Boris Johnson and Catholicism in England

Crisis Magazine posts an interesting story that poses the question: is the Prime Minister of England a practicing Catholic? or is he still an Anglican? Sean Fitzpatrick notes that this question arises because Johnson married a Catholic woman in a Catholic ceremony in Westminster Cathedral:

When asked by a journalist after his Catholic marriage and the Catholic baptism of his son, “Are you now a practicing Catholic?” Johnson, an Anglican since Eton, replied, “I don’t discuss these deep issues—certainly not with you.” Fair enough, sir.

In any event, the Prime Minister is now under suspicion of being England’s first Catholic prime minister, which would complicate his relation to the Church of England (God save the Queen). Mr. Johnson known for his wry and ready wit, and he wielded it in that moment to keep to himself what so many seek to fling into public scrutiny. Whether it be our religion, our political affiliation, or our vaccination status, the deep issues of our lives are boarding themselves up against undue exposure as they become increasingly divisive.

Fitzpatrick follows his own of inquiry in the rest of his essay, but what interests me is the church-state relationship in England: the government (the United Kingdom doesn't have a Constitution the way that we in the USA have one) still has an officially anti-Catholic stance. No monarch can be a Catholic, and it's not very clear whether or not a Catholic can be Prime Minister. According to the amended Catholic Relief Act of 1829:

It shall not be lawful for any person professing the Roman Catholic religion directly or indirectly to advise his Majesty, or any person or persons holding or exercising the office of guardians of the United Kingdom, or of regent of the United Kingdom, under whatever name, style, or title such office may be constituted, or the lord lieutenant of Ireland], touching or concerning the appointment to or disposal of any office or preferment in the Church of England, or in the Church of Scotland; and if any such person shall offend in the premises he shall, being thereof convicted by due course of law, be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and disabled for ever from holding any office, civil or military, under the Crown.

Yet the question of Boris Johnson's Christian religion was broached when he was elected, as this in July, 2019 article from The Irish Times (Northern Ireland) evidences :

BORIS Johnson has become the first baptised Catholic to become prime minister.

The 55-year-old, whose mother Charlotte Fawcett is Catholic, was baptised as a child.

His godmother is Lady Rachel Billington – daughter of the devoutly Catholic Lord Longford.

However, Mr Johnson was confirmed an Anglican while studying at Eton as a teenager.

That Confirmation in the Church of England probably smoothed over the issue; his marriage to a Catholic in a Catholic Cathedral and the baptism of their child has raised it again.

One of the duties of the Prime Minister is to advise the Queen on episcopal appointments in the Church of England. I cannot imagine Boris Johnson refusing to pass along recommendations for a woman to succeed in an English diocese or to otherwise interfere in those appointments on doctrinal, spiritual, or moral grounds. Nor would Queen Elizabeth II veto any on such grounds, the Anglican church being so thoroughly Erastian. In view of that fact, I'd imagine his Catholicism is a moot point. That's probably why there haven't been any "Johnson Riots" in England. Some would probably have other reasons for burning the Prime Minister in effigy on Bonfire Night, but not because he was baptized Catholic and married a Catholic woman.

As Sean Fitzpatrick concludes, citing Chesterton:

G. K. Chesterton (who was definitely a Catholic) wrote, “The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” Boris Johnson may or may not be Catholic, but he is certainly Chestertonian, and that goes somewhere beyond his doughy build and rumpled hair. He is elusive and playful and insightful—and those are traits that often go with the faithful. But let us not, as Catholics, be as the slavish children of the age sniffing for social controversy or social stigma—or even stigmata. Let us worry about being Catholic rather than who may or may not be Catholic.

Nevertheless, these are interesting considerations, leading to one more question: when will the monarch be able to be a Catholic? or another way to ask it: when will the Church of England be dis-established as the State Church of the United Kingdom? Should it be? What purpose does its establishment serve now? Those questions lead us all the way back to July 14, 1833!

Image Credit (public domain): The Gordon Riots by Charles Green (1840–1898)

Book Review, Part Two: Newman's Anglican Difficulties

Before I demonstrate to you how Saint John Henry Newman, just five years after his conversion to Catholicism and three years after his ordination to the Catholic priesthood, attempts to remove any prejudices against the Catholic Church in the hearts and minds of the remaining members of the Movement of 1833 (the Oxford Movement), allow me to comment again on Edward Short's introduction.

