NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY. - Cardinal and distinguished writer, b. in London on 22 Feb. 1801, d. in Birmingham on 11 Aug. 1890.
I. LIFE
From a Protestant family (his father was an intelligent and well-to-do banker, his mother descended from Huguenots who had emigrated after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes), he was educated aristocratically at the boarding school of Ealing (then outside London), where he revealed himself as a thoughtful youth, of acute sensitivity, fond of solitude and passionate about music. In the last months of his stay at Ealing, under the influence of Walter Mayer, an Evangelical and convinced Calvinist pastor, he matured his "conversion" to a well-defined creed (Trinity, Incarnation, Predestination), which determined his religious orientation.
In Dec. 1816 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, and after 4 years (1820) obtained the degree of "Bachelor of Arts"; in 1822 he was promoted with great honor to "fellow" of Oriel College.
Ordained an Anglican priest, he was for two years (1824-1826) curate of the parish of St. Clement's, Oxford. From 1826 to 1832, as "tutor" at Oriel College, he took charge of the intellectual and moral formation of numerous university students (undergraduates). On 14 March 1828 he was appointed vicar of St. Mary's, where until 1843 he preached with extraordinary success. Stricken by intense intellectual work, from Dec. 1832 to July 1833 he traveled in the Mediterranean, visiting Rome, Malta, Corfu and Sicily. Having recovered from a serious illness contracted at Leonforte, on the return journey he composed the short poem Lead, Kindly Light, in which is expressed his trust in Providence, which would have guided him to the fulfillment of a particular mission: "I have a work to do". On his return to his homeland the Oxford movement began, of which he became the most representative figure: a small band of young men conceived the generous design of combating theological liberalism, that is, that particular tendency to undervalue the rights of faith in the face of the growing claims of reason, which had manifested itself in the current of the "evidential school". This became N.'s work, and his whole life remained engaged in it, with growing fidelity. Led by the logic of anti-liberal principles, which in his feverish historical research became ever clearer in themselves and in their applications, he concluded that the claim of Anglicanism to consider itself the via media between the dogmatic amplifications of Romanism and the religious minimizations of Lutheranism was illegitimate; therefore in the 90th tract for the times he declared his open sympathies for Catholicism, in favor of which he attempted to interpret the 39 articles of the Anglican confession. Condemned by the "Hebdomadal Board" of the University of Oxford and disavowed by 42 bishops, N. renounced the parish of St. Mary's and on 9 Apr. 1842 retired, with some friends, to Littlemore, where he matured, by drafting the celebrated Essay of development of christian doctrine, his conversion to the Catholic Church, into which he was received on 9 Oct. 1845 by the ven. Dominic of the Mother of God, Passionist.
Sent to Rome (1846) by Msgr. Wiseman, with his faithful and inseparable friend Ambrose St. John, in the Col-
College of Propaganda Fide, he completed his Catholic education and received priestly ordination from the prefect of Propaganda, Cardinal Fransoni (May 26, 1847). Encouraged by Pius IX to establish the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England, he founded the houses of Maryvale (1848), of Birmingham (Alcester Street), of London (where he placed Fr. Faber at the head of the community) and finally that of Edgbaston (a district of Birmingham), where he remained for the rest of his life, except for the time (1854-58) spent in Dublin as rector of the new University.
The years of his Catholic life were embittered by rebuffs and misunderstandings. All the works he undertook (the founding of the University of Dublin, the English translation of the Bible, the editorship of the review The Rambler, the founding of an Oratory at Oxford for the young Catholics attending the University) failed because of the opposition of that faction which succeeded in portraying N. as a man dangerous to English Catholicism. Though bleeding under the persistent "war of pins" (the Spiritual Diary bears witness to it, Ital. trans. by G. Barra, Pinerolo 1950, pp. 17-46), N. remained faithful to the Church and truly accomplished "his work," the defense of truth with writings that won for Catholicism the sympathy of the Anglicans, and for him the admiration of his adversaries.
