William Leigh and Woodchester

I happened upon part of an episode of a program called Escape to the Country on our local PBS "Create" channel:

Jules Hudson is helping a self-confessed city-lover to break free from the big smoke and find some countryside calm where she can raise her young son. With a budget of £850,000, Gloucestershire is the chosen location, and her little sister is coming along for support. While in the county, Jules also tries his hand at some 19th-century building skills within the walls of an abandoned gothic mansion.

What piqued my interest during Jules Hudson's visit to "an abandoned gothic mansion" was when the owner's status as a convert to Catholicism was mentioned!

William Leigh, as the host and his guide in the mansion mentioned had joined the Catholic Church in 1844. Because he had inherited a fortune and excellent business prospects, Leigh wanted to build a gothic mansion for a kind of retreat center for Catholics, living in community in a still hostile environment, according to the show. 

So you know I had to find out more! Thus I found this book, Woodchester: A Gothic Vision: The Story of William Leigh, Benjamin Bucknall and the Building of Woodchester Mansion by Liz Davenport, which I've purchased on Kindle. (All proceeds from the sales of the book go to the Woodchester Mansion Trust.)

This website offers a review of the book and highlights William Leigh's zeal to create a Catholic community in the Cotswolds:

Chapter III opens with the purchase of Woodchester Park in 1845, where Leigh aimed to create a Catholic community in the Cotswolds. Advice was first sought from A. W. N. Pugin, who described Woodchester Mansion as "wretched" and advocated demolition. Leigh's thoughts then turned to a community, with church and monastery, to be served by the Passionists. Pugin considered all this to be too ambitious for the budget and site, and withdrew from any involvement. However, by this time, Leigh was already consulting Charles Hansom, whose estimate for the church was considerably lower. The foundation stone of the church was laid by Bishop Ullathorne in 1846. Through Ullathorne, Leigh paid for a design by Hansom for work in Australia, seeing it as a model church for "the New World." Others followed. Leigh was careless of cost and had high expectations. The interior of Leigh's Church of the Annunciation near Woodchester, designed by Hansom, "resembled the new House of Lords." The east window above the altar was painted by William Wailes, there is a doom painting above the chancel arch and floor tiles were by Minton. This impacted upon the Mansion, where the builder was personally out of pocket and work was at risk of stopping.

With the death of Father Dominic Barberi, the Passionist Provincial, the Passionists concluded that the Woodchester community was too small to sustain the number of services Leigh sought. Ullathorne suggested replacing them with Dominicans, who were based at Hinckley in Leicestershire, where the Hansoms had previously resided. Their requirements were more costly than the Passionists, which further impacted upon Leigh's work at the Mansion. The final cost, partly funded by Leigh, was around £20,000. As Davenport frequently points out, Leigh was not careful in his budgeting and typically overspent. . . .

Here's a gallery of images from the unfinished mansion: work basically ceased after William Leigh's death in 1873.

Once I found out about the connection to Blessed Dominic Barberi, the Passionist missionary to England who among other great things received Saint John Henry Newman into the Catholic Church, you can imagine that I wanted to know more! 

I have found the websites of two Catholic churches in the area associated with Woodchester Mansion and William Leigh, The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Stroud and Woodchester  Priory on St. Mary's Hill also in Stroud.

From what I have gleaned from this information now is that of William Leigh we could partially apply verse 9 from Psalm 69 (Douai-Rheims translation) to his efforts:

For the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up: and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.

He set out on a great project but was not able to complete it, God bless him! Yet his efforts bore fruit in the community and he is well-remembered.

More to come, I assure you! I will post a review of the book noted above in due time.

Blessed Dominic Barberi, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit: (Public Domain): Photo d'une peinture de Dominique Barberi, prêtre, né à Viterbo en 1792, mort en Angleterre en 1849.

Charles Lamb and Chesterton Agree: More Graces, Please!

G.K. Chesterton's famous quote on gratitude: 

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

Note that this website presents Chesterton's reflection as a poem.

In the Essays of Elia, Charles Lamb reflects on saying "Grace Before Meat" and like Chesterton, wants to add occasions of gratitude--but he wants specially written "forms":

THE custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was more than a common blessing; when a belly-full was a windfall, and looked like a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of food -- the act of eating -- should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence. I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, these spiritual repasts -- a grace before Milton -- a grace before Shakespeare -- a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading The Fairie Queene? . . .

Eighth Day Books has used the selection in bold italic for one of its bookmarks, free with the purchase of any book!!

I think one form will do for any of the occasions Chesterton and Lamb mention:

Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Neither author considers expressing gratitude after the experience of the concert, the opera, the pleasant walk, The Faerie Queene:

We give Thee thanks, Almighty God, for all thy benefits, Who live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.

Charles Lamb cared for his beloved sister Mary throughout his life, protecting her from condemnation when she killed their mother during a fit of "lunacy" as authorities called it (there was no insanity defense at that time). He kept her out of public "mad houses" but she and he both spent time in asylums when their madness was out of control. More on Charles Lamb here. More on eighteenth century insane asylums here.

Image Credit (public domain): Grace before the Meal, by Fritz von Uhde, 1885

The Battle of Zutphen and Sir Philip Sidney (and St. Edmund Campion!)

