As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the
organizing members of the Oxford Movement were in general — though not specific
or particular — agreement on fundamental principles of Christianity that they
believed must be embodied in and taught by the Church of England. They were also in agreement on their opinion
that the Church of England was in deadly peril.
What they lacked, and what was to show up as the Movement progressed,
was an appreciation of the importance of the phases of a movement, and the need
to “secure” and continue each phase before going on to the next one.
 |
| Rev. Wm. J. Ferree: the work of social justice is never done. |
All movements go through phases. Nor are any movements exempt from this,
however low or high their goals and aspirations. It could even be argued that all movements,
even or especially after they have achieved institutionalization, need to
retain the essence of each phase without at the same time being held back by or
stuck in any particular step or phase.
One of the characteristics of social justice, in fact, is
that its work is never done. Even the
oldest established and most venerable institutions need to be watched and
monitored constantly to ensure that they both remain true to their fundamental
principles and be responsive to the needs and wants of all the members of the
institution.
Thus, not only must the effectiveness of a movement itself
be constantly evaluated and corrective actions taken if it is found to be
straying too far from established parameters, but each member of a movement
must do the same for him- or herself, personally. Each member of a movement must adjust his or
her level of expectations to the particular phase in which the movement finds
itself:
·
Guerilla
War. This is the beginning of the
movement as a movement. People come
together on the basis of shared ideas and common principles, organize, study,
teach, and internalize the principles, methods, and goals of the movement, that
is, build solidarity, all with the goal of reforming their institutions — their
“social tools” — to conform to what is good and enable those institutions to assist
people to attain the good. This phase is
primarily concerned with “acts of social charity,” that is, people loving their
institutions as they love themselves. At
the same time, there may also be “targets of opportunity,” that is, situations
in which acts of social justice will be effective, even if not far-reaching in
their effects, at least not initially.
·
Beachhead. Once a determinant number of people have come
together in solidarity and formed a core group, then a systematic program of
social justice can be implemented. This
involves not merely seeking out or waiting for targets of opportunity but
implementing institutional restructuring as a regular program of reform. The effects of reform at this stage may still
be limited, but they should be having a material effect on other institutions
within a particular milieu and also beginning to affect the common good of all
society, that is, the vast network of all institutions of life.
·
Campaign. Once a milieu, e.g., Academia, the financial system, organized religion, has been
materially reformed (no institution will ever be completely reformed and thus
perfect in every way), the movement can begin reaching out beyond the milieu
within which it started, and work to bring all the institutions of the common
good into material conformity with good principles, viz., the fundamental precept of the natural law, “good is to be
done, evil avoided.”
·
Victory. Although, as we will see below, the term is
somewhat misleading, “victory” is achieved for a movement when a determinant
number of institutions of the common good are in material conformity with the
natural law, that is, with the good that is human nature and from which the
natural law is discerned. It is
essential to specify the natural law consisting of the four cardinal or natural
virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and — above all — justice, because
material conformity with these virtues is the only thing that other individuals
and society itself have the right to demand, and the legitimate power to
coerce. Conformity with the supernatural
virtues of faith, hope, and — above all — charity must always be completely
voluntary and a matter of free will.
Attempts to coerce any supernatural virtue by any authority, civil,
religious, or domestic, is a fundamental attack on the dignity and sovereignty
of the human person. All forms of
socialism, for example, by attempting to substitute charity for justice as the
first principle of civil society, violate and degrade essential human dignity
by altering, ignoring, or overriding the natural law, the very thing that
defines human beings as human beings made in the image and likeness of God.
·
Institution
Building. Having achieved a state of
society in which a determinant number of the institutions of the common good
are in material conformity with the precepts of the natural law with respect to
their basic structures, the task becomes to “institutionalize” the reforms so
that they become “social habits,” that is, true institutions, social tools,
that assist people in attaining the good life as members of society within the
bounds of the common good, just as individual habits of doing good — virtues
(vices are habits of doing evil) — assist people in attaining the good life as
individuals. Ultimately, there should
never be any conflict between being a good member of society and being a good
person. When a conflict between the two
appears, then the whole process of social justice begins all over again,
although if the initial restructuring and ongoing movement phases are being carried
out properly, such corrections will be relatively minor matters.
