Daily Episcopalian will publish every other day this week. This is the second of two articles on John Henry Newman.
By Benjamin King
When Pope Benedict XVI beatifies John Henry Newman on September 19, 2010, it will be the highest point to date in the rocky relationship of the nineteenth-century Englishman with the papacy.
Newman’s final elevation to sainthood is already in the works, only awaiting confirmation by the Vatican that a second miracle has occurred through his intercession. It is not my place to comment on the sanctification process, but I do know that Newman’s writings reveal a scholar who bent church history and reshaped his writings to please the popes of his own day.
Perhaps he was saintly, but Newman’s image and writings also were the work of his own careful manipulation. And he needed to manipulate them because he received such a frosty reception in his adopted Roman Catholic Church.
Newman in his youth was a major figure in the Church of England. He was the main leader of the Oxford Movement, where he and others articulated a renewed Catholicism, within the Church of England and across the Anglican Communion, founded upon the Church Fathers and High Church divines.
This new Anglo-Catholicism, as Newman called it, was violently anti-Rome. In fact, Newman’s fiery criticism of “Romanism” meant that, when he converted in 1845, he was disliked and distrusted by his adopted Church. Seminary professors in Rome, where he went to retrain for the priesthood, challenged his views of church doctrine. One Roman bishop in England charged him with heresy after Newman’s 1859 article “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” gave prominence to the laity, at the expense of bishops, in the job of upholding the orthodox faith.
Newman knew the pope and others in Rome were suspicious of him, so he shifted his views on doctrine to disarm them. One can trace this in Newman’s slippery use of the Alexandrian Fathers, the early Egyptian theologians who helped determine the content of the New Testament and the Creeds.
Newman quoted, re-quoted and even deliberately misquoted these early authorities of Christianity. By the 1870s Newman was interpreting the Alexandrian Fathers to say just what the new pope, Leo XIII, wanted to hear. It was Pope Leo who made the extraordinary gesture of elevating Newman from obscurity at the Birmingham Oratory in England to the position of cardinal in 1879.
The historian Sir John (later Lord) Acton was one Roman Catholic contemporary who saw what was happening to Newman. Shortly after Newman was made cardinal, Acton realized that Newman had become an “Ultramontane,” one who recognizes papal precedence over local church authority.
Acton’s accusation that Newman had lurched to the right, looking to Rome for leadership, upsets modern Catholics who claim Newman’s 1859 article “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” was a forerunner of the Church’s 1960s reforms at the Second Vatican Council. Acton was correct, though, for Newman put into the mouths of Church Fathers such as Athanasius words that would please prevailing papal views.
In the 1870s Newman re-edited his earlier works and removed words that might upset the authorities. Newman added a self-defense to “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” and clarified what exactly the history of the Alexandrian Church showed: “it was by the faithful people, under the lead of Athanasius and the Egyptian bishops, and in some places supported by their Bishops or priests, that the worst of heresies was withstood or stamped out of the sacred territory.”
In this heavily edited version of the 1859 article, bishops now “lead” the opposition to heresy – Newman learned that from experience when the Bishop of Newport had the article investigated for heresy! In the later version, priests were united with the laity and Newman omitted his quotation from St. Hilary of Poitiers that the ears of the laity were holier than the hearts of the priests!
Today Newman’s writings still present the pope with what he wants to hear, which is upsetting those Catholics who think the Church’s hierarchy is co-opting him for the conservative cause.
In spite of those who claim Newman was a democratizing figure within the Church – the great defender of individual conscience – the conservative Pope Benedict thinks “It was from Newman that we learned to understand the primacy of the Pope.” For when individual conscience cannot decide on doctrinal truth about God, Newman said the infallible Church was there to decide for him.
Newman’s beatification has led to a battle among English Roman Catholics today over what his legacy should be. Some even argue that Newman should not be beatified, in accordance with his own wishes. The historian John Cornwell has recently shown that Newman wanted to be buried in rich compost that would rapidly decompose his remains to prevent any possibility of a cult of his relics. Cornwell quotes Newman’s own words: “I have no tendency to be a saint – it is a sad thing to say so. Saints are not literary men…”
These words were typical of the convert Newman’s lack of self-confidence. As a Roman Catholic, Newman thought of himself as a literary man or as a historian rather than as a “theologian,” let alone a potential saint. Theologians were those learned in Latin methods; Newman did not think his years as an Anglican studying the primarily Greek doctrine of the Fathers qualified him.
He even turned down an invitation in 1870 to attend the First Vatican Council because, as he told his friend, “really and truly I am not a theologian.” Newman privately thought the First Vatican Council’s pronouncement of papal infallibility would set back the cause of Roman Catholicism in England. And when he wrote on the subject, he gave a minimalist account of the occasions in which popes spoke infallibly.
Fascinatingly, the bishop who arranged for his invitation to the Council was the same Bishop of Newport who accused him of heresy ten years earlier. Before the Council, Newman was also told that Pope Pius IX now thought favorably of his writings. What had changed the hierarchy’s mind?
Much had to do with the success of Newman’s autobiographical Apologia, first published in 1864 in reply to Charles Kingsley’s attack on his honesty. Newman garnered sympathy among the British public not only for himself but for Roman Catholicism too. The year 1867 also saw the end of Newman’s investigation for heresy. Rome was pleased at last.
But the Apologia is another of Newman’s artful constructions. In it he claimed that he was led to Roman Catholicism by following his conscience and by reading the Church Fathers. On the contrary, having been hounded out of the Church of England by those who saw him as a closet Roman, Newman looked to the Fathers for an after-the-fact justification for his conversion.
One can still be moved by the Apologia’s elegant prose and passionate defense of the faith handed down to us. But its reworking of Newman’s personal history is consonant with his manipulation of the Church’s history; in both instances the reward for his craft was the same – papal approval.
Those who see Newman as the Father of Vatican II can make a good case from “On Consulting the Faithful.” But an equally good case can be made for Newman’s trimming his sails to please the pope. Those who see him as a defender of conscience have cause, but so do those who see him as an upholder of papal magisterium.
Where Newman could control his self-presentation in life, he cannot control it in death. Given that he spoke with different voices during his life, it is no surprise the Roman Catholic Church is divided over his legacy in death. But these difficulties no longer concern Anglicans.
Benjamin King is Assistant Professor of Church History at the School of Theology, University of the South, Sewanee and author Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers (Oxford University Press). An extended version of this article will appear in the next Sewanee Theological Review.