Cardinal Newman

Scholar of Oxford: A Soul's Quest for Truth


By Rev. John A. O'Brien, PH.D., LL.D.


Every great achievement, it has been observed, is but the
lengthened shadow of a great man. A movement which has weathered
the storms of more than a century and still exercises its
influences upon the direction of human thought is indeed no small
achievement. Such is the Oxford Movement, which projects into our
modern day the mighty figure of John Henry Newman, scholar of
Oxford, litterateur, philosopher, theologian and Cardinal of the
Catholic Church. Toward the close of the last century Lord
Coleridge reflected the sentiment of many an Englishman in
referring to Newman as "that great man who still survives at
Birmingham in venerable age, but with undimmed mental eye and
unabated force of genius, a Roman Cardinal in title, but the light
and guide of multitudes of grateful hearts outside his own
communion and beyond the limits of these small islands." After the
lapse of half a century, instead of growing dim, that light shines
with increasing brilliance as a beacon light for ever-enlarging
multitudes of people outside his own communion and beyond the
British Isles. The numerous volumes about him which have issued
from the press in the last few years mirror this constantly
widening interest among people of every faith in the retiring
scholar of Oxford, who still speaks to a listening world from the
pages of his mighty books.

Born in London on February 21, 1801, Newman was the eldest son of
John Newman, a banker, and of Jemima Fourdrinier, of Huguenot
extraction. He was of a quiet, retiring nature, finding his
recreation less in school games and more in the reading of the
Bible and the novels of Scott which were then in the course of
publication. From his mother he received his religious training,
which was a modified Calvinism. At sixteen he entered Trinity
College, Oxford, and in the following year he gained a scholarship
of �60, tenable for nine years. When only twenty-one he was
elected a fellow of Oriel, then the acknowledged center of Oxford
intellectual life. In 1824 he was ordained and became tutor of
Oriel, and later was appointed vicar of St. Mary's, the University
Church at Oxford.

He took a Mediterranean trip with Froude, whose health was
impaired, visiting Sicily, Naples, and Rome. There he met Dr.
Wiseman, then Rector of the English College, who was destined to
play an important part in his later career. Returning from Rome to
Sicily alone, he was stricken with a dangerous fever at Leonforte.
Recalling in later years the details of this critical illness,
Newman saw himself upon his bed, a prey to delirium, with death
hovering near, giving final instructions to his Italian servant,
but adding the strange words, the memory of which was to haunt him
later on: "I shall not die, I shall not die, for I have not sinned
against the light . . . God has still a work for me to do." When
the worst of the fever had passed, and he had determined to
continue his journey, he remembered himself sitting on the bed of
the inn, still weak and sobbing, and saying to his servant, who
understood not a word: "I have a work to do in England." What that
work was, he had no idea then. But subsequent events were to prove
with a vengeance that he had a work to do.

With difficulty he reached Palermo, aching to get home. He crossed
the Mediterranean, then France, and was sailing home when the
vessel became becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio. While walking
the deck, and gazing up at the darkened sky, he composed the poem,
"Lead, Kindly Light," which has become a favorite hymn in all the
Christian churches. It reveals to us the state of his mind
questing for the light that he might obey the mysterious voice
telling him that he had "a work to do."

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home-
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene,-one step enough for me.

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those Angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

Newman landed in England on July 9, 1833. A few days later what is
called "The Oxford Movement" began. Arriving at Oxford, Newman
found his friends greatly excited over the government's Bill to
suppress a number of the Anglican bishoprics in Ireland. It was
regarded by them as a shocking usurpation by the State, a clear
manifestation that the Government considered the Church its
creature, with which it could do as it saw fit. What then became
of the Church as a divine institution, Apostolical in character,
having a charter independent of the State, a conviction which
these Anglican divines liked to entertain? Keble declared war
against the measure in a sermon on "National Apostacy," which he
preached at St. Mary's on July 14, 1833. The sermon was printed,
widely distributed, and created a great stir.

Newman later wrote "that he had ever considered and kept the day
as the start of the religious Movement of 1833," subsequently
known as the Oxford Movement. While Keble first sounded the
tocsin, and Pusey spread further the alarm, it was Newman who was
the real leader of the more. It was becoming increasingly apparent
even to his reluctant eyes that soon he would be obliged to choose
between Rome, the historic center of Christian unity, with its
emphasis upon apostolicity of doctrine and of practice, and the
Church which Henry VIII had ushered into the world and which felt
no need to hark back to the center of unity for its credentials.

       "I SAW MY FACE . . . ."

Newman was further unsettled by an article which Dr. Wiseman, who
had now returned to England, had published in The Dublin Review.
Wiseman compared the Donatist heretic with the Anglican. Newman
had previously made an exhaustive study of the Arians and other
heretical sects in the first five centuries, and he found the
comparison disturbing. "I must confess," wrote Newman, "that it
has given me a stomach-ache.... At this moment we have sprung a
leak; and the worst of it is that those sharp fellows, Ward,
Stanley and Co., will not let one go to sleep upon it . . . this
is a most uncomfortable article on every account."

The more he pondered upon the parallel suggested by Wiseman
between the earlier heresies, such as Donatism and Monophysitism,
and the Anglican formularies, the more and more obvious it seemed,
and by the same token the more difficult did escape become. "My
stronghold was antiquity," said Newman; "now here, in the middle
of the fifth century, I found, as it seemed to me, Christendom of
the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries reflected. I saw my face in
that mirror, and I was a Monophysite."

Wiseman had quoted with telling effect the famous phrase of St.
Augustine, <Securus judicat orbis terrarum>, which may be
interpreted, "Catholic consent is the judge of controversy." There
burst in upon Newman the concept of a living Church, witnessed to
in the past by Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, and witnessed to at
the present by its churches, schools, and monasteries in all the
countries of the world. True, the seed had unfolded into a mighty
tree but it had not lost its identity in the phenomenon of
worldwide growth. The shadow of Rome as an institution destined by
its Founder for mankind in all the ages, was overclouding his
Anglican compromise, his <Via Media>. From this time on, Newman
was on his deathbed, he confessed afterward, as regards his
membership in the Anglican Church.

Newman was not to take a step, however, which would change the
whole course of his life without long and deliberate study and
prayer. For three years he remained at Littlemore with a band of
disciples, seeking light from above that they might chart their
course aright. They lived under monastic conditions in great
physical austerity and in an atmosphere of anxiety and suspense.
To his disciples he assigned the task of writing the lives of the
English saints, while he occupied himself with the completion of
an essay on the development of doctrine, by which principle he
sought to trace the growth of the mustard seed of Apostolic
teaching into the mature doctrines of the Catholic Church. By more
than a decade he thus anticipated Darwin's formulation of the
principle of organic evolution which was to win him lasting fame
in biology. Newman replaced the static principle hitherto
prevailing in religious thought with a dynamic one-the principle
of growth, development, evolution.

While Newman was at Littlemore he received letters from a number
of his friends urging him to take no step that he would regret
later on. Among such pleas was one from his sister, Mrs. John
Mozley, reminding him "of those many anxious minds waiting and
watching your every motion, who would misunderstand your
proceedings, and consider it a beginning of a formal disengaging
of yourself from your own Church." She also enclosed a letter from
a lady who voiced the plea of many against being deprived of the
guidance which they had come to rely upon from Newman. Its sad
tone was well calculated to touch Newman's heart.

"I have been thinking," she wrote, "that among all the opinions
and feelings your brother is called upon to sympathize with,
perhaps he hears least and knows least of those who are, perhaps,
the most numerous class of all-people living at a distance from
him, and scattered over the country, with no means of
communication with him as with one another, yet who all have been
used to look up to him as a guide. These people have a claim upon
him; he has witnessed to the world, and they have received his
witness; he has taught, and they have striven to be obedient
pupils. He has formed their minds, not accidentally; he has
<sought> to do so, and he has succeeded. He has undertaken the
charge, and cannot now shake them off. His words have been spoken
in vain to many, but not to them. He has been the means, under
Providence, of making them what they are. Each might have gone his
separate way but for him. To them his voluntary resignation of
ministerial duties will be a severe blow. If he was silenced, the
blame would rest with others; but giving them up of his own free
will, they will have a sense of abandonment and desertion. There
is something sad enough and discouraging enough in being shunned
and eyed with distrust by neighbours, friends, and clergy; but
whilst we have had someone to confide in, to receive instruction
from, this has been borne easily. A sound from Littlemore and St.
Mary's seems to reach us even here, and has given comfort on many
a dreary day; but when the voice ceases, even the words it has
already spoken, will lose some of their power; we shall have sad
thoughts as we read them. Such was our guide, but he has left us
to seek our own path; our champion has deserted us; our watchman,
whose cry used to cheer us up, is heard no more."[1]


When Newman finished reading this letter, tears came to his eyes.
He suffered tortures from the consciousness of the sorrow he was
thus involuntarily bringing to souls who trusted him. In his reply
to his sister, his "Dearest Jemima," couched in as affectionate
terms as ever, he begs her to trust the motives which direct his
course. To his other sister, Mrs. Thomas Mozley, he writes: "I am
so drawn to the Church of Rome, that I think it safer, as a matter
of honesty, <not> to keep my living . . . I could not without
hypocrisy profess myself any longer a <teacher> and a <champion>
for our Church . . . My dear Harriet, you must learn patience, so
must we all, and resignation to the will of God."

