Everybody knows about John Henry Newman. He tried to turn the Church of England into
the Catholic Church, and when that didn’t work he became a real Catholic. He then wrote a bunch of books about how to
start a university and apologize for everything, and then had a big fight with Pope
Pius IX because they didn’t allow him to dissent about papal infallibility, so
he wrote a book about how to dissent without seeming to dissent, and he was
right because Pope Leo XIII made him a cardinal . . . right?
Wrong.
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| Meh. Close enough. . . . |
That is not to say there isn’t some truth in the popular
image of Newman, but it’s the sort of thing one gets from the “history” of W.C.
Sellar and R.J. Yeatman in 1066 and All
That (“A Memorable History of England, comprising all
the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2
Genuine Dates”). That is, a few
half-remembered truths get mixed in with a lot of opinion and prejudice and the
next thing you know, it’s written in stone.
Take, for example, the
claim that Newman was trying to turn the Church of England into the Catholic
Church. It sounds as if the whole thing
had something to do with religion.
Well, yes, in a way, but
even the most insightful commentators manage to miss the Big Picture of what
was going on with that Newman guy and — not by coincidence — Robert Hugh
Benson, Ronald Knox, G.K. Chesterton, and even Fulton Sheen, following Newman’s
lead. The simple fact is that it wasn’t
only “religion” that was in trouble in the early nineteenth century. All of society was in danger, and the danger
remains today, only much worse than it was back then.
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| Knox . . . or Benson. One of those guys. |
True, “religion” —
specifically Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant — was the stalking
horse. That, however, was only because
those behind the “new things” who were trying to change what it means to be a
human person and impose their vision on society needed to capture religion
before the assault on civil society (“the State”) and the family could be
effective. Organized religion,
particularly the Catholic Church, was taking the lead in the struggle against
the “new things.”
Why? Because as long as each individual human
being was viewed as a special creation of God, with all rights and powers
vested in the individual human person and from thence delegated to those human tools
— abstractions — called institutions (of which the State is the most
important), the “new things” could make no progress. With God above the human person, and the
human person above institutions, tailoring God or human nature as a reflection
of God’s Absolute Nature to fit the new vision of what it means to be human would
be impossible.
And that meant not merely a new religion had to be
invented and promoted, but a new type
of religion, one that turns Collective Man — an abstraction — into a god, and
thus turns the proper order of things upside down. Instead of having God at the top, actual
people in the middle, and institutions such as the State at the bottom, the new
order of things had to be the State or Collective Man at the top, actual people
still in the middle, and God at the bottom — an arrangement Fulton Sheen called
“Religion Without God.”
So, yes, this has everything to do with religion . . . and
nothing to do with religion.
Confusing, isn’t it?
Not as confused as John Henry Newman was in late December
1863 when he got up, did his morning things, and opened his mail. Puzzling Newman a bit was the fact that
someone had sent him a copy of Macmillan’s
Magazine for January 1864.
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| James Anthony "Fake News" Froude |
That is, Newman was puzzled until he saw a passage marked
in pencil in a book review of James Anthony Froude’s History of England written by “C.K.” Who this “C.K.” might be Newman had no idea (“Crazy
Kook”?), but it was evident whoever it was had a grudge against Newman and the
Catholic Church. As the passage read,
Truth for its own sake has never been a virtue with the Roman
clergy. Father Newman informs us that it
need not be, and on the whole ought not to be; — that cunning is the weapon
which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male
force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or
not, it is, at least, historically so.
In other words, all Catholic priests are liars and have
always been so, and John Henry Newman is a liar and teaches that lying is a
virtue. (Of course, if everything Newman
says is a lie, how do we know he is telling the truth when he says lying is a
virtue? . . .)
Newman was understandably a bit irritated as well as
completely baffled. He immediately sent
off a note to the editors of Macmillan’s
informing them that if they were going to publish something that looked very
much like libel, they might at least have the decency to provide proof that
what “C.K.” said was true instead of a bare assertion.
This was, in fact, a rather sensitive issue with Newman,
for a few years before he had been sued for criminal libel on extremely
specious grounds. He lost the case and
was fined £100 (he was lucky not to have been sent to prison for a year) and incurred
legal fees and court costs of around £12,000 because the documents clearing him
could not be found soon enough and the judge and jury dismissed as irrelevant
the testimony of eyewitnesses and overwhelming proof of Newman’s innocence.