Edward Short, who sent me the review copy of this new volume in the Newman Millennium Edition, provides a most comprehensive introduction, describing the occasion of Newman's lectures, the location, the press coverage, Newman's composition of the lectures, and the autobiographical nature of the lectures (his look back at his participation in the Oxford Movement was almost a rehearsal for the Apologia pro Vita Sua 14 years later). Short also provides a precis for each of the lectures, and extensive commentary on the critical reaction to them, from newspapers at the time, William Makepeace Thackeray, John Mason Neale, J.M. Capes (who left the Church of the England for the Catholic Church and then left the Catholic Church to return to the Church of England), and other contemporaries--but also Christopher Dawson, Owen Chadwick, ("the doyen of Newman detractors"), John Griffin, Newman biographer Ian Ker, Robert Pattison (author of The Great Dissent), and Stanley L. Jaki, OSB, the previous editor of these lectures (Real-View Books).

Short's footnotes, which are sometimes so long that the text at the top of the page may be only two or three lines, are equally comprehensive, identifying people, texts, and even the context of Newman's mention and use of those cited sources. I admit that sometimes I merely scanned the notes while reading the text while in the midst of Newman's argument, but they provide great resources for understanding the argument, notwithstanding.

In Part Two of the these lectures, after offering the remaining members of the Movement of 1833--notice that name used by Newman dates the Oxford Movement, placing it in the past--evidence of their parlous position in the Church of England, he admits that these arguments have mainly been negative. Now he will offer more positive arguments to deny their views of the Catholic Church based on five issues:

• The Social State of Catholic Countries (not evidence against the Sanctity of the Catholic Church)
• The Religious State of Catholics (not evidence against the Sanctity of the Catholic Church either)
• Differences among Catholics (not evidence against the Unity of the Catholic Church)
• Heretical and Schismatical Bodies within the Catholic Church (not evidence against the Catholicity--universality--of the Catholic Church)
• Ecclesiastical History of the Catholic Church (not evidence against the apostolicity--the unbroken line of Tradition--of the Catholic Church)

What Newman is trying to do is remove their English prejudice against Italy, France, Spain, and Belgium, which they consider to be behind the (progressive English) times:

No man in his senses, certainly no English gentleman, would abandon the high station which his country both occupies and bestows on him in the eyes of man, to make himself the co-religionist of such slaves, and the creature of such a Creed. . . .

What, then, you are saying comes, in fact, to this: We would rather deny our initial principles, than accept such a development of them as the communion of Rome, viewed as it is; we would rather believe Erastianism, and all its train of consequences, to be from God, than the religion of such countries as France and Belgium, Spain and Italy. This is what you must mean to say, and nothing short of it. (pp. 264-265)

The main thrust of his arguments in these five lectures is what the Catholic Church is and what she aspires to achieve--in contrast to an Erastian church dedicated to serving the worldly ends of the State and the progress of the Nation--saving souls:

The world believes in the world's ends as the greatest of goods; it wishes society to be governed simply and entirely for the sake of this world. Provided it could gain one little islet in the ocean, one foot upon the coast, if it could cheapen tea by sixpence a pound, or make its flag respected among the Esquimaux or Otaheitans, at the cost of a hundred lives and a hundred souls, it would think it a very good bargain. What does it know of hell? it disbelieves it; it spits upon, it abominates, it curses its very name and notion. Next, as to the devil, it does not believe in him either. We next come to the flesh, and it is "free to confess" that it does not think there is any great harm in following the instincts of that nature which, perhaps it goes on to say, God has given. How could it be otherwise? who ever heard of the world fighting against the flesh and the devil? Well, then, what is its notion of evil? Evil, says the world, is whatever is an offence to me, whatever obscures my majesty, whatever disturbs my peace. Order, tranquillity, popular contentment, plenty, prosperity, advance in arts and sciences, literature, refinement, splendour, this is my millennium, or rather my elysium, my swerga; I acknowledge no whole, no individuality, but my own; the units which compose me are but parts of me; they have no perfection in themselves; no end but in me; in my glory is their bliss, and in the hidings of my countenance they come to nought.

Such is the philosophy and practice of the world;—now the Church looks and moves in a simply opposite direction. It contemplates, not the whole, but the parts; not a nation, but the men who form it; not society in the first place, but in the second place, and in the first place individuals; it looks beyond the outward act, on and into the thought, the motive, the intention, and the will; it looks beyond the world, and detects and moves against the devil, who is sitting in ambush behind it. It has, then, a foe in view; nay, it has a battle-field, to which the world is blind; its proper battle-field is the heart of the individual, and its true foe is Satan.