On September 25, 1843, he bade a tearful farewell to his Anglican
congregation at Littlemore. The little church was adorned with
flowers in honor of the seventh anniversary of its consecration.
There, too, was the tomb of his mother, and on it the flowers were
heaped high. As Newman ascended the pulpit an attitude of tension
prevailed, the members sensing that an announcement fraught large
with meaning for the future would be forthcoming. Taking as his
theme, "The Parting of Friends," he spoke slowly in a low voice,
passing in review the scenes of separation depicted in the Bible,
dwelling at some length upon that of David and Jonathan. His many
pauses, the pathos in his voice, told of the anguish in his soul
struggling for expression. He ended with the touching plea for the
prayers of his people that he might know God's will and do it.

"O my brethren," he said, "O kind and affectionate hearts, O
loving friends, should you know any one whose lot it has been, by
writing or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to
act; if he has ever told you what you knew about yourselves, or
what you did not know; has read to you your wants or feelings, and
comforted you by the very reading; has made you feel that there
was a higher life than this daily one, and a brighter world than
that you see; or encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way
to the inquiring, or soothed the perplexed; if what he has said or
done has ever made you take interest in him, and feel well
inclined toward him; remember such a one in time to come, though
you hear him not, and pray for him, that in all things he may know
God's will, and at all times he may be ready to fulfill it."[2]

Tears were in the eyes of all. Descending the pulpit, Newman
received Communion and withdrew. Pusey completed the services,
struggling to suppress the tears that interrupted his reading. All
left Littlemore with a clear feeling that the whole of a mighty
past was definitely closed. "I am just returned, half broken-
hearted," wrote Pusey, from the commemoration at Littlemore; the
sermon was like one of Newman's.... People sobbed visibly.... If
our Bishops did but know what faithful hearts, devoted to our Lord
and the service of His Church, they are breaking."[3]

The agitation aroused by Newman's farewell sermon was as great at
Oxford as at Littlemore. Writing twenty-five years later,
Principal Shairp still felt, after "an interval of twenty-five
years, how vividly comes back the remembrance of the aching blank,
the awful pause, which fell on Oxford, when that voice had ceased,
and we knew that we should hear it no more. It was as when, to one
kneeling by night, in the silence of some vast cathedral, the
great bell tolling solemnly overhead has suddenly gone still."[4]
There was a widespread feeling that his resignation was but the
prelude to his secession, and everybody realized what a staggering
blow this would be for the Church of England. "I stagger to and
fro like a drunken man, and am at my wit's end," wrote Gladstone
to Manning. Describing the impact of this news upon the
intellectual world at Oxford, Stanley says: "No one asked about it
in public, but everyone rushed to and fro to ask in private.... To
anyone who has been accustomed to look upon Arnold and Newman as
<the> two great men of the Church of England, the death of the one
and the secession of the other could not but look ominous, like
the rattle of departing chariots that was heard on the eve of the
downfall of the Temple of Jerusalem."[5]

While Newman had lost faith completely in the Apostolical
character of the Anglican Church, he was not yet fully convinced
that the Church of Rome was the true Church. He did not wish to
act on mere probabilities but desired complete certainty. "My
difficulty was this," he wrote later: "I had been deceived greatly
once; how could I be sure that I was not deceived a second time? .
. What test had I, that I should not change again, after that I
had become a Catholic? I had still apprehension of this, though I
thought a time would come when it would depart."

NEWMAN DRAWS NEARER

For two years Newman waited, praying and searching for the light,
seeking to pass from probability to certainty. Some have been
surprised at this long delay and have been critical of it. But
they can be answered with Newman echoing the voice of St.
Augustine: "Let those make use of severity who are not acquainted
with the difficulties of distinguishing error from truth, and in
finding the true way of life amidst the illusions of the world."
Newman's habit of viewing both sides of a question, weighing the
pros against the cons on the scales of logic, further slowed his
reaching a definite conclusion. Since his decision would exercise
such a profound influence upon those who looked to him for
guidance, he felt it doubly necessary to exhaust all means of
resistance before surrendering. Indeed nothing in Newman's life
throws into clearer relief the profound sincerity of the man, his
unwillingness to act on mere sentiment, his painstaking solicitude
for truth, than the protracted inquiry he conducted at Littlemore
before taking the final step. Who can fail to admire the
transparent honesty of this earnest soul, struggling to dissipate
the darkness of uncertainty and to arrive not at the twilight of
probability but at the bright light of certainty and truth before
he would chart his course upon the troubled waters of the future?

On the one hand were the associations of a lifetime, the pleadings
of his sisters, the esteem of his colleagues at Oxford, the
reverent affection of the younger men, and the promise of
advancement in the Church of his birth. On the other hand was the
alien communion of Rome, in which he had few acquaintances and
scarcely any friends. His contact with the Catholic clergy had
been practically nil. He knew the deep-seated prejudices of the
British people against "Romanism," and the social and intellectual
ostracism which they tended from long custom to inflict upon its
members. His concern, however, was not for a crown with the honors
it would bring, but for the truth even though it bring him a cross
with shame and ignominy. His prayer was for light to see the truth
and courage to follow wherever it might lead, even though it lead
him through strange and lonely ways, where his feet never before
had trod. Like St. Augustine, who after his conversion in the
garden at Milan, remained at his retreat at Cassisiacum for almost
a year, preparing himself by prayer and discipline for his baptism
and Holy Communion, Newman remained at Littlemore, increasing his
austerities and redoubling his prayers. "Lord, that I may see!"
was his daily prayer.

Ward and some others had preceded him into the Church of Rome, but
still Newman deliberated, awaiting the result of the working of
his conscience and of his prayers for light. That he realized what
the contemplated step would cost him is evident from a letter he
wrote to his sister on March 15, 1845: "I have a good name with
many: I am deliberately sacrificing it. I have a bad name with
more: I am fulfilling all their worst wishes, and giving them
their most coveted triumph. I am distressing all I love,
unsettling all I have instructed or aided. I am going to those
whom I do not know, and of whom I expect very little. I am making
myself an outcast, and that at my age-oh! what can it be but a
stern necessity which causes this?"[6]

Meanwhile, Wiseman, puzzled at the long delay, decided to send
Father Bernard Smith, a convert and an old friend of Newman's, to
Littlemore to note the lay of the land. Newman received him with
marked coldness. But the vigilant eyes of Father Smith did not
fail to note one telltale detail. Newman dined in gray trousers.
To Father Smith, who knew Newman's punctiliousness in the matter
of dress, this was evidence that he no longer regarded himself as
a clergyman. But the end was not yet. "There was a pause," says
Dean Church. "It was no secret what was coming. But men lingered.
It was not till the summer that the first drops of the storm began
to fall. Then through the autumn and the next year, friends whose
names and forms were familiar in Oxford, one by one disappeared,
and were lost to it.... We sat glumly at our breakfasts every
morning, and then someone came in with news of something
disagreeable-someone gone, someone sure to go."

NEWMAN SURRENDERS!

The community at Littlemore waited and waited for their leader to
give the signal. At last the end of the long vigil of prayer and
deliberation came-simply and quietly, without pomp or melodrama.
Newman learned that a Passionist priest would be passing through
Oxford on the evening of October 8, 1845, and he sent Father
Dalgairns to meet him. "At that time," writes Father Dalgairns,
"all of us except St. John, though we did not doubt that Newman
would become a Catholic, were anxious and ignorant of his
intentions in detail. About three o'clock I went to take my hat
and stick and walk across the fields to the Oxford 'Angel,' where
the coach stopped. As I was taking my stick Newman said to me in a
very low and quiet tone: 'When you see your friend, will you tell
him that I wish him to receive me into the Church of Christ?' I
said: 'Yes,' and no more. I told Father Dominic as he was
dismounting from the top of the coach. He said: 'God be praised,'
and neither of us spoke again till we reached Littlemore."