Toward the decline of his life the shadows dissipated, when Leo XIII, acknowledging his "genius and learning," created him cardinal (1879); the whole English-speaking world, from Britain to Australia, felt the magnificence of the gesture and manifested its joyful pride. In his acceptance speech, the new prince of the Church showed the unity of his life in the constant struggle he had waged against theological liberalism, and even while declaring himself, with complete sincerity, an unprofitable servant, he savored inwardly the joy of having fulfilled the mission that Providence had assigned to him. In his last years, surrounded by universal admiration, he prepared himself holily for the passage "ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem" (inscription dictated by N. for his tomb).
II. WORKS
N. was a particularly prolific writer, because he felt it his duty to take up the pen every time the interests of the faith were at stake. He never claimed to do anything great or admired by the world, but he wished to say with the simplicity and cordiality of a friend (according to his cardinalatial motto: cor ad cor loquitur) as much as was required by the principle: Holiness first. It happened, however, that in old age he found himself with an immense body of material, which he patiently organized into well-defined series of volumes (published in London between 1870 and 1879), for which he has a right to an honorable place in all branches of Christian culture. The principal works of the two periods may be noted:
1. Anglican period
Parochial and plain sermons (8 vols., Oxford 1834 ff.): spare and incisive, they shook consciences by stirring up the deepest problems of the soul; Sermons on subject of the day (ibid. 1843): preached between 1831 and 1843; discourses 21-24, delivered on four consecutive Sundays (Nov. 28-Dec. 18, 1841), have autobiographical value: in them surface subjective principles, which the author shortly afterward definitively rejected; Sermons preached before the University of Oxford (ibid. 1843): in them he illustrates the relations between faith and reason; many refined motifs returned in the Grammar of Assent; The arians of the fourth century (ibid. 1833): a reconstruction of a historical moment exceptionally important for the development of Christian thought; N., more than the facts, observes the ethos of the Arians and the interior movements of the heresy; Lectures on the doctrine of justification (ibid. 1838): in them he refutes the theory of justification by faith alone. In the 13th lecture he thoroughly criticizes the religious subjectivism established by Luther; An essay on the development of christian doctrine (ibid. 1845): a vindication of the Church from the accusation of having corrupted Christian doctrine with the addition of new dogmas. The essay, one of the most original works of the 19th century, opens by tracing a psychology of the masses, into which the Gospel message entered as a divine leaven. The Christian idea, one and manifold, shining with lights and surrounded by shadows, handed down in writings full of chiaroscuro and eloquent silences, is the true "granum sinapis" of the Gospel destined to grow. Therefore ever new developments of that idea and ever vaster resonances were to be expected. The slow and sure progress of the pope's primacy and of devotion to Mary are facts that confirm a parte post what was expected in advance from the very nature of the Church, which has developed while preserving the same nature (conservation of types) and the same fundamental tendencies (continuation of the same principles), that is, the primacy of faith, the biblical, dogmatic, theological and sacramental principle. These immutable elements of Christianity are endowed with an intimate assimilating force (faculty of assimilation), which, once harmful elements are eliminated, receives and makes its own others, determining from within a homogeneous increase, which harmonizes with what is immutably fixed (logical consequence) and is as it were foreshadowed by what is barely sketched in the living organism (anticipation of the future), while it adds an effective confirmation to that which was previously already in act (conservation of ancient things). Such progress provokes in the whole mystical body an ever new vigor (perpetual vigour), which explains how in the history of the Church, unlike what happens in heresy, after brief and harsh winters, ever new springs always follow.
