Dawson on Victiorians and Catholicism

After posting on the History Today book review yesterday, I found this essay by Christopher Dawson on ENGLISH CATHOLICISM AND VICTORIAN LIBERALISM in the EWTN Library:

The hundred years that have elapsed since the restoration of the English Hierarchy [in 1850] have been a time of slow but uninterrupted progress for English Catholicism [Dawson thus was writing in 1950]. There have been no spectacular triumphs and no catastrophic defeats, but step by step the Church has been gradually recovering her lost position in the life of the nation. And this is no small achievement when one considers how completely the face of the world has changed during the last century: how the old European order and the new liberal order that aspired to take its place have both alike been swept away by new forces that were hardly perceptible in 1850, so that Europe itself and the millennial tradition of Western civilization are now in process of dissolution.

In 1850 English Liberalism, having surmounted the crisis of Chartism, was settling down to enjoy the fruits of the new order that it had created. The collapse of the old regime on the Continent in 1848 and the failure of the revolutionary movements to establish a stable democratic order had combined to strengthen the prestige of English institutions and ideals, not only in our own eyes but in those of Europe. Consequently, it is not surprising that the restoration of the Hierarchy and the reappearance of Catholicism as a living power in nineteenth-century England should have been regarded as a challenge to the spirit of the age, an act of "papal aggression." For the liberal rationalist and the conservative Protestant alike, the Papacy seemed the embodiment of those forces of reaction against which the modern world was in revolt.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 marked the final achievement of the Victorian compromise in which all the leading elements of English society found their place. High Tories like the Duke of Wellington, cosmopolitan pacifists like John Bright, Christian idealists and scientific rationalists, artisans and capitalists, all came together under the leadership of the Queen and the Prince Consort to celebrate the triumphs of science and industry and the dawn of a new era of universal peace and enlightenment. But there was no place for the English Catholics in this festival of national and international unity. The unpopularity of the Oxford conversions combined with that of Irish Nationalism and that of the Papal Government caused Catholics to be regarded with hostility and suspicion by Liberals and Conservatives alike. In their attitude to Catholicism there was nothing to choose between Liberals like Lord John Russell and Tory extremists of the type of Newdegate and Sir Robert Inglis.

Yet in spite of all this, the deeper intellectual tendencies of the age were far less hostile to Catholicism than one would suppose from the expression of popular opinion in Press and parliament. The great writers of the Victorian age, such as Carlyle and Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, were as a rule highly critical of the optimism and selfcomplacency of Victorian liberalism.

Dawson goes on to cite cultural influences like the Romantic and Victorian interest in the Middle Ages, and of course the rise of Catholic intellectual converts like Newman and Manning.

But even as he comments on this rise and influence of Catholics in English Society, Dawson notes that it proceeded along the lines of Victorian liberalism and secularization:

Yet throughout this period the secularization of English culture has proceeded almost without a check, so that our position today is no longer that of a Catholic minority in a Protestant society, but that of a religious minority in a secular or neo-pagan civilization. We have become so accustomed to this change that we are apt to forget its tremendous implications. During the last hundred years English Catholicism has developed under the protection ofthe Victorian compromise. We have accepted the Victorian principles of individual freedom, religious toleration and the limited character of the State as elementary conditions of existence which hardly needed to be defended. But, in proportion as civilization becomes secularized, all these principles and rights lose their political expression in totalitarian States.

Dawson's argument reminds me of Russell Shaw's American Church and recalls Owen Chadwick's classic study of the rise of secularism in the nineteenth century. The Catholic Church in both the United States and in Britain accepted the values of the modern democratic state as the means of increasing influence and effectiveness. The great pitfall of this process is that those values wane as secularism waxes:

Today all the basic liberties which were formerly regarded as essential conditions of modern civilization are everywhere questioned and often completely abolished, and the new secularist ideologies are establishing themselves as exclusive dogmatic anti-religions which demand the total surrender of the mind and will. It is true that this country is still relatively immune. A feeble gas-jet of freedom still flickers in the dilapidated Victorian basement. But it is obvious that English Catholicism cannot rely on the continuance of the conditions which prevailed during the first century of its restored existence. Sooner or later it must come up against the same forces that prevail in the rest of the world. No doubt this will involve great changes in our apologetic, which, like so much else, is an inheritance from the Victorian age, and which has been dominated for a century by the long- drawn-out controversy with Anglicanism. Today these familiar controversies are overshadowed by the world debate between Christianity and atheism, and we have to deal not with the validity of Anglican orders but with the existence of the human soul and the ultimate foundations of the moral order.

