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.