On September 22, 1586, Spanish forces defeated the Anglo-Dutch allies at the Battle of Zutphen in the Spanish Netherlands. (In May of 1591, the Anglo-Dutch allies, led by Maurice of Orange, would besiege the Spaniards and win the city back.) 

During a cavalry charge, Sir Philip Sidney was fatally wounded, as it turned out, because the surgeons could not remove the musket ball from his thigh and he died of gangrene poisoning in the city Arnhem on October 17, 1586. Biographers now, like Alan Stewart, dismiss the legend that Sidney removed a piece of his body armor that would have protected him from this wound because another Englishman did not wear it. Stewart comments that the English generally preferred light armor, so Sidney wouldn't have been wearing it in the first place.  

His body was returned to England and he was buried in the Old St. Paul's Cathedral but his grave and monument were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. His posthumous reputation as a Renaissance courtier was aided by his biographer Fulke Greville and Edmund Spenser's elegy Astrophel.

The Poetry Foundation notes in its biography of Sidney that he met Edmund Campion in 1577 during his "official mission of extending the queen's condolences to the family of Maximilian II":

In Prague he also visited Edmund Campion, whom he must have known, if only casually, from their days at Oxford. To his tutor in Rome, Campion described Sidney, mistakenly, as "a poor wavering soul" who might be amenable to conversion to the Roman Church. It is clear that his interest in Sidney was opportunistic. Yet Campion's words provide no basis for saying, as John Buxton has, that Sidney was cynically "using all his tact and charm to learn from Campion's own lips how far conversion had led him on the path of disloyalty." Rather, though Sidney held Campion to be in "a full wrong divinity"--as he said of Orpheus, Amphion, and Homer in The Defence of Poetry--he probably admired the gifted and accomplished Jesuit, as many others did. Sidney genuinely sought "the prayers of all good men" and was happy to assist even Catholics who would ease the suffering of the poor. The catalogue of the long-dispersed library at Penshurst, recently discovered by Germaine Warkentin, lists an edition of the Conference in the Tower with Campion, (1581) published shortly after Campion's execution. If in fact this book belonged to Philip Sidney, perhaps he hoped to find in it evidence that Campion had discovered the true religion in the hours before his death.

Edmund Campion had left Oxford in 1569, the year after Sidney had come to attend Christ Church. The two men shared the patronage of the Earl of Leicester: Sidney because Leicester was his uncle; Campion because of his display of rhetorical brilliance when Elizabeth I visited Oxford in 1566.

Their "tours" of Europe overlap: Sidney from 1572 to 1575; Campion from 1571 to 1580. But they were seeking vastly different goals: Sidney to forge a Protestant alliance; Campion to study for the priesthood and to teach in Prague at the Jesuit College. 

And they both hoped the other would convert: Sidney hoped Campion would return to the Church of England; Campion hoped that Sidney would be reconciled to his ancestral Catholicism.

Image Credit (public domain): The Fatal Wounding of Sir Philip Sidney (1805)by Benjamin West.

Another Newman Poem Set to Music

In June, I posted some comments on the concert featuring two settings of St. John Henry Newman's Meditation (by Sir James MacMillan and Will Todd). Today, I highlight another of Newman's poems set to music, this time by James Whitbourn, in a commission for the choir of Oriel College (which Newman served as Fellow and Tutor). The poem is titled "Solitude":

There is in stillness oft a magic power
To calm the breast, when struggling passions lower;
Touch'd by its influence, in the soul arise
Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.
By this the Arab's kindling thoughts expand,
When circling skies inclose the desert sand;
For this the hermit seeks the thickest grove,
To catch th' inspiring glow of heavenly love.
It is not solely in the freedom given
To purify and fix the heart on heaven;

There is a Spirit singing aye in air,
That lifts us high above all mortal care.
No mortal measure swells that mystic sound,
No mortal minstrel breathes such tones around,—
The Angels' hymn,—the sovereign harmony
That guides the rolling orbs along the sky,—
And hence perchance the tales of saints who view'd
And heard Angelic choirs in solitude.
By most unheard,—because the earthly din
Of toil or mirth has charms their ears to win.
Alas for man! he knows not of the bliss,
The heaven that brightens such a life as this.

You may read an analysis of this poem here, by Professor Barb Wyman of McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana on the Cardinal John Henry Newman website. He wrote this poem in Oxford during the Michaelmas Term (between the first of October and December 17) in 1818. It is the first poem in his Verses on Various Occasions.

The work premiered during Trinity Term in 2019:

Sunday 12th May: Craig Ogden, Guitar

Visiting Musician, classical guitarist Craig Ogden, will perform in the first recital. You are encouraged to remain for Choral Evensong at 6pm, during which Craig Ogden will perform with the Chapel Choir with music including the premiere of Solitude by James Whitbourn.

Here's a performance by the Houston Chamber Choir with quite a bit of amplification. I prefer this recording from Oxford University Press 2020 Choral Highlights. More about the composer here.

I found that I had to have the text in front of me as I listened to either version which is another reason I preferred the OUP recording without the distraction of the videography in the Houston performance.

