Preview of a Preview: "Waiting for Christ" on the Son Rise Morning Show!

While we're all waking up from our Thanksgiving Day long weekend with friends and family, we've also begun a new Liturgical Season: Happy Church New Year! It's Advent! 

So, next Monday, December 5, Anna Mitchell, Matt Swaim, and I will begin a new Newman series on the Son Rise Morning Show.

Each Advent Monday in December, we'll discuss a sermon featured in Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas. On January 2, 2023, we'll wrap up this series with a Christmas Season sermon from the book. The show's hosts and Paul Lachmann (who calls me before my interviews) have the week of December 26-30 off!!

By the way, I reviewed this book for the National Catholic Register in 2018, when it was published with the words "Blessed John Henry Newman" at the top of the cover! Christopher Blum of the Augustine Institute selected, excerpted, and revised Newman's punctuation, spelling, and use of Bible translation (from King James to Douai-Rheims or Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition) from the original Parochial and Plain Sermons.

So please watch this space on December 2, 9, and 16 for previews for those Monday discussions!

Blessed Advent to you all, as we wait for Christ to come at Christmas and at His glorious Second Coming!

Preview: "Take Me Away": Gerontius's Soul At and After Judgment

We'll conclude our series on Saint John Henry Newman's The Dream of Gerontius on Monday, November 28 on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on the air about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here.

(I usually post these previews on the Friday before. I'm posting this early because I know the Thanksgiving weekend is a busy time!)

The end is indeed nigh as his Guardian Angel leads Gerontius's Soul to the threshold of his particular judgment. The Angel prepares him for the experience:

When then—if such thy lot—thou seest thy Judge,
The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart
All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.
Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him,
And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him,
That one so sweet should e'er have placed Himself
At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
There is a pleading in His pensive eyes
Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.
And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinn'd, {360}
As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire
To slink away, and hide thee from His sight:
And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell
Within the beauty of His countenance.
And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him,—
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.

This is one of Newman's great innovations in the Church's meditations on the Four Last Things. He does not dwell the wrath of Jesus at the particular judgment and the great fear of the sinner before his Judge. Rather, he dwells on the love and mercy of Jesus balanced with the Soul's own acknowledgment of his sinfulness. And yet, the love Jesus shows the Soul even as He judges Gerontius, has a great impact on him: it hurts perhaps more that wrath would in the Soul who has tried to prepare for eternal life with faith, hope, and charity.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, while not alluding to Newman's poem, might have been thinking of this when he wrote in Spe Salvi:

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.

And Father Juan Velez, my theological guide through this work, concurs that for:

a faithful soul . . . it is sorrow and love communicated to the soul by a glance of God. Particular judgment is followed by purgatory. The former involves the “glance” of the loving God which consumes the soul. Purgatory entails the absence of that marvelous vision, but the real assurance and anticipation of it are a source of peace and joy.

But just before the Soul reaches the Judgment Seat, Newman shows how time "works" in the afterlife, as the Soul hears the voices of the priest and the attendants, still praying for him at his deathbed, and Guardian Angel explains:

It is the voice of friends around thy bed,
Who say the "Subvenite" with the priest.
Hither the echoes come; before the Throne
Stands the great Angel of the Agony,
The same who strengthen'd Him, what time He knelt
Lone in that garden shade, bedew'd with blood.
That Angel best can plead with Him for all
Tormented souls, the dying and the dead.

So, there is one more angel, the Angel of the Agony (the Agony in the Garden):

Jesu! by that shuddering dread which fell on Thee;
Jesu! by that cold dismay which sicken'd Thee;
Jesu! by that pang of heart which thrill'd in Thee;
Jesu! by that mount of sins which crippled Thee;
Jesu! by that sense of guilt which stifled Thee;
Jesu! by that innocence which girdled Thee;
Jesu! by that sanctity which reign'd in Thee;
Jesu! by that Godhead which was one with Thee;
Jesu! spare these souls which are so dear to Thee;
Souls, who in prison, calm and patient, wait for
Thee; {366}
Hasten, Lord, their hour, and bid them come to Thee,
To that glorious Home, where they shall ever gaze on Thee.

The Soul endures his Judgment and is ready for Purgatory: he knows he must be purified and he wants to be purified:

Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be, {367}
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,—
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest
Of its Sole Peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and Love:—
Take me away,
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see Him in the truth of everlasting day.

The Souls in Purgatory welcome him, while the Guardian Angel--and here, you should listen to Janet Baker singing the Angel's loving farewell--promises to return soon:

Softly and gently, dearly-ransom'd soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance. {370}

Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.

Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.

As the Guardian Angel had told him before, time is of no matter in the afterlife; the Soul is among the Communion of Saints, the Church in Heaven, on Earth, and in Purgatory. What "the morrow" means to us after a night of sleep and waking the next day and what it means in Heavenly time is not the same.

And as at the beginning of the poem, Newman returns to how the dying and the dead need prayers and Masses offered for them, so that the bonds of the Communion of Saints remain close. We remember the faithful departed in the Eucharistic Prayers at every Mass, and in the month of November, we remember them in special ways.

