Apologia Pro Vita Sua by Cardinal John Henry Newman, Post 6

This is the sixth 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.   

 

Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845, Part 1

Summary

In Part 1 of this chapter, Newman finds himself in a sort of no man’s land, neither in the Catholic Church, which he is now convinced of her authority, nor with his heart in the Anglican Church which has fallen in his eyes.  He recapitulates why the Catholic Church is holy and why the Via Media is lacking.  He speaks of the rise of a new Oxford movement, one in which he mostly looks on from the outside, finding himself in a difficult position given it is now apparent he has Catholic sympathies.  He spends a good deal of space in this half chapter rebutting the charges he has been a closeted Catholic all along, refuting individual claims against his theology.  He ponders what his future might look like, continuing in this half in, half out state, still deciding he could never convert to the Catholic Church.

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There isn’t much in this first section of chapter four that I think needs a lot of discussion to tease out the thought.  I think the summary captures it well.  But there is this one paragraph that I found interesting, and as I look at it might be considered the whole of Section 1 of Chapter Four in a microcosm.  It’s a really long paragraph, and it has several twists and turns of thought which baffles me as to why Newman wrote it this way.  When a good writer writes a paragraph, he normally considers a paragraph thesis that holds it together.  A paragraph thesis might be contain subdivisions, and so a writer has to decide if each subdivision is a thesis onto itself, and thereby create multiple paragraphs, or the thesis is so cohesive that a single paragraph does it justice.  I will say that writers in contemporary times trend toward breaking up large thoughts into multiple paragraphs.  Newman is not a contemporary writer.

So here’s the paragraph.  I’m going to break it up to show his progression of thought, but remember it’s all one paragraph.  Here’s the first chunk.

 

While my old and true friends were thus in trouble about me, I suppose they felt not only anxiety but pain, to see that I was gradually surrendering myself to the influence of others, who had not their own claims upon me, younger men, and of a cast of mind in no small degree uncongenial to my own. A new school of thought was rising, as is usual in doctrinal inquiries, and was sweeping the original party of the Movement aside, and was taking its place.

So Newman talks about the new Oxford Movement rising with a new generation, but even there he juxtaposes two thoughts.  (1) That his friends were “troubled” he was drifting from their influence and (2) coming under the influence of a new group that was “rising.”

 

The most prominent person in it, was a man of elegant genius, of classical mind, of rare talent in literary composition:—Mr. Oakeley. He was not far from my own age; I had long known him, though of late years he had not been in residence at Oxford; and quite lately, he has been taking several signal occasions of renewing that kindness, which he ever showed towards me when we were both in the Anglican Church. His tone of mind was not unlike that which gave a character to the early Movement; he was almost a typical Oxford man, and, as far as I recollect, both in political and ecclesiastical views, would have been of one spirit with the Oriel party of 1826-1833. But he had entered late into the Movement; he did not know its first years; and, beginning with a new start, he was naturally thrown together with that body of eager, acute, resolute minds who had begun their Catholic life about the same time as he, who knew nothing about the Via Media, but had heard much about Rome.

From those two half points of that first subdivision, he turns in what feels like a digression into a characterization of “the most prominent person” of that new movement, Mr. Oakeley.  It’s a lovely piece of writing, but it feels connected to the first sentences.  But then he returns to the thesis of the new movement.

 

This new party rapidly formed and increased, in and out of Oxford, and, as it so happened, contemporaneously with that very summer, when I received so serious a blow to my ecclesiastical views from the study of the Monophysite controversy. These men cut into the original Movement at an angle, fell across its line of thought, and then set about turning that line in its own direction. They were most of them keenly religious men, with a true concern for their souls as the first matter of all, with a great zeal for me, but giving little certainty at the time as to which way they would ultimately turn. Some in the event have remained firm to Anglicanism, some have become Catholics, and some have found a refuge in Liberalism.

So after concentrating on Mr. Oakeley, he gives a generalization of the other men in the new movement.  He continues on the men of the new movement but notice his thesis has expanded.

 

Nothing was clearer concerning them, than that they needed to be kept in order; and on me who had had so much to do with the making of them, that duty was as clearly incumbent; and it is equally clear, from what I have already said, that I was just the person, above all others, who could not undertake it.

