“Power Tends to Corrupt”

From 1824 to 1826, William Cobbett (1763-1835), whom G.K. Chesterton and others consider “the Apostle of Distributism,” published segments of A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland.  In the book, portions of which were later adapted for The Poor Man’s Friend (1829), Cobbett’s goal was not to defend the Catholic faith.  As he clearly stated, he was a Protestant, and never had any intention of being anything else.

The Theory of Certitude

Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Socialism as promoted by Robert Owen, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, François-Marie-Charles Fourier, and others, sought to abolish traditional concepts of private property, marriage and family, and religion.  In their place would be new institutions that might go by the same name and even have the same outward form as the old institutions (Saint-Simon, for instance, called his system, “the New Christianity”), but the substance would be completely different.

The Honesty of Ebenezer

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that Ebenezer Scrooge, the, er, hero (or maybe “victim”?) of Charles Dickens’s 1843 story “A Christmas Carol” was portrayed as a strictly honest man, despite later dramatic characterizations that made him seem like a minor Robber Baron or major sneak thief.  Scrooge’s iron rectitude is, in fact, essential to the plot, as otherwise Dickens’s story could have been dismissed (at least within the context of the fictional world) as a lie or a delusion.

Reason and Infallibility

In the previous posting on this subject, we went into the various ways that popes prior to Leo XIII and Rerum Novarum tried to counter socialism and moral relativism.  The bottom line here, of course, is that trying to educate people in sound philosophy and democratic political principles wasn’t going anywhere without the personal power in the hands of ordinary people who remained at the mercy of those who controlled property and thus political and economic power.  When someone controls how you are allowed to live, they soon make great inroads into how you think or believe.

John Henry Newman and Liberalism

What with the “canonization” of John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) coming up in a couple of weeks, we thought we would add our two cents as well as a few hundred words into the discussions that are raging.  (Canonization does not "make" someone a saint; it is a certification process.)  By and large, the discussion seems to be whether Newman was a liberal or a conservative.  From the interfaith viewpoint, however, it seems more to the point whether Newman was in agreement with the Just Third Way.

John Henry Newman and His Brothers

Word has just come down the pike that the canonization of John Henry Newman has been set for October 13, 2019.  We say that with caution, because you can bet money on it that most of the people commenting on it, Catholic or non, will say that “Newman will be made a saint,” or words to that effect.

Rebranding Socialism as True Christianity

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Robert Owen believed that all of humanity’s problems would disappear if religion, marriage, and private property were abolished.  In 1813 in A New View of Society he declared that reorienting religion from worshiping God to bettering the condition of humanity would be sufficient to establish and maintain the perfect world.

Religion Without God

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Robert Owen, the Father of Modern Socialism (and Communism) wanted to establish and maintain a perfect society in this life, a constant theme of socialism for the past two centuries and more.  Since he believed that people are formed entirely by their environment, all that is necessary to create the perfect society (so he claimed) is to abolish religion, marriage, and private property.  Everything will then be perfect.

A New View of Society

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, modern socialism (which includes Marxist communism) traces its roots to the thought of Robert Owen.  Owen’s theories anticipated the modern Welfare State as well as the drift into secularism, the deification of the abstraction of humanity, the decay of marriage and family, and a host of other ills attendant upon the alienation of most people from direct ownership of the means of production, and thus personal power and the means of participating as full members of society.

Brothers Under the Skin

On Sunday, July 14, 1833 at Oxford University in England, the Reverend John Keble (1792-1866) ascended the University Pulpit and preached his scheduled “Assize Sermon.”  An “Assize Sermon” is preached in the Church of England at the opening of a term of the civil and criminal courts — “the Assizes” — hence the name.  The sermon is officially addressed to the judges and officers of the court and is intended to exhort them to do their duty and render justice.

Politics and Religion

According to R.W. Church, possibly the best (if not completely objective) historian of the Oxford Movement, the whole trouble and the reason for the ultimate downfall of the Movement and the loss of John Henry Newman to the Church of England was the result of ego and arrogance on the part of the Oxford authorities who looked on ancient Christian doctrines as dangerous novelties,

Crisis of Confidence

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, with the publication of “Tract 90,” John Henry Newman inadvertently gave leverage to the enemies of the Oxford Movement.  By playing on the fears of “creeping (or galloping) Romanism,” the more liberal (in the bad sense) elements in the Church of England were able to undermine and eventually marginalize almost completely the effort to return to orthodoxy.

“Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles”

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, John Henry Newman’s goal when he published “Tract 90,” otherwise known as “Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles,” was not to try and turn the Church of England into the Catholic Church.  Rather, it was to show the continuity of doctrine in both churches and their fundamental agreement on what makes Christianity specifically Christianity.

A Suitable Pretext and the Usual Suspects

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, worried that the Church of England might return to orthodoxy and undermine or repudiate all the gains that had been made by “the democratic religion” or New Christianity that was intended to replace traditional political and religious institutions, the “Broad Church” faction comprised of socialists, modernists, unitarians, and even followers of esoteric cults whipped up fear of “Romanism” among the Evangelical faction that adhered to traditional Christian beliefs.

Prelude to Catastrophe

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the adherents of the “democratic religion” of socialism — which also encompassed what became known as modernism and the New Age — became adamantine opponents of John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement when it became obvious that the tenets of the New Christianity could in no way be reconciled with orthodox beliefs.  As G.K. Chesterton would note a century or so later, the “Hampden Affair” revealed the profound differences between traditional religion (Orthodoxy, 1908) and the invention of a new religion under the name of Christianity (Saint Francis of Assisi, 1923).

Broad Church Basics

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, John Henry Newman and the others of the Oxford Movement were confronted with something they were ill-prepared to deal with, and up to a point did not even realize what the real problem was.  With the Industrial and French Revolutions a new idea had grown up regarding the real purpose of religion — and it did not have too much to do with God, as Fulton Sheen would point out in the next century.

Stranger Than Truth

As we saw in the previous posting in this series, in the 1830s John Henry Newman and others in the Oxford Movement found themselves at odds with the “Broad Church” movement within the Church of England, a variety of what purported to be Christianity, but without all those annoying legalistic, papist rules that got in the way of the true religion taught by Jesus: democratic socialism.  At issue was the nature of truth itself, even if such a thing as truth could exist.

Christianity versus the Democratic Religion

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, in the early nineteenth century traditional forms of Christianity were under assault from socialism, modernism, and what became known as the New Age, with two churches especially targeted, the Church of England and the Catholic Church.  Nor is this surprising, given the fact that the Catholic Church had always been opposed to anything that undermined the natural law, and the Church of England with the Oxford Movement was making an effort to return to its original doctrinal roots.

“The Oxford Malignants”

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, just as the Oxford Movement gained what many authorities consider its greatest triumph — neutralizing the “Broad Church” (“Latitudinarian”) clergyman and Oxford professor Renn Hampden — it also set in motion a reaction that would within a few years undermine the Movement and bring it to a screeching halt, at least as far as its original purpose of reviving the Church of England was concerned.

A Turning Point

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the victory of orthodoxy (more or less) in the matter of the appointment of the Reverend Renn Dickson Hampden, while the high water mark of the Oxford Movement, came at what eventually proved to be a high price.  Although the members of the Movement were not the only ones objecting to Hampden, they were the only ones singled out as having “persecuted” him.