One more thing: when you read and pray the Meditations and Devotions Newman composed for the boys of the Oratory School, you can get an insight into how he prepared for his own Particular Judgment, as he places all his faith, hope and love in Jesus alone, as in this "Act of Love":

2. And therefore, O my dear Lord, since I perceive Thee to be so beautiful, I love Thee, and desire to love Thee more and more. Since Thou art the One Goodness, Beautifulness, Gloriousness, in the whole world of being, and there is nothing like Thee, but Thou art infinitely more glorious and good than even the {332} most beautiful of creatures, therefore I love Thee with a singular love, a one, only, sovereign love. Everything, O my Lord, shall be dull and dim to me, after looking at Thee. There is nothing on earth, not even what is most naturally dear to me, that I can love in comparison of Thee. And I would lose everything whatever rather than lose Thee. For Thou, O my Lord, art my supreme and only Lord and love.

3. My God, Thou knowest infinitely better than I, how little I love Thee. I should not love Thee at all, except for Thy grace. It is Thy grace which has opened the eyes of my mind, and enabled them to see Thy glory. It is Thy grace which has touched my heart, and brought upon it the influence of what is so wonderfully beautiful and fair. How can I help loving Thee, O my Lord, except by some dreadful perversion, which hinders me from looking at Thee? O my God, whatever is nearer to me than Thou, things of this earth, and things more naturally pleasing to me, will be sure to interrupt the sight of Thee, unless Thy grace interfere. Keep Thou my eyes, my ears, my heart, from any such miserable tyranny. Break my bonds—raise my heart. Keep my whole being fixed on Thee. Let me never lose sight of Thee; and, while I gaze on Thee, let my love of Thee grow more and more every day.

We know that Father Newman prayed at the deathbeds of members of his congregation and that he prayed for those whom he loved in life after their deaths. Also, we have this poignant note, "Written in Prospect of Death", on March 13th, 1864, Passion Sunday, 7 o'clock a.m.:

I WRITE in the direct view of death as in prospect. No one in the house, I suppose, suspects anything of the kind. Nor anyone anywhere, unless it be the medical men.

I write at once—because, on my own feelings of mind and body, it is as if nothing at all were the matter with me, just now; but because I do not know how long this perfect possession of my sensible and available health and strength may last.

I die in the faith of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. I trust I shall die prepared and protected by her Sacraments, which our Lord Jesus Christ has committed to her, and in that communion of Saints which He inaugurated when He ascended on high, and which will have no end. I hope to die in that Church which our Lord founded on Peter, and which will continue till His second coming. . . .

Perhaps this--in the midst of Charles Kingsley's attack on him in January of that year--is in the background of Newman's inspiration to write The Dream of Gerontius! From April to June he was writing and serially publishing the Apologia pro Vita Sua. 

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Levering's Different Angle on Newman's Development of Doctrine

Professor Matthew Levering spoke at Eighth Day Institute's 2021 Florovsky-Newman Week (now called Ad Fontes) on “Christ the New Joshua: Patristic Reflections on Baptism", and I read his book on Mary's Bodily Assumption after the 2019 Florovsky-Newman Week. Now I see he has new book out about Saint John Henry Newman: Newman on Doctrinal Corruption.

According to the publisher, Word on Fire Academic Dimensions, this book:

examines John Henry Newman’s understanding of history and doctrine in his own context, first as an Oxford student and professor reading Edward Gibbon and influenced by his close friend Hurrell Froude, then as a new Catholic convert in dialogue with his brother Francis, and finally as an eminent Catholic during the controversies over the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (in dialogue with Edward Pusey) and papal infallibility (in dialogue with Ignaz von Döllinger).

Author Matthew Levering argues that Newman’s career is shaped in large part by concerns about doctrinal corruption. Newman’s understanding of doctrinal development can only be understood when we come to share his concerns about the danger of doctrinal corruption—concerns that explain why Newman vigorously opposed religious liberalism. Particularly significant is Newman’s debate with the great German Church historian Döllinger since, in this final debate, Newman brings to bear all that he has learned about the nature of history, the formation of Church doctrine, the problem with private judgment, and the role of historical research.

• This book is unique in its predominant focus on Newman’s understanding of doctrinal corruption. Most books on this subject focus primarily on his theory of development.

• This book focuses on the development of Newman’s views on corruption over the course of his life by looking at his engagements with a series of key figures.

• The book showcases Newman’s engagements with five key figures: the historian Edward Gibbon; his friend, Hurrell Froude; his brother, Francis Newman; the prominent figure in the Oxford Movement, Edward Pusey; and the Church historian, Ignaz von Döllinger.

Looks fascinating! As soon as I saw that Newman's first interlocutor was Edward Gibbon I thought of Edward Short's chapter on Newman and Gibbon in Newman and History ("Newman, Gibbon, and God's Particular Providence")!

Catholic World Report offers a review by Casey Chalk, and the Newman Review from the National Institute for Newman Studies provides a report on and a recording of Levering's 2020 Spring Newman Symposium lecture on the same theme (which had to be offered online because of COVID-19!!):

The first lecture we will share is one by Dr. Matthew Levering, the James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake. His lecture is entitled, “Newman on Doctrinal Corruption.” In this lecture, Dr. Levering shows that Newman’s work on doctrinal development arose from his Anglican concerns about doctrinal corruption, which at that time he identified in the Church of Rome. Why, however, did doctrinal corruption worry Newman so much? He realized that if one were to grant that doctrinal corruption has occurred in all churches—as Latitudinarians believed—then in fact the doctrinal teachings of the Church in any epoch are simply whatever powerful people, whether ecclesiastical rulers or State rulers, think fit to impose upon the less powerful masses. Far from being excitingly bold or indicating more freedom of thought, doctrinal corruption as a principle held by theologians simply justifies the power of the strong over the weak. . . .

