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High Spirits
A Saintly Conscience
John Henry Newman’s beatification is the focal point of Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain, which begins today.
Cardinal John Henry Newman(1801-1890) was at the center of many controversies and calumnies during his life. He is back in the headlines again, 120 years after his death, because his beatification — as the focal point of Benedict XVI’s papal visit to Britain that begins today — is resurrecting the Newman tradition of attracting trouble.
Among the hares that the soon-to-be Blessed Cardinal has started running are a row about his sexuality; an argument about whether he was a dissident rebel against papal infallibility; and a surge of ill feeling over the soaring costs of the beatification ceremony. These stories have been filling a surprising quantity of column inches and chat show minutes. Are they just storms in an ancient ecclesiastical teacup? Or does Newman and his beatification have some real spiritual relevance for the modern world, particularly for the aggressively secular and increasingly Muslim-influenced British public?
Newman’s most enduring footprints on the sands of time and theology were made by his talents as a writer. His autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua; his best poems such as The Dream of Gerontius or “The Pillar of Cloud” (later turned into the hymn “Lead Kindly Light”); and his famous treatise on academic freedom, The Idea of a University, are all classics in their different genres. But in his Victorian age it was Newman’s spiritual journey from early skepticism to evangelical Protestantism, High Church Anglicanism, and eventually Roman Catholicism that unleashed the strongest passions among his divided contemporaries.
The divisiveness continues but on different grounds. Was Newman homosexual? This is an issue of great excitement to campaigners of the gay lobby. They cite their hero’s close relationship with Ambrose St. John, a lifelong friend who shared a house and eventually a grave with Newman. They also make much of the Cardinal’s mannerisms and appearance, which would surely justify the modern term “camp.” His latest biographer John Cornwell (Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint, 2010) sums up his subject’s demeanor as a cross between “an eternal monastic novice” and “a high bred lady.” But such combinations were part of the zeitgeist of England’s academic and ecclesiastical elites in the 19th century, as were their intense but platonic friendships. Since there is no evidence to suggest that Newman deviated from his self-proclaimed life of celibacy, further speculation on his sexuality is pointless. Moreover, it detracts from Newman’s true importance and relevance to the 21st century, namely his pioneering role as a voice of religious conscience.
Newman’s conscience did not give him a quiet life. Throughout his career he was troubled by stress-related illnesses; high profile controversies; dismissals; upheavals; resignations; polemical spats with leaders of church and state; a prosecution for criminal libel; and dramatic changes of spiritual direction. In his youth he was extreme in his hostility to Rome, denouncing the pope as “Antichrist” and Catholicism as a “polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous” religion. But after he’d moved to the position of a high church theologian, his sermons and tracts made him an immensely influential figure, particularly as one of the founders of the Oxford Movement which launched the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England.
After his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845, Newman was vilified as a hate figure by some hysterical Protestants who feared that large swathes of church-going England would soon be taking the Pope’s shilling. But Newman remained his own man. He accepted Catholic doctrine but with liberal qualifications. He was ambivalent about the newly formulated dogma in 1870 of papal infallibility, famously remarking: “I shall drink-to the Pope, if you please — still to Conscience first and to the Pope afterwards.”
Intriguingly, it would appear that the Cardinal’s dissident thoughts on conscience may be one of the drivers of his imminent beatification by the pope, who has long been fascinated by Newman. When Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, led a seminar on conscience at a synod of bishops in 1981, he singled out Newman for praise. In Newman’s writings, said Ratzinger, conscience “received an attention it had not received in Catholic theology since St. Augustine.” He went on to say that both Newman and Augustine had recognized the priority of a profound level of conscience, which should be preeminent in moral judgements “because we could never judge that one thing is better than another if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us.”
The current media noise about Newman’s beatification is loudest about the money being spent on the papal visit. This is linked to other outbursts of Benedict-bashing which suggest that he is coming to Britain “to sanitize Newman” and to suppress all sorts of other uncomfortable truths about matters such as gays in the priesthood and child sex abuse scandals. This is about as illogical and inaccurate as the vilification that Newman had to endure in the 1840s.
