208. The claim of place and time are most strongly supported by the tradition of the Dominican Order. Pope Leo XIII affirmed over and over the Dominican origin of the Rosary and in a letter to the Bishop of Carcassone (1889), he accepts the tradition of Prouille as the place where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Dominic, revealing this devotion. The tradition that Mary first revealed the Rosary devotion to St. Dominic is supported by 13 popes. St. Dominic went into the villages of the heretics, gathered the people, and preached to them the mysteries of salvation – the Incarnation, the Redemption, Eternal Life. As the Holy Virgin had taught him to do, he distinguished the different kinds of mysteries and after each short instruction he had ten Hail Marys recited. St. Dominic found great success in this new devotion, bringing about the conversion of the Albigensians.

Well, it is a disputed story, but we Dominicans believe it. 

Here is a picture of the statue at my parish, St. Rita’s Church in Staten Island, NY, and then a zoomed in picture.

 

 

Afterwards I asked Fr. Eugene where that statue was normally placed.  I had never seen it before.  He said it was in his office.  I found that strange.  Fr. Eugene is a Lay Carmelite.  Why would he have a statue f St. Dominic in his office?  Then I remembered.  St. Rita many years back had a chapter of Dominican Sisters at the parish, teaching at the parish school. 

Well, it made my Dominican heart jump for joy when I saw it at Mass.

Apologia Pro Vita Sua by Cardinal John Henry Newman, Post 8

This is the eighth and final post in a series of St. John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua. 

You can find Post #1 here.  

Post #2 here.  

Post #3 here. 

Post #4 here. 

Post #5 here. 

Post # 6 here.  

Post #7 here.  

 

All that is left is my Goodreads review.  It’s a lengthy review, and so I think I captured the essence of the book and Newman’s conversion.  I think all of the posts on Apologia Pro Vita Sua are insightful, but if you are only going to read one post, I would read this one.

 

My Goodreads Review

This is one of the great conversion stories in the history of literature, and a wonderful defense of the Catholic faith.  Perhaps it is not as stirring as St. Augustine’s Confessions, but it is written by an equally great theologian, an equally great writer of prose, and an acknowledged saint in the Catholic Church.  Of course Newman would not know in his lifetime, but he would be canonized in 2019 and should now be referred to as St. John Henry Newman.

I gave this work five stars, but that is not to say all readers will enjoy this work.  It is a difficult read.  There are several difficulties. First, it was written in the 19th century, so there's a style gap between Newman and us. Second, he's very intellectual, so there is a lot of knowledge that is assumed the reader knows. Third he's dealing with finer points of apologetics. Fourth, there's a historical time and place context. The history of the Anglican Church is not something we are generally taught.  These definitely make reading this book difficult.

Still it is worth it.  John Henry Newman has the reputation of being one of the great prose stylist of the English language.  There are numerous passages that are so eloquently written that a students of prose can map out paragraphs and sentences for their edification.  Lovers of fine prose can just bask in the pleasure of his artistry.  Here’s a short example of a description of a friend and colleague.

 

To mention Mr. Hugh Rose's name is to kindle in the minds of those who knew him a host of pleasant and affectionate remembrances. He was the man above all others fitted by his cast of mind and literary powers to make a stand, if a stand could be made, against the calamity of the times. He was gifted with a high and large mind, and a true sensibility of what was great and beautiful; he wrote with warmth and energy; and he had a cool head and cautious judgment. He spent his strength and shortened his life, Pro Ecclesia Dei, as he understood that sovereign idea. Some years earlier he had been the first to give warning, I think from the University Pulpit at Cambridge, of the perils to England which lay in the biblical and theological speculations of Germany. The Reform agitation followed, and the Whig Government came into power; and he anticipated in their distribution of Church patronage the authoritative introduction of liberal opinions into the country. He feared that by the Whig party a door would be opened in England to the most grievous of heresies, which never could be closed again.

I should write about how the Apologia was inspired.  His Apologia was published nineteen years after being received into the Catholic Church.  It seems that just before 1864 Newman had been wanting to write about his conversion, and was scribbling notes in preparation but an occasion came upon him that focused the memoirs.  A certain Charles Kingsley, a novelist, historian, and ardent anti-Catholic, in a review of a recently published History of England written by James Anthony Froude, which strongly defended the English Reformation, insulted the Catholic clergy by twisting words of Newman’s written prior to his conversion. 

