Newman and Converts and the Church

Matt Swaim--who also works for the Coming Home Network--and I will talk about Blessed John Henry Newman and conversion on the Son Rise Morning Show at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern DST/6:50 a.m. Central DST. All last week we prayed at the daily Masses of the Octave of Easter for those who joined the Church at the Easter Vigil, particularly through Baptism. According to CRUX, publishing a story by the Catholic News Service:

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Tens of thousands of new Catholics are expected to join the Catholic Church at Easter Vigil liturgies in parishes throughout the United States the night of April 20.

While a precise number was not available, reports from 89 U.S. Latin-rite dioceses, roughly half the total number, indicate that their dioceses alone will account for about 37,000 Catholics joining the Church.

As the article states, many of those who became Catholic on Saturday, April 20, came through a parish Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. They were prepared for the Rites of Initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion, through study, prayer, reflection, questions and answers, practices and rehearsals, and the final decision to join the Catholic Church, either leaving another faith community or coming to the Sacraments for the first time.

But how has the Church or the individual parish been prepared to receive them? Welcome them beyond a "recruiting" process, and help them become part of the parish? The process of initiation can't end at the Easter Vigil.

That was a concern Newman certainly had about the individuals and groups of Anglican converts coming to the Catholic Church in the 1840's and later. The converts had to be prepared for the Church, but he also thought the Church needed to be prepared for them: how to welcome them; how to integrate them; how to make use of their education and abilities. As he commented:  “There are those who only wish to convert, and then leave the poor converts to shift for themselves, as far as knowledge of their religion goes. The other end which is so important, is what I call levelling up." He did not want failed conversions: “I am afraid to make hasty converts of educated men lest they should not have counted the cost & should have difficulties after they have entered the Church . . . . ” 

It is true that Newman thought the Catholic Church in England needed to focus on making sure the Catholics she had were well formed and educated, but he also worked with hundreds of prospective converts, helping them prepare for life in the Catholic Church, to understand what they faced with their families and friends, etc. But when he knew that they believed that the Catholic Church was the one, true Church that Jesus had founded, he insisted that they should become Catholics as soon as possible and he pointed to the example of himself and others who may suffered loss and trouble in temporal matters, but had received great spiritual consolation and comfort in knowing they were in the "one fold of Christ." 

Father Stanley Jaki and Peter Wilcox have written about the letters Newman sent to prospective converts and those who had joined the Church, advising them, consoling them, urging them to be patient, forbearing, and brave.

The Anglican Ordinariate, which will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the publication of Anglicanorum Coetibus this November 4th, provides a structure for groups of Anglicans coming into the Catholic Church. The Pastoral Provision which Pope John Paul II arranged in 1980 still assists individual Anglicans and Episcopalians. The Coming Home Network--perhaps I should interview Matt!--reaches out to all Protestant pastors and their families to help them in their journeys to the Catholic Church. For most of the men, women and children who became Catholic at the Easter Vigil on April 20, however, it will be up to the parishes they joined to help them progress in their love of Jesus and His Church.

Deep in History: The Counter-Reformation in England

Interesting timing: The Coming Home Network has posted this video of Father Charles Connor speaking about "The English Counter-Reformation":

Many are familiar with the Catholic Counter-Reformation that took place on the European continent in response to Martin Luther and other reformers. Less well known is what the Counter-Reformation looked like in England as a response to the schism led by King Henry VIII. Fr. Charles Connor explores the relationship between Catholics and Anglicans in England in the decades following the split between the Church of England and the Church of Rome.

Since I'm reading Father Philip Hughes' great work on Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England, I watched/listened to the video the day it was released (I think I have an audio CD that I purchased several years ago). Of course, Father Connor can't go into the detail that Father Hughes can, but I think it is unfortunate that he concentrated only on the campaign against heresy during Mary I's reign, and skipped the constructive reform that Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, and his bishops led during Mary I's reign. 

Hughes provides the most unflinching interpretation of the international and papal politics, the personalities of major players and how their personalities influenced their efforts, and the status of belief in England that I have ever read. For example, he comments on how 20 years of the civil administration of religious policy in England had essentially freed the English from all thought of having canon law and the Catholic hierarchy in control again. Canon law and the ecclesiastical courts had previously ruled on many of the most essential events in the laity's life: marriage, family life, etc. The English people were not ready to place themselves under that authority again. Hughes also examines Reginald Pole's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, and how he was not able to face unpleasant realities and also too imperturbable--Pole was too willing to accept the role of martyrdom and incapable of the kind of righteous anger that drives us to effective action and real sacrifice.

I'm still reading Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England and will post a fuller review later. This book is the necessary supplement to Father Connor's brief presentation and also a more realistic (pessimistic?) view of the first Counter-Reformation efforts in England than Eamon Duffy's Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor. That's not really fair, to say that Hughes was a pessimist--after all, the Counter-Reformation in England did fail!