These phases of a movement help us understand what the
members of the Oxford Movement did right and, often more importantly when
seeking to duplicate a success, what they did wrong. The latter, as became clear as the Movement
progressed, was a failure to build a true solidarity, to agree upon and
internalize the fundamental principles that defined the Church of England as a
unique and viable institution. Among the
former was a shared conviction that there was a serious danger that threatened
the Church of England, and decisive action was not only desirable, but
essential to the survival of the Church of England as a genuinely Christian
body.
 |
| Otto von Bismarck |
Thus, although he is generally marginalized in the history
of the Oxford Movement, Hugh Rose was both one of the participants in that
first meeting at Hadleigh Rectory (it was, after all, his parish), and a light
and intellectual guide of the Movement in its early stages. Rose appears to have awakened to the danger
and the need for reform in the mid-1820s when he traveled to the Germanies.
It is important to note that the modern unified country we
think of today as “Germany” did not exist prior to 1871 and unification. Under “the Iron Chancellor,” Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck (1815-1898),
this created what amounted to two nations in one. This gave a “Prussian Character” to the new
nation, engendering something of a schizophrenia that so baffled people trying
to reconcile Prussian militarism and the art, music, and literature of the
“other” Germany.
Nor did Prussianism come out of nothing. What Rose found in the Germanies was the
doctrines of the New Christianity and European type liberalism spreading throughout
the Lutheran Church. Appalled at “the
rationalizing temper and methods which had supplanted the old Lutheran
teaching” (Church, The Oxford Movement,
op. cit., 71), Rose realized that the situation in England was moving
rapidly in the same direction.
The danger was all the more imminent due to the fact that
the clergy of the Church of England, especially the bishops, had lived in a
little world of their own for so long that they were completely unprepared for
the revolution that was already upon them.
As Rose said, “That something must
be done is certain. The only thing
is, that whatever is done ought to be quickly
done.” (Ibid., 75.)
 |
| Edward Bouverie Pusey |
In 1827, after his return, Rose and Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882)
engaged in a debate over the seriousness of the danger represented by the “new
things” Rose saw in the Germanies, which were, admittedly, only a part of what
was spreading throughout Europe at this time.
As Pusey downplayed the danger and thought Rose overly concerned about
nothing, the debate became acrimonious as Rose’s outrage was met with Pusey’s
indignation.
Ironically, after Rose’s death Pusey came to share the
former’s views on the danger represented by the “new things,” and became after
the departure of Newman the principal champion of Christian orthodoxy in the
Church of England. Such was his
reputation for learning and scholarship that his involvement beginning early in
1834 was a great gain both within and without the Movement. When Pusey died, he left strict instructions in
his will that his writings on the debate between him and Rose were not to be
republished.
Unfortunately, although Rose was only a little older than
the others in the core group, he may already have been in failing health at the
inception of the Movement. He was to die
at the relatively early age of forty-three in 1838. Although others such as Newman and Froude were
to be more forceful in advancing the Movement, and members like Keble and Pusey
to be more in the public eye as champions of the Church of England (at least as
far as they were permitted by the powers-that-be), Rose’s intellect, learning,
and moderating influence formed the essential character of the Movement in the
critical early stages. Something
certainly would have been done without him, but it probably would not have had
anywhere near the same effect.
 |
| William Palmer |
Another member of the core group who was critical in the
early stages was William Palmer. The
idea of forming an association (or, more accurately, a network of affiliated
associations) was probably his, and — as we have seen in the laws and
characteristics of social justice — organization is an essential feature of effective
social action directed to the reform of institutions.
The problem was that Palmer seemed to think that
organization was sufficient in and of itself to do what had to be done, and yet
at the same time was persuaded to give up the emphasis on forming associations. This caution of Palmer’s (almost debilitating
according to Maisie Ward) may have contributed to the failure of the
association scheme, which in turn led to the eventual unraveling of the
Movement itself once the key man, Newman, was removed.
In social justice, it is not sufficient to have a good
idea or sound principles. Because social
justice is something specifically social, organization is essential not only to
be able to engage in effective action, but also to build solidarity among the
core group.
As we have suggested in previous postings on this subject,
however, while there was general agreement on principles among the members of
the core group of the Movement, there was not the specificity and
internalization of the fundamentals that would have enabled all members of the
group to act as members of the group.