There is little doubt that both the finances and the administration of the papal visit have so far been badly handled. The Vatican is said to be furious with the English hierarchy over its poor administration of the logistical arrangements. The costs are soaring and the planning is in disarray. The pope’s beatification mass for Newman was scheduled to be held at Coventry Airport, with an expected attendance of more than 200,000. At the eleventh hour it has been switched to a park in Birmingham, which can only accommodate 80,000 worshippers. Even after this downsizing there is much grumbling in the pews as the Catholic faithful are being asked to fork over $7 million to fund what many see as an expensive extravaganza.
David Cameron’s new coalition government has also become worried about the troubles besetting the first state visit it is to host. So it has underwritten a larger share of the costs and appointed a logistical supremo. He is Lord Patten, a leading liberal Catholic who has done the state some service as a former governor of Hong Kong, cabinet minister, and chancellor of Oxford University.
Although Pope Benedict is not noted for his theological liberalism, he may surprise his wider British audience by continuing his earlier championing of Newman’s view of conscience. For this is a theme that speaks across the secular, spiritual, and agnostic divides in a multi-faith society. The central message of Newman’s life is that nobody should accept in docile fashion what they are taught by their parents, their school, their church, their mosque, or by any self-proclaimed source of authority. Instead they should travel on their own journey, searching for truth by the light of their conscience.
If the combined forces of Cardinal Newman’s memory and Pope Benedict’s preaching can encourage people in Britain to search their consciences and find the great truths proclaimed by Jesus Christ, then contrary to current expectations this will be a papal visit and a beatification ceremony well blessed by success.
About the Author
Jonathan Aitken, The American Spectator’s High Spirits columnist, is most recently author of John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (Crossway Books). His biographies include Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed (Doubleday) and Nixon: A Life, now available in a new paperback edition (Regnery).
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cuban pete| 9.15.10 @ 9:05AM
Rouse thee, my fainting soul and play the man;and through such waning span of life and thought as still has to be trod,
Prepare to meet thy God.
And while the storm of that bewilderment
Is for a season spent,
And, ere afresh the ruins on me fall
Use well the interval
The Dream of Gerontius
Thank you for this article.
PJ| 9.15.10 @ 10:57AM
Thank you for an excellent essay. I always wondered why Pope Benedict has a special fondness towards Newman's writings. Now I understand: Newman's writings mesh nicely w/the pope's beliefs of faith & reason.
RCV| 9.15.10 @ 12:14PM
Even though I am an Anglo-Catholic American, whose own journey was from Roman Catholicism to the Newman's original faith, there are few modern theologians whose lives I more admire than Cardinal Newman's. He was a gem, and it is with good reason that most Catholic collegiate centers bear his name.
leveut| 9.15.10 @ 10:20PM
"...does Newman and his beatification have some real spiritual relevance for the modern world..."
I don't know, does they?
RCV| 9.15.10 @ 10:43PM
Where are Strunk & White when we need them?
John II| 9.16.10 @ 12:39AM
I'm right here, Roberto. And it would be equally grammatical to ask, "Where is Strunk & White when we need it?"
Mr. Aitken had a choice between singular and plural in such a construction. The compound subject buried in the question ("Newman and his beatification") may be taken as an instance either of (1) non-appositional coordination or of (2) notional concord.
In the first instance, the compound would behave thus: "Newman and his beatification are both vexed topics for Brit Protestants."
In the second instance, the compound would behave thus: "Newman and his beatification is a fascinating topic of discussion for Protestants and Catholics alike."
It is clear that Mr. Aitken has opted, at least subliminally, for notional concord in his use of the singular "does"--and, indeed, it would be surprising if he had done otherwise, considering the context, in which the topic is specifically Newman and his beatification.