The ever prophetic Christoper Dawson!!

Meta-Meta-Meta History: Current Views of Victorian Views of English History

History Today features this review of a book looking at how the Victorians looked at English history; thus it's a meta-meta-meta history. Our view of how the Victorians interpreted English history:

Victorians saw themselves as moral and progressive. They frequently referred to the brutal history that had preceded them. The more benighted the past, the better they seemed. Thus, as Andrew Sanders explains, a great deal of British history before the 18th century was popularly characterised as being ‘little more than a series of judicial executions and violent or untimely deaths. The sad stories of the death of kings were retold with relish and the sword, the axe, the assassin’s dagger and the poisoned cup became a stock in trade of history painting’.

The beautifully titled painting Queen Elizabeth Discovers She is No Longer Young by Augustus Egg is typical of the way Elizabeth, with her capricious ways and refusal to do the womanly thing, to marry and procreate, was contrasted with the Victorians’ own dear queen. The 1848 picture shows a haggard, hook-nosed Elizabeth grumpily averting her eyes from a looking-glass in front of a group of fawning courtiers.

In contrast Queen Victoria holds Prince Arthur in her plump arms to receive a jewelled box from the elderly hero, the Duke of Wellington, while that symbol of magnificence, the Crystal Palace, glimmers in the distance in Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s painting The First of May 1851.

Sanders, a Dickens expert and emeritus professor of English at Durham, builds on the work of Roy Strong’s And When Did You Last See Your Father? The Victorian Painter and British History (1978). Sanders’ contribution is to explore the literary nature of Victorian history to reveal how painters were indebted to written record. Literary figures, moreover, not only wrote that record, they became part of it. In the 1840s Thomas Carlyle had identified the literary man as a new breed of hero. Henry Wallis’ 1856 painting of the teenaged suicide Thomas Chatterton was a new kind of history painting. Saunders suggests the image represented to the Victorians both the 18th-century’s neglect of the man of letters and, correspondingly, their own enlightened approach, as they were prepared to commemorate him.

Jad Adams does not mention in his review how Sanders recounts the Victorian view of the English Reformation, but according to the publisher, Yale University Press, Sanders focuses on Pugin and Cobbett:

In this richly textured and wide-ranging survey of Victorian attitudes to the past, Andrew Sanders builds on Roy Strong’s groundbreaking book And when did you last see your father?: The Victorian Painter and British History (1978). Sanders explores the essentially literary nature of Victorian history writing, and he reveals the degree to which painters were indebted to written records both fictional and factual. Starting with a stimulating comparison of Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, In the Olden Time examines works by poets and painters, essayists and dramatists, architects and musicians, including Jane Austen, John Donne, William Shakespeare, and John Soane. Together with a study of religious history as seen through the eyes of architect and critic Augustus Pugin and journalist William Cobbett, this book offers an original view of Victorian responses to British history, presenting a fresh investigation of unexpected Victorian attitudes and the establishment of particular 20th-century prejudices and bias.

I would think that James Anthony Froude would be represented as the mainstream of Victorian attitudes to the English Reformation in historical prose, but Sanders' emphasis on historical views of the past seen through the arts and literature looks as fascinating as an examination of Victorian historiography would be--perhaps even more so. The whole genre of historical painting appears to be a great subject for exploration. Think of the effect of Delarouche's painting of Lady Jane Grey on the scaffold and how it influenced the common views of her as an innocent victim and object of pity.