+Bishop Bill Fey, OFM Cap., RIP

Each September, I receive several mailings from religious orders and other organizations offering Masses for the Poor Souls for All Souls Day and throughout the month of November. A couple of days ago, I got the one from the Capuchins, highlighting several from their order who had died since last All Souls Day. One of the faces looked familiar and then I recognized the name: Bishop Bill Fey, OFM Cap, who died January 19, 2021 (just 17 days after my brother Steven here in Wichita, KS) in Pittsburgh, PA. You may find his obituary here. He had retired as the Bishop of Kimbe, Papua New Guinea in 2018 and returned to the USA in 2020; he'd suffered a couple of strokes before his retirement and became ill with COVID-19 after joining a Capuchin friary in Pittsburgh.

The reason I recognized his name is because he was a Newman scholar:

Bill completed his theological studies at Capuchin College in Washington, DC, in 1969 and received a Master of Arts degree from the Catholic University of America in 1970 before enrolling for doctoral studies at Oxford University in England, where he was awarded the degree of D.Phil.Oxon (doctorate in Philosophy) in 1974. His doctoral thesis was entitled John Henry Newman, Empiricist Philosophy and the Certainty of Faith. His interest in the work of that future saint would continue throughout his life; his doctoral thesis was published in book form entitled Faith and Doubt: the Unfolding of Newman’s Thought on Certainty (Patmos Press: 1976). He went on to contribute scholarly articles and to deliver numerous papers and lectures on Cardinal Newman’s thought and writings over the years.

He came to the Newman Center at Wichita State University sometime in the early 1980's to give a day-long program based upon his book. I still have my notes from that day but have lost the program that was printed for the occasion.

The last time I'd seen his name in association with St. John Henry Newman was this blurb for John Henry Newman: Spiritual Director, 1845-1890 by Peter C. Wilcox, STD: 

Drawing on Newman's vast correspondence, Wilcox has given us a very human portrait of a spiritual master of remarkable sensitivity. Readers will find Newman's account of the development of revealed doctrine reflected in his understanding of the spiritual development of ordinary people. Newman comes across as someone who listens with respect and then speaks with careful balance--promoting devotion without excessive piety, reasonableness without rationality, and compassion without sentimentality--always challenging without demanding. --William Fey, OFM Cap., Bishop of Kimbe, Papua New Guinea

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.

St. John Henry Newman and Our Lady of Sorrows

I've been working my way through the articles by John R. Griffin posted on the Christendom College website, and finished his survey of "Newman and the Mother of God" yesterday. As Griffin explains:

My paper has three parts. The first is concerned with what might be loosely called the “tractarian” view of Mary, namely the Marian devotions put forward by Newman and his mentor John Keble during the first Oxford Movement. The second part consists of a description of the Anglican charge to the effect that Roman Catholics, as part of their system, encouraged or at least tolerated the “worship” of Mary. The third and final part is concerned with Newman’s writings on behalf of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the devotions that surround Mary.

You may read the rest there. I'm going to jump to the end, "the third and final part" in which Griffin comments:

Notwithstanding his shyness or reticence on the matter of public declarations of his love for Mary, Newman has written some of the most beautiful devotional statements ever made about Our Blessed Mother. In his Meditations we have many examples of his abundant love for the Mother of God . . .

As an example of this love and devotion, Newman wrote a series of meditations on the Litany of Loretto for the month of May. From May 17 to 23, he focused on Our Lady's Dolours or sorrows, as the Church does today with the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows (yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross--please note the hierarchy of the celebrations!). Here's a sample:

Mary is the "Vas Insigne Devotionis," The Most Devout Virgin

TO be devout is to be devoted. We know what is meant by a devoted wife or daughter. It is one whose thoughts centre in the person so deeply loved, so tenderly cherished. She follows him about with her eyes; she is ever seeking some means of serving him; and, if her services are very small in their character, that only shows how intimate they are, and how incessant. And especially if the object of her love be weak, or in pain, or near to die, still more intensely does she live in his life, and know nothing but him.

This intense devotion towards our Lord, forgetting self in love for Him, is instanced in St. Paul, who says. "I know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified." And again, "I live, [yet] now not I, but Christ liveth in me; and [the life] that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself for me." [Note 2]

But great as was St. Paul's devotion to our Lord, much greater was that of the Blessed Virgin; because she was His Mother, and because she had Him and all His sufferings actually before her eyes, and because she had the long intimacy of thirty years with Him, and because she was from her special sanctity so ineffably near to Him in spirit. When, then, He was mocked, bruised, scourged, and nailed to the Cross, she felt as keenly as if every indignity and torture inflicted on Him was struck at herself. She could have cried out in agony at every pang of His.

This is called her compassion, or her suffering with her Son, and it arose from this that she was the "Vas insigne devotionis."

The rest of Newman's meditations on Our Lady's Dolours may be found here at the Newman Reader.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (public domain): "Madonna in Sorrow", by Titian, 1554

The Agnus Dei and "agni dei" in Recusant England

I've been listening to a new CD from The Sixteen and Harry Christophers: Agnus Dei. It's a compilation of performances of different settings of the Agnus Dei, The Lamb of God, part of the Ordinary of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, chanted/sung before Holy Communion:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, miserere nobis

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, miserere nobis

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, dona nobis pacem

(Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.)