So the dispute was not over some deep theological issue but over a crass statement by what today might be called a bigot.  Newman found the opportunity to expose Kingsley and defend the burgeoning Catholic Church in England.  This came at a critical moment in the Catholic Renaissance in England.  Catholics thanked Newman, Protestants read the Apologia and started to if not accept Catholics at least drop some of their erroneous notions, and a number of prominent Englishmen converted to Catholicism.  Without Newman’s Apologia we might never have had the conversions of Gerard Manly Hopkins, Robert Hugh Benson, and G.K. Chesterton.  Newman’s autobiography was one of those rare books that had a lasting societal impact.

The book takes us from Newman’s youth, where from a religious experience brought him to Evangelical Protestantism, then in his collegiate education, fixed into the Church of England, becoming an Anglican theologian at Oxford and a parish rector.  Newman takes us through some twenty years as an Anglican apologist, combatting the Liberal Protestantism that was infecting England—one might argue that Liberal Protestantism has completely won the day in today’s Anglican Church, which might not surprise Newman at all—and the Catholic Church, which to Newman felt had deviated from Apostolic tradition through her many accoutrements.  In Newman’s mind it was the Anglican Church that had maintained Apostolic tradition, and to what Newman called “primitive Christianity,” and he tried to show how the Anglican Church was the via media, the middle way between the traditional Protestantism of the Reformers and Catholicism.  And then he suddenly realized he was wrong.

So what converted him to Catholicism?  I’m going to put this under spoiler in case you want to let the book unfold the story for you.

And then Newman read Church history.  “To Be Deep in History Is to Cease to Be Protestant.”  That is a famous quote from Newman which does not come from this book.  I've known that quote for a long time and not having read the context I imagined it was because Newman reading the Church Fathers saw the sacraments from their origin and concluded Protestantism had deviated and that Catholicism had not. I imagined he looked into the past and could not find Protestantism in the early Church. But High Church Anglicanism still had the concept of the sacramental system. So it was not that at all. The history that converted Newman was the history of the heresies and how Rome dealt with them. He came to see Protestantism as just another heresy.

In studying the Monophysite heresy, he realized how similar they were in standing and argument with Luther and Calvin.  The Monophysitic heresy was over the nature of Christ.  The Council of Nicaea determined that Christ was of two natures, divine and man.  The Monophysites were those that declared that Christ was only of one nature, of strictly divine.  The Monophysites pointed to Biblical passages to justify their claims.  The Catholic Church rejected those claims, arguing the Monophysites were bringing in a new thought from the Apostolic tradition.  Luther and Calvin pointed to Biblical passages to justify their claims.  The Catholic Church equally rejected their claims as non-Apostolic.  Just because you can point to a reading in the Bible doesn’t mean that’s how the Apostles meant it to be read. 

In understanding the Monophysitic heresy, he noticed Pope Leo the Great’s response to the heresy and he noticed the Monophysitic reaction by attaching themselves to political power, which was exactly what the Protestant Reformers did, and he came to a startling realization. 

 

I have nothing more to say on the subject of the change in my religious opinions. On the one hand I came gradually to see that the Anglican Church was formally in the wrong, on the other that the Church of Rome was formally in the right; then, that no valid reasons could be assigned for continuing in the Anglican, and again that no valid objections could be taken to joining the Roman. Then, I had nothing more to learn; what still remained for my conversion, was, not further change of opinion, but to change opinion itself into the clearness and firmness of intellectual conviction.

And so, he even realizes that his Via Media had actually a lesser claim to challenge Rome than the other Protestant denomination.  Luther and Calvin had put forth a different theology, however incorrect, than Catholicism.  Anglicanism was essentially a qualification to Catholicism, and so had even less of a right to protest.  In time Newman would realize that the Catholic accoutrements were not novelties as Protestant theology is but developments from kernels that had been there since the beginning.  He would later show this in his great theological work, The Development of Doctrine. 

Finally Newman leaves it completely unambiguous that he has converted to Catholicism with his whole heart and that he accepts all the doctrines and dogmas the Church has declared. 

 

And now, having thus described it, I profess my own absolute submission to its claim. I believe the whole revealed dogma as taught by the Apostles, as committed by the Apostles to the Church, and as declared by the Church to me. I receive it, as it is infallibly interpreted by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and (implicitly) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted by that same authority till the end of time. I submit, moreover, to the universally received traditions of the Church, in which lies the matter of those new dogmatic definitions which are from time to time made, and which in all times are the clothing and the illustration of the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I submit myself to those other decisions of the Holy See, theological or not, through the organs which it has itself appointed, which, waiving the question of their infallibility, on the lowest ground come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed.