Blessed Richard Hurst, Executed on the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist

This martyr, a farmer with a family, was a public recusant in Lancashire. He was executed on August 29 in 1628 after a rigged trial.

According to this blog:

A CONVICTED recusant, he was ploughing his field when one Dewhurst came to serve him with a warrant. Herst fled, and Dewhurst, following in pursuit, received a blow from Herst's maid, and afterwards in the heat of the pursuit fell and broke his leg. From that wound in the leg he died, yet Herst, who had never been within thirty yards of him, was charged with his death. Herst's pardon was offered him if he would take the oath, but he refused, and he declined also to go to church, so he was trailed there by his legs and much hurt. In the church he stopped his ears, not to hear false doctrine, and, on returning, said, "They have tortured my body, but, thank God, they have not hurt my soul." At his trial at Lancaster, though his innocence of Dewhurst's death was evident, the judge told the jury that he was a recusant, had resisted the Bishop's authority, and that they must find it murder for an example, which was done. At the gallows he said to the hangman, who was bungling with the rope, "Tom, I think I must come and help you." Then, after repeating the holy names of Jesus and Mary, he passed to immortality, Lancaster, August 29.

He corresponded with his confessor while in prison awaiting his execution:

THIS is his last letter to his confessor when about to suffer : "Now I take my last leave; now I am dying, and am as willing to die as ever I was to live, I thank my Lord and Saviour, who I trust will never fail me. I have comfort in Christ Jesus and His Blessed Mother, my good angel, and all the blessed Saints, and in the valiant and triumphant martyr, B. Arrowsmith, who is gone before me. How I have been used you will hear, and likewise what I had offered me if I would have taken the oath. I hope my friends will truly understand that my greatest desire is to suffer, and I would I had as many lives to offer as I have committed sins. Now, dear Sir, prepare yourself also to suffer, and animate your ghostly children in suffering. Once again, I desire you to say and to procure some Masses for my sinful soul, and if it please God to receive me into His kingdom, I shall not be unmindful of you and of all my good friends. I pray you remember my poor children, and encourage my friends about my debts which my chief worldly care is to satisfy. Once again, adieu. I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ Jesus."

The B. Arrowsmith he refers to is, of course, St. Edmund (Bryan) Arrowsmith, SJ who had been executed the day before.

According to this blog, Blessed Richard Hurst reflected on the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist before his execution:

He kissed the gallows on reaching the place of execution, and disregarding the ministers present, recommended himself to God, and begged the prayers of the Blessed Virgin, his angel guardian, and all the saints, especially St. John the Baptist, it being the day of his decollation. Ascending the ladder, he repeated the names of Jesus and Mary, and so was put to death.


More on the Lancashire Martyrs here.

George Sand, Chopin, and St. Augustine and St. Monica

On a previous visit to Paris, I visited the Nouvelle Athenes area, starting with Église de la Sainte-Trinité in the 9th arrondisement, La Musee de la vie romantique, and the Passages or walk through shopping streets near Boulevard Montmartre.

When I entered Sainte-Trinite (Holy Trinity), the Blessed Sacrament was exposed on the Altar in huge monstrance with a sun burst design. I was there just in time for Benediction, and the priest struggled mightily to make the Sign of the Cross and bless us. The park in front the church was quiet that morning, but when I took my husband to see Sainte-Trinite later one day, the lawns were covered with picnickers and others relaxing--just before a sudden rain storm. Then everyone dispersed and we ran in to the church. In fact, when we visited Sainte-Trinite during our last trip, it started raining just as we left one of the busy cafes near the Trinite Metro stop, and interesting coincidence.

But during my tour, I left Sainte-Trinite in search of La Musee de la vie romantique, quite a way off the tourist route, and arrived before it opened. So I walked a little further down Rue Chaptal to find a tabac or brasserie for a cup of coffee.