What a line-up of books about Newman I have in the next few months: the festschrift for +Father Ian Ker, the collection of essays and articles by +Mary Katherine Tillman, and this new book!

The Tudors and Renaissance England at the Met

I thought the Wall Street Journal review (might be behind a paywall!) was interesting, because it starts off by mentioning what's NOT in the Exhibition:

This is no stroll through the long gallery of Tudor-era celebrity. Sir Thomas More, the speaker of truth to power in Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” is here in Hans Holbein the Younger’s remorseless portrait of 1527, but More’s nemesis Thomas Cromwell, the manipulative meritocrat of Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” is absent. Sea dogs such as Sir Francis Drake, the first man to circumnavigate the globe and survive, or lifelong diplomats like William Howard, who served four of the five Tudor monarchs, are nowhere at all. Of the all-rounders who exemplified the ideal of the Renaissance man, Sir Walter Raleigh appears only as the source of a set of porcelain and gilt “China dishes,” and Sir Philip Sidney, the soldier-poet who pioneered a theory of English literature, is missing in action. There are no portraits of Shakespeare, either.

That's because The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England is not aimed a collecting lots of portraits from the Tudor era, but exploring the uses of art to display power and majesty, as reviewer Dominic Green explains:

Curated by the Metropolitan Museum’s Elizabeth Cleland and Adam Eaker, and gathering more than 100 objects from an impressive range of collections, this exhibition instead reframes the Tudors as patrons building a political myth. Its introductory gallery and five thematic zones (such as “Public and Private Faces,” “Languages of Ornament,” “Allegories and Icons”) catch the long arc of image projection.

Even if one can't go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the museum's website for the exhibit might be the next best thing to being there, as it provides 131-page booklet, the audio guide, and detailed visiting guide.

One more comment of Green's I cannot pass without my own reaction:

The imagery of power struggled to mask the political reality of dynastic weakness. His heir, the sickly boy-king Edward VI, died in 1553. Edward’s Catholic half-sister, Mary (reign 1553-1558), burned heretics as well as books, and preferred prayer to patronage.

Mary is the odd woman out in the Tudor lineup. The only Catholic among Henry VIII’s children, she risked England’s independence by marrying Philip II of Spain. Here, however, her familiar portrait by Hans Eworth emerges as a template of continuity, a source for the images of her half-sister, Elizabeth.

The second paragraph rather belies the first, doesn't it? It demonstrates that Mary I both understood her predecessor's use of portraiture to convey majesty, and provided Elizabeth I with a model for a female monarch. Also, his comment ignores the facts that Mary I was engaged, through her Archbishop of Canterbury and the surviving faithfully Catholic bishops, with restoring Catholic churches and teaching in the five years she reigned. While Green does mention that Henry VIII had that Catholic patrimony of art and books burned in the paragraph above, he doesn't mention that her father also burned--or hanged, drawn and quartered or mercifully beheaded--heretics, Catholic or Protestant. 

Preview: The Soul on the Way to Judgment in "The Dream of Gerontius"

On Monday, November 21, we'll continue our survey of highlights from Newman's The Dream of Gerontius on the Son Rise Morning Show. Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss the Soul's progress to his judgment before God at about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live here.

Since November is the month of prayers for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, I have heard at least two sermons on the Four Last Things, and two of them for sure have cited Saint Paul's promise in I Corinthians 2:9, quoting Isaiah 64:4:

But, as it is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him. (Douai-Rheims translation)

And that verse seems an appropriate lens through which to view this next meditation on Newman's imaginative vision of the afterlife, as he describes Gerontius' Soul on the way to Judgement, already enjoying some of the peace and joy of Heaven.

The soul of Gerontius has just encountered his Guardian Angel, whose remaining duties are to lead him to the judgment-court, and to Purgatory and thence to Heaven.

Although Gerontius on his deathbed feared death and judgment, now his Soul does not:

Dear Angel, say,
Why have I now no fear at meeting Him?
Along my earthly life, the thought of death
And judgment was to me most terrible.
I had it aye before me, and I saw
The Judge severe e'en in the Crucifix.
Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled;
And at this balance of my destiny,
Now close upon me, I can forward look

With a serenest joy.

So his Guardian Angel explains that it was because Gerontius had feared death and judgement during his life, and therefore had repented of any of the sins he'd committed:

It is because
Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear,
Thou hast forestall'd the agony, and so
For thee the bitterness of death is past.
Also, because already in thy soul
The judgment is begun. . . .

So now, too, ere thou comest to the Throne,
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
Is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense,
And heaven begun.

At this point, I thought what if Newman had written a poem about an unrepentant soul, fearful on his deathbed, pleading for mercy, not really able to confess his sins, and with no time to make restitution for those sins? 

Would the un-Gerontius be greeted by his Guardian Angel singing Alleluia! and would that soul feel such calm and joy? I don't think so: It would be a completely different poem, filled with anguish and terror! 

But Newman did not want to wish anyone to go to Hell, not even a fictional character, because that's such a sin against charity, as our priest here in Wichita said at Mass last Sunday. No, Newman is giving us a model, even in a fictional character, of what a happy, holy death should be like--and what God has prepared for him because he loved Him.

