Newman and the Poor of Littlemore

Sister Mary-Birgit Dechant, F.S.O. writes about how as the Anglican Vicar of St. Mary's the Virgin in Oxford, John Henry Newman also addressed the needs the people of Littlemore. She includes details about how his mother and sisters helped him:

In 1830, his mother, also called Jemima, and his two surviving sisters, Harriett and Jemima, moved to Rose Hill, close to Littlemore. They were happy to be near John Henry. They soon got involved in the various parish duties at Littlemore. Newman had a set of rooms in their house and it served as a kind of vicarage for Littlemore. His sisters gathered the children of Littlemore and ran a rudimentary school. They and their mother visited the sick and elderly. . . .

John Henry's brother Frank, sounding a little like either a Jane Austen character or Judas complaining about the expensive nard used to anoint Jesus, commented that it might be too expensive for their mother and sister to maintain a house and servants in Littlemore. Newman answered him that he needed their help and it was better for them to be able to help the poor in Littlemore than to do all the housework. Sister Dechant continues:

One thing was certain: the people of Littlemore were very grateful for all the Newman family did for them. Forty years later, Anne Mozley, Newman’s sister-in-law, found the memory of both the rector and his family alive in the parish. In 1875, she related to his sister Jemima that one parishioner (Martha K.), “still sees you and Harriett in green silk cloaks, in which you looked so nice. You were her ideals of goodness and taste. It had been an honour for her to help in the kitchen at Rose Bank (to which the family had moved from Rose Hill). [...] Also she was of Newman’s mother’s class, has most devoted recollections of her kindness to people, knows still her taste in needlework, and how particular she was.” 9 On one occasion Mrs. Newman, glad that there were so many candidates for Confirmation, rejoiced in “seeds of promise sown by yourself”. Summing up she wrote: “everyone is very grateful and I do hope the people are something better and happier than they were some time ago.”10 

They also helped him build a church in Littlemore:

In April 1835, Newman’s sisters collected signatures for a petition to Oriel College to build a church: practically all the inhabitants of Littlemore signed it.11 This time the request met with approval. With joy, Newman wrote to his friend Henry Wilberforce, “I am building a chapel at Littlemore. If you know any rich man furnished with ability, I have no objection to be indebted to him. I hope to do it for £500 or £600. The College give ground and £100. Population 470. I want it to hold 200.” 12 Mrs. Newman had the honour of laying the foundation stone of the church on 21st July 1835. In her diary, she wrote, “A gratifying day. I laid the first stone of the church at Littlemore. The whole village there … J.H. a nice address.”13 She calls the occasion “that day of triumph.” Sadly, she died suddenly on 17th May 1836. Newman commemorated her in the new church with a memorial plaque made by his good friend Richard Westmacott.  

Read the rest there.

Newman: Docentium at the Spiritual Life Center

Our diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Advance, features a story (page 11) about my presentation on Thursday, August 18 as part of the Spiritual Life Center's monthly Docentium series. The title is: "Blessed John Henry Newman: Faith, Family, and Friends":

When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Newman in September 2010, local author Stephanie A. Mann says, “Something changed about the way Catholics should view this great nineteenth century writer and intellectual. Blessed John Henry Newman is an intercessor and a heavenly patron now, not just an academic interest and research project.”

In the decades after his death in the late nineteenth, his Cause for Canonization moved slowly, Mann notes, but one reason some Catholics believed Newman should be canonized was his influence on others to become Catholic , both in his lifetime and for more than a century after his death. “Some even thought those conversions should be considered the miracles needed for his canonization,” Mann commented.

While Newman has had tremendous influence among converts, his own family rejected Catholicism entirely, and his brothers might even be said to have rejected orthodox, Trinitarian Christianity, in spite of his efforts. His equals in the Oxford Movement, E.B. Pusey and John Keble, didn’t follow his example but remained Anglicans.

Why did someone so persuasive fail within his own close family and friends? What does Newman’s failure mean for those of us whose family and friends have fallen away from Jesus and His Church?

Stephanie A. Mann will explore this aspect of Newman’s life and legacy as part of the Docentium series at the Spiritual Life Center on Thursday, August 18. “Blessed John Henry Newman is a model for us of how to follow Jesus and to reach out to others to follow Him too, despite the cost, difficulty, or failure,” Mann concluded.

Contact the Spiritual Life Center at 316.744.0167 or register online to attend. The Docentium format includes a brief social gathering, buffet dinner, and presentation.

