As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, there
was a very natural desire on the part of the members of the Oxford Movement to
come to grips with the serious danger threatening the Church of England. This, combined with some difficulties in
completing any plan of association, prevented the formation of an organization
to provide a base from which to carry out a coordinated campaign.
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| Hugh James Rose |
Failure to organize properly also prevented the adoption
of a clear set of principles or core values, and a coherent mission
statement. As a result, it was all very
well to say that they wanted to restore the doctrines and disciplines of the
Church of England, but precisely what those doctrines and disciplines were
remained a matter of opinion, except in the most general terms.
Not that there wasn’t an effort to promulgate a standard
doctrinal and disciplinary approach, a project that had been in the works even
before the Hadleigh meeting. Arthur
Perceval drafted The Churchman’s Manual
as a supplement to the Church Catechism
and submitted it to William Palmer and Hugh Rose for review and revision. As R.W. Church described it, the Manual was intended to explain —
. . . the nature and claims of the Church and its
Ministers. It is a terse, clear,
careful, and, as was inevitable, rather dry summary of the Anglican theory, and
of the position which the English Church holds to the Roman Church, and to the
Dissenters. It was further revised at
the conference, and “some important suggestions were made by Froude.” (Church, The Oxford Movement, op. cit.,
89.)
Perceval, who not unnaturally had great hopes of what
would result from the book’s publication, spared no pains to try and make it
perfect. After doing everything he
thought possible, he submitted it for review by a number of religious and civil
leaders, all of which apparently approved of the project, the Scottish bishops
in particular not stinting their praises.
Finally, Perceval submitted the book to the Archbishop of Canterbury for
correction or suppression if he found it unsuitable, or for his endorsement and
sanction if he approved.
Not surprisingly, the Archbishop — the quintessential
political prelate — did neither, avoiding the issue altogether. He replied that he had no objection to it,
but that “official sanction must be declined on general grounds.” (Ibid.)
Recovering from this — to him — unexpectedly equivocal
response from the highest religious authority in England, Perceval decided that
his book was really the first Tract, and thus had a special place in the Oxford
Movement. He seemed to believe to the
end of his life that he, not John Henry Newman, initiated and inspired the
Tracts. The fact that the book was all
but forgotten even during his own lifetime made no difference. Perceval continued to assert its publication
(it did achieve a small number of sales) as his chief claim to fame.
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| John Henry Newman |
Of the first one, Sidney Leslie Ollard (1875-1949)
remarked in his book, A Short History of
the Oxford Movement (1932), “Certainly no other tract in all religious
literature was ever like this one.” (S.L. Ollard, A Short History of the Oxford Movement. London: A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1983,
44.) As R.W. Church commented on the
surprising effect the Tracts had from the very beginning,
[T]he ring of these early Tracts was something very different
from anything of the kind yet known in England.
They were clear, brief, stern appeals to conscience and reason sparing
of words, utterly without rhetoric, intense in purpose. They were like the short, sharp, rapid
utterances of men in pain and danger and pressing emergency. The first one gave the keynote of the
series. Mr. Newman “had out of his own
head begun the Tracts”: he wrote the opening one in a mood which he has himself
described. He was in the “exultation of
health restored and home regained”: he felt, he says, an “exuberant and joyous
energy which he had never had before or since”: “his health and strength had
come back to him with such a rebound” that some of his friends did not know
him. (Church, The Oxford Movement,
op. cit., 80.)
It is common when analyzing the Oxford Movement to give
extensive quotes from the first Tract, or even (since it is fairly short)
present it in its entirety. Other studies
of Newman or the Movement, however, are primarily religious in nature, and
consequently focus on matters of doctrine and discipline as they relate to
religious belief.
That of course is important, and the subject is what most
people find of interest in the life of Newman and the history of the Oxford
Movement. This study, however, is on
social justice and the fact of doctrine and solid discipline based on sound doctrine,
not necessarily the specific doctrines or disciplines themselves.
Social justice involves organized acts directed to the
common good intended to reform institutions to make them “structures of virtue,”
that is, to conform discipline (applications of doctrine) to doctrine
(principles of good), whether in religious, civil, or domestic society. Focusing only on the religious aspects of the
Oxford Movement obscures the importance of its social and political character
when it does not result in ignoring it altogether.
It is therefore the fact of the Tracts themselves, not
their content (even though they were and remain works of literature presenting
the Movement’s views on Anglican doctrine and discipline) that is of importance
to social justice. The Tracts also
served to bring the members of the movement together in solidarity, at least up
to a point.
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| John Keble |
Because the principles of the Movement went back to the early
Church Fathers, short translations of selections from their works were
published in tandem with the Tracts. The
Church Fathers were writers of the first centuries of Christianity who are
revered as saints for their special witness to the faith, and are characterized
by their antiquity, orthodoxy, sanctity, and approval by the Church. They are usually divided into the “Latin
Fathers” and the “Greek Fathers.” Like
the Tracts, these “Records of the Church” were sold for one penny.
Having, so they thought, organized sufficiently and gained
a beachhead, the members of the Movement now began their campaign in
earnest. During the “Long Vacation” in
the closing days of 1833, Newman and the others traveled around the country
with bundles of Tracts, distributing them wholesale at country parsonages and
even bishops’ palaces.
An amusing but sad anecdote Newman related in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua is of a bishop who
read the Tract on “the Apostolic Succession” — the theory that the Christian priesthood
descends directly from the companions of Jesus.