And, after I finish this book, I have another Counter-Reformation book in queue: John Hungerford Pollen's The Counter-Reformation in Scotland. Who knew that there was one? 

John Hungerford Pollen, SJ, was the son of John Hungerford Pollen, convert and associate of Blessed John Henry Newman. (He was the architect of the church Newman had built for the Catholic University of Ireland and a member of the faculty too.) His namesake son researched and published many books on the Catholic martyrs of England and Wales. This monograph is based upon a lecture, expanded for publication. More information on Father Pollen, here, from the Jesuits in Britain. He was vice-postulator for the cause of the martyrs of England and Wales from 1900 to 1923.

Deep in History and Culture

Tyler Blanski wrote When Donkeys Talk and it was published by Zondervan in 2013. While Blanski followed his "Quest to Rediscover the Mystery and Wonder of Christianity" he found the Catholic Church. From Zondervan:

Tired of church as you’ve known it? Thirsty for a fresh look at Christian faith? American singer/songwriter and author Tyler Blanski was, too. So he set out on a Holy Pilgrimage to rediscover the saints, stars, and beauty of Christianity for the twenty-first century. Rich with deep application for living in the modern world, When Donkeys Talk is an invitation to become enchanted again with Christ and his world.

Tyler reminds us that God works in unexpected, unusual, and miraculous ways and that he inhabits and speaks through the wondrous world he has made. Blanski redefines “magical” to help us see that the world is guided by a hand greater than science and materialism. Using scripture, the wisdom of the church fathers, and respected theologians and Christian thinkers from centuries past, as well as a creative and humorous narrative, you will find the wonder of our ancient faith still alive and well.

From Tyler Blanski at Churchpop.com:

If I were to tell you that I had a talking donkey, you would probably chuckle and pour another drink. If I were to insist that I was entirely serious, you would probably back away slowly and, with no masked alarm, look for the nearest exit.

Nothing ruins a good party like a story about a miracle.

“It was a trick of the nerves, an illusion,” those who dared to hang around would counsel, surveying me with concerned puppy eyes. “Have you taken your medication?” I do not have a donkey, but if I did, I would want it to be a talking donkey.

So begins the book that eventually made me become Catholic, a book in which Christianity is an old-growth forest, a world crowded with angels and saints and sacraments and wild theories about how the Incarnation has comprehensive implications for the universe and for us.

We need a holy renaissance. But the path through Christendom is old and dangerous, and careful reconnoitering is necessary. This is, at least, the modest justification for the travelogue, When Donkeys Talk: A Quest to Rediscover the Mystery and Wonder of Christianity (Zondervan, 2013).

The strange thing is, it’s written by a Protestant; that is to say, I had not yet been received into the Church when I wrote it. I was somewhere in between, in a via media, and I was searching for home. Writing When Donkeys Talk was my way of going on a “holy pilgrimage” in search of something more.

So I plunged irreversibly into the old forests Christendom. Even though I was no Saint George when it comes to fighting dragons, I hoisted a backpack of library books, tightened my grip on my proverbial donkey’s reins, and stepped portentously onto the old trail at the edge of the darkening pines. It was to be my ruining. As John Henry Cardinal Newman once said, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

And then, over at The Coming Home Network, Tyler describes how he and his wife Brittany read themselves into the Catholic Church, as he was preparing to be a minister in the Anglican church:

Since our wedding day, Brittany and I have been on a long journey of repentance, discovering and receiving one Catholic truth after another — the Blessed Virgin Mary, transubstantiation, purgatory, the priesthood, the papacy, conjugal openness to life, even hell. We stopped using birth control. We met with a priest. We prayed. We read every Catholic book we could get our hands on, especially the Bible. We read Karl Keating and Scott Hahn and Stephen Ray, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Vladimir Soloviev, and the Catechism.

Brittany believed before I did. She just knew — the way you just know that the sky is high and that trees are beautiful and that apples will fall — that Christ established the Church on Peter and endowed her in Christ with every spiritual blessing (Matt 16:17-19; Eph 1:3). And her faith made her flower. I was close behind.

I was simmering, just simmering, but Gerard Manley Hopkins brought me to a boil. Then G.K. Chesterton and Cardinal John Henry Newman made me sing like a teakettle. The saints, the Scriptures, the Mass, the hope of glory…I was more than wooed: God had trampled me. It was not long before deep in my heart I knew the truth of the Catholic Church, nothing less than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Blanksi blogs here.

