Two Posts from "The Newman Review": Lost Voices and How to Read Newman

Just a couple of excerpts from two articles in the recent online Newman Review from the National Institute of Newman Studies:

The first is from Julia Meszaros and Bonnie Lander Johnson, editors of the Catholic Women Writers series from the Catholic University of America Press. They explain why these "Lost Voices of the Catholic Literary Revival" deserve to be heard, by being celebrated and read:

The work of these women indicates that the Revival lasted much longer than is usually thought (women were writing earlier and later than most of the men associated with the Revival) and that its writers were located in all areas of Britain and Ireland, not merely in the south of England. Novels by Catholic women are often concerned with different theological questions than we find in the work of Waugh and Greene. They are set in families and villages and in the institutional communities in which the writers themselves first encountered the faith: schools, convents, or convent schools. Almost wholly unrecognized by scholarship of the Catholic novel, or indeed the novel generally, are the frequent depictions of female religious life in novels of the twentieth century.

Highlighted is a book I've had on my "to be read" pile for awhile but now have started to read:

Another writer of the Revival now back in print in the Catholic Women Writers series is Sheila Kaye-Smith, until recently forgotten but a bestseller in the 1920s. Her 1925 novel The End of the House of Alard was written during her conversion from high Anglicanism to Catholicism and, long before Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, explores the post-war erosion of the aristocracy from a Catholic point of view. Faced with the decline of their family estate, Alard’s characters must discern between intrinsic and instrumental goods. In relaying their struggles, Kaye-Smith boldly takes all that was most loved about her own best-selling genre—the aristocracy’s glamour, its age-old traditions, and its role in community-building—and subordinates it to a higher truth. The novel in some ways dramatizes Kaye-Smith’s own experience of how many fruits of the world can, and at times must, be put aside by those who choose God, and how this sacrifice brings with it different riches entirely unseen and unknown by those who refuse to give up what is most dear to them.

The second article offers some insights into what makes reading Newman such a rewarding challenge. (The author, Luigi Rossi  was a Visiting Scholar at NINS during September 2023. He is Assistant Professor (Maître de Conférences) of Education at the Catholic University of the West in Angers, France.):

Compared to my usual diet of scholarly articles and books, Newman’s writings stood out for what appeared to me as their meandering character. Unlike most contemporary works, Newman does not state upfront what he is going to say and then take the reader through the motions of a demonstration delivered blow by blow. He begins, instead, with a puzzle, or a question, that he brings before his audience; he unfolds his thinking slowly, almost searchingly, from his initial questions; he also frequently refrains from tying up his argument, leaving whatever he said simply to “air” with the reader.4

After overcoming my initial disorientation at a style that looks unsystematic––from the standpoint of contemporary academic standards––I started to notice a growing curiosity in me: not just for what Newman says, but precisely for how he says it. To be more precise: I noticed myself referring back to the experience of reading Newman’s texts in order to get a firmer hold on his understanding of how reason operates in the ordinary conduct of life. As I did that, I eventually retrieved within myself a freer, more meandering style of reasoning, not unlike that which Newman practices in his writing. In a way, reading Newman brought me closer to what it is to read a text: making space for it to breathe, for its images to resonate, for its metaphors to blossom into rich associations, and eventually, to witness a meaningful figure come into being by this slow maturation. . . .

Please read the rest there.

I think this is one of the ways that Newman drew his listeners and draws his readers into their imaginations--not of fantasy--but of thought and reality. They were, as evidenced by the popularity of these sermons in their time, and those who read him today--or hear him read as I do at our monthly Newman reading gatherings--engaged in his exploration of an important spiritual, moral, religious truth.

After our most recent "Lovers of Newman" meeting, following a "Colloquy" tradition founded by the late Father Ian Ker in the 1990's, I realized that I could not think of another convert to Catholicism whose pre-conversion works we read with such attention and devotion. 

Can you?

And I'm thinking particularly of our reading of his Parochial and Plain Sermons and other sermons he wrote as an Anglican, not just as explorations of his developing thought, but as sources of spiritual, moral, and religious insights and guidance. Since I attended my first Newman School of Catholic Thought in 1979, I've been encouraged to read these Anglican sermons. It's true that at our monthly sermon readings we have discussions about a more Catholic understanding of some matters, but primarily, as Father William R. Lamm did so many years ago in 1934, we appreciate his spiritual legacy and his goals in those sermons (from my 2021 review of Father Lamm's book):

Father Lamm's thesis is that in Newman's sermons given as Vicar of the University Church of St. Mary's the Virgin in Oxford, he had a special purpose. He wanted to give general spiritual direction to those students in his congregation who wanted to be REAL Christians, who wanted to pursue holiness and perfection in the spiritual and moral life. Therefore, Father Lamm argues that Newman's spiritual legacy centers around these themes: what keeps us from becoming perfect (not considering grave, mortal sin) and what can help us become perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

What Newman sees as keeping us from pursuing holiness and the realizing of God's Presence in our souls, according to Lamm, is our hypocrisy as we deceive ourselves about our spiritual state, deceive others, and attempt to deceive God. What will help us pursue holiness and the realizing of God's Presence is Surrender to God's Will through repentance, and the practice of a host of virtues, including love, faith, hope, obedience, and fervour, summed up as sincerity and simplicity--watching for God and developing the habit of prayer. . . .

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!