My dear brethren, do not think I am declaiming in the air or translating the pages of some old worm-eaten homily; as I have already said, I bear my own testimony to what has been brought home to me most closely and vividly as a matter of fact since I have been a Catholic; viz., that that mighty world-wide Church, like her Divine Author, regards, consults for, labours for the individual soul; she looks at the souls for whom Christ died, and who are made over to her; and her one object, for which everything is sacrificed—appearances, reputation, worldly triumph—is to acquit herself well of this most awful responsibility. Her one duty is to bring forward the elect to salvation, and to make them as many as she can:—to take offences out of their path, to warn them of sin, to rescue them from evil, to convert them, to teach them, to feed them, to protect them, and to perfect them. (pp. 267-269)

This passage really jumped out at me as so perfect for our current "Cancel Culture" situation. After describing how the Catholic Church will offer God's forgiveness to any repentant sinner, Newman notes:

With the world it is the reverse; a member of society may go as near the line of evil, as the world draws it, as he will; but, till he has passed it, he is safe. Again, when he has once transgressed it, recovery is impossible; let honour of man or woman be sullied, and to restore its splendour is simply to undo the past; it is impossible. (p. 281)

The problem is now that the line keeps moving and the worldly can't keep behind it!

Just a page after that Newman presents the example that created the greatest scandal to his English readers:

Take a mere beggar-woman, lazy, ragged, and filthy, and not over-scrupulous of truth—(I do not say she had arrived at perfection)—but if she is chaste, and sober, and cheerful, and goes to her religious duties (and I am supposing not at all an impossible case), she will, in the eyes of the Church, have a prospect of heaven, which is quite closed and refused to the State's pattern-man, the just, the upright, the generous, the honourable, the conscientious, if he be all this, not from a supernatural power—(I do not determine whether this is likely to be the fact, but I am contrasting views and principles)—not from a supernatural power, but from mere natural virtue. (p. 282)

Perhaps they should have read again the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, another scandalous comparison!

In the next lecture, Newman provides his auditors or readers an especially appropriate reminder of the recent Anglican crisis over the Sacrament of Baptism, when he describes what the Catholic Church believes about its effects on the soul and the Church's effort to maintain that state of grace:

A soul which has received the grace of baptism receives with it the germ or faculty of all supernatural virtues whatever,—faith, hope, charity, meekness, patience, sobriety, and every other that can be named; and if it commits mortal sin, it falls out of grace, and forfeits these supernatural powers. It is no longer what it was, and is, so far, in the feeble and frightful condition of those who were never baptized. But there are certain remarkable limitations and alleviations in its punishment, and one is this: that the faculty or power of faith remains to it. Of course the soul may go on to resist and destroy this supernatural faculty also; it may, by an act of the will, rid itself of its faith, as it has stripped itself of grace and love; or it may gradually decay in its faith till it becomes simply infidel; but this is not the common state of a Catholic people. What commonly happens is this, that they fall under the temptations to vice or covetousness, which naturally and urgently beset them, but that faith is left to them. Thus the many are in a condition which is absolutely novel and strange in the ideas of a Protestant; they have a vivid perception, like sense, of things unseen, yet have no desire at all, or affection, towards them; they have knowledge without love. Such is the state of the many; the Church at the same time is ever labouring with all her might to bring them back again to their Maker; and in fact is ever bringing back vast multitudes one by one, though one by one they are ever relapsing from her. The necessity of yearly confession, the Easter communion, the stated seasons of indulgence, the high festivals, Lent, days of obligation, with their Masses and preaching,—these ordinary and routine observances and the extraordinary methods of retreats, missions, jubilees, and the like, are the means by which the powers of the world unseen are ever acting upon the corrupt mass, of which a nation is composed, and breaking up and reversing the dreadful phenomenon which fact and Scripture conspire to place before us. (pp. 304-305)

I would have to quote almost the entire chapter on Ecclesiastical History of the Catholic Church to represent the rich detail Newman provides to describe his studies of the Fathers of the Church in the history of the Arian heresy (in 1839). As Newman concluded in the Apologia Pro Vita Sua:

I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite. The Church of the Via Media was in the position of the Oriental communion, Rome was where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians.