And now back to "The Nun's Story" (1959), a sensitive and fascinating flick that would no longer be within the reach of the dimwits who now populate Hollywood, inasmuch as the Roman Catholic Church and her retinue is no more than an object of contempt and scorn among the secular elite.
Vasu Murti | 9.17.10 @ 2:27AM
"...does Newman and his beatification have some real spiritual relevance for the modern world..."
YES! Compassion for all creatures.
Roman Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-90), wrote in 1870 that "cruelty to animals is as if a man did not love God." On another occasion, he asked:
"Now what is it that moves our very heart and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this: first, that they have done us no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which make their sufferings so especially touching...there is something so very dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us and who cannot defend themselves; who are utterly in our power."
Cardinal Newman compared injustices against animals to the sacrifice, agony and death of Christ upon the cross:
"Think of your feelings at cruelty practiced upon brute animals and you will gain the sort of feeling which the history of Christ’s cross and passion ought to excite within you. And let me add, this is in all cases one good use to which you may turn any...wanton and unfeeling acts shown towards the...animals; let them remind you, as a picture of Christ’s sufferings. He who is higher than the angels, deigned to humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation..."
Another cardinal, Henry Edward Manning (1808-92), spoke out against cruelty to animals, especially experimentation upon animals. In a letter dated July 13, 1891, he wrote: "We owe ourselves the duty not to be brutal or cruel; and we owe to God the duty of treating all His creatures according to His own perfections of love and mercy."
Bishop Westcott wrote, "Animals are in our power in a peculiar sense; they are committed by God to our sovereignty and we owe them a considerate regard for their rights. No animal life can be treated as a THING. Willful disrespect of the sanctities of physical life in one sphere bears its fruit in other and higher spheres."
Cardinal Francis Bourne (1861-1934) told children in Westminster Cathedral in April 1931: "There is even in kindness to animals a special merit in remembering that this kindness is obligatory upon us because God made the animals, and is therefore their creator, and, in a measure, His Fatherhood extends to them." Cardinal Arthur Hinsley (1865-1943), the former archbishop of Westminster, wrote that "the spirit of St. Francis is the Catholic spirit."
According to Cardinal Hinsley, "Cruelty to animals is the degrading attitude of paganism."
Reverend Jean Gautier, a doctor in canon law, a director of the Grand Seminary in Paris (St. Sulpice), and a noted French authority on Roman Catholic philosophy, wrote in his book A Priest and his Dog: "For cruelty to defenseless beings we shall one day have to answer before Him who trieth the heart and the reins. Not with impunity is the weakness of animals abused."
In his 1957 book, The Status of Animals in the Christian Religion, author C.W. Hume wrote that the catechism children use for their first Communion and for their confirmation in France contains the answer, "it is not permissible for me to cause suffering to animals without good reason, to hurt them unnecessarily is an act of cruelty."
British Jesuit Father John Bligh observed, "A man is not likely to be much of a Christian if he is not kind to animals."
A Roman Catholic priest, Msgr. LeRoy E. McWilliams of North Arlington, New Jersey, testified in October 1962 in favor of legislation to reduce the sufferings of laboratory animals. He told congressional representatives:
"The first book of the Bible tell us that God created the animals and the birds, so they have the same Father as we do. God’s Fatherhood extends to our ‘lesser brethren.’ All animals belong to God; He alone is their absolute owner. In our relations with them, we must emulate the divine attributes, the highest of which is mercy. God, their Father and Creator, loves them tenderly. He lends them to us and adjures us to use them as He Himself would do.""
Msgr. McWilliams also issued a letter to all seventeen thousand Catholic pastors in the United States, calling upon them to understand "what Christianity imposes on humans as their clear obligation to animals."
Unfortunately, these are only isolated instances of concern for animals. "The Church should be a leader in the movement for the protection of animals, but it is not even in the procession," wrote Helen Jones of the National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare in 1966. "The attitude of the Church today toward the suffering of animals is for the most part one of utmost indifference."
Voices within the Church calling for justice towards the animals have been few and far between.