There are 20 (twenty) settings on this CD:

1. Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) (from Requiem, Op. 48) 5.16
2. Thomas Tallis (c.1505-85) (from Missa Puer natus est nobis) 8.53
3. Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) (from Missa Breve ‘La Stella’) 1.44
4. Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) (from Requiem of 1605) 3.57
5. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) (from Messa a 4 da cappella, SV 257) 2.06
6. Edmund Rubbra (1901-88) (from Missa Cantuariensis, Op. 59) 2.04
7. Orlande de Lassus (c.1532-94) (from Missa Bell’ amfritit’ altera) 4.29
8. J.S. Bach (1685-1750) (from Mass in B minor, BWV 232) 2.40
9. Duarte Lôbo (c.1565-1646) (from Missa pro defunctis a 8) 2.33
10. Bartłomiej Pękiel (fl.1633-70) (from Missa Concertata ‘La Lombardesca’) 1.47
(Conductor: Eamonn Dougan)
11. Frank Martin (1890-1974) (from Mass for Double Choir) 5.42
12. G.P. da Palestrina (1525-94) (from Missa Papae Marcelli) 3.34
13. Benjamin Britten (1913-76) (from Missa Brevis in D, Op. 63) 2.10
14. Christopher Tye (c.1505-73) (from Missa Euge bone) 6.30
15. Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) (from Missa Che fa oggi il mio sole) 4.15
16. Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) (from Mass in G, FP 89) 4.39
(Soli: Julie Cooper soprano, Kim Porter alto, Jeremy Budd tenor, Ben Davies bass)
17. John Sheppard (c.1515-58) (from Missa Cantate) 4.55
18. G.F. Handel (1685-1759) Behold, the Lamb of God (from Messiah, HWV 56) 3.13
19. Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650) (from Missa Regina caeli) 2.11
20. Samuel Barber (1910-81) [based on the famous "Adagio"] (Solo: Ruth Dean soprano) 8.29

Not only those riches, but the CD cover featuring the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb!! made this a must have for me (and I bought a copy as a gift for a dear friend's birthday last week).

But while searching for something else online, I found this article titled "The agnus dei, Catholic devotion, and confessional politics in early modern England" by Aislinn Muller, in the British Catholic History journal, published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2018. According to the abstract:

After 1571 Catholic sacred objects were outlawed in England, and the possession of such objects could be prosecuted under the statute of praemunire. Despite this prohibition sacred objects including rosaries, blessed beads, and the agnus dei (wax pendants blessed by the pope) remained a critical part of Catholic devotion. This article examines the role of the agnus dei in English Catholic communities and the unique political connotations it acquired during the reign of Elizabeth I. It assesses the uses of these sacramentals in Catholic missions to England, their reception amongst Catholics, and the political significance of the agnus dei in light of the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570.

Please read the article there as allowances to share from it are limited.

You might recall that St. Cuthbert Mayne, one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales and the protomartyr of the seminary priests who returned to England as missionaries after ordination on the Continent, was condemned partially because he had brought an agnus dei into England:

He was ordained in 1575 and came to England with St. John Payne (Payne and Mayne!) in 1576. When Father Cuthbert Mayne was arrested in June, 1577, authorities had some trouble in gathering evidence that corresponded with charges punishable by death:

He was brought to trial in September; meanwhile his imprisonment was of the harshest order. His indictment under statutes of 1 and 13 Elizabeth was under five counts: first, that he had obtained from the Roman See a "faculty", containing absolution of the queen's subjects; second, that he had published the same at Golden; third, that he had taught the ecclesiastical authority of the pope in Launceston Gaol; fourth, that he had brought into the kingdom an Agnus Dei and had delivered the same to Mr. Tregian; fifth, that he had said Mass.

Father Mayne offered a defense for each of these counts:

As to the first and second counts, the martyr showed that the supposed "faculty" was merely a copy printed at Douai of an announcement of the Jubilee of 1575, and that its application having expired with the end of the jubilee, he certainly had not published it either at Golden or elsewhere. As to the third count, he maintained that he had said nothing definite on the subject to the three illiterate witnesses who asserted the contrary. As to the fourth count, he urged that the fact that he was wearing an Agnus Dei at the time of his arrest was no evidence that he had brought it into the kingdom or delivered it to Mr. Tregian. As to the fifth count, he contended that the finding of a Missal, a chalice, and vestments in his room did not prove that he had said Mass.

He was condemned in September but not executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering until November 30, 1577.

We should remember that Mr. Tregian, Sir Francis Tregian, suffered for receiving that his contact with Father Mayne and for almost receiving the agnus dei and copy of the Papal Bull:

Tregian was indicted under the Statute of Praemunire prohibiting dissemination of papal bulls. Mayne had a souvenir copy of a proclamation regarding the 1575 Holy Year dispensation, and it was supposed that he intended to give it to Tregian. Tregian was held in the Marshalsea for ten months before being returned to Cornwall for trial. At first the jury would return no verdict, but after threats from the judges a conviction was obtained.