Nevertheless, as his Guardian Angel leads the Soul to the Judgment Seat, he encounters some demons, who mock his humanity and striving for holiness. The angel explains that:

We are now arrived
Close on the judgment-court; that sullen howl
Is from the demons who assemble there.
It is the middle region, where of old
Satan appeared among the sons of God,
To cast his jibes and scoffs at holy Job.
So now his legions throng the vestibule,
Hungry and wild, to claim their property,
And gather souls for hell. Hist to their cry.

But this Soul is not going to Hell, even though he hears hints of what Hell is through the cacophony and impotence of the Demons' chant:

Virtue and vice,
A knave's pretence,
'Tis all the same;
Ha! ha!
Dread of hell-fire,
Of the venomous flame,
A coward's plea.
Give him his price,
Saint though he be,
Ha! ha!
From shrewd good sense
He'll slave for hire
Ha! ha!
And does but aspire
To the heaven above
With sordid aim,
And not from love.
Ha! ha!

In Newman's vision of the Four Last Things, Hell is represented by these demons, who mock salvation, the Church, the Sacraments, and all that is good. Although this Soul is bound for Heaven, he hears their horrible blasphemies on his way to the Judgment Seat.

Their voices, however, are soon replaced by the Choirs of Angelicals; from the chant of the Fifth Choir of Angelicals another hymn has been composed, "Praise to the Holiest in the Height":

Praise to the Holiest in the height,
and in the depth be praise:
in all his words most wonderful,
most sure in all his ways.

O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
a second Adam to the fight
and to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
which did in Adam fail,
should strive afresh against the foe,
should strive and should prevail;

And that a higher gift than grace
should flesh and blood refine,
God's presence and his very self,
and essence all-divine.

O generous love! that he, who smote
in Man for man the foe,
the double agony in Man
for man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,
and on the cross on high,
should teach his brethren, and inspire
to suffer and to die.

These five Choirs of Angelicals contradict entirely the rude chants of the demons, stressing human dignity based securely on the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery of Jesus, as the Angels have recounted the history of salvation, the reality the demons cannot accept. As Father Juan Velez explains:

The history of salvation reaches its climax with Christ’s redemptive suffering, which Newman wishes the reader to contemplate. Christology becomes the key to a proper reading of eschatology. As in his other works, the author has a Christological approach to the Holy Trinity, ecclesiology, sacramental theology and morality. In the Dream, the passion of Christ is the measure of God’s mercy. Newman shows Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane as the reference point from which man should realize the gravity of man’s sins and the need for forgiveness. The Incarnate God is the One who will be man’s judge. Christ is the second Adam who suffered in His flesh to obtain man’s recovery[ ].

In our concluding discussion on November 28, I'll highlight some themes from the Soul's Personal Judgment and his entry into Purgatory. In the few minutes we have each Monday, I can only give you glimpses of this great poem--you have to read it yourself and perhaps listen to Elgar's dramatic, semi-operatic work to appreciate it fully.

Saint John Henry Newman's prayer for a happy death:

O my Lord and Savior, support me in my last hour in the strong arms of Thy Sacraments and by the fresh fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal me; and let Thine own Body be my food, and Thy Blood my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother, Mary, breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me, and my glorious saints and my own dear patrons smile upon me, that, in them all and through them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and die as I desire to live, in Thy faith, in Thy Church, in Thy service, and in Thy love. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Christ the Judge and Praying Angels by Giovanni da Milano

Image Credit (Public Domain): The angelic choirs circling the abode of God, from Dante's Paradiso, illustrated by Gustave Doré. Hint: Think of the two figures in the foreground as the Soul of Gerontius and his Guardian Angel!

Francis Young's Survey of English Reformation History Scholarship

I do not have access to this review article which Francis Young announced on his blog:

My review article ‘Surveying a Field Come of Age’ has just been published in the journal British Catholic History. The book is a review of Robert E. Scully and Angela Ellis’s Companion to Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland, but also goes beyond that to take stock of the historiography of early modern British Catholicism and the field’s recent evolution. The appearance of summative companions like Scully and Ellis’s is an indication that the field is approaching, or has attained, maturity and is seeking ways to define its identity and communicate it to scholars in other disciplines as well as to the wider public.

Nevertheless, I just wanted to capture this great list of references I can see:

1. See Christopher Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Christopher Haigh, The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

2. Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Boydell, 1999).

3. See, for example, Michael Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Peter Lake and Michael Questier, All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

4. John Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975).

5. Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

6. Frederick Smith, ‘The Origins of Recusancy in Elizabethan England Reconsidered’, The Historical Journal 60:2 (2017): 301–32.

7. Ceri Law, Contested Reformations in the University of Cambridge, 1535–1584 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2018).

8. Katy Gibbons, English Catholic Exiles in Late Sixteenth-Century Paris (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011); Liesbeth Corens, Confessional Mobility and English Catholics in Counter-Reformation Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

9. Gabriel Glickman, The English Catholic Community, 1688–1745: Politics, Culture and Ideology (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009); James Kelly, English Convents in Catholic Europe, c. 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

10. R. Po-chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ulrich Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

11. See, for example, James Kelly and Hannah Thomas, eds. Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c. 1580–1789: ‘The World is our House’ (Leiden: Brill, 2018); Teresa Bela, Clarinda Calma and Jolanta Rzegocka, eds. Publishing Subversive Texts in Elizabethan England and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

12. Richard P. Williams, ed. Mannock Strickland (1683 – 1744): Agent to English Convents in Flanders: Letters and Accounts from Exile (Woodbridge: Catholic Record Society, 2016); Philip Perry, Essay on the Life and Manners of Robert Grosseteste, ed. Jack Cunningham (Woodbridge: Catholic Record Society, 2022).