Reverend Basil Wrighton, the chairman of the Catholic Study Circle for Animal Welfare in London, wrote in a 1965 article entitled, "The Golden Age Must Return: A Catholic’s Views on Vegetarianism," that a vegetarian diet is not only consistent with, but actually required by the tenets of Christianity. He concluded that the killing of animals for food not only violates religious tenets, but brutalizes humans to the point where violence and warfare against other humans becomes inevitable.
In 1969, Reverend Kevin Daley, as chairman of the CSCAW in London, wrote that "the work of animal welfare" is an "essential part of the work of a Christian."
A strong condemnation of cruelty towards animals appeared in the March 10, 1966 issue of L’Osserevatore della Domenica, the official Vatican weekly newspaper. Written by the respected theologian, Msgr. Ferdinando Lambruschini, it read in part:
"Man’s conduct with regard to animals should be regulated by right reason, which prohibits the infliction of purposeless pain and suffering on them. To ill treat them, and make them suffer without reason, is an act of deplorable cruelty to be condemned from a Christian point of view. To make them suffer for one’s own pleasure is an exhibition of sadism which every moralist must denounce."
The 1967 New Catholic Encyclopedia took the position that while killing animals for food is acceptable and the mistreatment of animals may not be a mortal sin, wanton destruction of animal life is evil: irrational, unbeneficial and certainly not an example of positive spiritual development.
In his 1970 book God’s Animals Reverend Don Ambrose Agius wrote: "It is a moral obligation for every Christian to fight cruelty to animals because the consequences of cruelty are destructive to the Christian order...The Bible...tells us that cruelty to animals is wicked and that it is opposed to God’s will and intention...The duty of all Christians (is) to emulate God’s attributes, especially that of mercy, in regard to animals. To be kind to animals is to emulate the loving kindness of God."
In his foreword to Reverend Agius’ book, Cardinal John Heenan wrote: "Animals...have very positive rights because they are God’s creatures. If we have to speak with absolute accuracy, we must say that God has the right to have all His creatures treated with respect...Only the perverted are guilty of deliberate cruelty to animals or, indeed, to children."
Vladimir Lossky wrote about "Cosmic Awareness" and the teachings of St. Maximus in a 1973 religious text: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. According to Lossky, the limitations of the creation are part of its intrinsic nature:
"they are problems to be resolved, obstacles to be surmounted on the way towards union with God. Man is not a being isolated from the rest of creation; by his very nature, he is bound up with the whole of the universe, and St. Paul bears witness that the whole creation await the future glory which will be revealed in the sons of God (Rom. viii, 18-22). This cosmic awareness has never been absent from Eastern spirituality, and is given expression in theology as well as in liturgical poetry, in iconography and, perhaps above all, in the ascetical writings of the masters of the spiritual life of the Eastern Church...
"In his way to union with God, man in no way leaves creatures aside, but gathers together in his love the whole cosmos disordered by sin, that it may at last be transfigured by grace."
Father Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, author, and founder of the Riverdale Center of Religious Research in New York, wrote in 1987 that "vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic survival, physical well-being, and spiritual integrity."
In an editorial that appeared on Christmas Day, 1988, Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy, a prominent Catholic vegan, observed:
"A long raised but rarely answered question is this: If it was God’s plan for Christ to be born among animals, why have most Christian theologians denied the value and rights of animals? Why no theology of the peaceable kingdom?...Animals in the stable at Bethlehem were a vision of the peaceable kingdom. Among theology’s mysteries, this ought to be the easiest to fathom."
Mother Teresa, honored for her work amongst the poor with the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote in 1992 to Marlene Ryan, a former member of the National Alliance for Animals. Her letter reads:
"I am praying for you that God’s blessing may be with you in all that you are doing to create concern for the animals which are often subjected to much cruelty. They, too, are created by the same loving Hand of God which created us. As we humans are gifted with intelligence which the animals lack, it is our duty to protect them and to promote their well being.