These men of the new movement were in need of a leader, and he would have been the logical person to lead them but because of his sympathies to Rome (unmentioned but implied from the general context) he was not the logical person.  When I say this paragraph is this section of the chapter in a microcosm, I am referring to this tension of one foot with the Anglicans and one foot with the Catholics.  Next Newman returns to the “old friends” of the first sentence.

 

There are no friends like old friends; but of those old friends, few could help me, few could understand me, many were annoyed with me, some were angry, because I was breaking up a compact party, and some, as a matter of conscience, could not listen to me. When I looked round for those whom I might consult in my difficulties, I found the very hypothesis of those difficulties acting as a bar to their giving me their advice. Then I said, bitterly, "You are throwing me on others, whether I will or no." Yet still I had good and true friends around me of the old sort, in and out of Oxford too, who were a great help to me. But on the other hand, though I neither was so fond (with a few exceptions) of the persons, nor of the methods of thought, which belonged to this new school, as of the old set, though I could not trust in their firmness of purpose, for, like a swarm of flies, they might come and go, and at length be divided and dissipated, yet I had an intense sympathy in their object and in the direction in which their path lay, in spite of my old friends, in spite of my old life-long prejudices.

Now that is an extended riff on his alienation from his compatriots of the original Oxford movement.  I use the word “riff” because if this paragraph were music, this subdivision would be in a different musical key from before.  On the one hand it appears to be a completely different topic.  And yet, that topic was there in the opening sentence of this great paragraph.  It is integrated as a thought.  And now he shifts to another subject.

 

In spite of my ingrained fears of Rome, and the decision of my reason and conscience against her usages, in spite of my affection for Oxford and Oriel, yet I had a secret longing love of Rome the Mother of English Christianity, and I had a true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, in whose College I lived, whose Altar I served, and whose Immaculate Purity I had in one of my earliest printed Sermons made much of. And it was the consciousness of this bias in myself, if it is so to be called, which made me preach so earnestly against the danger of being swayed in religious inquiry by our sympathy rather than by our reason.

In this subdivision, he captures the tension within himself, the fear of Rome and the love of Rome, justifying why he has been forced into this alienation of his own volition.  Perhaps this whole book, this testimony, can be reduced to those two sentences.  Finally he concludes by bringing together all the motifs of the subdivisions into a coherent whole.

 

And moreover, the members of this new school looked up to me, as I have said, and did me true kindnesses, and really loved me, and stood by me in trouble, when others went away, and for all this I was grateful; nay, many of them were in trouble themselves, and in the same boat with me, and that was a further cause of sympathy between us; and hence it was, when the new school came on in force, and into collision with the old, I had not the heart, any more than the power, to repel them; I was in great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood; I took their part; and, when I wanted to be in peace and silence, I had to speak out, and I incurred the charge of weakness from some men, and of mysteriousness, shuffling, and underhand dealing from the majority.

The old movement in conflict with the new movement, and he caught in between which results in his alienation.  Remember this is all one paragraph.  I chose to break it into seven subdivisions, and you might have a slightly different way to break it up, but you can see how it appears to meander.  But does it really meander?  Or is it a cohesive thought?

Depending on how you answer that, you might consider it a masterpiece of a paragraph—and I’ve come to the conclusion it is—or you might find it a rambling thought that somehow got pulled together at the end.  I doubt any contemporary editor would keep that paragraph as is today.  I have to say, I enjoyed it!

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Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845, Part 2

Summary

In Part 2 of this chapter, Newman still finds himself in “no man’s land” but here focuses on the events and mindset that pushed him to convert to Catholicism.  There were two key events that shaped this section of chapter four: (1) his formal retraction of the negative things he had said about the Catholic Church over the years and (2) his resignation of his position and living at St. Mary’s Church, which stood as a symbol of his connection to Anglicanism.  He returns repeatedly to these two events as he works through the logic and feelings of his decision.  One thig is evident throughout his process of thought, he has grown to respect the Catholic Church, has grown even to have affection for her, and has come to an understanding of the deficiencies of not just Anglicanism, but of Protestantism in general.  By the close of the chapter, Newman has left Oxford, left Anglicanism, and has entered the Catholic Church.