13. Victoria Moul, A Literary History of Latin and English Poetry: Bilingual Verse Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

14. Emilie Murphy, ‘Adoramus te Christe: Music and Post-Reformation English Catholic Domestic Piety’, Studies in Church History 50 (2014): 240–53; Emilie Murphy, ‘Music and Catholic Culture in Post-Reformation Lancashire: Piety, Protest and Conversion’, British Catholic History 32:4 (2015): 492–525.

As Young indicates, the field of English Reformation and Early Modern Catholic history has come a long way from the days when Maurice Powicke's The Reformation in England and H. Outram Evennett's The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation were highlights of the academic, non-confessional study of that era. It's just too bad, for me at least, that so many of these resources are so expensive! The book that tops his review essay, for example, costs $299.00!

Professor Mary Katherine Tillman, RIP

While I learned of Father Ian Ker's death on the very day, I just found out about the death of another Newman Scholar, Professor Emerita Mary Katherine Tillman of the University of Notre Dame. She died on October 21 of complications associated with esophageal cancer and her funeral Mass was celebrated at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame on Friday, October 28. Her obituary, posted by the University of Notre Dame is found here. The South Bend Tribune obituary adds the detail that she married another Professor Emeritus just 12 years ago and that she and her husband, Phillip Sloan, resided in Holy Cross Village at Notre Dame, a senior living community sponsored by the Holy Cross Brothers. 

The Notre Dame obituary highlights her study of Newman:

Tillman was a scholar of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, writing a book and several extended commentaries on the works of the 19th-century English priest, as well as the history and philosophy of liberal education.

She published widely in scholarly journals and gave lectures throughout the U.S. and Europe, and in 2019 received the Gailliot Award for Lifetime Achievement in Newman Studies from the National Institute for Newman Studies.

According to my records, she visited Wichita twice to give presentations on Newman, focusing on university education and the relationship between faith and reason. In 1995 at the Newman School of Catholic Thought at the Newman Center at WSU, she provided a comprehensive explanation of the works Newman wrote during his "campaign in Ireland" to establish the Catholic University in Dublin, describing how they help us see how he realized his notional ideas of university education, thus demonstrating the "unity of idea and image" in his reflections on education. Tillman provided an overview of Newman's Idea of a University, and the Rise and Progress of Universities, the first presenting the idea, the second the image through descriptions of places of universal knowledge in Athens, Paris, and Oxford, among others. She also spoke on Faith and Reason at that 1995 Newman School of Catholic Thought, in which she compared Newman's Grammar of Assent and Fifteen University Sermons, noting of the latter that they sowed "the seeds of all Newman's future writings".

And she wrote the introductions for critical editions of the Fifteen Sermons and the Rise and Progress of Universities.

In 1998, she presented a lecture at Newman University on "Catholic Higher Education at the Millennium". I know that I attended that lecture but I have no surviving notes from it.

And in 2015, Marquette University Press published a collection of her works on Newman titled John Henry Newman: Man of Letters.

In this collection of essays spanning thirty years of her work in Newman Studies, Tillman elaborates the broad reach of Newman's philosophical, educational, historical and classical acumen. Attentive to his philosophical methodologies and to recent Newman scholarship, she compares Newman's views on a wide range of issues with those of other thinkers, classical and modern. Included in the essays are such topics as Newman's meaning of 'views', of relations between faith and reason, of imagination, on the college in relation to the university, on research, on whether virtue can be taught, on the development of ideas, on prepredicative experience and on phronesis, on 'the gentleman' in relation to the Oratorian, on human nature, and on worldly wisdom in relation to holy wisdom. Newman, Man of Letters, is seen as unique in his prolific and wide-ranging genius.

Eternal rest grant unto her O Lord and may her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace. And may she rest in peace.

Preview: "The Immortality of the Soul" and The Soul of Gerontius

On Monday, November 14, Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell of the Son Rise Morning Show and I will continue our series on Saint John Henry Newman's The Dream of Gerontius. I'll be on the air about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here.

In one of his Parochial and Plain Sermons, "The Immortality of the Soul", Newman spoke to his Anglican congregation on the reality of the immortality of the soul. As he so often did in these sermons, he remonstrated with them that although Christians in his day paid lip service to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, they lived as if they did not have immortal souls that would live beyond the life of their bodies after death:

And yet, in spite of our being able to speak about it and our "form of knowledge" [Rom. ii. 20.] (as St. Paul terms it), there seems scarcely room to doubt, that the greater number of those who are called Christians in no true sense realize it in their own minds at all. Indeed, it is a very difficult thing to bring home to us, and to feel, that we have souls; and there cannot be a more fatal mistake than to suppose we see what the doctrine means, as soon as we can use the words which signify it. So great a thing is it to understand that we have souls, that the knowing it, taken in connection with its results, is all one with being serious, i.e., truly religious. . . . Yet to this state of mind, and therefore to this true knowledge, the multitude of men called Christians are certainly strangers; a thick veil is drawn over their eyes; and in spite of their being able to talk of the doctrine, they are as if they never had heard of it. They go on just as the heathen did of old: they eat, they drink; or they amuse themselves in vanities, and live in the world, without fear and without sorrow, just as if God had not declared that their conduct in this life would decide their destiny in the next; just as if they either had no souls, or had nothing or little to do with the saving of them, which was the creed of the heathen.