La Musee de la vie romantique combines memories of George Sand and Frederic Chopin and the works of Ary Sheffer--and thus the connection to St. Augustine, whose feast we celebrate today, and his mother, St. Monica, whose feast we celebrated yesterday through the painting depicted above. The painting shows the two saints in that ecstasy St. Augustine describes in the tenth chapter of book nine in the Confesssions:

23. As the day now approached on which she was to depart this life -- a day which thou knewest, but which we did not -- it happened (though I believe it was by thy secret ways arranged) that she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window from which the garden of the house we occupied at Ostia could be seen. Here in this place, removed from the crowd, we were resting ourselves for the voyage after the fatigues of a long journey.

We were conversing alone very pleasantly and "forgetting those things which are past, and reaching forward toward those things which are future."[293] We were in the present -- and in the presence of Truth (which thou art) -- discussing together what is the nature of the eternal life of the saints: which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man.[294] We opened wide the mouth of our heart, thirsting for those supernal streams of thy fountain, "the fountain of life" which is with thee,[295] that we might be sprinkled with its waters according to our capacity and might in some measure weigh the truth of so profound a mystery.

24. And when our conversation had brought us to the point where the very highest of physical sense and the most intense illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with the sweetness of that life to come, not worthy of comparison, nor even of mention, we lifted ourselves with a more ardent love toward the Selfsame,[296] and we gradually passed through all the levels of bodily objects, and even through the heaven itself, where the sun and moon and stars shine on the earth. Indeed, we soared higher yet by an inner musing, speaking and marveling at thy works.

And we came at last to our own minds and went beyond them, that we might climb as high as that region of unfailing plenty where thou feedest Israel forever with the food of truth, where life is that Wisdom by whom all things are made, both which have been and which are to be. Wisdom is not made, but is as she has been and forever shall be; for "to have been" and "to be hereafter" do not apply to her, but only "to be," because she is eternal and "to have been" and "to be hereafter" are not eternal.

And while we were thus speaking and straining after her, we just barely touched her with the whole effort of our hearts. Then with a sigh, leaving the first fruits of the Spirit bound to that ecstasy, we returned to the sounds of our own tongue, where the spoken word had both beginning and end.[297] But what is like to thy Word, our Lord, who remaineth in himself without becoming old, and "makes all things new"[298]?

Before visiting the Passages Jouffroy, des Panoramas, and the Galerie Vivienne, I stopped in Notre Dame de Lorette to close the triangle of Nouvelle Athenes in Paris.

All the Graces of Oxford and Cambridge!

When I attended The Oxford Experience several years ago, I noticed they maintained a tradition of saying a very Christian grace before the more formal meals, with the High Table and the Final Banquet:

The Christ Church Grace

At Oxford Experience High Table Dinners and Final Dinners the shorter version of the Christ Church Latin Grace is read:

Nos, miseri homines et egeni, pro cibis, quos nobis ad corporis subsidium benigne es largitus, tibi, Deus Omnipotens, Pater Cælestis, gratias reverenter agimus; simul obsecrantes, ut iis sobrie, modeste atque grate utamur, per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum, Amen.

Here is the translation:

We unhappy and unworthy people do give thee most reverent thanks, almighty God, our heavenly Father, for the victuals which thou hast bestowed on us for the sustenance of the body, at the same time beseeching thee that we may use them soberly, modestly and gratefully. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

This even though the participants had many different--or no--faith backgrounds.

The full grace of Christ Church is surely in this book:

The custom of formal dining at Oxford and Cambridge dates back to the earliest days of college life. Before each dinner, according to ancient statutes, grace must be said in Latin, and, although the text and nature of grace for each college has changed over the years, the tradition itself remains current to this day.

Following a historical introduction, The College Graces of Oxford and Cambridge reproduces in chronological order the full Latin texts of all the graces alongside facing English-language translations. Also included are the special graces reserved for feast days, as well as an explanation of some of the traditions that accompany them, including the trumpeters that summon students to dinner to the use of the Sconce Cup and the Rose Bowl.

From the twelfth-century monastic texts and the two-word graces of the nineteenth century to the new graces written for the modern age, this meticulous collection reveals how the tradition of the Latin grace has survived and evolved over the centuries and offers a rare glimpse inside the private halls of Oxford and Cambridge.