In the Apologia he even cites his own account of how he reached that realization from the final lecture in this book:

It was difficult to make out how the Eutychians or Monophysites were heretics, unless Protestants and Anglicans were heretics also; difficult to find arguments against the Tridentine Fathers, which did not tell against the Fathers of Chalcedon; difficult to condemn the Popes of the sixteenth century, without condemning the Popes of the fifth. The drama of religion, and the combat of truth and error, were ever one and the same. The principles and proceedings of the Church now, were those of the Church then; the principles and proceedings of heretics then, were those of Protestants now. I found it so,—almost fearfully; there was an awful similitude, more awful, because so silent and unimpassioned, between the dead records of the past and the feverish chronicle of the present. The shadow of the fifth century was on the sixteenth. It was like a spirit rising from the troubled waters of the old world, with the shape and lineaments of the new. The Church then, as now, might be called peremptory and stern, resolute, overbearing, and relentless; and heretics were shifting, changeable, reserved, and deceitful, ever courting civil power, and never agreeing together, except by its aid; and the civil power was ever aiming at comprehensions, trying to put the invisible out of view, and substituting expediency for faith. What was the use of continuing the controversy, or defending my position, if, after all, I was forging arguments for Arius or Eutyches, and turning devil's advocate against the much-enduring Athanasius and the majestic Leo? Be my soul with the Saints! and shall I lift up my hand against them? Sooner may my right hand forget her cunning, and wither outright, as his who once stretched it out against a prophet of God! anathema to a whole tribe of Cranmers, Ridleys, Latimers, and Jewels! perish the names of Bramhall, Ussher, Taylor, Stillingfleet, and Barrow from the face of the earth, ere I should do aught but fall at their feet in love and in worship, whose image was continually before my eyes, and whose musical words were ever in my ears and on my tongue! (pp. 426-427 in Difficulties of Anglicans)

My final comment about this section of the book is that Newman reminds us today--as Catholic laity, religious, and clerics--of the purpose of the Catholic Church: the salvation of souls. That's the center from which our worship of God, our prayers and works, our charity and activity, in the workplace, in our families, in our parishes and schools, and among our best friends and company, and all should radiate. Thus it may infuse all of actions to achieve God's will, calling people to Jesus and His Church.

This a magnificent volume of Newman's works in an appropriately presented edition. Highly recommended!

Image Credit: (Used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license) Statue outside the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, popularly known as Brompton Oratory, in London (the second location of the London Oratory; Newman presented these lectures at the King William Street location)

Book Review, Part One: Newman's Anglican Difficulties

Re-reading this book after almost thirty years--my late husband Mark gave me a copy of Father Stanley Jaki's edition of Newman's Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching in 1995--I was impressed more this time with the second part of his attempts to persuade his former colleagues in the Oxford or Tractarian Movement to leave the Church of England and become (Roman) Catholics. He called them members of "the Movement of 1833".

In the first part, "Communion with the Roman See the Legitimate Issue of the Religious Movement of 1833", I think Newman succeeded completely proving that those remaining in the Oxford Movement had no true home in the Church of England. He demonstrates to them that they will have no meaningful influence on the Church or the Nation, since the Church serves the Nation and the Nation rules the Church. Newman uses the recent history of the Gorham Judgment to show them this. Queen Victoria's Privy Council ruled that Baptism wasn't really a Sacrament after all and that a minister of the Church of England didn't really need to believe it was a Sacrament, effecting the grace of God it symbolized in the pouring of water and the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." Of course, members of the Movement of 1833 had been totally supportive of Bishop Philpott of Exeter not to ordain the Reverend George Cornelius Gorham and were disappointed in the Queen's Privy Council decision, because it meant the State ruled on a Church issue (the exact reason that Keble presented his sermon on the "National Apostasy" in 1833).

