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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 23, 2005
Newman
We learn, from some Vatican insider or other, that John Henry Newman may be beatified under the reign of the present Pope. This could be very significant, to Catholics, and beyond them, to the whole English-speaking world.Newman was a great sage of the 19th century, perhaps the greatest and boldest of thinkers in a Victorian age that was not bereft of great and bold thinkers. He was also a scandal, or more than a scandal, for as the best mind among many fine minds in the Oxford Movement, that sought to revitalize the Anglican church, his “defection” to Rome was felt throughout English society. And the shock carried from there, across Europe, and America, and to wherever the Union Jack then flew. Newman was the man who, more than any other, recreated for the English-speaking world a Catholicism that was not ethnic, not “merely Irish”. (Not that the Irish should be condemned for being Irish themselves.) Who raised the old Recusant spirit, like Lazarus from the grave -- from an England that had centuries before surrendered to an “hygienic” Protestantism, but which had once been perhaps the most reliably Catholic nation in Europe. (Read, for a start, Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars, a remarkable survey of religious practices in England on the eve of the Reformation.) He is still invoked as a “Father of Vatican II”, though it is hard to imagine that Newman would wish to own much that came out of that particular revolution. He was, signally, a man of ideas, of universal truths. Such that, wherever today in the English-speaking world Catholicism is being practised with fidelity to its teachings, Newman’s presence is honoured and enjoyed. And where it is being practised as a mere ethnicity -- Catholics like our prime minister, or our premier, who think they are Catholic because their parents were, but themselves disregard all Catholic teaching -- Newman is either absent, or felt as an embarrassing or quaint old family portrait on the wall. It follows that Newman’s beatification would be a controversial act. I suspect previous Popes did not think of it, for they were unwilling to face the wrath of Anglican and other ecumenists. But I also suspect Pope Benedict has the courage to do it -- and thereby move decisively beyond an era in which Catholics have been in the habit of apologizing for themselves. Newman was himself a man who did not hesitate to seek converts; who did not rank the need for diplomacy above the need for Christ. Though a true modern in his language, he was not “modern” in a key sense of that word -- for we often use it unconsciously as a synonym for “pusillanimous”. I wrote that he revived the old Recusant spirit, yet dressed it in clothing of the times, and made it a present force. For while the Reformation became in many other places a sometimes violent contest between ethnicities, it was in England a battle of ideas, ultimately settled by the force of the State. And some good came of this, as some good comes of any disaster. For today, the revival of Catholicism in English-speaking countries must again be a battle of ideas, a defence of what Christianity means, instead of some kind of IRA struggle on behalf of a beleaguered minority. Newman remains by the centre of it, as the man who still expounds a universal message in plain English-spoken terms. In my view, “mainstream” Protestantism, and the matching “mainstream” Catholicism are dead forces in the English-speaking world. They have degenerated into what I dismissed as “ethnic” above; they are the defunct tribal standards of the white middle class (or lower, in the case of many tribal Catholics). Traditional Catholicism, and the Evangelical movement, are the living forces. The latter is much larger, but I think Evangelicals are moving in a consistently Catholic direction over time. Such that Newman is now often respectfully read, in Evangelical circles. And this is because believers can smell belief. Newman’s authority is deeper than his brilliant arguments, because it is founded squarely in a sanctified life. By which I mean, he was not “nice”, but good -- a faith shining through every earthly deed. There was no pose in him, and there was no compromise in what he was about. For all the flaws in my own generation, I think we remain capable of receiving Christ through the intercession of such a man; of men like Newman. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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