On October 9, Newman made his profession of faith and received
conditional baptism. The following morning, along with Dalgairns,
St. John, Stanton and Bowles, he received Holy Communion from the
hands of Father Dominic.

The news of Newman's entry into the Catholic Church aroused
intense excitement. "It is impossible," says Mark Pattison, "to
describe the enormous effect produced in the academical and
clerical world, I may say throughout England, by one man's
changing his religion."[7] Gladstone, the prime minister declared:
"I regard Newman's secession as an event as unexampled as an
epoch."[8] Later Disraeli, another prime minister, declared "that
this conversion had dealt a blow to England from which she yet
reeled." Following in Newman's steps came Oakeley, Faber, and a
long line of clergymen and Oxford graduates, numbering more than
three hundred. "Nothing similar," says Thureau-Dangin, "had been
seen since the Reformation." The procession, started by Newman,
has never stopped. Continuing into our own day, it has brought
more than fourteen hundred Anglican clergymen into the Catholic
Church. The step cost Newman dearly-his position, his friends,
even his family. Did he regret the step later on, as some writers
have sought to imply? Twenty years later, at a time when he had
reason to complain of the tactics used against him by some of his
coreligionists, he openly testified to "the perfect peace and
contentment that he had enjoyed since his conversion." He declared
"that he had never had one doubt," and that "it was like coming
into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score
remains to this day without interruption."

The Church's Renaissance in England

NEWMAN'S conversion divides a life of almost ninety years into
equal parts, both filled with drama, struggle against odds, and
achievement. In October, 1846, Newman went to Rome where he was
ordained a priest and honored by the Pope with the degree of
Doctor of Divinity. Pope Pius IX approved his plan of establishing
in England the Oratory of St. Philip, a community of religious
with simple vows, and in 1847 Newman set up the house at London,
with Father Faber as superior, and later founded Oratories at
Birmingham and Edgbaston. Here for almost forty years he remained
as a recluse, going out occasionally for lectures, but spending
most of his time in writing his matchless books, which have
enriched all posterity with the genius of his thought.

His sermon, <The Second Spring>, delivered at the Synod of Oscott,
is a masterpiece of rare and delicate beauty, which Macaulay
learned by heart. His <Lectures on the Present Position of
Catholics in England> abounds in passages of lively humor, rich
imagination, and delicate beauty which held George Eliot in
thralldom. "When Newman made up his mind to join the Church of
Rome," observes R. H. Hutton, "his genius boomed out with a force
and freedom such as it never displayed in the Anglican
community.... In irony, in humour, in eloquence, in imaginative
force, the writings of the later, and as we may call it, the
emancipated portion of his career far surpass the writings of his
theological apprenticeship."

In 1854, Newman went at the request of the Irish bishops to
Dublin, as Rector of the newly-established Catholic university.
Practical difficulties beset the undertaking and after four years
Newman retired. The most valuable outcome of this enterprise was
his volume of lectures entitled <Idea of a University>, which has
remained as the classic in this field from the day it first
appeared. The following passage illustrates its graceful ease of
diction and its pregnancy of thought:

"That training of the intellect, which is best for the individual
himself, best enables him to discharge his duties to society. The
Philosopher, indeed, and the man of the world differ in their very
notion, but the methods, by which they are respectively formed,
are pretty much the same. The Philosopher has the same command of
matters of thought, which the true citizen and gentleman has of
matters of business and conduct. If then a practical end must be
assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good
members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end
is fitness for the world.

"It neither confines its views to particular professions on the
one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other.
Works indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under
no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal
authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or
conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of
Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or
Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before now
contained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the other
hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist
or the engineer, though such too it includes within its scope. But
a University training is the great ordinary means to a great but
ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society,
at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste,
at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims
to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the
ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power,
and refining the intercourse of private life.

"It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of
his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an
eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It
teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point,
to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical,
and to discard what is irrelevant."

DUEL WITH KINGSLEY

Since 1841 Newman had been under a cloud, <sub luce maligna>, as
far as concerned the great masses of cultivated Englishmen who
never could bring themselves to understand how such a gifted mind
could take the step he did. Conscious of the suspicion with which
he was viewed, Newman had begun in 1842 to gather biographical and
other memoranda waiting for the opportunity to vindicate his
career. The occasion was offered him by Charles Kingsley, a
novelist of note, who in reviewing Froude's <History of England>
in <Macmillan's Magazine> for January, 1864, incidentally
asserted:

"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 world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his
notion is doctrinally correct or not, it is, at least,
historically so."

When Newman protested, Kingsley replied by referring to Newman's
sermon, <Wisdom and Innocence>, published in 1844, before Newman's
conversion. "It was in consequence of this sermon," he wrote,
"that I finally shook off the strong influence which your writings
exerted on me, and for much of which I still owe you a deep debt
of gratitude. I am most happy to hear from you that I mistook your
meaning; and I shall be most happy, on, showing me that I have
wronged you, to retract any accusation as publicly as I have made
it."

In response to a further letter Kingsley remarked that he liked
the tone of Newman's letter, and in his proposed apology expressed
his "hearty pleasure" at finding Newman "on the side of truth in
this or any other matter." Newman objected to this as well as to
the no less ambiguous remark that "no man knows the meaning of
words better than Dr. Newman." Kingsley refused to do more,
maintaining that he had done as much as one English gentleman
could expect from another. Exasperated beyond measure, Newman felt
that the only manner in which he could secure redress was by
publishing the correspondence, thus submitting the controversy to
the fairness of the British public. The result was a masterpiece
of controversial irony, unsurpassed in the English language for
the vigor of its biting satire.

"Mr. Kingsley," Newman wrote, "begins by exclaiming: 'Oh, Oh, the
chicanery, the wholesale fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the
conscience-killing tyranny of Rome! We have not far to seek for
evidence of it! There's Father Newman to wit; one living specimen
is worth a hundred dead ones. He, a priest, writing of priests,
tells us that lying is never any harm.' I interpose, 'You are
taking a most extraordinary liberty with my name. If I said this,
tell me when and where.' Mr. Kingsley replies: 'You said it,
reverend sir, in a sermon which you preached when a Protestant, as
Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844, and I could read you a
very salutary lecture on the effects which that sermon had at the
time on my own opinion of you.' I make answer: 'Oh . . . <not>, it
seems, as a priest speaking of priests; but let us have the
passage.'

"Mr. Kingsley relaxes: 'Do you know, I like your <tone.> From your
<tone> I rejoice-greatly rejoice-to be able to believe that you
did not mean what you said.' I rejoin: '<Mean> it! I maintain I
never <said> it, whether as a Protestant or as a Catholic!' Mr.
Kingsley replies: 'I waive that point.' I object: 'Is it possible?
What! Waive the main question? I either said it or I didn't. You
have made a monstrous charge against me-direct, distinct, public;
you are bound to prove it as directly, as distinctly, as publicly,
or to own you can't!' 'Well,' says Mr. Kingsley, 'if you are quite
sure you did not say it, I'll take your word for it-I really
will.' '<My word!>' I am dumb. Somehow, I thought that it was my
<word> that happened to be on trial. The <word> of a professor of
lying that he does not lie! But Mr. Kingsley reassures me. 'We are
both gentlemen,' he says. 'I have done as much as one English
gentleman can expect from another.' I begin to see: he thought me
a gentleman at the very time that he said I taught lying on
system. After all it is not I, but it is Mr. Kingsley who did not
mean what he said."

Kingsley would have done well to have escaped as quickly as
possible from an untenable position. Newman was the last man in
England who could be charged with insincerity. In his quest for
truth he had sacrificed more than any man in the Church of England
and had received in return an obscure post in an alien communion.
Uncompromising in his loyalty to the truth, he should have been
the last man for Kingsley to choose for his cruel and unjust
attack. "But Kingsley," as Arnold Lunn well observes, "was as
incapable of understanding Newman's subtle and complex mind as a
prizefighter of grasping the Einstein theory." Foolishly
persisting in this attack, he wrote a pamphlet, <What then does
Dr. Newman mean>? It was a rehash of all the familiar antiRoman
charges now worn threadbare. Again he gave Newman a splendid
opportunity.