Newman probably convinced many that their position in the Church of England was tenuous: the Movement of 1833 was foreign to the Erastian Church of England; it was not derived from that National Church; it was not moving in the direction of the National Church which was moving in the direction of the Nation ("progressively"); they could not expect to remain a party, a branch, or a sect in the Church of England. So he concludes in the last lecture of this section:

Therefore, I say now,—as I have said years ago, when others have wished still to uphold their party, after their arguments had broken under them—Find out first of all where you stand, take your position, write down your creed, draw up your catechism. Tell me why you form your party, under what conditions, how long it is to last, what are your relations to the Establishment, and to the other branches (as you speak) of the Universal Church, how you stand relatively to Antiquity, what is Antiquity, whether you accept the Via Media, whether you are zealous for "Apostolical order," what is your rule of faith, how you prove it, and what are your doctrines. It is easy for a while to be doing merely what you do at present; to remain where you are, till it is proved to you that you must go; to refuse to say what you hold and what you do not, and to act only on the offensive; but you cannot do this for ever. The time is coming, or is come, when you must act in some way or other for yourselves, unless you would drift to some form of infidelity, or give up principle altogether, or believe or not believe by accident. The onus probandi will be on your side then. Now you are content to be negative and fragmentary in doctrine; you aim at nothing higher than smart articles in newspapers and magazines, at clever hits, spirited attacks, raillery, satire, skirmishing on posts of your own selecting; fastening on weak points, or what you think so, in Dissenters or Catholics; inventing ingenious retorts, evading dangerous questions; parading this or that isolated doctrine as essential, and praising this or that Catholic practice or Catholic saint, to make up for abuse, and to show your impartiality; and taking all along a high, eclectic, patronising, indifferent tone; this has been for some time past your line, and it will not suffice; it excites no respect, it creates no confidence, it inspires no hope.

And when, at length, you have one and all agreed upon your creed, and developed it doctrinally, morally, and polemically, then find for it some safe foundation, deeper and firmer than private judgment, which may ensure its transmission and continuance to generations to come. And, when you have done all this, then, last of all, persuade others and yourselves, that the foundation you have formed is surer and more trustworthy than that of Erastianism, on the one hand, and of immemorial and uninterrupted tradition, that is, of Catholicism, on the other.

Throughout this first part, Newman explores the impact of Erastianism, state control of the Church of England through laws enacted in Parliament and decisions made in the secular courts, and the impact of private judgment, each man or woman deciding what God teaches in the Holy Bible and in His Church--what Erastianism and private judgment mean for what the Movement of 1833 set out to defend. The Church of England, Newman tries to demonstrate to them, cannot be a Branch or a Via Media, of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ as long as it remains a National Church, following the path of the Nation, according to the private judgment of its citizens about what is wrong and what is right, how a Christian gains salvation and goes to Heaven, what the Church teaches, what the Bible means, etc. And the Movement of 1833 has no influence over that State control or that private judgment.

He has to contravene his own arguments in the 1830's and 40's to develop the theory of the Via Media, his own statements against the Catholic Church, his own efforts to establish the apostolicity, universality, holiness, and unity of the Church of England as a Branch Church in his Tracts for the Times!

As Newman presents these arguments to the remaining members of the Movement of 1833, he composes masterful passages, and I have highlighted, underlined, starred, asterisked, and commented on many pages of my book. Just a few examples.

On page 72 in Lecture II "The Movement of 1833 Foreign to the National Church":

Faith has one meaning to a Catholic, another to a Protestant. And life,—is it the religious "life" of England, or of Prussia, that he [Archdeacon Hare, whom Newman quoted in previous paragraphs] means, or is it Catholic life, that is, the life which belongs to Catholic principles? Else he will be arguing in a circle, if he is to prove that Protestants have that life, which manifests "the presence of the Spirit," on the ground of their having, as they are sure to have, a life congenial and in conformity to Protestant principles. If then "life" means strength, activity, energy, and well-being of any kind whatever, in that case doubtless the national religion is alive. It is a great power in the midst of us; it wields an enormous influence; it represses a hundred foes; it conducts a hundred undertakings. It attracts men to it, uses them, rewards them; it has thousands of beautiful homes up and down the country, where quiet men may do its work and benefit its people; it collects vast sums in the shape of voluntary offerings, and with them it builds churches, prints and distributes innumerable Bibles, books, and tracts and sustains missionaries in all parts of the earth. In all parts of the earth it opposes the Catholic Church, denounces her as antichristian, bribes the world against her, obstructs her influence, apes her authority, and confuses her evidence. In all parts of the world it is the religion of gentlemen, of scholars, of men of substance, and men of no personal faith at all. If this be life,—if it be life to impart a tone to the court and houses of parliament, to ministers of state, to law and literature, to universities and schools, and to society,—if it be life to be a principle of order in the population, and an organ of benevolence and almsgiving towards the poor,—if it be life to make men decent, respectable, and sensible, to embellish and refine the family circle, to deprive vice of its grossness, and to shed a gloss over avarice and ambition,—if indeed it is the life of religion to be the first jewel in the Queen's crown, and the highest step of her throne, then doubtless the National Church is replete, it overflows with life; but the question has still to be answered, Life of what kind? Heresy has its life, worldliness has its life. Is the Establishment's life merely national life, or is it something more? Is it Catholic life as well? Is it a supernatural life? Is it congenial with, does it proceed from, does it belong to, the principles of Apostles, Martyrs, Evangelists, and Doctors, the principles which the movement of 1833 thought to impose or to graft upon it, or does it revolt from them? If it be Catholic and Apostolic, it will endure Catholic and Apostolic principles; no one doubts it can endure Erastian; no one doubts it can be patient of Protestant; this is the problem which was started by the movement in question, the problem for which, surely, there has been an abundance of tests in the course of twenty years.