Tregian's death sentence was remitted to imprisonment and his property confiscated. He was incarcerated at Windsor and then in various London prisons for twenty-eight years, eventually winding up at Fleet Prison, where his wife joined him. On the petition of his friends, he was released by King James I. . . .

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, dona nobis pacem.

Sancte Cuthbert Mayne, ora pro nobis!

Book Review: "John Henry Newman and His Age" by Owen F. Cummings

From the publisher, Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf & Stock Publishers:

Many books exist devoted to the life, thought, and writings of Blessed John Henry Newman, the premier Catholic theologian in nineteenth-century England. His influence has been enormous, perhaps especially on Vatican II (1962-65). This book is a Newman primer, and not only a primer about Newman himself, but also about his time and place in church history. It attends to the papacy during his lifetime, his companions and friends, some of his peers at Oxford University, the First Vatican Council (1869-70), as well as some of his writing and theology. It should be especially helpful to an interested reader who has no particular background in nineteenth-century church history or in Newman himself. (Published in February 2019).

It's certainly not to be confused with Sheridan Gilley's complete biography, Newman and His Age, published by Darton Longman & Todd in 1990 and revised in 2003.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by John C. Wester, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Newman's Pope: Pope Pius IX (1846-78)

2. The Oxford Movement

3. John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

4. In Newman's Circle from Oxford: John Keble, Hurrell Froude, Edward Bouverie Pusey

5. In Newman's Circle from the Oratory: Ambrose St. John, Frederick William Faber, Edward Caswall

6. Newman's Women! 

7. Vatican I, 1869-70

8. Newman the Poet

9. Newman the Preacher

10. Looking Back

Appendix: Going Further

Bibliography

NO INDEX?!?!??!?

I think this book attempts to be more than a primer because its title offers a wider view. It could have used at least one more chapter: "In Newman's Circle of Converts: James Hope-Scott, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Hungerford Pollen", for example. And the chapter on "Newman's Women!" deserves a better title, like "The Women in Newman's Life: Family and Friends". 

I appreciate Cumming's method in writing this introduction to Newman's life in the context of his age (the nineteenth century), but then wonder why he only wrote the chapter on Newman's Pope to offer religious context for Newman's life as a Catholic: surely a chapter on the religious context of England in his time, the tentative position of Catholics, the divisions of the Church of England, would have been helpful since he spent the first half of his life as a member and then a minister in the Church of England--and something about the Victorian age in England, its political, social, and economic milieu, would also have provided more background. Cummings might have also placed too much weight upon the First Vatican Council, dedicating a chapter to it, especially since he'd already discussed the pontificate of Pope Pius IX--especially since he doesn't take the opportunity to explore Newman's reaction (the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk) to the proclamation of papal infallibility in any depth.

As another reviewer opined, Cummings does not explore Newman's philosophical studies and I think--via Reinhold Hutter's John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits--he minimizes Newman's familiarity with the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. On page 21, Cummings states that "Newman had never much more than a gentleman's acquaintance with the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas, so [Aeterni Patris, Pope Leo XIII's 1879 encyclical] promoting Thomism had no real effect on this thinking." And he makes a similar statement on p. 43. From my reading of Hutter's book published a year after John Henry Newman and His Age, I think that Cummings should want to revise those passages if he has the chance. From my review of Hutter's book last year:

The real surprise to me was that Hutter establishes St. Thomas Aquinas as the main interlocutor to Newman in three of the four chapters. Since I have usually read that Newman was not a systematic theologian--more of a controversialist--this Newman-Aquinas connection was enlightening. As Hutter explains, Newman consulted Aquinas on conscience; Hutter thinks Aquinas help us understand what Newman says about faith more clearly; and Newman and Aquinas shared a vision of a university education.

Hutter cites other indications of Newman's regard for Aquinas, including evidence that he had read Aquinas while at Oriel College (thus as an Anglican); that he had Aquinas' complete works in his library and several other volumes by Aquinas; that there are annotations on different volumes, and that in 1878, after Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Aeterni Patris, re-establishing Aquinas as the Common Doctor of Catholic philosophy and theology, Newman was confident that he would not be found to be in conflict with Aquinas in his Grammar of Assent. Hutter also notes that Newman had been disappointed to learn that Aristotle and Aquinas were not in style in Rome while he studied for the Catholic priesthood after his conversion. [Cummings cites that last fact on page 43 of his book]

So Newman had more than a "gentleman's acquaintance" or a "layman's acquaintance" (p. 43) with the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas and Aeterni Patris did influence his thought (see pages 16-17 and 54 in Hutter's book for more on that influence).

Cummings relies mostly on secondary sources and most of them are good, although I was surprised when he cited John Cornwell's book on Newman's "Unquiet Grave", although it is a sympathetic quotation. But my concern grew when Cummings continued to cite Cornwell in the chapter on Newman's circle at the Oratory, culminating in the unfortunate question, "Was Newman Gay?" and rather sideways acknowledgement of Father Ian Ker's statement that Newman was heterosexual AND celibate. Cummings does not quote Father Ker's evidence in a 2008 article from L’Osservatore Romano but footnotes Cornwell again. (Use of the word "Gay" is sloppy; if you have to ask the question at all, it should be phrased "Was Newman Sexually Attracted to Men? No." I think it's interesting that the question never comes up in Cummings' narrative until Newman is a Catholic--he had many male friends while at Oxford too!)