And Newman thinks he knows why we have trouble discerning this truth in our every day lives--we are surrounded and enmeshed in a world of things, of objects, even of ourselves as objects. As he says, a child can grow up with this view and seldom think of any different sort of life:  "He views himself merely in his connection with this world, which is his all; he looks to this world for his good, as to an idol; and when he tries to look beyond this life, he is able to discern nothing in prospect, because he has no idea of any thing, nor can fancy any thing, but this life."

To comprehend what it means that we have immortal souls, we have to separate ourselves from this world: 

To understand that we have souls, is to feel our separation from things visible, our independence of them, our distinct existence in ourselves, our individuality, our power of acting for ourselves this way or that way, our accountableness for what we do. These are the great truths which lie wrapped up indeed even in a child's mind, and which God's grace can unfold there in spite of the influence of the external world; but at first this outward world prevails.

We have to be attentive to God's Providence in our lives, as He shows us how little we can depend on what we see and think so important in our lives:

And when He visits us, then in a little while there is a stirring within us. The unprofitableness and feebleness of the things of this world are forced upon our minds; they promise but cannot {20} perform, they disappoint us. Or, if they do perform what they promise, still (so it is) they do not satisfy us. We still crave for something, we do not well know what; but we are sure it is something which the world has not given us. And then its changes are so many, so sudden, so silent, so continual. It never leaves changing; it goes on to change, till we are quite sick at heart:—then it is that our reliance on it is broken. . . .

In our response to God's Grace, we hear the call to prepare for Eternal Life, for the immortality of our soul is more real to us:

And thus a man is drawn forward by all manner of powerful influences to turn from things temporal to things eternal, to deny himself, to take up his cross and follow Christ. For there are Christ's awful threats and warnings to make him serious, His precepts to attract and elevate him, His promises to cheer him, His gracious deeds and sufferings to humble him to the dust, and to bind his heart once and for ever in gratitude to Him who is so surpassing in mercy.

According to the Newman Reader, Newman offered this sermon in 1833. Thirty-two (32) years later, in The Dream of Gerontius, Newman depicts the result of such awareness of his immortality in the "Soul" of Gerontius, as he is named throughout the rest of the poem:

I went to sleep; and now I am refresh'd,
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense {332}
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.

The Soul knows he is alive, but does not understand what has happened to his body as he seems still to be in it yet not as he was before:

Am I alive or dead? I am not dead, {333}
But in the body still; for I possess
A sort of confidence which clings to me,
That each particular organ holds its place
As heretofore, combining with the rest
Into one symmetry, that wraps me round,
And makes me man; and surely I could move,
Did I but will it, every part of me. . . .

So much I know, not knowing how I know,
That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
Or I or it is rushing on the wings
Of light or lightning on an onward course,
And we e'en now are million miles apart.

Then the Soul notices the presence of another: his Guardian Angel, who rejoices at the change in its responsibilities to its charge. Its work is done, as it rejoices that it helped guide this Soul throughout his life on earth to this moment. It had led Gerontius on the narrow way from earth to heaven, fighting a long fight against sin and corruption and weakness.

So the Soul comprehends what has happened and his transition from life on earth to Eternal Life is clear:

Now know I surely that I am at length
Out of the body; had I part with earth,
I never could have drunk those accents in,
And not have worshipp'd as a god the voice
That was so musical; but now I am
So whole of heart, so calm, so self-possess'd,
With such a full content, and with a sense
So apprehensive and discriminant,
As no temptation can intoxicate.
Nor have I even terror at the thought
That I am clasp'd by such a saintliness.

So I think it's valid to read these passages from The Dream in the context of that Sermon when as an Anglican he had moved away from the Calvinist doctrine of salvation and was reading the Fathers of the Church but not yet come to the fullness of Christianity (as +Father Ian Ker would title one of his books on Newman): Newman's embrace of the Catholic Faith has deepened through his years as a Catholic priest. As Father Juan Velez comments in a 2001 article for New Blackfriars, "Theological Themes in Newman's Dream of Gerontius":

In those first years as a Catholic he began to understand the important role of the sacraments in a Christian’s preparation for death [ ] and of the Sacrifice of the Mass as atonement for the lives of the faithful departed. Finally, the Dream of Gerontius constitutes Newman’s mature reflection on the Catholic doctrine of purgatory as purification of souls who die in a state of grace, a deeper awareness of the communion of saints, and his own understanding of the nature of purgatorial fire. 

When Newman composed his poem, made famous by Elgar’s musical arrangement [ ], he had reached a refined doctrinal and spiritual understanding of the Christian belief in life after death. In effect he had overcome various problems and interpretations of Calvinist and Anglican theology, and of Roman Catholic piety. [Please see the linked article for the bracketed lacuna (end notes).]