This quotation demonstrates how often and fairly Newman proposes the arguments of those who do want to remain in the Church of England and then identifies the weakness and flaws of their arguments: what good is lots of activity if it's based on bad ideas and principles?

From Lecture III, "The Life of the Movement of 1833 Not Derived from the National Church", pages 105 to 106:

You tell me, my brethren, that you have the clear evidence of the influences of grace in your hearts, by its effects sensible at the moment or permanent in the event. You tell me, that you have been converted from sin to holiness, or that you have received great support and comfort under trial, or that you have been carried over very special temptations, though you have not submitted yourselves to the Catholic Church. More than this, you tell me of the peace, and joy, and strength which you have experienced in your own ordinances. You tell me, that when you began to go weekly to communion you found yourselves wonderfully advanced in purity. You tell me that you went to confession, and you never will believe that the hand of God was not over you at the moment when you received absolution. You were ordained, and a fragrance breathed around you; you hung over the dead, and you all but saw the happy spirit of the departed. This is what you say, and the like of this; and I am not the person, my dear brethren, to quarrel with the truth of what you say. I am not the person to be jealous of such facts, nor to wish you to contradict your own memory and your own nature, nor am I so ungrateful to God's former mercies to myself, to have the heart to deny them in you. As to miracles, indeed, if such you mean, that of course is a matter which might lead to dispute; but if you merely mean to say that the supernatural grace of God, as shown either at the time or by consequent fruits, has overshadowed you at certain times, has been with you when you were taking part in the Anglican ordinances, I have no wish, and a Catholic has no anxiety, to deny it.

Why should I deny to your memory what is so pleasant in mine? Cannot I too look back on many years past, and many events, in which I myself experienced what is now your confidence? Can I forget the happy life I have led all my days, with no cares, no anxieties worth remembering; without desolateness, or fever of thought, or gloom of mind, or doubt of God's love to me and providence over me? Can I forget,—I never can forget,—the day when in my youth I first bound myself to the ministry of God in that old church of St. Frideswide, the patroness of Oxford? nor how I wept most abundant, and most sweet tears, when I thought what I then had become; though I looked on ordination as no sacramental rite, nor even to baptism ascribed any supernatural virtue? Can I wipe out from my memory, or wish to wipe out, those happy Sunday mornings, light or dark, year after year, when I celebrated your communion-rite, in my own church of St. Mary's; and in the pleasantness and joy of it heard nothing of the strife of tongues which surrounded its walls? . . .

What a magnificent and magnanimous appeal to shared feelings, demonstrating his empathy with them--while they know Newman is now a Catholic and cannot support their decision to remain in the Church of England. That last clause "and in the pleasantness and joy of it heard nothing of the strife of tongues which surrounded its walls?" is the warning that all those joys would be scorned by the Bishops, the Establishment, etc, outside the Oxford Movement. They won't find the kind of sympathy and empathy Newman offers them in their own Church.

He can be pretty tough on them too, as in this passage from Lecture V, "The Providential Course of the Movement of 1833 not in the Direction of a Party in the National Church", pages 188-191:

And now, my brethren, will it not be so, as I have said, of simple necessity, if you attempt at this time to perpetuate in the National Church a form of opinion which the National Church disowns? You do not follow its Bishops; you disown its existing traditions; you are discontented with its divines; you protest against its law courts; you shrink from its laity; you outstrip its Prayer Book. You have in all respects an eclectic or an original religion of our own. You dare not stand or fall by Andrewes, or by Laud, or by Hammond, or by Bull, or by Thorndike, or by all of them together. There is a consensus of divines, stronger than there is for Baptismal Regeneration or the Apostolical Succession, that Rome is, strictly and literally, an anti-Christian power:—Liberals and High Churchmen in your Communion in this agree with Evangelicals; you put it aside. There is a consensus against Transubstantiation, besides the declaration of the Article; yet many of you hold it notwithstanding. Nearly all your divines, if not all, call themselves Protestants, and you anathematize the name. Who makes the concessions to Catholics which you do, yet remains separate from them? Who, among Anglican authorities, would speak of Penance as a Sacrament, as you do? Who of them encourages, much less insists upon, auricular confession, as you? or makes fasting an obligation? or uses the crucifix and the rosary? or reserves the consecrated bread? or believes in miracles as existing in your communion? or administers, as I believe you do, Extreme Unction? In some points you prefer Rome, in others Greece, in others England, in others Scotland; and of that preference your own private judgment is the ultimate sanction.

What am I to say in answer to conduct so preposterous? Say you go by any authority whatever, and I shall know where to find you, and I shall respect you. Swear by any school of Religion, old or modern, by Ronge's Church, or the Evangelical Alliance, nay, by Yourselves, and I shall know what you mean, and will listen to you. But do not come to me with the latest fashion of opinion which the world has seen, and protest to me that it is the oldest. Do not come to me at this time of day with views palpably new, isolated, original, sui generis, warranted old neither by Christian nor unbeliever, and challenge me to answer what I really have not the patience to read. Life is not long enough for such trifles. Go elsewhere, not to me, if you wish to make a proselyte. Your inconsistency, my dear brethren, is on your very front.

 

I cannot nor should not cite every extraordinary passage; but Newman also demonstrates his mastery of Church history as when he describes the conflict between St. Ambrose of Milan and the Arian Empress Justina (pp. 82-84) or the protracted controversy between Henry II and St. Thomas Becket (pp. 211-214)--and he will further explore the history of the Arian controversy in the Part Two, "Difficulties in Accepting the Communion of Rome as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic".

I'll comment further on Newman's line of argument in Part Two in a second post on this marvelous book.

Erastianism and Marriage in the Church of England

The Church of England's official prayer book and liturgy contains this commentary on and definition of marriage and its purposes, as written in the Book of Common Prayer:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this Congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.

~First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.

~Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body.

~Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. Therefore if any man can shew any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.

But now, as Father Dwight Longenecker states, the British Parliament has redefined marriage, superceding the authority of the Church of England's doctrine and order. This is the crucial issue for the authority of the Church of England--the reason Pusey, Newman, and Keble started writing Tracts and preaching sermons in Oxford. Whence its authority to teach as Christ's Church--from Jesus or from the State? Who is Head of the Church of England: Jesus or the monarch? Does the Church of England lead the State and the national culture or does the State and the national culture lead the Church of England? Are the teachings and discipline of the Church determined by divine or Erastian authority, based on revelation or on political trends? Those were exactly the issues that inspired the Oxford Movement. As John Henry Newman worked to substantiate the via media of the Anglican Church with apostolic and catholic authority, he found himself unable to find solid ground; thus his conversion to Catholicism in 1845.

Does Parliament subsequently to the passage of this law direct the Church of England to rewrite the Book of Common Prayer and this scriptural explanation and definition of Matrimony (marriage) cited above? Does English society achieve the parity and equality it desires if the Church of England has two different services: one according to the biblical faith of the Book of Common Prayer as currently published and one according to Parliamentary definition of marriage as a commitment? It's an Erastian knot that's impossible to untie--unless the official ties between the Church and the State are cut?

HHS, Henry VIII and Recusancy

Even a contributor to The Wichita Eagle's opinion line has noticed the parallel: Like Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy, the Obama administration’s HHS mandate is an attempt to seize control of all Catholic institutions. But Catholics are only the beginning. If this decision stands, freedom of religion is dead in this country.

This article in The Catholic World Report makes the connection between the recent contraception mandate and the English Reformation, although Matthew Cullinan Hoffman focuses on Elizabeth I and recusancy:

Intentionally or not, the administration's policy smacks of the methods established by England's Queen Elizabeth against Catholic "recusants," who refused to participate in the worship services of the Anglican Church during the late 16th century. Although Elizabeth's regime, and those that followed for the next two hundred years, did not provide a penalty for Catholic belief as such, they found a simple and devastating way to coerce Catholics to violate their consciences: the recusancy fine, which was levied against those who absented themselves from Sunday Anglican worship or failed to receive communion once a year.