Newman seized it to vindicate not only his own career but his
espoused faith, which was now assailed. The result was the
<Apologia>, the simple confidential tone of which "revolutionized
the popular estimate of its author." Written as a series of
fortnightly articles, it achieved an instant success. Newman
appealed to the fairness of the British public to decide the
merits of the controversy. And not in vain. For with all their
ingrained prejudices against Romanism, the essential fairness of
the English public and their fine sense of sportsmanship enabled
them to appreciate the superior logic of Newman's reasoning and
the greater deftness of his controversial strokes. He gained a
smashing victory among all classes.

They applauded the honesty and courage of a man who, splashed with
slander and abuse by an opponent who then sought to withdraw,
pursued him until his honor and truthfulness were vindicated
beyond all cavil. The <Apologia> was written under the stress of
great emotion and at a furious speed. Newman wrote sometimes for
twenty hours at a stretch. In consequence, as literature it is
uneven. But in spite of the speed with which it was ground out, it
is permeated with a deep earnestness which echoes even between the
lines, and is aglow with an irrepressible passion to vindicate the
truth. In none of his other works do the character, personality
and forthrightness of the author shine forth more luminously.

"No finer triumph of talent in the service of conscience," says
William Barry, "has been put on record. From that day the Catholic
religion may date its reentrance into the national literature.
Instead of arid polemics and technical arguments, a living soul
had revealed in its journey toward the old faith wherein lay the
charm that drew it on. Reality became more fascinating than
romance, the problem which staggered Protestants and modern minds-
how to reconcile individual genius with tradition, private
judgment with authority-was resolved in Newman's great example."
The place of the <Apologia> among the great masterpieces of
autobiographical writing is secure.

HIS WRITINGS

Amidst the acclamations of Catholics and non-Catholics alike,
Newman turned now to the formulation of the philosophy which would
justify his action. He began <The Grammar of Assent>, the most
closely reasoned of all his works. In it the author avoids
abstractions and metaphysics and focuses attention upon the
problem of concrete affirmation, its motives, and its relation to
the personality of the individual. Hitherto interest had been
centered on the objective grounds for assent, while the subjective
or psychological steps leading to the affirmation remained largely
unexplored. The author brought to the problem a penetrating
insight into the workings of the human mind and heart, a rare
capacity for subtle analysis, and a vast amount of experience in
examining and analyzing the psychological factors which lead to a
decision of the will. Without sacrificing the rights of pure
logic, Newman restores the will to its rightful place and
emphasizes the influence of the moral resonance of the
individual's character in providing that proper disposition, that
<pia credulitas>, which is a prerequisite to the act of faith. In
short, assent is not a mere mechanical echo of the syllogism, but
a distinct psychological act in which the will and the moral
reasonance of the individual play vital and important parts.

In common with Kant, Newman considered the witness of conscience,
"the categorical imperative," among the supreme evidences of a
Deity both immanent in the universe and yet transcending it. He
states that it would be easier for him to doubt his own existence
than the existence of "Him who lives as an All-seeing, All-judging
Being in my conscience." Conscience was to him, as Barry observes,
the inward revelation of God, Catholicism was the external and
objective one. He held that the reason by which men guide
themselves is <implicit> rather than <explicit>, and stressed the
need of varied and converging proofs. The work served as a sequel
and a crown to the <Development of Doctrine> and completes the
author's philosophy. It was composed with painstaking care, some
portions of it being written ten times, and it abounds in passages
of psychological penetration, deft analysis, and logical power.

In <Christianity and Scientific Investigation>, Newman developed
the thesis that theology was a deductive science, while physics
and the other natural sciences were inductive. Hence there could
be no real collisions between these two bodies of knowledge. They
moved in essentially different orbits, and the appearance of
conflict only would occur from the scientist invading the domain
of theology or the theologian trespassing upon the territory of
science. He thus sought to provide a concordat which would prevent
a recurrence of the Galileo imbroglio.

Some of the friends of Newman belong to a type known in history as
"Liberal Catholics," though the term has never found a hospitable
welcome in the Church. In 1864 he wrote of Montalembert and
Lacordaire: "In their general line of thought and conduct I
enthusiastically concur and consider them to be before their age."
He speaks of "the unselfish aims, the thwarted projects, the
unrequited toils, the grand and tender resignation of Lacordaire"-
a description which might well be applied to himself. It will be
recalled that on his deathbed Lacordaire said: "I die a repentant
Christian but an unrepentant Liberal."

In many of his lectures Newman stressed the inadequacy of
knowledge alone to provide the motive power for action in the face
of passion and habit. "Carve the granite with a razor," he wrote,
"moor the vessel with a thread of silk, then you may hope with
such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human
reason to contend against those giants, the passions and the pride
of men." Will power, strength of character, and those driving
forces which spring from deep religious convictions are necessary
to hold to its charted course the human bark tossed about on the
turbulent seas of angry passions.

In the midst of inner travail and suffering that came from the
blighting of his cherished hopes, Newman was accustomed to turn to
the writing of poetry in which he found relief. <The Dream of
Gerontius> is the most beautiful of his poems, and is indeed a
masterpiece of nineteenth century English poetry. Unlike the
composition of his philosophical works which occasioned always the
pains of travail, the writing of his poetry was done with ease.
Thus he wrote <The Dream of Gerontius> with a facility which
called for scarcely any erasures. When completed, he attached so
little importance to it that he threw it into the waste-paper
basket, where it would have been lost forever had not a friend
chanced to come upon it and prevailed upon Newman to publish it
anonymously. It met with instant success and has continued to grow
in popularity. Later it was made the subject of an oratorio by a
distinguished musician.

In this poem the author seeks to penetrate the veil that cloaks
the mystery of the soul's adventuring immediately after death when
it finds itself midway between time and eternity. He follows the
soul into Purgatory and describes the scenes of the other world,
peopled with angels and demons, with a grandeur of imagery that
reminds one of Dante but is more detached from earthly influences
and more wrapt in the contemplation of the spiritual. Newman was
much touched when he learned toward the close of his life of the
refreshment of spirit which Gordon had found in it when shut up at
Khartoum and preparing to sacrifice his life for his country's
cause. He kept his heroic death vigil, reading this poem and
scoring with pencil lines the passages which most appealed to him.

To Newman, poetry was not only an outlet for the emotions but it
was a means of disciplining and chastening them as well. To his
sensitive soul, much of the ceremony and ritual, the processions,
vestments and shrines of the Catholic Church were suffused with
poetry. The one was poetry in action, the other was poetry
crystallized in art.

"Poetry," he said, "is a method of relieving the over-burdened
mind; it is a channel through which emotion finds expression, and
that a safe, regulated expression. Now what is the Catholic
Church, viewed in her human aspect, but a discipline of the
affections and passions? What are her ordinances and practices but
the regulated expression of keen, or deep, or turbid feeling, and
thus a "cleansing," as Aristotle would word it, of the sick soul?

"She is the poet of her children; full of music to soothe the sad
and control the wayward,-wonderful in story for the imagination of
the romantic; rich in symbol and imagery, so that gentle and
delicate feelings, which will not bear words, may in silence
intimate their presence or commune with themselves. Her very being
is poetry; every psalm, every petition, every collect, every
versicle, the cross, the mitre, the thurible, is a fulfilment of
some dream of childhood or aspiration of youth. Such poets as are
born under her shadow, she takes into her service; she sets them
to write hymns, or to compose chants, or to embellish shrines, or
to determine ceremonies, or to marshal processions; nay, she can
even make schoolmen of them, as she made St. Thomas, till logic
becomes poetical."[9]

NEWMAN'S DISCERNMENT

It is part of the tragedy of Newman's life that after having made
so costly a sacrifice to follow the conviction of his conscience,
he was looked at askance by so many of his former Anglican
friends, and on the other side by many of the "old" Catholics. He
regarded the tendency of certain other converts, such as Manning,
now archbishop of Westminster, W. G. Ward, editor of <The Dublin
Review>, and F. W. Faber, head of the Oratory at London, to
overstress the papal claims as more calculated to antagonize the
British public than to attract them. Many of the converts were
strong papalists, with pronounced inclinations to overstate the
papal authority in both temporal and spiritual matters.

Thus W. G. Ward would have relished immensely having a Papal Bull
delivered each morning with <The Times>. He wanted the Pope to
decide every question that arose, and seemed to look forward with
impatience to the day when the Pope would be issuing Bulls on
every subject. From such extremes Newman's delicate soul shrank in
horror. While he respected the authority of the Pope and believed
in his infallibility in matters of faith even before the dogma was
formally proclaimed, he thought it wiser to stress the
reasonableness of doctrine than merely to show its
authoritativeness.