When I taught the "Newman and the New Evangelization" course at Newman University this summer, the priest who had designed the course wanted me to emphasize how Saint John Henry Newman used the imagination to help us more deeply grasp the crucial teachings of Jesus and His Church. He wants the students, preparing to be catechists in Catholic schools, parish OCIA/RCIA or CCD programs, etc, to adapt Newman's appeal to the imagination to their own efforts. 

While they--or I, or you--may not receive the inspiration to write a poem nor have the talent to compose it, the comparison of Newman's 1833 sermon and 1865 poem is illustrative. It shows that Newman not only continued to grow in his comprehension of the fullness of Catholic life, but he also continued to help his congregation, whether in the pews at the University Church of St. Mary's in Oxford or in the pages of The Month, comprehend these great Christian teachings, like the Immortality of Our Souls and the Eternal Life to come, more immediately, more intensely, and live as if--because--we believe they are True and Real and consequential in our lives, here on earth and in the life to come.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let Your perpetual light shine upon them.
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed
rest in peace. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Saint Martin of Tours, pray for us!

Image credit (Public Domain): "The Death of the Good Old Man" by William Blake

Image credit (Public Domain): "Ascent of the Blessed" Detail from Visions of the Hereafter, polyptych by Hieronymus Bosch in the Palazzo Grimani, Venice, Italy

Father Ian Ker, RIP

Yesterday, Saturday, November 5, I attended the First Saturday Mass and devotions to the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, meeting a couple of friends. We went to brunch after Mass and then I came home and checked my email for the first time that day. 

My inbox was full of notices of Father Ian Ker's death that morning in England. Father Juan Velez published this notice on his Saint John Henry Newman website:

Fr. Ian Ker (1942-2022) died in London, this morning November 5, 2022. A former Anglican, he became Roman Catholic and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Birmingham. He was a world authority on St. John Henry Newman on whom he published more than twenty books.

Fr. Ker taught theology at Oxford University and was a senior research fellow at Blackfriars, Oxford and a member of the faculty of theology.

We mourn the loss of Fr. Ker and pray that Our Lord reward him with “the vision of peace” of which St. John Henry Newman wrote. In the coming days, Fr. Peter J. Conley of the Archdiocese of Birmingham will write more about Fr. Ker’s contribution to Newman scholarship and his influence on his own (Fr. Conley’s) work.

Requiescat in pace!

Fr. Ker’s publications included:

John Henry Newman: A Biography (1988); The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845-1961 (2003); G.K. Chesterton: A Biography (2011); and Newman on Vatican II (2014); Newman, Councils and Vatican II in Newman and Faith (2004); and Mere Catholicism (2006).

He was also co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Newman (2009), contributing the chapter ‘The Church as Communion’.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Father Ian Ker twice when he visited Wichita for presentations: He was the keynote speaker at a Newman School of Catholic Thought at St. Paul's Parish-Newman Center at Wichita State University in February, 1992 based on his book Newman and the Fullness of Christianity and he led a day of recollection at the Spiritual Life Center on Newman's spirituality based on his book Healing the Wound of Humanity in October, 1993.

And in 2013, he was scheduled to speak at Newman University on the "Genius of Newman" but had to cancel because of illness.

May he rest in the peace of Christ. As I continue my series on Newman's The Dream of Gerontius, I dedicate my efforts to his memory and I will pray for the repose of his soul throughout the month of November.

Memory Eternal!

UPDATE: I asked Warren Farha at Eighth Day Books to special order this for me, from Gracewing Publishers in the UK:

I look forward to purchasing it and reading it as soon as possible!

Preview: The Deathbed of Gerontius: "Go forth, Christian Soul"!

During this month of devotions for the Holy Souls in Purgatory--who are indeed holy and bound for Heaven--Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss themes and imagery from St. John Henry Newman's poem, The Dream of Gerontius on the Son Rise Morning Show each Monday in November.

So on Monday, November 7, at about 6:50 a.m. Central Time/7:50 a.m. Eastern Time (don't forget to Fall Back this weekend!), we'll start the series. Please listen live here, and remember that you may subscribe to the Son Rise Morning Show website for a reminder of the daily broadcasts here.

First, some background on the poem:

The plot of Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius is simple:

1) Gerontius is on his deathbed and receives Last Rites and prays before he dies
2) Gerontius dies and experiences the afterlife as a disembodied Soul
3) Gerontius' Soul meets his Guardian Angel
4) His Soul encounters the demons of Hell on his way to Judgment
5) The Soul hears the choirs of heavenly Angels on his way to Judgment
5) The Soul is judged and sent to Purgatory
6) The Soul's Guardian Angel deposits him in Purgatory and promises to come back to convey him to Heaven

Newman wrote this poem, the longest he'd ever written, on 52 scraps of paper between January 17 and February 7, 1865. One of his biographers, Wilfrid Ward, describes its composition:

Now, after the abandonment of the Oxford scheme* gave him leisure for it, he set down in dramatic form the vision of a Christian's death on which his imagination had been dwelling. The writing of it was a sudden inspiration, and his work was begun in January and completed in February 1865. "On the 17th of January last," he writes to Mr. Allies in October, "it came into my head to write it, I really can't tell how. And I wrote on till it was finished on small bits of paper, and I could no more write anything else by willing it than I could fly." . . .

*The Oxford Scheme mentioned by Ward (son of William George Ward, the ultramontanist) was the plan to found an Oratory in Oxford to serve Catholic men attending one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford.

