Book Review: "John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed"

Please note, I purchased this book from Eighth Day Books: John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed by Ida Friederike Gorres. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024.

Edited and with an introduction by Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz

Translated by Jennifer S. Bryson

Contents:

Translator's Preface 

• Quotations and Citations: Hunting and Reverse Engineering
• "Dark, 17" and Detective Work
• The Citations: Layers of Complications
• Orthography: A Patchwork Quilt
• Acknowledgements

Introduction: A New Discovery. Ida Friederike Gorres on Newman

• Hagiography: A Segment of Gorres' Life's Work
• A New Discovery: A Newman Draft
• The Postwar Period: Exiting the Ark, Friendship with Newman Specialist Father Breucha
• Searching for What is Distinctive about This Book
• Circling Back Later On
• Unique Approach

The Book:

I. The Life of Newman

    1. The Man Who Was Sacrificed

        An Initial Reconnaissance of His Life

    2. The Golden Apple

    3. Newman's Religious and Human Character in Letters and Sketches

    4. Passion for the Truth

    5. Taking Christianity Seriously: The Tracts and Sermons

    6. Rome: A Mix of Hatred and Love

    7. Newman Brought Low

    8. Newman's Piety

    9. Two Poems by Newman ("The Two Worlds" The Oratory, 1862; The Death of Moses" Off Ithaca, December 30, 1832)

II. Conscience

    10. On Conscience

III. Encore

    11. A Sketch of the Life of Newman

Appendix A: Timeline of the Life of John Henry Newman

Appendix Be: Timeline of the Life of Ida Friederike Gorres

Register of Persons

Bibliography 

Index

This book takes me back, takes me way back to the January of 1979 when I attended the Newman School of Catholic Thought at (then named) St. Paul's Parish-Newman Center. From Ida Friederike Gorres I hear, among other things, what many of the college students, including me, there and then cried out: "Why didn't the Catholic Church in England listen to Newman? Why didn't they support his goals to revive Catholicism in Victorian England and beyond by engaging the laity, especially young men and women? Why did the leaders of Church relegate him to the Oratory in Birmingham? Why did they waste his talents?"

As Gorres examines the sacrifice(s) of Newman's life, she notes not only his loss of friends, family and influence because of his conversion to Catholicism, but how he sacrificed his intellect to the Truth, by not discovering it through his efforts but to finding what was objectively true and outside himself, so that he had to decrease so that He could increase. 

In the chapter on Rome (6.), I was impressed by Gorres' explanation of how the Vatican's over site of justice and order in Rome (and in the Papal States) caused Newman great difficulty: he saw "Roman corruptions" and "priestly rule" creating "physical and moral distress" (pp. 142-145), and that influenced his distaste for the Papacy. (But was England that much better at that time: debtors prisons, poor houses, and slums?, she notes.)

In the chapter "Newman Brought Low", Gorres contrasts how the hierarchy wasted his talents with how the laity wrote to him for advise and counsel, as he answered thousands of letter from potential converts to Catholicism, Catholics asking for spiritual direction, etc. So while he sacrificed the larger influence he could have had, he was sought out nonetheless.

As does Father William R. Lamm, Gorres offers excellent insights into Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons at Oxford and his wonderful efforts to lead his congregation, especially the students, to take "Christianity Seriously", to make it real for them and to impact their lives. In that context, and with the success of his efforts, Gorres frames the famous Tract 90, as Newman sought a firmer foundation for the doctrinal and liturgical reform of the Church of England. (Chapter 5)

Overall, however, I wanted more context for why, in 1940s Germany, Gorres was so attracted to Newman. She travelled to the Oratory in Birmingham in 1949, as the Introduction notes, and much of her research and reading into Newman took place between 1944 and 1949. I was surprised to read that there was a conference coinciding with the one hundred anniversary of Newman's conversion in Cologne, Germany when a similar celebratory conference couldn't be held in England during World War II, according to the Catholic University of America's American Essays for the Newman Centennial! (In the Introduction to that book, Father John K. Ryan is as certain that Newman would never be seriously considered a canonized saint as Gorres (in Chapter I of this book) is that Newman would be canonized and should be considered a Doctor of the Church! She's correct on one point so far, and both the UK and US bishops have presented arguments for the second point to the Vatican.)

Then in post-war years Gorres found a mentor in Newman studies, Father Breucha, and she was deeply involved in the Synod of Wurzburg in 1971, collapsing after defending the Catholic doctrine and Sacrament of Marriage. I need to purchase and read her book The Church and the Flesh from Cluny Media, translated by Bryson, I suppose, to understand the context further since Newman is cited several times in that book, evidently. Bread Grows in Winter: Six Essays on the Crisis in the Church from 1970 might be helpful to me too. And her defense of Marriage at the Synod (meaning it was under attack, right?) is forthcoming from Catholic University of America Press (What Binds Marriage Forever: Reflections on the Indissolubility of Marriage), also translated by Bryson. A Letter to the Church and the response to it is also cited. Here's more about forthcoming translation of books by Gorres, etc.

So, as usual, one book leads to another, and another. For example, I'm already browsing a copy of John Henry Newman: Centenary Essays (1945), edited by Father Henry Tristram of the Oratory, highlighted in the bibliography and elsewhere in this volume as one of Gorres' sources (remember, she didn't have the newmanreader.org with almost everything Newman wrote at her fingertips!) 

Gorres succeeded remarkably well with the sources she had to present a saintly and human portrait of Newman. I recommend John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed most highly. In fact, I've already ordered two more copies from Eighth Day Books as gifts!