The University of Chicago Press is distributing the book for the Bodleian Library.

Of course, one reason such a prayer before meals creates no opposition is that no one knows what the Latin means! Queens College at Cambridge provides a special page just for those students who don't know Latin. However, in 2009, one college at Cambridge gave up its tradition of Latin grace, according to this story in The Telegraph.

Blessed John Henry Newman and Blessed Dominic Barberi

 

Today (in England) is the memorial of Blessed Dominic Barberi, probably best known as the Italian missionary priest who received Blessed John Henry Newman into the "one true fold of Christ" as Newman always said, on October 9, 1845. This essay, written by Fr. Adolfo Lippi for The International Centre of Newman Friends, describes the circumstances of that event:

“Dalgarins (sic) invited a certain Fr. Dominic of the Mother of God, a Provincial of the Passionists, to go to Aston Hall in Littlemore, telling him that he was being called to a work in the service of God: and unwittingly, he agreed. He was always conscious that every delay could possibly result in some great harm to the office to which he called. However because of a terrible storm he set out in a covered coach. He endured five hours of driving rain and, as it so pleased God, completely exhausted he arrived at Littlemore at night. Without delay he entered in the solitary dwelling of those fervent men who were famous throughout England, and with great humility Newman fell at his feet, telling him that he would not move from there until he was blessed and received into the Church of Jesus Christ.”

Father Lippi goes deeper into the connections between the Passionists and Newman, however, including Father Ignatius (George) Spencer:

There is another Passionist, who undoubtedly moved Newman’s spirit: George Spencer, the Anglican pastor of a noble family (the same as Lady Diana) who had already entered the Catholic Church in 1830. He had met Barberi in Rome and was certainly influenced by him who had preached a crusade throughout Europe for the return of England to the Catholic Church. Years later Leo XIII spoke about St. Paul of the Cross and meetings that the Pope had with George Spencer, who became Fr. Ignatius of the Heart of Jesus, at the nunciature in Brussels. George Spencer became a Passionist in 1846, two years before Newman published his novel [Loss and Gain]. . . .

The novel Loss and Gain was written by Newman after his conversion. Undoubtedly Newman was thinking about Spencer when Charles, the protagonist of the novel, meets his friend Willis who had become a Catholic before him and had become a Passionist with the name of Fr. Aloysius. There is a phrase, inspired by St. Augustine, which reveals some of the admiration of Newman for Spencer and, at the same time, conceals it. Precisely on the last page of the novel, Charles, the protagonist, says to his friend Willis who had become a Passionist, that he admired the first fervor of the new convert: “No, Willis…you have taken the better part betimes, while I have loitered. Too late have I known Thee, O Thou ancient Truth; too late have I found Thee, First and only Fair.”

And Father Lippi goes on to cite three quotations from Blessed John Henry Newman about his first confessor in the Catholic Church. Read rest here. More details about Blessed Dominic Barberi from a previous post on this blog here. The photo of the ex voto from three English converts, referring to George Spencer, is from Notre Dame des Victoires in Paris.

This Week's Reading Assignment

 

 

I'm almost to Italy in this book by Jo Anne Cammarata Sylva from Newman House Press--by that I mean that John Henry Newman is discussing that essential Mediterranean journey with Richard Hurrell Froude. Of course, Italy, including his visits to Rome and Sicily on that trip in 1833 are important sign posts on Newman's way to the Catholic Church. He would return to Rome as a seminarian preparing for the Catholic priesthood after his conversion in 1846, and then briefly on Oratory business in  1856, and finally in 1879 when he received his cardinal's hat. Sister and Dr. Brigitte Maria Hoegemann FSO wrote about Blessed John Henry Newman's visits to Rome particulary in the June 2008 Newsletter of the International Centre of Newman Friends:

 

