Giving thanks for the other Newman

Differing from the traditional practice, the feast day of Cardinal John Henry Newman will not be celebrated on the day of his death. Instead, in his memory the Church will celebrate his feast on the day he converted to Catholicism - Catholic News Agency, 10th September 2010, in the approach to Newman's beatification.

One might have thought that in an ecumenical age the date of Newman's Baptism would have been considered for feast day (the date of his death, 11th August, already the feast of St. Clare of Assisi).  But, no, 9th October was chosen.  Rather than complain about Roman triumphalism, Anglicans should accept that Newman would, in all likelihood, be pleased with the choice: he did, after all, abandon Anglicanism for Roman Catholicism.  That said, I would therefore expect our Roman Catholic brethren to forego any accusations of Anglican triumphalism when we commemorate 5th November.

Sunday's canonisation of John Henry Newman has produced a range of responses amongst Anglicans.  There are those Anglo-catholics celebrating the canonisation with no recognition at all of the irony.  These Anglicans are celebrating the canonisation of a theologian who, after becoming a Roman Catholic, condemned Anglicanism in the strongest terms while making claims for Rome that now look utterly ridiculous in light of the relationship between Canterbury and Rome:

For this is the truth: the Establishment, whatever it be in the eyes of men, whatever its temporal greatness and its secular prospects, in the eyes of faith is a mere wreck. We must not indulge our imagination, we must not dream: we must look at things as they are; we must not confound the past with the present, or what is substantive with what is the accident of a period. Ridding our minds of these illusions, we shall see that the Established Church has no claims whatever on us, whether in memory or in hope; that they only have claims upon our commiseration and our charity whom she holds in bondage, separated from that faith and that Church in which alone is salvation.

Mind you, on the subject of looking ridiculous, the Church of England's response to the forthcoming canonisation may as well have been written in parts by Newman post-conversion:

Both as an Anglican and as a Catholic, his contribution to theology, to education and to the modelling of holiness resonates to this day around the world and across the churches.

That noise you hear is Keble and Pusey turning in their graves, wondering why on earth a Church of England bishop is describing Newman as becoming "a Catholic" in 1845, rather than at his baptism.  In the words of Tract 5, "A branch of this holy Catholic (or universal) Church has been, through God’s blessing, established for ages in our island; a branch which ... we denominate the Church of England".

Many Anglo-catholics may be celebrating on Sunday.  For other Anglicans, of course, Newman's betrayal of both Anglicanism and the Oxford Movement means that Sunday will either be resolutely ignored or result in some rather uncharitable responses.  It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I am no fan of key aspects of Newman's legacy.  His attacks, in the later 1830s, on the 18th century High Church tradition were a narrow, self-defeating, and self-serving rejection of a vibrant theological and devotional tradition.  Tract XC was, in the words of Carl Trueman, "one of the most self-serving and embarrassing pieces of historical and theological tosh ever penned by an otherwise intelligent person".  As for Apologia Pro Vita Sua, it was and is utterly unconvincing not only to the vast majority of Anglicans, but specifically to the vast majority of those who over the years have stood in the Tractarian tradition initiated by Newman.

That said, however, I will be thankful on Sunday as our Roman brethren canonise Newman.  I will be thankful for the other Newman, who can continue to delight, inform, and challenge: Newman the High Church parson.

It should be remembered, though, that Newman was no ritualist.  To the end of his Anglican days he wore nothing more 'advanced' than surplice, scarf and hood - New Directions (the magazine of Forward in Faith), October 2019.

This is the Newman who spoke movingly - late in his Anglican period - of the deep emotional roots of "this attachment to our own communion".  The Newman who rejoiced in the dignified simplicity of Laudian ceremonial.  The Newman who embraced the native piety of reverencing the Royal Martyr.  The Newman who was a very traditional High Church parson regarding the Eucharist.

It is the Newman of the Parochial and Plain Sermons, sermons whose content was almost unerringly traditionally High Church, with little or no hint of what was to come, either in Newman's life or in the detours taken by Tractarianism in the 1840s and beyond.  Froude said of these sermons:

No one who ever heard his sermons in those days can ever forget them.  They were seldom directly theological.  We had theology enough and to spare from the select preachers before the university.  Newman, taking some scripture character for a text, spoke to us about ourselves, our temptations, our experiences … A sermon from him was a poem.