2. Catholic period
Loss and gain: the story of a convert (written in Rome at the end of 1847, published in Oxford 1848 anonymously): N. draws on personal memories without, however, composing an autobiography. In it the various theological tendencies of England at the time are vividly described: Discours addressed to mixed congregations (1848): discourses in which the joy of conversion is reflected; Lectures on certain difficulties felt by Anglicans in submitting to the catholic Church (1851): he demonstrates to the followers of the Oxford movement that the concept of an established Church is in conflict with their own principles; for them there remains only to draw a logical conclusion: to submit to the Catholic Church; Lectures on Catholicism in England (1851: in the definitive edition the title is different: Present position of catholics in England); a satire of the inveterate prejudices of Anglicanism against Rome; with this book N. secured for Catholicism the right of citizenship in his country; Discours on the scope and nature of university education (1852: in the definitive edition they form the 1st part of the volume: The idea of university defined and illustrated); a series of 10 lectures (of which only 5 were delivered) to illustrate the nature and purpose of the Catholic University of Dublin: with this work N. takes his place among the best modern pedagogues; Callisto, a sketch of the third century (1856): a novel, whose background is Christian Africa in the time of St. Cyprian; Sermons preached on various occasions (1857: the definitive edition contains three more discourses): important is the V on the dispositions toward faith; the X, The second spring, delivered at Oscott on the occasion of the First Provincial Council of Westminster, is among the most celebrated; Apologia pro vita sua (1863): a moving and loyal account of his journey toward the full light; written to vindicate the sincerity of his conversion, it proved a gripping apology of the Church, valid for all times; A letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey on his recent Eirenican (1866): an apology of Marian devotion, founded on the truths of the Divine Maternity and of the Co-redemption (the new Eve), which are presented as the two patristic cornerstones from which all later Mariology developed. He also demonstrates there that the excesses of popular devotion are not imputable to theology and the Church; Verses on various occasions (1868): a collection of 30 short poems, composed at various times, of which the best known is The Dream of Gerontius, the song of the Communion of Saints, which in its Dantean grandeur fascinates and moves. An assay in Aid of grammar of assent (1870): the apologetic masterpiece. In the first part he demonstrates, in polemic with theological liberalism, that it is not useless to give religious assent to a series of mysterious propositions, such as those contained in the Athanasian Creed, since in man, beyond notional apprehension (the theoretical, purely abstract knowledge of a truth), there prevails real apprehension (concrete and individual knowledge, based on direct contact with the thing perceived); therefore to give the propositions of the Athanasian Creed a real assent (founded on real knowledge) is to believe (to believe), that is, to perform a religious act, rich in emotional virtuality; whereas to offer the same propositions a notional assent (based on notional knowledge) is to do theology, which is as legitimate as faith, of which it is a prolongation along the theoretical and abstract line. In the second part he confronts the problem of the contrast between the unshaken firmness of the act of faith and the apparent fragility of the proofs on which it is based. He begins by distinguishing assent from inference: the former is the unconditional adherence to a proposition prescinding from the premises on which it depends, the latter is the assent to the conclusion of a syllogism. Religious truths cannot be accepted by inference; indeed a rigorous demonstration, founded on formal logic, is not possible in this order of knowledge, since faith is not a notional assent, but a real one to concrete facts, which escape abstract reasoning, by which certainty is attained only in the purely theoretical order. Therefore the religious fact cannot be established except by a complex of indications, too numerous and too subtle to be syllogized, of which each one, taken separately, offers only a probability, while in their converging totality they suppress any doubt. This convergence (or synthesis of probabilities) generating certainty is the product of the illative sense, a true facultas iudicandi, a kind of judgment of the concrete, comparable to Aristotle's phronesis, which although rooted in the depths of human nature develops and is sharpened with the moral perfection of man; therefore the Gospel word: «beati mundo corde quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt» indicates the surest way to attain religious truth. It was inevitable that a work as ingenious as it was audacious should lend itself to the most disparate evaluations; A Letter addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on occasion of Mr. Gladstone's recent Expostulation (1875): while rejecting the positions of the integralists (Ward, Manning, Veuillot), N. defends with Catholic loyalty the definitions of the Vatican Council, illustrating with acumen their intimate import, even if some restriction is not entirely exact.