Long before the Anglo-Catholic Oxford don actually saw the city, its name must have resonated with John Henry Newman, evoking not just images of the ancient city, kingdom, republic and empire, its history of three thousand years, its rise and the fall, but also its huge claim to power and its unique culture of antiquity both pagan and Christian. Rome was not only a subject of special interest to the young Oxford student, but also the visible centre of the Catholic Church from the time of the apostles. Yet the don still had the conviction, learned as a boy at Ealing, that the Christian faith in Rome had over time become so corrupt as to be the work of Antichrist. The mere name of the city aroused in Newman notions, emotions and convictions both happy and painful. He describes an Anglican looking down on the city, who remarked: “the Christian can never survey (it) without the bitterest, the most loving and the most melancholy thoughts.”[1]

 

In the course of time and his personal development, Newman’s attitude to Rome became simpler and more distinct. He visited the eternal city four times, in the early third, fourth, fifth and late seventh decade of his life. These are used as biographical stepping-stones to trace something of what “Rome” meant in Newman’s life, pointing out some of the main changes in his attitude to the city and the Church. When he visited Rome for the first time, in the spring of 1833, invited by friends to accompany them on a long voyage to Southern Europe, he was a young Oxford scholar, an already famous don of Oriel College, an ordained minister of the Church of England, whose preaching and teaching were influenced by his studies of the Early Christians.

Professor Sylva goes beyond Rome, of course, in this book, and looks at other crucial Italian influences in Newman's life--and pride of place must surely be Blessed Dominic Barberi, whose memorial we celebrate tomorrow! I'll let you know. Here is an interview with the author of How Italy and Her People Shaped Cardinal Newman: Italian Influences on An English Mind (a title I think should have been reversed!)

August 22, 1553 and 1572

On August 22nd, 1553, John Dudley, the First Duke of Northumberland, was executed for his role in the attempted coup d'etat to place his daughter-in-law, Jane Dudley (nee Grey) on the throne, diverting the succession from Mary Tudor as Queen of England and Ireland.

On August 22nd, 1572, Thomas Percy, Seventh Earl of Northumberland, was executed for his role in the Northern Rebellion, which might have had the result of deposing Elizabeth I and placing Mary, the erstwhile Queen of Scots on the throne of England and Ireland (and Scotland).

What a fascinating circumstance, that two scions of the same household would die on the same date, with 19 years separating their executions! These two men have another thing in common: at the block both of them spoke strongly of their Catholic faith. John Dudley reverted to Catholicism while in the Tower of London--perhaps he hoped for mercy from Mary--and he publicly retracted and regretted the efforts of the Edwardine government to introduce Calvinist reforms, warning the people against listening to deceptive preachers teaching new things:

And one thing more good people I have to say unto you, which I am chiefly moved to do for discharge of my conscience; that is to warn you and exhort you to beware of these seditious preachers, and teachers of new doctrine, which pretend to preach God's word, but in very deed they preach their own fancies, who were never able to explicate themselves, they know not today what they would have tomorrow, there is no stay in their teaching; doctrine, they open the book, but they cannot shut it again. Take heed how you enter into strange opinions or new doctrine, which hath done no small hurt in this realm, and hath justly procured the ire and wrath of god upon us, as well may appear who so list to call to remembrance the manyfold plagues that this realm hath been touched with all since we dissevered ourselves from the catholic church of Christ, and from the doctrine which hath been received by the holy apostles, martyrs, and all saints, and used through all realms christened since Christ.

And I verily believe, that all the plagues that have chanced to this realm of late years since afore the death of king Henry the eight, hath justly fallen upon us, for that we have deuvded ourself from the rest of Christendom whereof we be but as a spark in comparison: Have we not had war, famine, pestilence, the death of our king, rebellion, sedition among ourselves, conspiracies? Have we not had sundry erroneous opinions sprung up among us in this realm, since we have forsaken the unity of the catholic Church? and what other plagues be there that we have not felt?