In his <Roman Converts>, Arnold Lunn terms him a "minimizer," as
Talbot did before him. But this is scarcely accurate. A "realizer"
would be a better term. For it was because of his keen realization
of the temper and prejudices of the British mind of his day that
he endeavored to soften the needlessly harsh statement of certain
Roman doctrines which Ward, Faber and others were frequently
making. Understanding from his own experience as an Anglican
divine how certain ultra-Romanizing tendencies were inclined to
grate on British sensitivities, none too friendly even to the
restrained statement of Roman claims, he sought to avoid any
unnecessary waving of the red flag before the British bull.

An instance in point is the language used by Cardinal Wiseman in
his Pastoral announcing the reestablishment of the regular
hierarchy in England with himself as Primate. Writing from the
Catholic atmosphere of Rome, the newly appointed Cardinal seems to
have forgotten momentarily the anti-Roman prejudices of the
British public, and addressing his letter from "without the
Flaminian gate," declares: "Till such time as the Holy See shall
think fit otherwise to provide, we shall govern and continue to
govern the counties of Middlesex, Hertford and Essex as ordinary
therefor with the islands annexed as administrators with ordinary
powers."

A storm of indignant protest followed. "John Bull snorted. He
wrote to <The Times> explaining that he'd see Wiseman damned
before Wiseman governed as ordinary or as extraordinary a yard of
British soil." Even the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, joined
in the hue and cry. The "No popery" campaign was in full swing
again. Why? Because of a needlessly arrogant and haughty manner of
stating a simple fact, unobjectionable in itself. Because of a
complete lack of delicacy in dealing with latent anti-Roman
prejudices, which with a discerning and tactful statement would
have remained dormant, but which were jolted into furious activity
by the bombastic and domineering language used. Because Newman had
a profound understanding of the British mind and knew its
sensitive spots, he opposed all his life the needlessly harsh
statement of doctrine, Roman claims and viewpoints which Manning,
Talbot, Ward and others seemed bent on using.

Another illustration is the statement of the doctrine, <Extra
ecclesiam nulla salus>-no salvation outside the Church. This has
been stated at times with such harshness and brutality as to be
positively repellent. But when the inner heart of the doctrine is
reached, it is found to embody the simple and unobjectionable
truth that every human being who acts in accordance with the light
of his own conscience is within the soul of the Church and may
enter into eternal life. Newman did not believe anything was to be
gained by the needlessly harsh and unpalatable statement of a
doctrine. In the language of our day, he did not believe in
rubbing the fur the wrong way-at least not needlessly. In a letter
to Phillips-de Lisle in 1848, he wrote: "It is no new thing with
me to feel little sympathy with parties, or extreme opinions of
any kind." He did not approve of attenuating that which is true,
but in setting down nothing in malice.

Manning thought he was transplanting the "Oxford tone into the
Church," while Ward used harsher language. But when the hue and
cry broke out against the formal proclamation of the dogma of
Papal Infallibility by the Vatican Council in 1870, it was Newman
who came to its defense, and whose presentation more than any of
the ultra-papalists, told with the British public. He had
previously opposed the definition as untimely, but when Gladstone,
the Prime Minister, accused the Catholic Church of having "equally
repudiated modern thought and ancient history," Newman sprang to
her defense. In a letter nominally addressed to the Duke of
Norfolk, he gave a masterly vindication of the rights of
conscience and showed the harmonious roles which authority and
reason play in the formulation of the verdict of the individual
conscience. Probably no other writer in England or elsewhere has
so stressed the important role which conscience plays in the
spiritual life and no one has laid greater emphasis upon its
finality as the court of last appeal. Passages concerning it
abound in practically all his works.

"What is the main guide of the soul," he asks, "given to the whole
race of Adam, outside the true fold of Christ as well as within
it, given from the first dawn of reason, given to it in spite of
that grievous penalty of ignorance which is one of the chief
miseries of our fallen state? It is the light of conscience, 'the
true Light,' as the Evangelist says, 'which lighteth every man
that cometh into the world.' Whether a man be born in pagan
darkness, or in some corruption of revealed religion; whether he
has heard the name of the Saviour of the world or not; whether he
be the slave of some superstition, or is in possession of some
portions of Scripture, in any case, he has within his breast a
certain commanding dictate, not a mere sentiment, not a mere
opinion, or impression, or view of things, but a law, an
authoritative voice, bidding him do certain things and avoid
others. It is more than a man's self. The man himself has not
power over it, or only with extreme difficulty; he did not make
it, he cannot destroy it. He may silence it in particular cases or
directions; he may distort its enunciations; but he cannot-or it
is quite the exception if he can-he cannot emancipate himself from
it. He can disobey it, he may refuse to use it; but it remains.

"This is Conscience; and, from the nature of the case, its very
existence carries on our minds to a being exterior to ourselves;
else, whence its strange, troublesome peremptoriness? I say its
very existence throws us out of ourselves, and beyond ourselves,
to go and seek for Him in the height and depth, whose voice it is.
As the sunshine implies that the sun is in the heavens, though we
may see it not; as a knocking at our doors at night implies the
presence of one outside in the dark who asks for admittance, so
this Word within us necessarily raises our minds to the idea of a
Teacher, an unseen Teacher."[10]

" (Conscience) holds of God, and not of man, as an Angel walking
on the earth would be no citizen or dependent of the Civil Power.
Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be
consistent with oneself! but it is a messenger from Him, who, both
in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches
and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal
Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its
peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and, even
though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church should cease
to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have
a sway.[11]

It was not only in his writings that Newman paid homage to the
thin small voice within, but in his life as well. He not only
preached obedience to that inner voice, he practiced it. He bore
eloquent testimony to his uncompromising loyalty to its whispering
when in tears he descended from the pulpit at Littlemore and
turned his back upon his beloved Oxford. When later as a Catholic
he found himself frequently put in an unfavorable light before the
officials at Rome, he scorned the slightest approximation to
toadyism, engaging in no flattery or sycophancy, but relied solely
upon the testimony of an approving conscience.

This trait in his character is illustrated in a reply he wrote to
Monsignor Talbot. The younger son of Lord Talbot of Malahide, he
had entered the Church in 1847, had become the Pope's chamberlain
and the trusted agent of Manning in Rome. As such he had used his
strategic influence to thwart Newman in many ways. After the great
success of <Apologia>, however, he relented to the extent of
inviting the Oratorian to Rome. He reminded him that he would
"derive great benefit from revisiting Rome and showing himself to
the Ecclesiastical authorities" and pointed out that as a preacher
he would enjoy at Rome "a more educated audience of Protestants
than could ever be the case in England." What a tempting
opportunity to curry favor he was dangling before Newman's eyes.
Did Newman rush to accept? He sent the following reply:

"Dear Monsignor Talbot,-I have received your letter inviting me to
preach in your church at Rome to an audience of Protestants more
educated than could ever be the case in England. However,
Birmingham people have souls, and I have neither the taste nor the
talent for the sort of work which you have cut out for me. And I
beg to decline your offer.

"I am, yours truly,

"JOHN H. NEWMAN."

In this brief note the character of the Oratorian, devoid of
obsequiousness and utterly lacking any tendency to buckle, stands
plainly revealed. He might have saved himself many a jolt if he
had stooped to curry favor, but it simply was not in his make-up.
He was to learn from bitter experience that manly independence and
a scorn for the arts of the sycophant offer no passport to
preferment in a world where climbing and crawling are performed in
much the same attitude. But he held to it to the bitter end. Then,
strangely enough, when he least expected it, recognition,
glorious, overwhelming, world wide, came to him.

It was this trait in Newman's character which compelled even Dean
Inge, who wastes no affection upon the Catholic Church, to pay
tribute. "Newman's confidence toward God," he writes, "rested on
an unclouded faith in the Divine guidance, and on a very just
estimate of the worthlessness of contemporary praise and blame.
There have been very few men who have been able to combine so
strong a faith with a thorough distrust of both logic-chopping and
emotional excitement, and who, while denying themselves these aids
to conviction, have been able to say, calmly and without
petulance, that with them it is a very small thing to be judged of
man's judgment."

Newman was simply practicing what he had preached in one of his
sermons. "What," he asks, "can increase their peace who believe
and trust in the Son of God? Shall we add a drop to the ocean, or
grains to the sand of the sea? We pay indeed our superiors full
reverence, and with cheerfulness as unto the Lord; and we honour
eminent talents as deserving admiration and reward; and the more
readily act we thus, because these are little things to pay."[12]
Such unworldliness as this, observes R. H. Hutton in words
singularly well chosen, "stands out in strange and almost majestic
contrast to the eager turmoil of confused passions, hesitating
ideals, tentative virtues, and groping philanthropies, amidst
which it was lived."