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| Charles "Big Fib" Kingsley |
So, Newman was, all things considered, very considerate in
only pointing out that there was no proof that he had ever said such a thing as
alleged by “C.K.” He reassured the
editors of Macmillan’s that he was
not going to take any action, that he didn’t even really expect an
apology. He was simply pointing out that
a very damaging statement had been made without proof under their auspices and
that they were, however inadvertently, responsible for its having been published.
A couple of weeks later Newman gets a letter from the
Reverend Charles Kingsley, the “C.K.” who had written the review. The editors, knowing how Newman had been
unjustly taken to the cleaners by a bigoted judge and jury a few years
previously, were understandably nervous.
Newman could very easily, despite his assurances, decide to sue them,
and would very likely win hands down, if only so the British courts could wipe
out the shame of the demonstrably unjust judgment delivered against Newman.
In rather condescending terms Kingsley explained that he
had gotten his information from a sermon Newman had preached and published
while still a Protestant and sneered that he would be more than happy to issue
a retraction if Newman could show that he, Kingsley, had misunderstood the
sermon. As Kingsley said,
The document to which I expressly referred was one of your
sermons on “Subjects of the Day,” No. XX in the volume published in 1844, and
entitled “Wisdom and Innocence.” It was
in consequence of that sermon that I finally shook off the strong influence
which your writings exerted on me.
Newman was completely astounded. Not only was there nothing in the sermon or
any of Newman’s other writings or sermons, Catholic or Protestant, that
provided the basis for Kingsley’s accusation, he had never met or interacted
with Kingsley in any way. Why on earth
was Kingsley attacking a man he had never met, and who had for years been out
of the public eye, a non-entity to all intents and purposes?
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| John Henry "Prove It" Newman |
And if Kingsley was going to make any accusation of any
kind, why couldn’t he stand up like a man and present his proof in a
straightforward manner? Kingsley, in
fact, made a big deal about being “manly” and that his Christianity was “muscular”
because it was British and “manly,” not weak and womanish like Catholicism, “Roman”
or Anglo.
Newman, of course, fired off a reply demanding to know
precisely what words or statement in the sermon or any other writing by him
could be construed as advocating lying in any form. Kingsley came back with a statement that
since they were both gentlemen (at least he, Kingsley, was one), no proof was
necessary, and that Newman should be satisfied that he had Kingsley’s word on
it that he, Newman, had said what Kingsley alleged.
After some increasingly acrimonious exchanges in which
Kingsley never actually got around to providing proof that Newman had said
lying was a virtue or anything to that effect, Newman published the exchange
after Kingsley dared him to, proving beyond a shadow of any doubt whatsoever
that Kingsley had made a false charge against him. Outraged — for he never thought Newman would
take the dare — Kingsley published a pamphlet over the objections and against
the advice of his friends, What, Then,
Does Dr. Newman Mean?
The 48-page rant was loaded with new accusations and
easily disproved “facts” that had nothing to do with the original accusation
but were intended to discredit Catholicism in favor of Kingsley’s “Muscular
Christianity.” Even the most rabidly
anti-Catholic of Kingsley’s friends and supporters cringed with embarrassment and
shame.
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| NO POT POURRI! |
The pamphlet was a serious mistake, both tactically and
strategically. Tactically, it was stupid
of Kingsley to continue to argue when he had already been shown to be in the
wrong. Strategically, it was a colossal
blunder to try and discredit Newman and the Catholic Church by making
additional false accusations when he had been unable to prove the original calumny.
In response, Newman performed what is still considered one
of the greatest feats in literary history.
He took ten weeks to write his Apologia
Pro Vita Sua, a full and complete explanation of the development of his “religious
opinions” from childhood until he entered the Catholic Church. In the process he also shredded Kingsley’s
accusations, point by humiliating point, leaving the man totally discredited,
and brought the Catholic Church in England to a highpoint in public opinion
after centuries of mindless chanting “No Popery!” — a slogan that is widely used
today only in Northern Ireland in the U.K. and liberal/traditional (sometimes
it’s hard to tell the difference) Catholic organizations and institutions.
The question, of course, is Why is this relevant to the
Just Third Way?
Because, as we will argue, Kingsley’s attack on Newman was
not really that of a manly British Protestant against little girly man Romish
superstition. On the contrary, it was
really a counterattack of the “new things” of the modern world — primarily
socialism in all its forms — against what G.K. Chesterton called the last
bulwark of common sense and reason in the world: the Catholic Church.
#30#