"We also owe it to them as they serve us with such wonderful docility and loyalty. A person who shows cruelty to these creatures cannot be kind to other humans also. Let us do all we can to become instruments of peace—where we are—the true peace that comes from loving and caring and respecting each person as a child of God—my brother—my sister."
In an article entitled "The Primacy of Nonviolence as a Virtue," appearing in Embracing Earth: Catholic Approaches to Ecology (1994), Brother Wayne Teasdale wrote:
"One key answer to a culture’s preoccupation with violence is to teach, insist on, and *live* the value of nonviolence. It can be done successfully, and it has been done for more than 2,500 years by Jains and Buddhists.
"Neither Jainism nor Buddhism has ever supported war or personal violence; this nonviolence extends to all sentient beings. Christianity can learn something valuable from these traditions. This teaching on nonviolence has been incarnated in the lives of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama with significant results..."
According to Teasdale: "...it is necessary to elevate nonviolence to a noble place in our civilization of loving-compassion because nonviolence as ahimsa in the Hindu tradition, a tradition that seems to possess the most advanced understanding of nonviolence, IS love! Love is the goal and ultimate nature of nonviolence as an inner disposition and commitment of the heart. It is the fulfillment of love and compassion in the social sphere, that is, in the normal course of relations among people in the matrix of society."
Brother Aelred (Robert Edmunds), a Catholic monk living in Australia, discusses the moral question of killing animals for food in his book Encounter: Christ and Krishna. He points out that Jesus Christ greatly expanded the interpretation of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" to include not getting angry without cause.
"My position is that Jesus’ teachings on mercy in the Beatitudes require an open-ended ethical inquiry" writes Brother Aelred. "I ask, for example, how a Christian may speak of ‘mercy’ in the terms of Jesus Christ, and deny mercy to creatures of God who, as we do, experience fear and suffering. Isn’t it the case that Jesus constantly went beyond the ‘letter of the law’ to its spirit?"
Brother Aelred quotes the prophecies of Isaiah (11:6-9, 65:25) concerning the coming Kingdom of Peace. "The passage sees a time when pain and bloodshed will be no more; when prey and devourer will be reconciled. What a vision! Even if the passage is seen as just poetic exaggeration, it is clear that there is hope for a future which will be very different to the world we know. And surely we, as Christians, must be part of this ‘peace process.’ Perhaps our main burden, as Christians, is to be part of this message of hope and reconciliation."
Brother Aelred ends with the following:
"An Anglican Franciscan superior, in Australia, tells his novices that if they wish to eat flesh they must go out and themselves kill the animal. The moral responsibility must be theirs alone. I consider this a thoroughly sound position, and any Christian reading this article might well reflect on the brother’s teaching. In conclusion, I must report a sad truth. My own Christian formation taught me many things of great value, but ‘respect for all things living’ was not part of that formation. It was other religious traditions and ‘secular’ insights which gave me teaching in this area."
RCV| 9.16.10 @ 12:23PM
An erudite and compelling post, my learned friend. "The Nun's Story" was a gem. Always brings me back to the wonderful nuns I was in love with as a young Altar Boy.
Ninefin| 9.16.10 @ 4:26PM
Why all the fuss? This Pope,who hid the sins of the Church for 25 years, is now going to spend $7 million dollars to beatify Newman to sainthood? Has the Catholic Church gone insane??? Why the big fanfare at a time when most people are feeling the ravages of a world depression? Did't this Pope spend enough money covering up the scandals???
John Cornwell | 10.10.10 @ 8:44AM
From John Cornwell: author Newman's Unquiet Grave: Aitkens says that I sum up Newman's demeanor as a cross between "an eternal monastic novice" and "a high bred lady." In fact this is a contemporaneous quotation among many others, by others and not by me. I would not myself "sum up" Newman in this way, as I hope my biography demonstrates over and over again. The quotation, among others, is also intended to demonstrate that the notion of Newman's effeminacy tells us more about the reaction of others to him at the time than any actual tendency in his own nature. JC