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So what intellectually pushed Newman over into Catholicism were two books: Veron's Rule of Faith and some Treatises of the Wallenburghs and a volume of St. Alfonso Liguori's Sermons.  Newman was surprised by the Liguori sermons in that he had expected Italian Catholicism to be overly focused on Mary. 

Such devotional manifestations in honour of our Lady had been my great crux as regards Catholicism; I say frankly, I do not fully enter into them now; I trust I do not love her the less, because I cannot enter into them. They may be fully explained and defended; but sentiment and taste do not run with logic: they are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.

His biggest hang up it seems was that he could not accept an intermediary between man and God.  His term for this is "solus cum solo,” which Newman translate as “face to face.”  Newman feels that one is only face to face with God at judgment.  It seems that for Newman’s Protestantism the “cloud of witnesses” on Hebrews 12:1 have no bearing with God.  But through Liguori’s sermons, he had the intuition that certain Catholic doctrines that appeared to him to be outside of Christinaity were indeed found in kernel form in early Christianity, and so the idea of the development of doctrine came to him and would justify these Catholic practices.  This intellectual process Newman summarizes in six points, but I’ll quote the fourth through sixth.

4. And thus I was led on to a further consideration. I saw that the principle of development not only accounted for certain facts, but was in itself a remarkable philosophical phenomenon, giving a character to the whole course of Christian thought. It was discernible from the first years of the Catholic teaching up to the present day, and gave to that teaching a unity and individuality. It served as a sort of test, which the Anglican could not exhibit, that modern Rome was in truth ancient Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, just as a mathematical curve has its own law and expression.

 

5. And thus again I was led on to examine more attentively what I doubt not was in my thoughts long before, viz. the concatenation of argument by which the mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea; and I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other. And I hold this still: I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I feel it impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that fact I am quite sure) without believing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal, All-seeing, All-judging Being in my conscience. Now, I dare say, I have not expressed myself with philosophical correctness, because I have not given myself to the study of what metaphysicians have said on the subject; {199} but I think I have a strong true meaning in what I say which will stand examination.

 

6. Moreover, I found a corroboration of the fact of the logical connexion of Theism with Catholicism in a consideration parallel to that which I had adopted on the subject of development of doctrine. The fact of the operation from first to last of that principle of development in the truths of Revelation, is an argument in favour of the identity of Roman and Primitive Christianity; but as there is a law which acts upon the subject-matter of dogmatic theology, so is there a law in the matter of religious faith.

And this thought process was conclusive.

 

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.

So he was there intellectually, but he still he found it difficult at the time to convert. 

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There were two actions that Newman took which in today’s parlance might be considered psychological breaks with the Church of England:

 

In 1843, I took two very significant steps:—1. In February, I made a formal Retractation of all the hard things which I had said against the Church of Rome. 2. In September, I resigned the Living of St. Mary's, Littlemore included…

The word actually is “Retractation.”  I thought it was a typo, retractation but Oxford Diction provides a definition:  

 

1. A reconsideration or re-examination of something previously discussed. Usually in plural.

 

Chiefly in the title of or with reference to a book by St Augustine containing further treatment and corrections of matters dealt with in his earlier writings.

 

2. The action or an act of withdrawing a statement, accusation, etc., which is now admitted to be erroneous or unjustified; = "retraction". Chiefly formal in later use.

It is synonymous with “retraction” but it’s a retraction based on a re-examination rather than a mistake.  It is also more formal in nature.

Newman’s excuse for his prior attacks on Catholic theology were based on purely what he had been taught, and that when he examined the original documents (Church Fathers) of what he had been taught he found the error on the side of what the Church of England taught, not on Catholicism.  From his Retractation which he quotes in this chapter:

 

"If you ask me how an individual could venture, not simply to hold, but to publish such views of a communion so ancient, so wide-spreading, so fruitful in Saints, I answer that I said to myself, 'I am not speaking my own words, I am but following almost a consensus of the divines of my own Church. They have ever used the strongest language against Rome, even the most able and learned of them. I wish to throw myself into their system. While I say what they say, I am safe. Such views, too, are necessary for our position.' Yet I have reason to fear still, that such language is to be ascribed, in no small measure, to an impetuous temper, a hope of approving myself to persons I respect, and a wish to repel the charge of Romanism."