III. The Triumph of Failure

NEWMAN engaged in a number of projects of great promise, which
because of circumstances over which he had no control, failed to
materialize. We have already seen how his valiant effort to found
a great National University in Ire! land failed because of lack of
organized support of the Irish Bishops. Another project which
stirred his enthusiasm and seemed rich in promise was a new
translation of the Bible which Cardinal Wiseman had induced him to
undertake. The Douay Bible while a great improvement on the Rheims
edition lacks the dignity and charm of the Authorized Version. No
one realized this more painfully than Newman, whose ear was
delicately attuned to its harmonies and whose style was so largely
influenced by its chaste cadences. If there was any one man in the
English-speaking world who was superbly gifted to turn out a
masterpiece of simple beauty and dignity it was Newman.

Friends who heard about it were elated. Newman threw himself into
the enterprise with unbounded energy. He enlisted contributors and
was already at work, when alas, obstacles again appeared.
Booksellers and publishers with a large stock of the Douay Bible
launched vigorous protest. Wiseman yielded. And again one of
Newman's great undertakings died aborning. What a priceless loss
for the English-speaking world! Who can calculate the far-reaching
influence of the inspired Word expressed in Newman's sentences of
stately majesty and simple beauty, cadences which would live in
the memory and keep ever fresh their precious cargoes of eternal
truth? In many respects this would appear to be one of the most
tragic frustrations of all of Newman's great undertakings. To him
may be applied the phrase which Horace wrote about Daedalus
seeking to fly to the heights of heaven on the wings of Icarus:
<Si non tenuit, tamen magnis excidit ausis>.-Even though he
succeeded not, he failed in daring and noble attempts.

Another enterprise which augured much was his acceptance of the
editorship of <The Rambler.> This was a journal conducted by an
able group of laymen, of whom Lord Acton, the historian, was one.
Newman had been prevailed upon by Cardinal Wiseman to assume the
editorship with a view of directing its policy. But the ill-
fortune which attended his many other efforts to serve the Church
of his adoption pursued him here. An article which he contributed,
"On Consulting the Laity in Matters of Doctrine," was deleted to
Rome by Bishop Brown of Newport, who denounced it as heretical.
There was some talk of summoning Newman himself to Rome. That it
stirred him deeply is evident from the following: "Call me to
Rome-what does that mean? It means to sever an old man from his
home, to subject him to intercourse with persons whose languages
are strange to him-to food, and to fashions, which are almost
starvation on one hand, and oblige him to dance attendance on
Propaganda week after week, and month after month-it means death.
This is the prospect which I cannot but feel probable, did I say
anything, which one bishop in England chose to speak against and
report. Others have been killed before me. Lucas went of his own
accord indeed, but when he got there-oh! how much did he, as loyal
a son of the Church and Holy See as ever was, what did he suffer
because Dr. Cullen was against him? He wandered, as Dr. Cullen
<said> in a letter he published in a sort of triumph, he wandered
from Church to Church without a friend, and hardly got an audience
from the Pope. And I too should go from St. Philip to Our Lady,
and to St. Peter and St. Paul, and to St. Laurence and to St.
Cecilia, and if it happened to me, as to Lucas, should come back
to die."

Newman resigned from the editorship. This was in 1859, after a
mere two months of incumbency.

Wilfrid Ward, his biographer, regards the following five years as
the saddest in Newman's life. The Oratorian chafed under the
restraint placed upon him. He craved greater freedom to express
himself without being pounced upon by the authorities. He
contrasted sadly the present restraint with the magnificent
freedom which characterized the great intellectual periods of the
Church's past-a freedom without which the highest scholarship
cannot thrive. He thought wistfully of the liberty which Thomas
Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure and other
intellectual giants of the Church enjoyed-the freedom to defend
their theses in the open arena against all challengers, the
freedom to clash and with sturdy blows to pound out on the anvil
of controversy the nuggets of truth from the ore of speculation
and theory.

In 1863 Newman wrote to Miss E. Bowles: "This age of the Church is
peculiar. In former times there was not the extreme centralization
now in use. If a private theologian said anything free, another
answered him. If the controversy grew, then it went to a
bishop.... The Holy See was but the court of ultimate appeal.
<Now> if I as a private priest put anything into print, Propaganda
answers me at once. How can I fight with such a chain on my arm?
It is like the Persians driven to fight under the lash. There was
true private judgment in the primitive and mediaeval schools-there
are no schools now, no private judgment (in the religious sense of
the phrase), no freedom, that is, of opinion. That is, no exercise
of the intellect. No, the system goes on by the tradition of the
intellect of former times."

In explanation of the conditions then prevailing, it should be
recalled that the Church in England had been in a state of siege
for several centuries. Since the time of Henry VIII her
monasteries had been confiscated, her schools and churches seized,
her hierarchy suppressed, her clergy scattered and the
overwhelming portion of her children torn from her by violence. At
the beginning of the nineteenth century the Catholic population
numbered only about 160,000,[13] and they were anxious only to be
let alone. Neither priests nor people had any mood for controversy
in the open arena. They were quite content to let sleeping dogs
lie. Moreover the scenes of horror and bloodshed ushered in by the
French Revolution were still fresh in the Church's memory, while
the rumblings of the approaching storm in Italy, portending the
seizure of the Papal States, were being heard with an ominous
frequency. The nerves of churchmen were jumpy and jittery. They
had enough dangers to contend with, without inviting more from
controversy on delicate and disturbing questions. Warfare,
persecutions, states of siege, do not encourage speculative
controversies and are not conducive to academic freedom. There
have been few periods, either before or since, when the officials
of the Church had such little relish for academic controversies as
at Newman's time.

THE PROJECT AT OXFORD

During all his life Newman retained a deep love for Oxford, the
Alma Mater which had nurtured him with her best and had honored
him with an outpouring of reverence and affection which she had
given to few, if any, of her other children. Among the many
sacrifices which he made in entering the Church of Rome, few
exacted heavier toll in heartthrobs and in tears than the
resulting exile from the institution where he had dreamed his
dreams, seen his visions, and hurled his defiance at the
worldliness without, with all the high idealism of youth. When
about to take the momentous step, he felt instinctively that it
would mean a long farewell to the place that was dearest to him in
all England and to the scenes that would live hereafter only in
his memory. His foreboding proved all too true. But once again in
almost fifty years, and that in graying age, did he set foot in
Oxford, though occasionally from a distance he saw its storied
spires.

Something of the sentiments tugging at his heartstrings when about
to leave his Alma Mater be reveals to us in <Loss and Gain>.
Herein he describes how the convert, Charles Reding-the pseudonym
for himself-about to leave Oxford, "passed through Bagley wood,
and the spires and towers of the University came to his view,
hallowed by how many tender associations, lost to him for two
whole years, suddenly recovered-recovered to be lost for ever!
There lay old Oxford before him, with its hills as gentle and its
meadows as green as ever. At the first view of that beloved place
he stood still with folded arms, unable to proceed. Each college,
each church, he counted them by their pinnacles and turrets. The
silver Isis, the grey willows, the far-stretching plains, the dark
groves, the distant range of Shotover, the pleasant village where
he had lived with Carlton and Sheffield-wood, water, stone, all so
calm, so bright, they might have been his, but his they were not.
Whatever he was to gain by becoming a Catholic, this he had lost;
whatever he was to gain higher and better, at least this and such
as this he never could have again. He could not have another
Oxford, he could not have the friends of his boyhood and youth in
the choice of his manhood."

With such deep attachment to Oxford, it was only natural that
Newman should think of establishing a house of the Oratory there.
In 1864 he set himself to achieve this goal. This he did with no
pretense at deciding the controversy concerning the attendance of
Catholics at Oxford, but merely with the thought that the students
actually there should not be left without any of the ministrations
of religion. This, he felt, was the surest way to lose them. But
the opposition raised by Manning among the English bishops and
among his friends at Rome thwarted the plan.