They continued to act primarily as individuals and began forming parties
not only in addition to the ones that already existed within the Church of
England (and which they were attempting to unify), but within the Movement
itself.
 |
| Msgr. Ronald Knox |
This is, in fact, one of the greatest difficulties in
effective acts of social justice.
Members of the group must come together in solidarity, but without being
subsumed into the collective, that is, the group itself. When that happens (all too frequently,
especially when social justice and socialism become confused), what is called social
justice may remain something social, but it ceases immediately to be justice. In strict justice, the rights and personality
of any member of the group, all members of the human race, in fact, must not in
any way be violated or degraded, even to gain the greatest good.
At the same time, no member of the group can insist on his
or her rights to the exclusion of those of other members of the group (or
anyone else, in or out of the group, for that matter), or seek to impose his or
her personality on the group to the detriment of other members of the group or
the group as a whole. Even outsiders and
those who are not members of the inner circle of a group have rights, despite
the tendency that Monsignor Ronald Knox observed in cases of “enthusiasm” in
which “the ungodly” (i.e., anyone
with whom anyone in power disagrees) have no rights, or at least no rights that
need be considered.
In any event, a number of plans for forming a network of
associations were drawn up and almost immediately rejected. The problem was that apart from the fact that
changes in doctrine (fundamental principles) and discipline (applications of
doctrine) were a grave and present danger, there was a general inability to
decide just how strict and specific the message of the Movement ought to be.
Keble, whom Newman regarded as the true leader of the
Movement, held out for an uncompromising statement of orthodox doctrine and a
punctilious observance of discipline.
Newman and Rose argued for strict adherence to both orthodox doctrine
and established disciplines of the Church of England but declared and explained
in a less confrontational manner.
It should be noted that none of the members of the
Movement was normally aggressive or unkind — although Newman was eventually
viewed with trepidation for his habit of unleashing his pent-up sarcasm if he
thought it warranted, as he would decades later in his literary altercation
with Charles Kingsley. They did,
however, advance their views and argue the Movement’s case in a manner that
G.K. Chesterton, in reference to the methods of Saint Thomas Aquinas in debate,
would describe as “combative.”
 |
| Richard William Church |
As Pope Leo XIII would explain in one of his first
encyclicals (Æterni Patris, § 4),, the
fact is the Oxford Movement was dealing with the rise and spread of unreason,
and the only effective weapon against unreason is reason, forcefully and
systematically presented. As Chesterton
said, however, “This . . . did not mean bitterly or spitefully or uncharitably;
but it did mean combatively.” (G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The “Dumb Ox”. New York: Image Books, 1956, 126.)
Unfortunately, there was “jealousy” (probably a euphemism
for suspicion) entertained against the proposal in “high quarters.” (Church, The Oxford Movement, op. cit., 77.) It also didn’t help any when Froude insisted
that any association must include the entire church, and thus not a network of
individual associations, while Newman, innately shy, had what amounted to a
“horror” (Church’s word) of committees and “great people in London” (ibid.).
Still, Palmer’s influential connections and efforts to
spread word about the effort to organize associations helped alert the clergy
of the Church of England to what was afoot.
“Addresses” — petitions — to the Archbishop of Canterbury by both the
clergy and the laity (represented by male heads of households), although much
watered down, at least served to notify the ecclesiastical authorities what was
intended.
What persuaded the group to give up on the proposal to
form associations, however, was the unfortunate — at least from the standpoint
of social justice — desire to focus on the immediate danger to the Church of
England. As Church quoted the decision
in his book on the Movement, probably unconsciously echoing similar language
coming out of the Vatican,
Every one who has become acquainted with the literature of
the day, must have observed the sedulous attempts made in various quarters to
reconcile members of the Church to alterations in its doctrines and
discipline. Projects of change, which
include the annihilation of our Creeds and the removal of doctrinal statements
incidentally contained in our worship, have been boldly and assiduously put
forth. Our services have been subjected
to licentious criticism, with the view of superseding some of them and of
entirely remodeling others. The very
elementary principles of our ritual and discipline have been rudely questioned;
our apostolical polity has been ridiculed and denied. (Ibid., 76.)
Even at this early date, however, it can be seen that
discipline and ritual — “safe” subjects” — took a slight precedence over
changes in doctrine, which being more fundamental, was also more serious.
#30#