III. EVALUATION
As a thinker Newman met with the most varied and disconcerting of fates; while, during his lifetime, his writings arrived awaited and brought serenity to public opinion, reassuring friends and placating adversaries, for professional scholars they remained for many decades a sign of contradiction.
As early as 1846 the American Catholic Brownson claimed to discern in Newman's writings a subtle Protestant virus extremely dangerous to the Catholic organism, into which an attempt was being made to inject it. On the Anglican side Mozley (1878), Fairbairn (1885) and Abbot (1897) saw in Newman's intellectual activity nothing but a sinister maneuver of dogmatic obscurantism, with a fideistic background, against the growing conquests of reason and science. In 1870 T. Harper believed he had definitively disposed of the ambiguous writer of Birmingham by showing a profound antinomy between Newmanian thought and Scholastic thought (either St. Thomas or Newman). More equitable judgments, issued by men superior in intellect and position, such as Cardinal Wiseman and the Scottish bishop Gillis, were neutralized by the Modernist interpretation. A mask of theologian of sentiment and of immanence was hastily imposed on Newman by A. Sabatier (1890) and ever better fitted to him by Loisy and by Tyrrell, while Bremond and Dimnet sought, with excessive zeal, ideological affinities with Schleiermacher and Hegel, with James and Bergson. From this widespread tendency men of excellence such as De Grandmaison and Boudin were unable to withdraw themselves entirely. But against the Modernist appropriation the Jesuit Toohey (1907), the bishop O'Dwyer (1908) and the layman W. Ward (1912) reacted effectively, obtaining at a particularly delicate moment, from Blessed Pius X, the historic verdict of orthodoxy: «Profecto in tanta locubrationum copia, quidpiam reperiri potest, quod ab usitata theologorum ratione alienum videatur, nihil potest quod de ipsius fide suspicionem afferat» (Epist. ad epist. E. T. O'Dwyer, in Acta Sanctae Sedis, 41 [1908], p. 200). Only after the First World War was the work of vindication begun in Germany by the Jesuit Perywara (1922) continued in France by Guitton (1933) and by Nédoncelle (1945), in America by Cronin (1935), in England by Tristram (1945), by Harrold (1945) and by other scholars, in Belgium by Janssens (1937), in Holland by Fr. Zeno (1943) and by Walgrave (1946), in Italy by De Luca (1949).
The long oscillation of human judgment around Cardinal Newman's thought is due, besides to partisan passions and suspicions, to an error of perspective. Having engaged in a thorough struggle with religious liberalism, which in the Anglican milieu of the nineteenth century had predominantly rationalistic tints, Newman seemed an anti-intellectual; when later the same movement slid, through intrinsic evolution, into Modernist voluntarism, to many it seemed logically that he was its warm supporter. Thus each person drew him to himself or rejected him according to his own theological sympathies or antipathies, and no one noticed that it was unhistorical to push toward any shore a thinker who throughout his life willed and succeeded in remaining far from every extremism. Today Newman is seen in a perspective of balance, which cannot be shaken even if in his multiform production something may be detected that is ephemeral, inexact, not orthodox, since in a sower of ideas like Newman what matters is the general orientation of the spirit and of the thought: the new and substantially just paths he marked out in the history of dogmas, in apologetics, in the concept of doctrinal development, in the evaluation of Protestantism, in the idea of the prophetic (theological) mission of the Church, in pedagogy and in spirituality show him to be a great precursor of the new times. It is therefore by the immanent force of truth that justice has been done to this man, and the true face of the convert of Oxford now appears in its noble lineaments of an authentic Catholic thinker. No longer the antithesis: either St. Thomas or Newman, but the synthesis: St. Thomas and Newman. Around the tall, spare and gentle old man of Birmingham there has now formed that consensus which he foresaw and which the Church, with maternal attention, has prepared and sanctioned in the judgment of three Pontiffs (Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XII).