The Dream of Gerontius was then published in The Month, a periodical founded in 1864 by the convert Frances Margaret Taylor (Mother Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, Poor Servants of the Mother of God). The Jesuits in England bought The Month in 1865 and Father Henry James Coleridge, another convert (great nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), became the publisher and editor. Read more about the rather surprising response to the poem here, as Anglicans like Charles Kingsley, William Gladstone, and General George Gordon admired it greatly!

But the focus in our discussion Monday is on the content of the poem itself, not that background!

The first part of the poem juxtaposes the protagonist's preparation for death with those at deathbed praying for him, according to Catholic ritual.

Gerontius is an old man, a faithful and practicing Catholic, and he is experiencing both the dread of death and the promise of eternal life:

JESU, MARIA—I am near to death,
And Thou art calling me; I know it now.
Not by the token of this faltering breath,
This chill at heart, this dampness on my brow,—
(Jesu, have mercy! Mary, pray for me!)
'Tis this new feeling, never felt before,
(Be with me, Lord, in my extremity!)
That I am going, that I am no more.
'Tis this strange innermost abandonment,
(Lover of souls! great God! I look to Thee,)
This emptying out of each constituent
And natural force, by which I come to be.

He asks for his friends and the priest with him to pray for him and they do, beginning with the Litany of the Saints:

Kyrie eleïson, Christe eleïson, Kyrie eleïson.
Holy Mary, pray for him.
All holy Angels, pray for him.
Choirs of the righteous, pray for him. 
Holy Abraham, pray for him.
St. John Baptist, St. Joseph, pray for him.
St. Peter, St. Paul, St Andrew, St. John,
All Apostles, all Evangelists, pray for him.
All holy Disciples of the Lord, pray for him.
All holy Innocents, pray for him.
All holy Martyrs, all holy Confessors,
All holy Hermits, all holy Virgins . . .

Hearing their prayers, he can pray as he thought he could not:

Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the man;
And through such waning span
Of life and thought as still has to be trod,
Prepare to meet thy God.
And while the storm of that bewilderment
Is for a season spent,
And, ere afresh the ruin on me fall,
Use well the interval.

Gerontius then prays what will become one of the popular hymns taken from this poem, "Firmly I believe and truly" as he confesses and professes a summary of Catholic belief:

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
Parce mihi, Domine. 
Firmly I believe and truly
God is three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
Manhood taken by the Son. . . .

But then he weakens again ("I can no more") and indeed, he senses and fears the presence of something evil:

Some bodily form of ill
Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse
Tainting the hallow'd air, and laughs, and flaps
Its hideous wings,
And makes me wild with horror and dismay.
O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!
Some Angel, Jesu! such as came to Thee
In Thine own agony …
Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary,
pray for me.

So the attendants intercede for him again ("Rescue this Thy servant in his evil hour") and after he dies, the priest intones the traditional prayer as I find it in my 1962 Roman Missal (or you may find it here):

Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!
Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the Name of God
The Omnipotent Father, who created thee!
Go, in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord,
Son of the living God, who bled for thee!
Go, in the Name of the Holy Spirit, who
Hath been pour'd out on thee!

So what Newman has accomplished in this section is to convey even a faithful Catholic's human fear of death, describing both the physical and spiritual weakness that comes upon Gerontius. He cannot pray for himself as he wishes, so he asks others to do it for him. Gerontius faces the great mystery of death--he does not know what it is to not be alive and so he faces it with trepidation, even as he has faith in God and in the Church's prayers for him. 

And these prayers are both on earth and in heaven, as the "assistants" at his deathbed and the priest call upon Jesus Christ our Lord to have mercy on Gerontius, and implore the angels and saints to pray with them for him. Since Newman poetically adapted prayers that many a Catholic had heard while at a loved one's deathbed, this was familiar scene to them. They had made the responses in the Litany of the Saints and watched their mother or father, brother or sister, die; seen the Sacrament of Anointing, and heard the priest's commending prayers for their loved one:

Receive, Lord, Thy servant (handmaid) into the place of salvation, which he (she) hopes to obtain through Thy mercy.R.Amen. Deliver, Lord, the soul of Thy servant (handmaid) from all danger of Hell; and from all pain and tribulation.R.Amen . . . Let the heavens be opened to him (her), and the angels rejoice with him (her). Let the archangel St. Michael, whom Thou didst appoint the chief of the heavenly host, conduct him (her). Let the holy angels come out to meet him (her), and carry him (her) to the city of heavenly Jerusalem. Let blessed Peter the apostle, to whom God gave the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, receive him (her). Let St. Paul the apostle, who was a vessel of election, assist him (her). Let St. John the beloved disciple, to whom the secrets of Heaven were revealed, intercede for him (her). Let all the holy apostles, who received from Jesus Christ the power of binding and loosing, pray for him (her). Let all the saints and elect of God, who in this world have suffered torments in the name of Christ, intercede for him (her); that being freed from the prison of his (her) body, he (she) may be admitted into the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who with Thee and the Holy Ghost, lives and reigns, world without end. Amen.

Newman had dramatized it and brought to their imaginations afresh. In next week's highlight from The Death of Gerontius, we''ll see how Newman imagined the Soul of Gerontius after death and its meeting with its Guardian Angel!

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Source (Public Domain): Deathbed Scene from a 16th century Office of the Dead.