He goes on to show why the language of the Anglican Church was so polemic against Catholicism:

 

Therefore, though I believed what I said against the Roman Church, nevertheless I could not religiously speak it out, unless I was really justified, not only in believing ill, but in speaking ill. I did believe what I said on what I thought to be good reasons; but had I also a just cause for saying out what I believed? I thought I had, and it was this, viz. that to say what I believed was simply necessary in the controversy for self-defence. It was impossible to let it alone: the Anglican position could not be satisfactorily maintained, without assailing the Roman.

This I believe is a truth for all Protestantism.  Protestantism doesn’t exist except in contrast and repudiation by all means of Catholic doctrine. 

As to his second action, resigning from the Oxford parish of St. Mary’s Littlemore, his reasoning is that he could no longer preach the Anglican theology.  He quotes from one of his letters of resignation:

 

"May 4, 1843 … At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the over-flowings of His dispensation. I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith…”

And then quotes from a May 18, 1843 letter:

"I do not see how I can either preach or publish again, while I hold St. Mary's;—but consider again the following difficulty in such a resolution, which I must state at some length.”

And with these two events he broke from the Church of England and Protestantism for good.  However, he did not immediately join the Catholic Church. 

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Until he actually converted, Newman’s expressions of doubt reveal a tension that is quite genuine.  I particularly thought this passage remarkable, especially with the opening simile of walking on ice.

 

Supposing I were crossing ice, which came right in my way, which I had good reasons for considering sound, and which I saw numbers before me crossing in safety, and supposing a stranger from the bank, in a voice of authority, and in an earnest tone, warned me that it was dangerous, and then was silent, I think I should be startled, and should look about me anxiously, but I think too that I should go on, till I had better grounds for doubt; and such was my state, I believe, till the end of 1842. Then again, when my dissatisfaction became greater, it was hard at first to determine the point of time, when it was too strong to suppress with propriety. Certitude of course is a point, but doubt is a progress; I was not near certitude yet. Certitude is a reflex action; it is to know that one knows. Of that I believe I was not possessed, till close upon my reception into the Catholic Church. Again, a practical, effective doubt is a point too, but who can easily ascertain it for himself? Who can determine when it is, that the scales in the balance of opinion begin to turn, and what was a greater probability in behalf of a belief becomes a positive doubt against it?

So he creates this tension from two conflicting sets of data.  If the soundness of the ice represents the soundness of Catholicism, he sees a group of people safely crossing it.  But he also hears a voice warning of its dangers.  He is caught in a sort of existential middle.  In summing this he provides a great and memorable quote: “Certitude of course is a point, but doubt is a progress; I was not near certitude yet.”

So what pushes him over the edge to certitude?  He comes to this question in January of 1845: “The simple question is, 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? Is it a mortal sin in me, not joining another communion?”  So what makes him feel that cannot be saved in the English Church.  At the same time as this letter, he began what is his most famous work.

 

I had begun my Essay on the Development of Doctrine in the beginning of 1845, and I was hard at it all through the year till October. As I advanced, my difficulties so cleared away that I ceased to speak of "the Roman Catholics," and boldly called them Catholics. Before I got to the end, I resolved to be received, and the book remains in the state in which it was then, unfinished.

So it was actually concluding the Catholic development of doctrine came from the original Church, and that Catholics were not heretical.  Now it seems to me he had concluded this earlier but it took time and writing for it to make it true in his heart.  Later that year he officially converted.

 

On October the 8th I wrote to a number of friends the following letter:—

 

"Littlemore, October 8th, 1845. I am this night expecting Father Dominic, the Passionist, who, from his youth, has been led to have distinct and direct thoughts, first of the countries of the North, then of England. After thirty years' (almost) waiting, he was without his own act sent here. But he has had little to do with conversions. I saw him here for a few minutes on St. John Baptist's day last year.

 

"He is a simple, holy man; and withal gifted with remarkable powers. He does not know of my intention; but I mean to ask of him admission into the One Fold of Christ …

 

"I have so many letters to write, that this must do for all who choose to ask about me. With my best love to dear Charles Marriott, who is over your head, &c., &c.

 

"P.S. This will not go till all is over. Of course it requires no answer."

He writes of his conversion so obliquely for so a momentous event.  It seems to have been a tendency of English Victorian writers.  They build up a tension and then slip the event indirectly.  This reminds me of a Henry James novel.  But Newman is now in the Catholic Church.