Also perhaps because he does rely so much on secondary sources and didn't find certain information within them, he errs when he says on page 21** that we don't "know what Newman would have made" of Pope Leo XIII's 1896 encyclical Apostolicae Curae on Anglican Orders if he had lived to see its publication. But we do know: When Newman published his two volumes of Essays Critical and Historical, he added a note to essay X, "The Catholicity of the Anglican Church". There he states:

Whether indeed, as time goes on, the Pope, in the plenitude of his power, could, with the aid of his theologians, obtain that clearer light, which the Church has not at present, on the whole question of ordination, for which St. Leo IX. so earnestly prayed, and thereby determine what at present is enveloped in such doubtfulness, viz., the validity of heretical ordination, and, what is still more improbable than the abstract proposition, the validity of Anglican Orders in particular, is a subject on which I do not enter. As the matter stands, all we see is a hierarchical body, whose opinions through three hundred years compromise their acts, who do not themselves believe that they have the gifts which their zealous adherents ascribe to them, who in their hearts deny those sacramental formulas which their country's law obliges them to use, who conscientiously shudder at assuming real episcopal or sacerdotal power, who resolve "Receive the Holy Ghost" into a prayer, "Whose sins ye remit are remitted" into a license to preach, and "This is My Body, this is My Blood" into an allegory. [Remember that one of the goals of the Oxford Movement had been to revive the teaching authority of the bishops as successors of the Apostles, but that Newman realized the Anglican bishops did not want to be successors of the Apostles!]

And then, supposing if ever, these great difficulties were overcome, after all would follow the cardinal question, which Benedict XIV. opens, as I have shown, about the sufficiency of their rite itself.

Anyhow, as things now stand, it is clear no Anglican {84} Bishop or Priest can by Catholics be recognized to be such. If indeed earnestness of mind and purity of purpose could ever be a substitute for the formal conditions of a sacrament, which Apostles have instituted and the Church maintains, certainly in that case one might imagine it to be so accepted in many an Anglican ordination. I do believe that, in the case of many men, it is the one great day of their lives, which cannot come twice, the day on which, in their fresh youth, they freely dedicated themselves and all their powers to the service of their Redeemer,—solemn and joyful at the time, and ever after fragrant in their memories:—it is so; but devotion cannot reverse the past, nor can good faith stand in the stead of what is true; and it is because I feel this, and in no temper of party, that I refuse to entertain an imagination which is neither probable in fact, nor Catholic in spirit. . . . 

So a simple search of The Newman Reader of "Anglican Orders", which I did, could have prevented such a misstatement by Cummings. I knew as soon as I read that comment that there was a problem, but not every reader would catch it--because I am not the intended audience I must admit. But if he had carried out that search he could have avoided the unfortunate line about Newman "impugning the sacred ministry of his friends Edward Pusey and John Keble." (21)**

Note: in the advertisement for the 1871 edition of these works, which he dedicated to William Froude, brother of Hurrell and James Anthony Froude, Newman explained why he published them and why he added notes to them:

THESE Essays, with the exception of the last, were written while their author was Fellow of Oriel, and a member of the Established Church. They are now after many years republished, mainly for the following reason:—

He does not hold now, on certain important points, the opinions to which he gave expression then; yet he cannot destroy what he has once put into print: "Litera scripta manet." He might suppress it for a time; but, sooner or later, his power over it will cease. And then, if either in its matter or its drift, it is adapted to benefit the cause, which it was intended to support when it was given to the world, it will be republished in spite of his later disavowal of it. In order to anticipate the chance of its being thus used after his death, the only way open to him is, while living, without making alterations, which would destroy its original character and force, to accompany it with additions calculated to explain why it has ceased to approve itself to his own judgment. . . .

Again, I guess you could say that based on my familiarity of Newman's life and works and of the works written about him, I am not the intended audience for John Henry Newman and His Age--which I did purchase because I wanted to see how Cummings placed Newman in the context of his era--but it also makes me reluctant to suggest this book as an introduction to Newman's life and legacy, especially with the analysis at the end of Chapter 5. I did appreciate the chapters on Newman the Poet and Newman the Preacher, however, especially since the former highlights Sir Edward Elgar's oratorio based on The Dream of Gerontius.

Instead I'd recommend Newman 101 by Roderick Strange from Ave Maria Press as a much better introduction.