Newman's Bishop, Dr. Ullathorne, keenly regretted this failure. A
pious and zealous man, he was anxious to utilize Newman's great
talents for the cause of religion at Oxford. The hostility,
tactless and unjust, directed against his ablest priest by high-
placed ecclesiastics distressed him. In June, 1866, he reopened
the matter, petitioning the Propaganda to permit the establishment
of an Oratory at Oxford. Six months later he received a reply
permitting the proposed foundation, but directing him to
discountenance Dr. Newman's taking up residence there. The Bishop
not wishing to hurt Newman by telling him of the restriction, and
thinking that he could remove it by personal representations,
simply informed Newman that the plan had been accepted. Newman was
enthusiastic. It looked as though his dream of many years of
returning to his old Alma Mater to champion the religion which he
had embraced was at last to be realized:

He believed that truth is its own defense, and though its
spokesman be outnumbered, the odds are with it still. He had long
felt that the policy of isolation from the great intellectual
center of English life was calculated only to lessen the little
influence which Catholics were then exercising, and to render it
even more negligible. They had the teachings of Christ, he
reasoned, in their Apostolical purity. They had the great
traditions of the Schoolmen. They had a masterly

system of theology wrought out with marvelous consistency. Above
all, they had the promise of the Holy Ghost to be with them all
days. And while at certain times that Pentecostal fire seemed to
be but smoldering, it never failed to blaze up ever and anon to
manifest its undying character. Why not then go into this great
stronghold of intellectual life, present her heritage of divine
truth and welcome the fullest discussion from every quarter?

To Newman, it seemed almost to be lacking in faith to doubt the
capacity of the truths of Christ and the Apostles to sustain
themselves when placed fearlessly before the eyes and the minds of
men. He opposed the policy of timid isolation. He scorned the
shelter of the Ivory Tower. Like St. Paul going to the Acropolis
to present the teaching of the Crucified to the scholars of
Athens, Newman yearned to carry the Apostolic faith to the chief
intellectual fortress of England, Oxford University. He was doubly
elated at the prospect of returning under such circumstances to
the campus upon which he had not set foot since the time he left
it, as an outcast and an exile without kindred or abiding place,
to join the alien communion of Rome more than a quarter of a
century ago. With the permission of his Ordinary, Newman issued a
circular, appealing for funds. The sum of �5,000 was quickly
raised. A site was purchased. Newman packed his trunk and,
sunshine on his face, talked of the approaching fulfillment of his
dream.

But then the opposition broke. Broke from a double quarter. On the
one hand, his old colleagues of Tractarian days, Reble and Pusey,
who had remained within the Anglican Church, grew alarmed at the
prospect of an invasion of Oxford by such a formidable
representative of Rome. The memory of the influence Newman had
exercised among the faculty and with the students, whose creed was
<Credo in Newmannum>, was still with them. What devastation might
he not work now as the spokesman of Rome? They sounded the tocsin,
and a cry of protest sprang up from Anglican leaders at Oxford. On
the other side, Manning, equally alarmed, led the opposition from
within the Church. Rallying a number of the bishops behind him, he
made representations through his agent, Monsignor Talbot at Rome,
that Newman's presence would draw many Catholic students to Oxford
and would further engender "a certain Anglo-Catholicism" in which
the English national spirit would prevail over the Roman or
Catholic one.

Fighting desperately to stave off another of the many defeats
which crowned his efforts to serve the Church he loved, Newman
sent his faithful disciple, Ambrose St. John, to Rome, with
precise instructions as to the answers which were to be made to
the objections raised. He was to point out that, even though there
was a danger of increasing the attendance, this would be more than
counterbalanced by the advantage of an Oratory church, which would
provide the ministrations of religion for students already there,
who otherwise would be neglected. But all in vain. His fellow-
convert, Manning, and, like himself, a former Oxford man, made his
views prevail at Rome. The Propaganda directed Bishop Ullathorne
to "take heed lest Dr. Newman should do anything which might
favour in any way the presence of Catholics at the University."

It was a great blow to Newman. It was all the more bitter because
those who on the representations of his critics had decreed his
exclusion, had never even taken the trouble to question him
concerning his own views and plans. Still more was he cut to the
quick when Cardinal Reisach, who came to collect information on
the Oxford question, avoided an interview with him. What strange
nemesis was dogging this man's footsteps, mocking his high
purposes, blighting his hopes, and dooming to ignominious failure
his many valiant undertakings to serve the Church in as effective
a manner as his intellect could devise? Strachey pictures him a
forlorn figure, Manning and Talbot smiling in triumph, while
Newman stands at the gate with his bag, packed all in vain,
looking wistfully toward the spires of his beloved Oxford, from
which he was bidden to remain an exile forever, weeping bitterly.
Such would seem to be the usual verdict.

DID NEWMAN REALLY FAIL?

But did he really fail? Go to Oxford today and see. The music of
his voice has died but the melody of his dream lingers on. Yes, it
lingers on in abiding stone, in the impressive foundations
established by the great religious Orders of the Church, in
Campion Hall of the Jesuits, in St. Benet's Hall of the
Benedictines, in the House of the Salesians, in the Hall of the
Franciscans, in the Hall of the Dominicans with the significant
inscription over its portals, "After a long exile the sons of St.
Dominic have returned!" Father Ronald Knox, the son of an Anglican
bishop, ministers as Chaplain to the Catholic students. Black-
robed Jesuits, brown-robed Franciscans, and white-robed Dominicans
are in the lecture halls, laboratories and libraries. Father M. C.
D'Arcy, S.J., holds the chair of ethics. Newman's dream at long
last has come true.

In the summer of 1925 the writer discussed with Cardinal Vaughan
the work of the foundations at Oxford. A few years previous there
was some agitation for the establishment of a National Catholic
university. The Cardinal along with other leaders of the Church
opposed the project as unwise. "'While I do not wish to speak
about what is the best arrangement for other countries, where
conditions are different," said His Eminence, "I am certain that
for the Church in England the establishments we have at Oxford and
Cambridge offer the best facilities for Catholic higher education.
They are the two great historic centres of intellectual life in
England, and our hope is to utilize them more and more. To cut
ourselves off from these two great universities, and to try to
establish a university off by ourselves would be the height of
folly, if not positively suicidal. The graduates of Oxford and
Cambridge have the ear of the English public and are at least
listened to with respect."

"What effect does Oxford have upon the faith of the Catholic
students?" inquired the writer. "Instead of weakening them,"
replied the Cardinal, "we can say now on the basis of a long
experience that with the provisions made for them, attendance at
Oxford strengthens them. The graduates of Oxford are supplying the
Church with a type of lay leadership which is of the highest to be
found in any Catholic country in the world." The remarkable growth
which the Church in England has experienced in the last half
century is attributable in no small degree to the sterling work of
her lay apostolate, which has set an example for the Catholics of
all other countries.

How happy would be the Church in any country to claim three such
able apologists as Fathers Ronald Rnox, C. C. Martindale, S.J.,
and M. C. D'Arcy, S.J.? That brilliant conversationalist, Arnold
Lunn, clashed swords in debate with Father Knox, only to surrender
his sword at last, and ask his erstwhile duelist to receive him
into the Church which not long before had opened its hospitable
arms to receive Knox himself. Well indeed might the old apologist
for entering Oxford and using it for a divine purpose, instead of
fleeing from it, Newman himself, have smiled as he looked down
from the eternal hills upon this latest corroboration of the
wisdom of his plan.

In America the scores of Newman Halls at State and secular
Universities carrying on his plan, bid fair to give his ideas a
vaster range and a universal currency, and to keep his memory ever
fresh and green. "Principles," said Newman, "will develop
themselves beyond the arbitrary points of which you are so fond,
and by which hitherto they have been limited, like prisoners on
parole." The growth of the Newman Club movement in England,
America and throughout the world testifies to the truth of his
prophetic utterance. Newman was thwarted, but his idea has
prevailed.

The frustration of his many noble undertakings calculated to try
the soul of the strongest man, Newman bore with a patience that
was nothing short of heroic. Shortly after the thwarting of his
Oxford project, a correspondent in Rome made an anonymous attack
upon Newman's orthodoxy in <The Weekly Register>. This was the
spark which kindled into a flame the long smoldering indignation
of the Catholic laity at the many unjust attacks made upon one of
the noblest and holiest souls in the Church in England. A mass
meeting of the laity was called. A testimonial, signed by two
hundred of the most distinguished English Catholics, was presented
to him. In it they served notice that "every blow that touched him
inflicted a wound on the Catholic Church in England." Newman was
deeply touched. "The attacks of the opponents," he replied, "are
never hard to bear when the person who is the subject of them is
conscious in himself that they are undeserved; but in the present
instance I have small cause indeed for pain or regret at their
occurrence, since they have at once elicited in my be half the
warm feelings of so many dear friends who know me well, and of so
many others whose good opinion is the more impartial for the very
reason that I am not personally known to them. Of such men,
whether friends or strangers to me, I would a hundred times rather
receive the generous sympathy than have escaped the
misrepresentations which are the occasion for showing it."[14]

A LONG ROAD TURNS

There comes at last an end to everything. And an end to the series
of disappointments which had crowned Newman's undertakings had
come. Likewise an end to the suspicions under which he had labored
for almost thirty years. This ostracism of a saintly genius had
been due chiefly to his former friends, Manning, Ward, and Talbot.
In 1877, Newman was elected an honorary Fellow of Trinity College,
and in February of the following year, after an absence of thirty-
two years, he returned to the Oxford whose spires only he had seen
from a distance in the intervening years. Appearing in his
University robes as the guest of the President of Trinity College,
he was warmly applauded by the students and faculty.