Blessed John Henry Newman

I am nearly finished reading Edward Short's Newman and His Family and have found it remarkably insightful. To think that the leading Anglican, then Catholic religious intellectual of his age would have had so little influence on his family's religious life is astounding. His two brothers would not even follow him so far as having faith in common Christian truths like the divinity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate, suffering, risen Savior of the world, and his sisters surely could not follow him into the "one fold of the Redeemer" as he called the Catholic Church. Short demonstrates how Newman's family (his father John, mother Jemima, brothers Frank and Charles, sisters Harriett, Jemima, and Mary) all influenced him in different ways--and he certainly influenced them, but not in religious matters to the extent that they would even accept or countenance his conversion to Catholicism, much less that they would become Catholic!

If he did not influence his family to accept Christian doctrine and the Catholic Church, he has influenced many hundreds of people in his own time and ours. Since his beatification in 2010, you can see his influence spreading even more widely, especially since he was chosen as the spiritual patron of the Anglican Ordinariate--he is the patron saint of Anglican converts to Catholicism. Here are just two examples:

The Fellowship of Blessed John Henry Newman:

The Fellowship of Blessed John Henry Newman was founded in September, 2011 when a majority of the members of the Episcopal Church of The Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, under the leadership of the Rt. Rev. Dr. David L. Moyer, Rector of Good Shepherd from 1989 to 2011, gathered for Mass to mark a new beginning free from the disorder of the Episcopal Church.

We chose to continue as an Anglo-Catholic fellowship with Cardinal Newman as our Patron because he was a man who, from deep prayer and concentrated study, made a hard and costly journey from the Church of England to the Catholic Church in the mid 19th century. We identify with him because we too, as a former parish and as a present fellowship, have been on that path, making that journey.

We are people who have been led by God to spend years witnessing to “the faith once delivered to the saints,” and who have striven to “speak the truth in love” to the leaders of the Episcopal Church, whom we saw as being increasingly led by the spirit of the age, rather than being rooted in the revealed religion of historic Christianity and its sacred Tradition. This was a grave concern to us and for our children, and our children’s children.

The Fellowship of Blessed John Henry Newman has been founded as a community of Anglo-Catholic Christians who live in hope that their corporate vocation will ultimately be as part of the Personal Ordinariate of the Catholic Church.

It seems to me that the Fellowship is like Newman and his friends gathered in Littlemore at the College, praying and preparing for their future as Catholics!

And the Ordinariate parish in Orange County California, Blessed John Henry Newman Catholic Church:

Our future as a parish in Orange County revolves around two aspects: creating an Anglican Catholic community that nurtures, preserves, and grows our patrimony - which is ultimately the people - to help us on our way to heaven; and the second aspect is participating in the unity of Christians which Our Lord commanded (cf. St. John xvii). These are really two sides of the same coin. Our position as Anglicans in full communion with the Mother Church, who see Anglicanorum coetibus as the way for Anglicans to achieve the corporate unity our forefathers have longed sought, provides Bl. John's with a unique standpoint and capacity to participate in ecumenism in the Orange County area, both on a corporate level and to reach individuals. This necessarily requires Bl. John's to evangelize Orange County with the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ through his Church here on earth. Our committment to the Catholic faith and the Anglican patrimony leads us to not only reach out to other Anglicans and Episcopalians in our area, but also to Protestant Christians and to non-Christians.

Our intention is grow spiritually and numerically, and as we grow, invest time, energy, talent and finances into the lives of parishioners and the community around us. Not only do we hope and pray for a physical location of our own one day, but also we hope to develop one of the finest musical programs in Orange County. We take very seriously the adage attributed to St. Augustine, “To sing is to pray twice." Likewise we hope to develop a Catholic school in the Anglican tradition using Scripture, Tradition and Reason to form students in the classical tradition in the best of Western Civilization. These hopes for Bl. John's in the future arise from our patron, Blessed John Henry Newman, who himself desired this to be how parish churches should be modeled.

So this parish is like Newman and his friends, established at the Oratory, teaching, worshipping, and working in Birmingham!

Like so many others with special devotion to Blessed John Henry Newman, I pray for the day he is raised to altars as a canonized saint, this feast day is on the Roman Calendar, and Catholic parishes, both Anglican Rite and Roman Rite, may be dedicated to his name:

Prayer for Canonization

Eternal Father, You led John Henry Newman to follow the kindly light of Truth, and he obediently responded to your heavenly calls at any cost. As writer, preacher, counselor and educator, as pastor, Oratorian, and servant of the poor he labored to build up your Kingdom.

Grant that through your Vicar on Earth we may hear the words, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the company of the canonized saints'.

May you manifest your Servant's power of intercession by even extraordinary answers to the prayers of the faithful throughout the world. We pray particularly for our intentions in his name and in the name of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.