**That page 21 set my "spidey senses" tingling as I knew there were some issues with the author's knowledge of Newman.

Newman's "Constitution and History of the Church of England"

At the end of The Spiritual Legacy of Newman, which I reviewed last week, Father William R. Lamm included as an Appendix Newman's essay on "The Constitution and History of the Church of England", which Newman wrote in 1866 for the French edition of the Apologia pro Vita Sua, and which Wilfred Ward translated for the 1913 Oxford University Press edition, which I presume means that Newman composed it in French. You may find Newman's elegant dissection of the Church of England at The Newman Reader (note the page numbers in brackets):

There is, perhaps, no other institution in which the English have shown their love of compromise in political and social affairs so strikingly as in the established national Church. Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, all enemies of Rome, were equally the enemies of one another. Of other Protestant sects the Erastians, Puritans and Arminians are also different and hostile. But it is no exaggeration to say that the Anglican ecclesiastical Establishment is an amalgamation of all these varieties of Protestantism, to which a considerable amount of Catholicism is superadded. The Establishment is the outcome of the action which Henry VIII, the ministers of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, the Cavaliers, the Puritans, the Latitudinarians of 1688, and the Methodists of the Eighteenth Century successively brought to bear on religion. It has a hierarchy dating from the Middle Ages, richly endowed, exalted by its civil position, formidable by its political influence. The Established Church has preserved the rites, the prayers and the {xxiii} symbols of the ancient Church. She draws her articles of faith from Lutheran and Zwinglian sources; her translation of the Bible savours of Calvinism. She can boast of having had in her bosom, especially in the seventeenth century, a succession of theologians of great learning and proud to make terms with the doctrines and practices of the primitive Church. The great Bossuet, contemplating her doctors, said that it was impossible that the English should not one day come back to the faith of their fathers; and De Maistre hailed the Anglican communion as being destined to play a great part in the reconciliation and reunion of Christendom.

This remarkable Church has always been in the closest dependence on the civil power and has always gloried in this. It has ever regarded the Papal power with fear, with resentment and with aversion, and it has never won the heart of the people. In this it has shown itself consistent throughout the course of its existence; in other concerns it has either had no opinions or has constantly changed them. In the sixteenth century it was Calvinist; in the first half of the seventeenth it was Arminian and quasi-Catholic; towards the close of that century and at the beginning of the next it was latitudinarian. In the middle of the eighteenth century it was described by Lord Chatham as having 'a papistical ritual and prayer-book, Calvinist articles of faith and an Arminian clergy'.

In our days it contains three powerful parties in which are embodied the three principles of religion which appear constantly and from the beginning of its history in one form or another; the Catholic principle, the Protestant principle, and the sceptical principle. Each of these, it is hardly necessary to say, is violently opposed to the other two. . . .

So how do these violently opposed parties co-exist in one Church? Newman answers: the Tory Party and its Erastianism:

It is not a religious party, not that it has not a great number of religious men in its ranks, but because its principles and its mots d'ordre are political or at least ecclesiastical rather than theological. Its members are neither Tractarians, nor Evangelicals, nor Liberals; or, if they are, it is in a very mild and very unaggressive form; because, in the eyes of the world their chief characteristic consists in their being advocates of an Establishment and of the Establishment, and they are more zealous for the preservation of a national Church than solicitous for the beliefs which that national Church professes. We said above that the great principle of the Anglican Church was its confidence in the protection of the civil power and its docility in serving it, which its enemies call its Erastianism. Now if on the one hand this respect for the civil power be its great principle, the principle of Erastianism is, on the other hand, embodied in so numerous a party whether among the clergy or the laity, that the word 'party' is scarcely adequate. It constitutes the mass of the Church. The clergy in particular—Bishops, Deans, Chapters, Rectors—are always distinguished by their {xxvi} Toryism on all English questions. In the seventeenth century they professed the divine right of kings; they have ever since gloried in the doctrine: 'The King is the head of the Church;' and their after-dinner toast: 'The Church and the King' has been their formula of protestation for maintaining in the kingdom of England the theoretical predominance of the spiritual over the temporal. They have always testified an extreme aversion for what they term the power usurped by the Pope. Their chief theological dogma is that the Bible contains all necessary truths, and that every Christian is individually capable of discovering them there for his own use. They preach Christ as the only mediator, redemption by His death, the renewal of man by His Spirit, the necessity for good works. This great assembly of men, true representatives of that English common sense which is so famous for its good as for its evil consequences, mostly regard every kind of theology, every theological school, and in particular the three schools which we have tried to portray, with mistrust. In the seventeenth century they combated the Puritans; at the close of that century they combated the Latitudinarians; in the middle of the eighteenth century they combated the Methodists and the members of the Evangelical party; and in our own times they have made an energetic stand at first against the Tractarians and today against the Liberals. . . .

In his introduction Ward also included a translation of the second essay Newman wrote for that French edition, offering a history of the University of Oxford. You'll find it on pages xxviii-xxxi. 

Ward comments that these essays demonstrate Newman's concern for this audience and their understanding of the context of Apologia pro Vita Sua. Ward also suggested that someone should "trace the causes which have made one of Newman's statements so completely inapplicable to the present day,—the statement that the clergy, and especially the high dignitaries, are "always distinguished for their Toryism on all English questions"."

Book Review: "The Spiritual Legacy of Newman" by William R. Lamm

Last Wednesday I went to Eighth Day Books in search of a certain book in the Theology section on the second floor. I wanted a copy of Hans Urs Von Balthasar's Does Jesus Know Us? Do We Know Him? which I had started to read in the Adoration Chapel at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church. (To the left see a picture of me on the front steps of Eighth Day Books on a chilly, snowy day!)