Such was the state of this prelate’s understanding of theology and,
demonstrating how far matters had degenerated within the Church of England, he
could not decide whether he believed the doctrine on which he based the
validity of his own ordination!
Despite the caution or ignorance of the higher clergy, the
Tracts were well received among the working clergy and ordinary Christians;
they could almost be said to have taken the country by storm, at least in a
religious sense. Even the liberal Evangelicals
of the early nineteenth century (not necessarily related to modern conservative
Evangelicals) approved of the effort at first.
Newman had, in fact, himself started out as a member of the Evangelical
branch of the Church of England and in 1828 had been one of the founders of The Record, an Evangelical newspaper.
Now Newman took the opportunity to write a series of
letters to the Record advocating
Church reform along the lines developed and promoted by the Movement. Five of the letters were published before the
sixth was rejected on the somewhat specious grounds that they attacked the
Temperance Societies.
The editor, however, mentioned in his note to Newman
rejecting the final letter that he “seriously regretted the character of the
Tracts.” It is therefore more probable
that it was the perception of a drift in the direction of Rome that made the
Evangelicals — or at least the editor — suspicious, not any promotion by Newman
of the cause of insobriety.
To lay a charge of “Romanism” against Newman at this time
or any other up to his actual decision to enter the Catholic Church was,
frankly, ludicrous. It was simply the
easiest way for anyone who accepted English or European type liberalism in any
form and to any degree to attack orthodoxy without appearing to do so.
The truth was that Newman had up to the beginning of the
Movement viewed the pope as Antichrist, as he himself admitted later. It was only after discussions with the others,
especially Froude, that Newman began to modify his views somewhat, although
remaining (in his own words) “anti-Catholic.”
What baffles both Catholics and Anglicans to this day is
the attitude of those in the Movement, especially Newman, to the Catholic
Church or (as they preferred to call it) “the Church of Rome.” It is actually a grave injustice to call
Newman a “Romanizer” or to assume that he had the slightest sympathy with the
Catholic Church.
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| Cardinal Wiseman |
When Newman visited Rome in 1833, a few months before the
Movement began, scarcely any of his letters home failed to include a condemnation
of the Catholic Church. Some of the
extracts read like a Chick Publications tract; they drip with disgust, even
horror. His behavior when he visited the
future Cardinal Wiseman was barely civil, bordering on outright rudeness.
To be blunt, the frequency with which Newman described
Rome under the pope as “cruel” becomes tiresome to the researcher hunting for
facts instead of fanaticism. As he wrote
to one of his sisters just before leaving Rome for Sicily,
Oh, that Rome were not Rome! but I seem to see as clear as
day that a union with her is impossible.
She is the cruel Church asking of us impossibilities, excommunicating us
for disobedience, and now watching and exulting over our approaching
overthrow. (Ward, Young Mr. Newman,
op. cit., 203.)
Newman’s antipathy to Rome had been increased by the
struggle for Catholic Emancipation, that culminated in 1829 by granting civil
rights to Catholics, and the (to Newman) disreputable behavior of “the Catholic
Party” afterwards. Nor did the fact that
he was at the same time increasingly dissatisfied with English Protestantism
ameliorate his feelings.
What did alter Newman’s opinion of Catholic doctrine — but
not his feelings about Rome’s presumed corruption of discipline and practice — were
the pointed questions Froude began asking.
Froude had accompanied Newman to Rome and shared his emotional antipathy
toward the eternally corrupt church that unfortunately controlled the Eternal City. Newman’s consideration of Froude’s questions appears
to have marked the beginning of Newman’s theory of the “Via Media,” a “Middle
Way” between the reactionary corruption of Rome and the liberal perversion of
Protestantism.
As the theory developed, the idea was that up until the
Council of Trent in 1545-1563, the Church of England and the Catholic Church
shared a common body of doctrine, even discipline in many instances. Immediately following the Tridentine Council,
official doctrine of both churches remained in agreement, but practices
(disciplines) began to differ, just as they did among the autocephalous
(“self-headed”) Orthodox churches in the east that did not acknowledge papal
supremacy.
Gradually, however — so the theory goes — Rome began
adding doctrines such as infallibility to the deposit of faith to bolster her
claim to papal supremacy. At the same
time, Protestant and liberal doctrines began infiltrating the Church of
England.
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| Richard Hurrell Froude |
The post-Tridentine Catholic Church was the bogeyman, both
of the ordinary Anglican in the pew, and the member of the Oxford Movement in
the pulpit, and Newman held this opinion as firmly as anyone. The only difference was that where Froude
would comment, “There are wretched Tridentines everywhere,” Newman was now persuaded
to be a trifle more indulgent toward what he viewed as Roman failings than before;
the problems of Rome were for the Romanists, his concern was the Church of
England.
Even with the hints of possible Romanizing, however unfair
or unjustified, the Tracts — and the Tractarians, as they were soon termed —
were extraordinarily successful. The
effort began taking on the character of a genuinely popular movement.
Nor was the effect limited to religious society. People joined the Movement in droves, and
even barristers and important men in the City (i.e., people involved in finance, the stock exchange, and the money
market) became associated with it.
Gladstone, the future prime minister, also came on board, and was to
remain on good terms with Newman until Gladstone’s misunderstanding of the decrees
of the First Vatican Council drove a wedge between them.
Remarkably successful as the Tracts were, however, what
really turned the Movement into a virtual religious Juggernaut in the Church of
England — and spread fear and consternation among the higher clergy as well as
the liberals, Evangelicals, New “Muscular” Christians, and socialists — were
the sermons of John Henry Newman.
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