Amen.

UPDATE: Choral Vespers from Westminster Cathedral will be broadcast tonight on BBC 3! We'll be able to listen to the recording of the broadcast for a week at that site. According to The New Liturgical Movement, the musical selections are:

Introit: Tout puissant (Poulenc)
Hymn: Iste confessor (Plainsong)
Psalms 14, 111 (Plainsong)
Canticle: Magna et mirabilia (Plainsong)
Responsory: Iustus Dominus (Plainsong)
Magnificat for Double Chorus, Op.164 (Stanford)
Motet: Iustorum animæ (Stanford)
Antiphon: Salve Regina (Poulenc)
Organ Voluntary: Præludium in E minor (Bruhns)

Edward Short's Newman Trilogy

Edward Short sent me this link to the T&T Clark blog about a presentation he'll be making in London this September and more information about his Newman Trilogy: Newman and His Contemporaries; Newman and His Family; and Newman and His Critics:

Edward Short on Newman and his Family, the 2nd volume in his trilogy on John Henry Newman

 

Edward Short will be delivering a talk intitled Newman and the Idea of Sanctity on the 5th of September, 8pm at St Wilfrid's Hall, The London Oratory, UK. Below he speaks about his second book in his trilogy on Cardinal Newman.

 

“Newman and his Family is the second volume in my trilogy about the great priest, poet, satirist, novelist, educator, philosopher and theologian, John Henry Newman. If in the trilogy’s first volume, Newman and his Contemporaries, I looked at Newman and his friendships with Edward Pusey, John Keble, Emily Bowles, William Froude, and Lady Georgiana Fullerton, as well as his influence on such prominent Victorian figures as Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Arthur Hugh Clough and Richard Holt Hutton, in my second book I look at Newman’s relationships with his immediate family.

 

These were close and complex relationships, and they were instrumental in shaping how Newman viewed not only English society in its social, intellectual, religious and moral aspects but himself and his evolving Christian faith as well. Accordingly, there are chapters on each of the parents and each of his five siblings, Charles, Frank, Harriet, Jemima and Mary. There is also a chapter on his nephew, John Rickards Mozley, with whom Newman entered into a fascinating exchange of letters in 1875. Mozley inherited something of the scepticism of late Victorian Cambridge, with, however, nagging reservations, and I discuss how in many ways he resembles other uneasy sceptics of that age—Henry Sidgwick most particularly. Then, again, I discuss how Mozley and Sidgwick corroborated Newman’s sense of the diffidence of doubt, which only strengthened his appreciation for the appeal of faith, even for those most dubious about the grounds for faith.

 

These are some of the intellectual and philosophical aspects of Newman’s familial relationships but in some of the other chapters, particularly those on Mary, Jemima, Harriett and Frank Newman I try to share with readers the deep love that Newman felt for his family, which, despite many trials, never wavered. In writing his mother from Lyons on his way back from the Mediterranean in July, 1833, Newman confessed how “The thought of home has brought tears in my eyes for the last two months.” The interrelated themes of home and love suffuse my book. So many of the differences that Newman experienced with his family and indeed with his contemporaries, especially after his conversion, arose as a result of conflicting ideas of home. And this, in turn, caused so much thwarted love! My book, then, as anyone familiar with the joys and sorrows of family life can see, is, in essence, a work of family history.  

 

Then he previews the third book that he's working on now:

 

Now I am at work on the third book of the trilogy, which is entitled Newman and his Critics. In this final volume, I show what an enormous debt Newsman owed his critics. After all, they forced him to defend himself, to defend his various positions on faith and reason, orthodoxy and liberalism, belief and unbelief. They put him on his mettle. Consequently, one of the underlying contentions of this final book of the trilogy is that if Newman had not done battle with so many of his contemporaries--in most cases, affable, charitable, constructive battle—he would never have become the great defender of the faith that he became. It was precisely because he spent so much time addressing those who did not share his faith—and among those we must number many in his own family—that Newman became such a compelling apologist.

 

The critics in my upcoming book include such lively, combative figures as Charles Kingsley and Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, as well as such former disciples as Mark Pattison and Anthony Froude. What is striking about these figures is how they hearken back to Newman’s brothers, Charles and Frank, who would never suffer their brilliant brother to persuade them of the tenability of faith, certainly not the Roman Catholic faith. In all three books, I have endeavored to show my readers that it is only by putting Newman in his immediate context, with his family and his contemporaries and his critics that we can begin to understand the full caritas and genius of the man.” 

 

I certainly look forward to seeing my review copy of Newman and His Family!