It is interesting Newman uses the form of the word “submit” three times in that short paragraph.  It is a conscious effort to contrast himself from Martin Luther, who refused to submit himself to Church authority, and, if I may, contrast himself to Lucifer who refused to serve God.  What a fine book by a future saint.

Sunday Meditation: Will He Find Faith On Earth?

The last sentence of this passage is something that comes to mind from time to time.

 

Jesus told his disciples a parable

about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.

He said, "There was a judge in a certain town

who neither feared God nor respected any human being.

And a widow in that town used to come to him and say,

'Render a just decision for me against my adversary.'

For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought,

'While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being,

because this widow keeps bothering me

I shall deliver a just decision for her

lest she finally come and strike me.'"

The Lord said, "Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says.

Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones

who call out to him day and night?

Will he be slow to answer them?

I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. 

But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

Lk 16:19-31

With the way the world has evolved, the way atheism and agnosticism seems to be spreading, I do wonder.  I also remember a from certain homily from a pastor at my church who has since been relocated, Fr. Richard Veras.  Perhaps it was in reference to this Gospel reading, I don’t remember.  He said that even if there is no longer a single believer in Christianity, that doesn’t render it not true.  Christ and the Trinity of God exists no matter if no one still believes it.  Just like we may not be aware of a particular fish at the bottom of the sea, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

Dr. Brant Pitre explains the entire passage.

 

 

Apologia Pro Vita Sua by Cardinal John Henry Newman, Post 7

This is the seventh post in a series of St. John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua. 

You can find Post #1 here.  

Post #2 here.  

Post #3 here. 

Post #4 here. 

Post #5 here. 

Post # 6 here.  

  

Chapter 5:  Position of my Mind since 1845

Summary

In the final chapter, Newman, couched in his thoughts since his conversion, gives a vindication of the Catholic Church, an apologetic of the Catholic faith, and a final rationalization for his conversion.  Newman touches on some key doctrines: the Catholic Church’s acceptance and assimilation of science, the nature of the human condition as fallen but not wretched, and perhaps most importantly to Newman the Catholic Church’s claim as infallible authority.  Finally Newman makes clear, that even when he has difficulties accepting some of the Church’s positions or manners of devotion, his submission to the Church’s authority, a submission he sees as necessary of a world drifting into relativism.

###

There really isn’t much to say about this chapter.  I think it provides some great passages of apologetics.  Let me quote a few.  Let’s start with the opening paragraphs of the chapter. 

 

From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption.

Now bear in mind he is writing this in 1864, some nineteen years from his conversion.  He has been ordained a priest in the Catholic Church but he is still fifteen years away from being promoted to a Cardinal, a title he had no expectation of achieving.  So for all that time he has had no regrets and is totally at peace.  I love the simile in his final sentence, coming into port after a rough sea.  He goes on.

 

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles, which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive of them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.

And so he does not have any trouble with any of the Catholic doctrines.  Sure there are difficulties, just as there were difficulties in creeds shared by Catholics and Protestants.  There are difficulties in all matters of faith, that’s why it’s faith.  I love this wonderful quote: “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”  Because one has difficulties to one with faith, it is a far cry from having doubts.

###

So Newman addresses one of the most prominent of the Catholic difficulties, that of Transubstantiation.  The quote on Transubstantiation is from one paragraph but I’m going to break it apart to show the development of his thought. 

 

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe?

It is interesting how he believed it immediately upon becoming Catholic.  Once the Church had “declared it to be part of original revelation” then if you accept Magisterial authority, then you just accept it.  Newman points out, yes it is difficult—impossible even—to imagine it, but belief is not understanding.  It is faith.  Side note: I find it strange how Protestants talk about justification by faith and yet when Jesus asks of you to have faith in His presence in the Eucharist they fail.  Every time one goes up for communion at Mass it is an act of faith that you are demonstrating when the priest says “Body of Christ” and you respond “amen.”  Amen literally means “it is so.”  Back to Newman’s paragraph.

 

Yet Macaulay thought it so difficult to believe, that he had need of a believer in it of talents as eminent as Sir Thomas More, before he could bring himself to conceive that the Catholics of an enlightened age could resist "the overwhelming force of the argument against it." "Sir Thomas More," he says, "is one of the choice specimens of wisdom and virtue; and the doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge. A faith which stands that test, will stand any test." But for myself, I cannot indeed prove it, I cannot tell how it is; but I say, "Why should it not be? What's to hinder it? What do I know of substance or matter? just as much as the greatest philosophers, and that is nothing at all;"—so much is this the case, that there is a rising school of philosophy now, which considers phenomena to constitute the whole of our knowledge in physics.