The fine, which began as a few shillings, was eventually raised to 20 pounds a month, a devastating penalty that few could afford. After being impoverished by such levies, family members would be thrown in jail for failing to pay, and sometimes expelled from the country. Only the wealthiest Catholic families, generally of the aristocracy, could avoid persecution by paying the fines and maintaining a Catholic existence in the privacy and secrecy of their estates.

Although it is far removed from the severity of Britain's old recusancy measures, Obama's policy bears an uncomfortable similarity to them. Catholics will not be directly forced to repudiate their moral principles, but some of their most important institutions will be fined handsomely for refusing to do so. For each employee not provided with contraceptive insurance coverage, a Catholic university, charity, or other institution will be required to pay the government $2,000 annually.

As under the old recusancy system, some larger and wealthier institutions might be able to sustain the financial burdens, but smaller ones will simply go bankrupt and be forced to fold, or will publicly violate their religious beliefs to remain in existence. The outcome will be painfully similar to that of other policies that impose morally offensive requirements on Catholics, such as requiring adoption agencies to give children to homosexuals. As a result of such measures, Catholic agencies in some states have been forced to close or have renounced their Catholic identity to continue operating.

As the publisher's blurb on the back of my book Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation so clearly states: "This book tells the story of the Catholic Church's survival and restoration in one land. It serves both as a lesson and a warning of the risks to faith and freedom when absolute power is given free reign."

UPDATE: PLEASE NOTE: I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday Morning, February 13 at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central to discuss the connections commentators are seeing between the HHS Mandate and what I call the "Tudor Mandates" (Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth I's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity). Listen live here.

Thomas Erastus Born

Thomas Erastus was born on September 7, 1524. The main reason his name comes up on a blog about the English Reformation is that the terms Erastian and Erastianism are derived from his name. Erastianism is the doctrine that the state is supreme over the church in ecclesiastical matters, and it is common to say that the relationship between the state and the established Church of England is Erastian. For the eastern Church, Caesaropapalism means the same thing: except that it centers the authority on the monarch, who adopts the role of the spiritual leader of his country as well as the temporal.

The Catholic Encyclopedia explains what Erastianism means for the Church in the context of the life and teaching of Thomas Lieber or Liebler of Baden Switzerland.

Henry VIII was really following the path of Byzantium, establishing England as an empire and himself as the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church as well as the King of England and Ireland, claiming total control of his empire. He was a Caesar-Pope, and the Convocation of Bishops's attempt to limit his power ("as far as the law of Christ allows") failed utterly. Edward VI did not live long enough to claim the title, and Mary I wanted rid of it as soon as possible! Elizabeth I, though she lost the "Governor" part of the title, still controlled the compromise of the via media, the selection of bishops, and other matters of discipline and reform.

The Church of England, as I commented in Supremacy and Survival was really under Parliament's thumb in the nineteenth century--that's what inspired the Oxford Movement. Church and State were so close that Thomas Arnold of the famed Rugby School thought that government officials were as able as ordained ministers to perform religious services, in his attempt to reduce the differences between ministers and laity he derided as "priestcraft". Parliament's decision to close down certain Anglican dioceses in Ireland precipitated the leaders of the movement to protest against the "National Apostacy" of treating the church like it was just a part of the secular government. Keble and the early Oxford Movement's argument for revival of the Church of England meant that the state control of the Church had to end: the Church should not be established by or based upon the State at all. For it to be part of the True Church--a branch of it, at least--its foundation had to be Jesus Christ and the Apostles he founded His Church upon. The bishops of the Church of England, if they were to have any true spiritual authority, had to be successors of the apostles, not officials of the House of Lords.

As I commented earlier this year, the UK Parliament flexed its Erastian muscles over the issue of ordaining women bishops--just make the Church of England follow government anti-discrimination laws and put an end to the debate in the Church over the issue. Among the three parties of the Church of England (the High, Broad, and Low), the Broad Church, exemplified by Thomas Arnold, Charles Kingsley, and others, would most favor the modern Erastian goals cited by the effort above. More in favor of liberal reform and less concerned about definitions of doctrine, they would favor the State leading the Church into enlightenment and toleration (not that they'd tolerate any dissent from that enlightenment!)

So, Happy Birthday, Thomas (Lieber) Erastus! I guess.