Coming Home Network Newsletter

What a thrill to open my monthly copy of The Coming Home Network Newsletter and see that Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation is offered as a premium for a donation. I presume The Coming Home Network (CHN) chose my book because the featured convert makes some Catholic connections when exploring his family history in England and then reads more about Catholicism in England:

When I was well on the way to being received into the Church, an unexpected form of historical encouragement appeared. Somehow I became aware of Eamon Duffy’s book, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580. (Note: This book can be purchased through the CHNetwork by calling 740-450-1175 or online at www.chresources.com. Only a limited quantity is available.) Duffy’s thesis, backed by considerable historical evidence, was that

[L]ate medieval Catholicism [in England] exerted an enormously strong, diverse, and vigorous hold over the imagination and the loyalty of the people up to the very moment of Reformation. Traditional religion had about it no particular marks of exhaustion or decay, and indeed in a whole host of ways, from the multiplication of vernacular religious books to adaptations within the national and regional cult of the saints, was showing itself well able to meet needs and new conditions. (p. 4)

This came as quite a surprise, because over time I had acquired just the opposite impression: that the English people by the time of the Protestant Reformation were clamoring to be rid of Catholicism. Now, for the first time, it occurred to me that many, if not most, of my English ancestors of the early Reformation period may not have been “intentional Protestants,” that is, people who affirmatively split from existing versions of Christianity. Instead, they were more likely to have had Protestantism forced on them from the top down. Catholicism in England was destroyed, not abandoned.

Supremacy and Survival is more accessible and more available for a premium, I suppose, than The Stripping of the Altars. When Matt Swaim of The Son Rise Morning Show appeared on The Journey Home, the CHN interview program on EWTN, he said I'd be perfect for the show--except that I'm neither a convert nor a revert. Marcus Grodi usually interviews one or the other; Matt suggested I could lapse ever so briefly to qualify, but that's not happening.

Book Review: Father Ray Ryland's Memoir

Father Ray Ryland died on March 20th this year after a fall on the steps on his way to Perpetual Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. The Coming Home network honored him, their chaplain, in their June newsletter and offered his memoir as a premium for a donation to their work helping Protestant clergy and their families on their "Journey Home" to Rome.

As the publisher, Emmaus Road, describes the memoir:

A fascinating autobiography in the spirit of Bl. John Henry Newman, Drawn from Shadows Into Truth: A Memoir is the intriguing story of how a married minister in the Disciples of Christ eventually came to be an ordained priest in the Catholic Church. This captivating narrative of Father Ryland’s quest for Jesus Christ and the One Church He founded is a spiritual and intellectual adventure—from a poor Oklahoma farm boy to a naval officer to a Protestant minister to a Harvard lawyer to a married Catholic priest with five children, twenty-two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Pick it up, and you’ll be unable to put it down!

Father Ryland's conversion and his memoir were both obviously inspired by Blessed John Henry Newman--the title of the latter confirms this influence, as it echoes the motto carved on Newman's gravestone: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem. Ryland even follows Newman's path from Bible Christianity (Disciples of Christ in Ryland's childhood), to personal conversion, to rationalism (and in Ryland's case Unitarianism), to the via media of Anglo-Catholicism, to the one true fold of Christ, the Catholic Church. Father Ryland provides details about his childhood religion in Crescent, Oklahoma, his college days, his service in the Navy during World War II, including his consistent, though undecided, call to ministry. He finally does, however, decide to become a minister, but soon realizes that since he does not believe that Jesus Christ is God, his ministry would be a utilitarian effort to help people understand Jesus's teachings and way of life. With his wife Ruth, Father Ryland continues to study theology and grow in his understanding of Jesus and His Church. He was a very well educated man.

For awhile, both Ryland and his wife are comfortable as Anglo-Catholics in the Episcopal Church, although his High Church liturgical practices are not always acceptable to his parishioners. When they recognize, like Newman, that the Church of England/the Episcopal Church is not the true Church founded by Jesus, they do explore Eastern Orthodoxy. Ryland carefully explains why they could not find their religious home there and how they finally came to the Catholic Church while serving the Episcopalian Church in Oklahoma, where he was born and raised. Becoming Catholic meant the loss of friends, estrangement from family, and being without a job or livelihood. Catholic friends help with the latter and begin to replace the former, but the family relationships take longer to heal.

Father Ray explains how he begins his new life as a Catholic. He was ordained as a Permanent Deacon and practiced law. Then he became the second priest ordained under the Pastoral Provision established by St. John Paul II, the antecedent in a way to the Anglican Ordinariate established by Pope Benedict XVI. His life story really ends there as he describes his teaching career at the University of San Diego and then at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio and his work with the Coming Home Network. In the last seven chapters of the book, Father Ryland explores several themes from his life: the authority of Jesus and His Church, an explanation of the doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, and the essential discipline of priestly celibacy among them.

It is a very readable book. It did need another set of eyes as some errors slipped by the proofreader and editor. Father Ian Ker's name, for example, is misspelled on the back cover (Kerr). The few typos are minor errors in view of Father Ryland's great intellectual gifts to the Church and his magnificent example of faithfulness to the Truth.