By “Macaulay” I assume he is referring to the British historian and politician in Newman’s day, Thomas Babington Macaulay, who Newman says needed the witness of Thomas More for him to think Catholics truly believed it.  Newman goes on to say that he cannot prove Transubstantiation, but he responds, “Why should it not be?”  “What do I know of substance and matter?”  Material phenomena does not constitute all of reality.   He continues.

 

The Catholic doctrine leaves phenomena alone. It does not say that the phenomena go; on the contrary, it says that they remain; nor does it say that the same phenomena are in several places at once. It deals with what no one on earth knows any thing about, the material substances themselves. And, in like manner, of that majestic Article of the Anglican as well as of the Catholic Creed,—the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. What do I know of the Essence of the Divine Being? I know that my abstract idea of three is simply incompatible with my idea of one; but when I come to the question of concrete fact, I have no means of proving that there is not a sense in which one and three can equally be predicated of the Incommunicable God.

The Catholic Church, Newman argues, leaves the possibility of phenomena beyond the sense experience.  He compares the idea of Transubstantiation with the idea of the Trinity, which is accepted by most Protestants.  Similarly he asks, “What do I know of the Essence of the Divine Being?”  We can’t conceptualize the Trinity.  Why does one think that they can conceptualize Transubstantiation?  Newman is a master at argument.

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Newman brings his apologetics all the way back to justifying God’s existence.  I won’t go into the details of that, but he provides this magnificent sentence, which is set aside as a paragraph.  It is a single sentence and a paragraph.

 

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world,"—all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.

To comprehend the sentence, start with the first phrase, “To consider the world in its length and breadth,” and then he provides a litany of historical facts and developments which have led to the present moment under the guiding hand of God, ending with the predicate “all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.”  So put those two halves together and you get: “To consider the world in its length and breadth… upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.”  William Faulkner would appreciate a sentence like that.

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This is an absolutely great quote on the fallen state of man and how we find ourselves in this universe:

 

Thus only should I be able to account for the contrast between the promise and the condition of [man’s] being. And so I argue about the world;—if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists, and as the existence of God.

And yet Newman finds in the Catholic Church the proper perspective of man’s relationship with his creator.

 

In like manner she has ever put forth, with most energetic distinctness, those other great elementary truths, which either are an explanation of her mission or give a character to her work. She does not teach that human nature is irreclaimable, else wherefore should she be sent? not, that it is to be shattered and reversed, but to be extricated, purified, and restored; not, that it is a mere mass of hopeless evil, but that it has the promise upon it of great things, and even now, in its present state of disorder and excess, has a virtue and a praise proper to itself. But in the next place she knows and she preaches that such a restoration, as she aims at effecting in it, must be brought about, not simply through certain outward provisions of preaching and teaching, even though they be her own, but from an inward spiritual power or grace imparted directly from above, and of which she is the channel. She has it in charge to rescue human nature from its misery, but not simply by restoring it on its own level, but by lifting it up to a higher level than its own. She recognizes in it real moral excellence though degraded, but she cannot set it free from earth except by exalting it towards heaven. It was for this end that a renovating grace was put into her hands; and therefore from the nature of the gift, as well as from the reasonableness of the case, she goes on, as a further point, to insist, that all true conversion must begin with the first springs of thought, and to teach that each individual man must be in his own person one whole and perfect temple of God, while he is also one of the living stones which build up a visible religious community. And thus the distinctions between nature and grace, and between outward and inward religion, become two further articles in what I have called the preamble of her divine commission.

What I see in this passage is a conscious effort to contrast the Catholic Church from the Protestant conceptualization of human nature.  “She does not teach that human nature is irreclaimable, else wherefore should she be sent?”  This is in contrast to the Lutheran notion of total depravity.  Here is Newman in that paragraph: “She recognizes in it real moral excellence though degraded, but she cannot set it free from earth except by exalting it towards heaven,” and implied in there is the notion of man’s free will, which contrasts with the Calvinist (and implied in Luther) of a chosen elect and predestination.  Newman here captures the beauty of the Catholic Church’s understanding of humanity and her mission to elevate man.  Newman, writing here, has fully become Catholic.

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I’m not quite finished with Apologia.  One last defense of Catholic teaching that Newman takes on is Catholic Church authority and her stance on Papal infallibility.  First he presents a comparison between Protestantism and Catholicism and denies the oppressiveness of Church authority.