Thomas Percy was stubbornly recalcitrant, in the Elizabethan government's view, as a Catholic, not repenting of his betrayal of Elizabeth, but warning the English that they were schismatic. While he was in prison, and on the scaffold, he was urged to conform to the Church of England and thus save his life, but he declared himself a lifelong Catholic and would not budge. In defiance of the norms of executions, he did not repent of his sins against the queen or warn others against committing such sins after him--his only regret was for the common people who suffered for their zeal in defending the Catholic Church. He is one of the Ten Blessed Martyrs of Sussex and a stained glass window honors him in Sacred Heart Church, Petworth.

Pope St. Pius X and Frequent Communion

Allow me to draw your attention to an article I wrote last year for the PraytheMass.org website on Pope St. Pius X and his influence on liturgy, the age at which children receive First Holy Communion, and more frequent reception of Holy Communion:

Jansenism, a heretical movement beginning in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, discouraged frequent Communion. Pope St. Pius X referred to this problem in his “Sacra Tridentina: On Frequent and Daily Reception of Holy Communion,” issued on December 20, 1905:

 

Piety, however, grew cold, and especially afterward because of the widespread plague of Jansenism, disputes began to arise concerning the dispositions with which one ought to receive frequent and daily Communion; and writers vied with one another in demanding more and more stringent conditions as necessary to be fulfilled. The result of such disputes was that very few were considered worthy to receive the Holy Eucharist daily, and to derive from this most health-giving Sacrament its more abundant fruits; the others were content to partake of it once a year, or once a month, or at most once a week. To such a degree, indeed, was rigorism carried that whole classes of persons were excluded from a frequent approach to the Holy Table, for instance, merchants or those who were married.

 

Jansenism required such rigorous standards of preparation because of its overall belief “that there are some commands of God which just men cannot keep, no matter how hard they wish and strive” as stated in one of the five propositions condemned by Pope Innocent X in 1653.

 

Although, as Pope St. Pius X wrote, several of his predecessors made statements against these rigorist views,

 

The poison of Jansenism, however, which, under the pretext of showing due honor and reverence to the Eucharist, had infected the minds even of good men, was by no means a thing of the past. The question as to the dispositions for the proper and licit reception of Holy Communion survived the declarations of the Holy See, and it was a fact that certain theologians of good repute were of the opinion that daily Communion could be permitted to the faithful only rarely and subject to many conditions.

 

The Pope pointed out that others went to the opposite extreme:

 

They held that daily Communion was prescribed by divine law and that no day should pass without communicating, and besides other practices not in accord with the approved usage of the Church, they determined that the Eucharist must be received even on Good Friday and in fact so administered it.

 

(Note that he was writing before the major revision of the Holy Week liturgy, which now includes a Communion service on Good Friday with Hosts consecrated at Mass on Holy Thursday.)
 

So Pope St. Pius X stated unequivocally that the laity were to be encouraged to receive Holy Communion frequently, even daily, as long as they had the correct disposition and were not in a state of Mortal Sin. He called on both factions to unite around this discipline and not place obstacles in the way of the lay faithful. For this document, and his decision on the proper age for First Holy Communion, Pope St. Pius X became known as “the Pope of the Eucharist”.

 

In 1910 he approved a “Decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments on First Communion” setting the age of discretion or reason at about age seven. Inspired by the verse from the Synoptic Gospels: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for of such is the kingdom of God”; he again urged that the Church unite around this discipline because of the sacramental benefits of Holy Communion.

 

Giuseppe Sarto succeeded Pope Leo XIII in 1903 and began his reign at Pope Pius X with the motto “To Restore all Things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). Among other liturgical reforms, he also revised the Breviary and issued the motu proprio “Tra le Sollecitudini” in 1903 soon after becoming pope encouraging not only the revival of Gregorian chant in the celebration of Mass, but active participation by the laity in chant. He acknowledged progress in the arts by commending the use of Renaissance polyphony (especially the works of Palestrina), but warned against any “theatrical” or “profane” influences in liturgical music.

 

Pope Pius X died in on August 20, 1914 at the beginning of World War I and was succeeded by Benedict XV. In 1954 he was canonized and his feast is on August 21 (since St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s feast is on August 20).

 

Pope St. Pius X, the Pope of the Eucharist, pray for us!

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!