For those of you who haven't been to Eighth Day Books--which celebrates its 33rd anniversary this year--there are three stories of books in a building that was formerly a china shop and before that at some point a house: the basement is filled with children's books; the main level with a poetry nook, a book shelf back and front dedicated to G.K. Chesterton, George McDonald, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the other Inklings; literature and literary criticism, a room filled with books on liturgy, spirituality, Catholic catechetical and liturgical books, books about saints; a shelf of Holy Bibles in various translations and formats, a wall of books on the Fathers of the Church and the monastic life; a section on Eastern Orthodoxy, many, many icons, books about art, and a display of new arrivals, etc. The shipping counter is behind the register with a tiny office/kitchen for the staff. And there's always free coffee available (and a bathroom). Oh, the coffee is right next to a shelf of Latin and Greek literature in the original and translation. There are also lots of beautiful, curated greeting cards, CDs, journals, and other gift items on the first floor. I need to take a picture of the recently re-arranged front counter which now offers many impulse buys of varied elegance.

You can see the "C.S. Lewis and Friends" shelf to the right in the picture above, and the new, featured releases on the shelf to the left of Jack Korbel, one of our local composers and performers (he's written a new song about Chaplain Emil Kapaun, whose remains are coming home later this month!!) 

The second floor has a room dedicated to Christian theology, church history, Biblical studies, philosophy, and other religions; there's a room with drama, education, psychology, music, modern languages, and reference works; and a third room with history, biography, social studies, etc. Throughout the main and second floors, used and new books are mixed on the shelves and there are special stacks of lovely old editions of books. 

Above is a picture of my late husband Mark standing in front of the Biblical studies section. There's a table with bench seating in front of him (and there's a similar table in the main level, and chairs for seating in other rooms, too).

There is also an attic area third floor where Warren Farha, the Proprietor, has his office. It is often filled with used books waiting to be evaluated, priced, and shelved.

So I went directly to the second floor and the V's in theology section and the book I sought was not there. So I looked in the N's for Newman and found this book: The Spiritual Legacy of Newman by William R. Lamm, S.M., published in 1934 by the Bruce Publishing Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in its 4th printing in May, 1948.

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

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

Contents (and each chapter is preceded by a complete outline):

Preface by the General Editor of the Religion and Culture Series, Joseph Husslein, SJ, PhD

Foreword by William R. Lamm, S.M.

I. Newman's Problem and Purpose

II. Obligation of Tending to Perfection

III. The Divine Indwelling

IV. Obstacles to Perfection: Hypocrisy

V. Hypocrisy as Insincerity: Self-Deceit and Secret Faults

VI. Hypocrisy as Insincerity: Self-Deceit and Relations with Others

VII. Hypocrisy as Insincerity: Self-Deceit and Relations with God

VIII. Hypocrisy as Insincerity: Newman's Method

IX. Surrender: The Way to Perfection: Surrender as Repentance

X. Surrender: The Way to Perfection: Surrender Under Various Other Names

XI. Surrender: The Way to Perfection: Sincerity and Simplicity

XII. Surrender: The Way to Perfection: The Realization of God's Presence

Appendix: The Constitution and History of the Church of England (from the French edition of the Apologia pro Vita Sua)

Bibliography

One of the great things about the book is how much Lamm quotes Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons: extensive quotations to support his thesis, with examples of Newman's explanations of the various forms of hypocrisy in chapters IV through VIII and of the practice of Surrender in chapters IX through XII. (He also quotes several passages from his Meditations and Devotions, written when Newman was a Catholic for the students at the Oratory School in Birmingham.)

One of the less great things about the book is that Lamm does not often give the name of the sermon: he provides footnotes that refer to the pages in the volumes of the Parochial and Plain Sermons, which could make it more difficult for someone who does not have the Longmans, Green, and Co. edition on their shelves. One can, however, access The Newman Reader online volumes of the PPS and find the volume and page number Father Lamm cites to thus identify and read the rest of it if so desired.

Do I agree with his thesis? Certainly the issue of being a real Christian versus being a nominal, cultural Christian is a constant theme in Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons. I think it's unfortunate that Lamm calls this Newman's "problem" because it seems like it was really Newman's "opportunity"--he had the opportunity to offer spiritual guidance to young men, primarily, and others in his congregation who wanted to pursue holiness and were willing to listen to him for guidance. Lamm also does note that Newman offered spiritual direction to individuals, personally and in correspondence. (Peter C. Wilcox wrote a book on Newman as a Spiritual Director during his life as a Catholic which demonstrates that Newman continued to do so, particularly reaching out to prospective converts.)

Newman had other problems or opportunities to address in the PPS, however, as he was generally trying to raise his congregation's realization of what they professed to believe about Jesus, the Bible, the Church, its liturgy and doctrine, the moral life, etc., etc., but if we define the spiritual life narrowly, Lamm has offered us excellent insights into Newman's spiritual legacy.

I recommend this book to readers interested in Newman's spiritual direction and in guidance in growth of the realization of the Presence of God, eliminating spiritual hypocrisy, and pursuing holiness through surrender in simplicity and sincerity. (There are a few copies available online from the usual sources.)

All photos (C) Stephanie A. Mann, 2021