 

It is the custom with Protestant writers to consider that, whereas there are two great principles in action in the history of religion, Authority and Private Judgment, they have all the Private Judgment to themselves, and we have the full inheritance and the superincumbent oppression of Authority. But this is not so; it is the vast Catholic body itself, and it only, which affords an arena for both combatants in that awful, never-dying duel. It is necessary for the very life of religion, viewed in its large operations and its history, that the warfare should be incessantly carried on. Every exercise of Infallibility is brought out into act by an intense and varied operation of the Reason, both as its ally and as its opponent, and provokes again, when it has done its work, a re-action of Reason against it; and, as in a civil polity the State exists and endures by means of the rivalry and collision, the encroachments and defeats of its constituent parts, so in like manner Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism, but presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide;—it is a vast assemblage of human beings with wilful intellects and wild passions, brought together into one by the beauty and the Majesty of a Superhuman Power,—into what may be called a large reformatory or training-school, not as if into a hospital or into a prison, not in order to be sent to bed, not to be buried alive, but (if I may change my metaphor) brought together as if into some moral factory, for the melting, refining, and moulding, by an incessant, noisy process, of the raw material of human nature, so excellent, so dangerous, so capable of divine purposes.

What is implied in that paragraph is that the Church’s doctrinal pronouncements are based on a long discernment of reasoned between internal factions—between “willful intellects and wild passions”—that sometimes lasts centuries before reaching a conclusion.  It is not an impulsive pronouncement but a judgement made on the tradition and development doctrine.  Newman is writing Apologia and this argument in 1864, just ten years from one of the most controversial of the Catholic Church’s declaration of an infallible dogma.

 

We priests need not be hypocrites, though we be called upon to believe in the Immaculate Conception. To that large class of minds, who believe in Christianity after our manner,—in the particular temper, spirit, and light, (whatever word is used,) in which Catholics believe it,—there is no burden at all in holding that the Blessed Virgin was conceived without original sin; indeed, it is a simple fact to say, that Catholics have not come to believe it because it is defined, but that it was defined because they believed it.

And Newman goes on to say that it took eight centuries, and that it is rare for the Church to even make such dogmatic declarations.

 

Now the instance which I have been taking suggests another remark; the number of those (so called) new doctrines will not oppress us, if it takes eight centuries to promulgate even one of them. Such is about the length of time through which the preparation has been carried on for the definition of the Immaculate Conception. This of course is an extraordinary case; but it is difficult to say what is ordinary, considering how few are the formal occasions on which the voice of Infallibility has been solemnly lifted up. It is to the Pope in Ecumenical Council that we look, as to the normal seat of Infallibility: now there have been only eighteen such Councils since Christianity was,—an average of one to a century,—and of these Councils some passed no doctrinal decree at all, others were employed on only one, and many of them were concerned with only elementary points of the Creed.

Finally Newman leaves it completely unambiguous that he has converted to Catholicism with his whole heart and that he accepts all the doctrines and dogmas the Church has declared. 

 

And now, having thus described it, I profess my own absolute submission to its claim. I believe the whole revealed dogma as taught by the Apostles, as committed by the Apostles to the Church, and as declared by the Church to me. I receive it, as it is infallibly interpreted by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and (implicitly) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted by that same authority till the end of time. I submit, moreover, to the universally received traditions of the Church, in which lies the matter of those new dogmatic definitions which are from time to time made, and which in all times are the clothing and the illustration of the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I submit myself to those other decisions of the Holy See, theological or not, through the organs which it has itself appointed, which, waiving the question of their infallibility, on the lowest ground come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed. Also, I consider that, gradually and in the course of ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method and a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great minds, such as St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas; and I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy of thought thus committed to us for these latter days.

It is interesting Newman uses the form of the word “submit” three times in that short paragraph.  It is a conscious effort to contrast himself from Martin Luther, who refused to submit himself to Church authority, and, if I may, contrast himself to Lucifer who refused to serve God.  What a fine book by a future saint. 

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Peej Comment:

I’m curious if Anglicanism was lacking in the regard of theology on the topic of human nature and sin.

My Reply:

Good question PEEJ. I can't say I know definitively but it wold not surprise me if Anglicanism did not have a dogmatic answer. Since Anglicanism can span from Low Church Puratanism to High Church Anglo-Catholic I can see them not having a position since a position would cause an internal dispute. But that is just speculation on my part.

Peej Comment:

Indeed, submission does come up frequently in this final chapter. I consider the virtue of “docility” or “openness to be taught” for Catholics. This can only come by true love of Christ and his body the Church. For docility is usually considered a negative thing in our culture, but for Christ it is not only acceptable but necessary.

My Reply:

Yes, "Blessed are the Meek, for They Will Inherit the Earth."