Here was the High Church tradition addressing a culture shaped by Romanticism, following Keble's example in The Christian Year, "bringing ... thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended and exemplified in the Prayer Book".

It is the Newman of 'Lead, kindly light', a devotional style and a native piety echoing that of Anglican priest-poets across the centuries, with no suggestion at all of any supposed need for Tridentine spirituality to supplement or replace such native piety.

And, lastly, it is the Newman of the prayer which is heard so often at Evensong:

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

These deeply resonant words, words which encapsulate the experience of Evensong, are from the conclusion of a sermon given in his Anglican period.

This is the Newman for whom I will give thanks on Sunday.  Our Roman brethren have their Newman.  We have ours, the Romantic High Church parson.  And this Newman, our Newman, is a reminder of what could have been.  The High Church Tradition did need to take cognisance of both the significant cultural impact of Romanticism and the consequences of the undoing of the Anglican state by the constitutional revolution of 1827-32.  Newman and the Oxford Movement could have contributed to such a re-statement of the High Church tradition in changed cultural and political contexts.

The National Apostasy sermon, the early Tracts, and much else in the initial years of the Movement suggested that this might be so.  But it was not to be.  The High Church tradition was rejected, its native piety displaced, its "habitual native dignity" (to use words from Burke) abandoned for longing looks across the Tiber.  Of course, the crisis Newman experienced in the 1840s was his crisis, a crisis resulting from the contortions of his own theology.  For every Newman, there were hundreds of Tractarian parsons, each a "true son of our dear Mother" (Keble's description of Anglicanism in his poem 'King Charles the Martyr'), most of whom - like Keble - ministered in a manner indistinguishable from their High Church predecessors.  It could have been so with Newman.  Trollope's fictional account of Mr. Arabin (Barchester Towers, chapter 20) could have been Newman's story:

He left Oxford for awhile that he might meditate in complete peace on the step which appeared to him to be all but unavoidable, and shut himself up in a little village on the sea-shore of one of our remotest counties, that he might learn by communing with his own soul whether or no he could with a safe conscience remain within the pale of his mother church ... Then his faith was against him: he required to believe so much; panted so eagerly to give signs of his belief; deemed it so insufficient to wash himself simply in the waters of Jordan; that some great deed, such as that of forsaking everything for a true Church, had for him allurements almost past withstanding ... When Mr. Arabin left Oxford, he was inclined to look upon the rural clergymen of most English parishes almost with contempt ... And yet it was from such a one that Mr. Arabin in his extremest need received that aid which he so much required. It was from the poor curate of a small Cornish parish that he first learnt to know that the highest laws for the governance of a Christian's duty must act from within and not from without; that no man can become a serviceable servant solely by obedience to written edicts; and that the safety which he was about to seek within the gates of Rome was no other than the selfish freedom from personal danger which the bad soldier attempts to gain who counterfeits illness on the eve of battle. 

Mr. Arabin returned to Oxford a humbler but a better and a happier man, and from that time forth he put his shoulder to the wheel as a clergyman of the Church for which he had been educated. 

John Henry Newman took a different path.  Even as our Roman brethren give their thanks for that different path, let us give our thanks for earlier, better years, for a Romantic High Church parson.

Let us then view God's providences towards us more religiously than we have hitherto done. Let us try to gain a truer view of what we are, and where we are, in His kingdom. Let us humbly and reverently attempt to trace His guiding hand in the years which we have hitherto lived. Let us thankfully commemorate the many mercies He has vouchsafed to us in time past, the many sins He has not remembered, the many dangers He has averted, the many prayers He has answered, the many mistakes He has corrected, the many warnings, the many lessons, the much light, the abounding comfort which He has from time to time given. Let us dwell upon times and seasons, times of trouble, times of joy, times of trial, times of refreshment. How did He cherish us as children! How did He guide us in that dangerous time when the mind began to think for itself, and the heart to open to the world! How did He with his sweet discipline restrain our passions, mortify our hopes, calm our fears, enliven our heavinesses, sweeten our desolateness, and strengthen our infirmities!  - 'Remembrance of Past Mercies', Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 5.

(The first illustration is based on a portrait of Newman from 1824, the year he was made deacon. The second illustration is from the Newman Window in the chapel of Oriel College, Oxford, depicting Newman as a traditional Anglican parson.)