Book Review: Duffy's Newman

This book was published as an introduction to John Henry Cardinal Newman before his canonization last year. A reader who knew nothing about Newman before reading this book would likely ask by the end of it: "why was he canonized? He seems like a most disagreeable person, selfish, dishonest, manipulative, tyrannical--what in him was holy?" We are assured that he strove for holiness but Duffy's portrayal of his works, projects, and legacy emphasizes only his mind, his literary brilliance, and the opposition he faced--and all his faults and frailties.

I had purchased the book because I have trusted Eamon Duffy's works on the English Reformation from The Stripping of the Altars to Reformation Divided. Lucy Beckett, whose works I have read and somewhat enjoyed, liked the book too and recommended it in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. I also liked the extensive chronology at the front of the book. Duffy does pack quite a bit of detail, citations from Newman's works, letters, and sermons, into "A very short history" (145 pages, including the index) but is it really a good introduction to Newman, written in conjunction with his canonization, following a process in which the Catholic Church's hierarchy determined first that he was Venerable and thus had practiced the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity to an heroic degree, and in which the faithful had the devotion to pray for his intercession with the Holy Trinity to answer prayers for great miracles of healing?

I'd have to say: No. It's a good critical study of Newman but seems to have missed the sense of the occasion: Newman being proclaimed a Saint of the Church, someone we believe lived a holy life and thus merited not only the glories of the Beatific Vision in Heaven but also devotion and imitation on earth after his death. Additionally, for an introduction to a man's life and work--probably because of space limitations--the absence of even a biographical sketch is almost strange.

I'd also have to say that I disagree entirely with this statement in the review I excerpted recently by Dr. Bud Marr, Director of the National Institute of Newman Studies and Associate Editor of the Newman Studies Journal:

The strength of Duffy’s treatment is rooted in the way that he navigates a via media between biographers who are overly hagiographical in their approach to Newman’s life and those scholars who are hypercritical and, in some cases, even hostile to Newman as a historical figure. Duffy strikes a nice balance. On the one hand, he’s more than happy to acknowledge Newman’s enduring legacy as one of the great Catholic thinkers of the modern era. On the other hand, Duffy refuses to paper over some of Newman’s rougher edges for the sake of preserving a supposedly pristine understanding of the English convert’s saintliness.

In Duffy's book there is barely a mention of any virtue in Newman at all unless it is intellectual. His love for God, for his family, for his friends, for his spiritual correspondents, for his parishioners, both Anglican and Catholic, for the poor, for the men and boys he taught at Oxford and Birmingham, is never highlighted. His faith in God's providence and love; his hope in the reality and truth of God's revelation and salvation are also never adequately conveyed.

Even his intellectual virtues are criticized because they are idiosyncratic to Newman. There's not even a hint of hagiography here, nor really of "the English convert's saintliness". Duffy doesn't just refuse "to paper over some of Newman's rougher edges"; he emphasizes and highlights them!

There were some insights I gained from reading this book. Duffy's explanation of Newman's campaign, after the excellent reception of the Apologia pro Vita Sua, to reach out to his Anglican friends on subjects like the doctrinal declarations of Mary's Immaculate Conception and of the Infallibility of the Pope in matters of faith and morals, was incisive. Duffy describes how Newman seized those opportunities to defend the Church with the intellectual and rhetorical skills unique to him, in terms his Anglican audience would understand--as they indeed better understood him and his conversion to Catholicism.

Overall it was a disappointing read, and one which will not persuade me to to go back to the older view of the hyper-sensitive, dishonest, self-absorbed Newman described by Frank Newman, Bremond, and Abbott. As I have before I call your attention to the former Bishop of Raphoe, Reverend Philip Boyce's article on Newman's holiness.