In the same month, Pope Pius IX died, and Leo XIII, who had also
lived in exile from the Curia since 1846, and who had learned from
experience the meaning of Vergil's phrase, <Haud ignora mali>,
ascended the chair of Peter. The Duke of Norfolk and other
Catholic peers approached Cardinal Manning about securing the
honor of the cardinalate for Father Newman. Leo XIII had
apparently already made up his mind to so honor Newman and readily
acceded to their request. A letter of the Cardinal Secretary of
State announced to Newman "that the Holy Father, highly
appreciating the genius and erudition which distinguished him, his
piety, the zeal which he displayed in the exercise of the holy
ministry, his devotion and filial attachment to the Holy Apostolic
See, and the signal services he had for long years rendered to
religion, had decided on giving him a public and solemn proof of
his esteem and good will," and that he would proclaim his
elevation to the Sacred College in the next Consistory.

On May 12, 1879, he was created a Cardinal amidst the universal
rejoicing of the British people, Catholic and nonCatholic alike.
The event was without a parallel in modern times, as no simple
priest without duties in the Roman Curia had been raised to the
cardinalate. Congratulations poured in upon him from such distant
countries as Australia, New Zealand, as well as from all parts of
America. Newman received the exalted honor with simple dignity and
with a complete absence of personal vanity. "The cloud is lifted
from me forever," he said to his brothers of the Oratory.

"The Roman Church has been less unpopular in England," observes
Dean Inge, "since Newman received from it the highest honour which
it can bestow. Throughout his career he was a steadfast witness
against tepid and insincere professions of religion, and against
any compromise with the shifting currents of popular opinion. All
cultivated readers, who have formed their tastes on the
masterpieces of good literature, are attracted, sometimes against
their will, by the dignity and reserve of his style, qualities
which belong to the man, and not only to the writer. Like Goethe,
he disdains the facile arts which make the commonplace reader
laugh and weep. 'Ach die zartlichen Herzen! ein Pfuscher vermag
sie zu rnhren!' Like Wordsworth, he might say, 'To stir the blood
I have no cunning art.' There are no cheap effects in any of
Newman's writings.... He was loved and honoured by men whose love
is an honour, and he is admired by all who can appreciate a
consistently unworldly life.... He has left an indelible mark upon
two great religious bodies. He has stirred movements which still
agitate the Church of England and the Church of Rome, and the end
is not yet in sight."[15]

The remaining eleven years of his life the aging Cardinal spent in
the quiet of the Oratory at Edgbaston, answering the many
correspondents who solicited his guidance in matters of
conscience, reediting his works, and in meditation and prayer. In
1886, Bishop Ullathorne dedicated to Cardinal Newman, his former
priest and subject, his last spiritual work in commemoration of
"forty years of a friendship and confidence which had much
enriched his life." Touched by the testimony of affection from the
venerable prelate, who had stood bravely by Newman in his many
trials, the Cardinal wrote the following note of thanks, which Dr.
Ullathorne terms "a memorial and a treasure for all time": "How
good has God been to me in giving me such kind friends! It has
been so all through my life. They have spared my mistakes,
overlooked my defects, and found excuses for my faults. God reward
you, my dear Lord, for your tenderness toward me, very conscious
as I am of my great failings. You have ever been indulgent towards
me; and now you show me an act of considerate charity, as great as
you can, by placing my name at the beginning of the last work of
your long life of service and sacrifice. It is a token of sympathy
which, now in my extreme age, encourages me in the prospect of the
awful journey which lies close before me."[16]

In the following year Dr. Ullathorne paid a visit to the aged
Cardinal at Edgbaston and on returning narrated the following
touching incident, which showed the humility and simplicity of
Newman had not been impaired by the honor of the cardinalate: "I
have been visiting Cardinal Newman to-day. He is much wasted, but
very cheerful.... We had a long and cheery talk, but as I was
rising to leave an action of his caused a scene I shall never
forget, for its sublime lesson to myself. He said in low and
humble accents, 'My dear Lord, will you do me a great favor?'
'What is it?' I asked. He glided down to his knees, bent down his
venerable head, and said, 'Give me your blessing.' [A general rule
of the Church's ritual ordains that the lower dignitary should
kneel before the higher one.] What could I do with him before me
in such a posture? I could not refuse without giving him great
embarrassment. So I laid my hand on his head and said: 'My dear
Lord Cardinal, notwithstanding all laws to the contrary, I pray
God to bless you, and that His Holy Spirit may be full in your
heart.' As I walked to the door, refusing to put on his biretta as
he went with me, he said: 'I have been indoors all my life, whilst
you have battled for the Church in the world.' I felt annihilated
in his presence; there is a Saint in that man."[17]

No trace of the former suspicions and hostilities now remained. To
an allusion to the party which had so long opposed him in England
and in Rome, Newman replied: "Let bygones be bygones," adding with
a smile, "Besides, they have all come round to my side now." His
declining years were full of serenity and peace. By a happy
reversal of fortune, the man who had gone through so many internal
crises, had encountered such prolonged opposition from within the
Church as well as from without, now found himself at peace with
the world and with himself. All England had become proud of him,
and the universal acclamation of his elevation to the cardinalate
became prolonged into a kind of apotheosis such as few men have
experienced in their lifetime. In March, 1884, he writes: "For
myself, now, at the end of a long life, I say from a full heart
that God has never failed me, never disappointed me, has ever
turned evil into good for me."[18]

The calm of a long evening was drawing to a close. Shortly before
his death, he asked some of the brothers of the Oratory to sing
him Faber's hymn, "The Eternal Years." "Many people," he said,
"speak well of my 'Lead, Kindly Light,' but this is far more
beautiful. Mine is of a soul in darkness-this is of the eternal
light." After a brief illness, he passed away peacefully on August
11, 1890, surrounded by his brethren of the Oratory. His body lies
beside that of his faithful disciple, Ambrose St. John, in Rednall
on the quiet Lychey Hills where he had so often gone to pray in
silence and meditate, "alone with the Alone." On his tomb is
inscribed the epitaph written by himself, an epitaph that would
tell, he thought, the story of his pilgrimage: <Ex umbris et
imaginibus in veritatem>.-From the shadows and the symbols into
the truth. With his passing the race lost a soul distinguished
alike for sanctity and for scholarship. Though dead, he still
speaks to us from the pages of his mighty books, speaks of his
vision of the truth which led him at times through strange and
lonely waters, but brought him safely at eventide to the harbor of
peace and security. Poor tired soul, he has passed at last from
the tumult of controversy into the silence of the beyond where the
eternal truth speaketh without the noise or confusion of words.
May he find there the rest he craved-under the everlasting arms
and in the light that shall not fail.

ENDNOTES

1 <Letters and Correspondence of J. H. Newman>, Vol. II, pp. 420,
421.

2 <Sermons on Subjects of the Day>, p. 409.

8 <Life of Pusey>, Vol. II. p. 374.

4 <Studies in Philosophy and Poetry>, by Principal Shairp, p. 255,
4th edition.

5 <Life of Stanley>, Vol. I. p. 332.

6 <Letters and Correspondence of J. H. Newman>, VOL II, p. 459.

7 <Memoirs of Mark Pattison>, p. 212.

8 Letter of December 10, 1845 (<Life of Bishop Wilberforce>, Vol.
I, p. 328).

9 <Essays Critical and Historical>, II, 442 f.

10 <Sermons on Various Occasions>, p. 64 f.

11 <Difficulties of Anglicans>, II, 248 ff.

12 <Parocial and Plain Sermons>, vii. 73.

13 P. Thureau-Dangin, <The English Catholic Revival in the
Nineteenth Century>, Vol. I.

14 <Life of Manning>, Vol. II, pp. 313, 314.

15 <Outspoken Essays>, William Ralph Inge, p. 202 ff.

16 <Letters of Archbishop Ullathorne>, pp. 481-483.

17 <Ibid.>, p. 512.

18 <Letters and Correspondence of J. H. Newman>, Vol. II. p. 482.

Published by Paulist Press in 1937.

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