Preview: John Keble's "The Christian Year" on the Son Rise Morning Show

Anna Mitchell of the Son Rise Morning Show suggested we start a series on a work by a man who influenced Saint John Henry Newman in his "religious opinions" (as he called them in his Apologia) before he became a Catholic: John Keble, Anglican minister, holder of the Poetry Professorship at Oxford from 1831 to 1841, and preacher of the "National Apostasy" sermon that launched the Oxford Movement in 1833. 

So we'll start on Monday, June 1 to explore the text of The Christian Year, Keble's book of verse reflecting on the liturgical year of the Church of England.

The Book of Common Prayer, in its various iterations from the time Thomas Cranmer first composed and arranged it, maintained a liturgical calendar of seasons (Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter, etc.) based on Catholic tradition. Our current "Ordinary Time" is called "Trinity" with numbered Sundays until Advent. Certain feast days, like St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents after Christmas were maintained; commemorations like the Gunpowder Treason, King Charles the Martyr, Restoration of the Royal Family, were added. There are also poems about Anglican sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, etc), reflecting the High Church aspects of the Oxford Movement as its leaders understood them.

We'll start with his Dedication:

When in my silent solitary walk,
   I sought a strain not all unworthy Thee,
My heart, still ringing with wild worldly talk,
   Gave forth no note of holier minstrelsy.

Prayer is the secret, to myself I said,
   Strong supplication must call down the charm,
And thus with untuned heart I feebly prayed,
   Knocking at Heaven’s gate with earth-palsied arm.

Fountain of Harmony!  Thou Spirit blest,
   By whom the troubled waves of earthly sound
Are gathered into order, such as best
   Some high-souled bard in his enchanted round

May compass, Power divine!  Oh, spread Thy wing,
   Thy dovelike wing that makes confusion fly,
Over my dark, void spirit, summoning
   New worlds of music, strains that may not die.

Oh, happiest who before thine altar wait,
   With pure hands ever holding up on high
The guiding Star of all who seek Thy gate,
   The undying lamp of heavenly Poesy.

Too weak, too wavering, for such holy task
   Is my frail arm, O Lord; but I would fain
Track to its source the brightness, I would bask
   In the clear ray that makes Thy pathway plain.

I dare not hope with David’s harp to chase
   The evil spirit from the troubled breast;
Enough for me if I can find such grace
   To listen to the strain, and be at rest.

I think that we can see what Saint John Henry Newman appreciated in Professor John Keble's person and character--not just that he inspired that work in England that Newman believed he was saved for when he was so ill in Sicily--but that:

Keble was young in years, when he became a University celebrity, and younger in mind. He had the purity and simplicity of a child. He had few sympathies with the intellectual party, who sincerely welcomed him as a brilliant {290} specimen of young Oxford. He instinctively shut up before literary display, and pomp and donnishness of manner, faults which always will beset academical notabilities. He did not respond to their advances. . . . He went into the country, but his instance serves to prove that men need not, in the event, lose that influence which is rightly theirs, because they happen to be thwarted in the use of the channels natural and proper to its exercise. He did not lose his place in the minds of men because he was out of their sight.

Keble was a man who guided himself and formed his judgments, not by processes of reason, by inquiry or by argument, but, to use the word in a broad sense, by authority. Conscience is an authority; the Bible is an authority; such is the Church; such is Antiquity; such are the words of the wise; such are hereditary lessens; such are ethical truths; such are historical memories, such are legal saws and state maxims; such are proverbs; such are sentiments, presages, and prepossessions. It seemed to me as if he ever felt happier, when he could speak or act under some such primary or external sanction; and could use argument mainly as a means of recommending or explaining what had claims on his reception prior to proof. (from the Note on "Liberalism" in the Apologia pro Vita Sua)

When Newman comments on The Christian Year in chapter one of the same work, he notes:

The Christian Year made its appearance in 1827. It is not necessary, and scarcely becoming, to praise a book which has already become one of the classics of the language. When the general tone of religious literature was so nerveless and impotent, as it was at that time, Keble struck an original note and woke up in the hearts of thousands a new music, the music of a school, long unknown in England. Nor can I pretend to analyze, in my own instance, the effect of religious teaching so deep, so pure, so beautiful. I have never till now tried to do so; yet I think I am not wrong in saying, that the two main intellectual truths which it brought home to me, were the same two, which I had learned from Butler, though recast in the creative mind of my new master. The first of these was what may be called, in a large sense of the word, the Sacramental system; that is, the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types and the instruments of real things unseen,—a doctrine, which embraces in its fulness, not only what Anglicans, as well as Catholics, believe about Sacraments properly so called; but also the article of "the Communion of Saints;" and likewise the Mysteries of the faith.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Portrait of John Keble (1792-1866) by George Richmond (1809–1896)

What I'm Reading Now: Newman Retitled

Os Justi Press has started a new series of Theological Classics, well-prepared works, affordably priced, with introductions and other helpful aids for readers. I purchased the re-titled--The Virgin Mary as New Eve--aka/pka as A Letter Addressed to The Rev. E.B. Pusey on Occasion of His Eirenicon by Saint John Henry Newman. The change in title, as the editor of the series, Peter Kwasniewski, explains, focuses our reading on the "principal theme of the entire letter". I've read this work before, on-line at the Newman Reader and in a cheap reprint, and neither format was conducive to an effective study for me. I prefer real books and want excellent books too.

So far what I've read beyond the Editor's Preface is the introduction by Fr. Thomas Crean, OP--and already learned something new! Pusey had written his Eirenicon in response to a work by Henry Manning, another Anglican convert and Catholic priest. Manning's work was titled The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England, in which he "deprecated those works." Pusey replied with The Church of England a Portion of Christ's One Holy Catholic Church, and a Means of Restoring Visible Unity: An Eirenicon, which was "far from peaceable."

An eirenicon is "a statement that attempts to harmonize conflicting doctrines" and is a borrowing from Greek and according to the OED, Pusey's unique borrowing at the time: 

The earliest known use of the noun eirenicon is in the 1860s.
OED's earliest evidence for eirenicon is from 1865, in the writing of Edward Pusey, Church of England clergyman and theologian.

Father Crean also notes that Newman had recently met Pusey and Keble again after so many years in September of 1865; Keble spoke about the "Eirenicon" and then Newman was surprised to read it and find out just how un-irenic it was. Newman decided to concentrate on Keble's remarks about Catholic Marian doctrine and devotion and began writing his reply on November 28 and finishing it on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1865.

Crean continues his introduction by highlighting the excellences of Newman's Letter with some "animadversions" to certain of Newman's statements, and concludes with analysis of reaction to the Letter from Pusey and others.

When I've read Newman's own work I might make some other comments on this blog. I'm so happy to have this work available in an attractive, well-prepared, and reasonably priced edition.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Some Contemporary Reactions to Newman's Conversion

I've been helping, in a small way, with a project not my own about which I should not say much, except that it is about St. John Henry Newman. 

While doing some of my own research, I stumbled upon a series of essays by John R. Griffin in Christendom College's Faith & Reason, part of that author's reinterpretation of the Oxford Movement and Newman's role in it. (Just search for his name on the Faith & Reason archive page--the college stopped publishing the journal in 2005 after 30 years). One of these essays really shocked me: I don't remember reading about the calumnious and treacherous actions of some of Newman's so-called friends. Note that this is before he "Poped":

Pusey was the first to suggest that something be done to diminish the impact of Newman’s conversion. Pusey and Keble expressed the hope that Newman would go to the continent to make his profession of faith.6 Manning, Isaac Williams, [Charles] Marriott, Pusey and several other high­churchmen conferred on the subject. The Manning correspondence of these years is marked “confidential”, and it appears that Manning asked Williams for a meeting in London to discuss what should be done about the pending event. Manning asked Williams to tell him all that he knew about the Newman affair and anything that Newman might have told him (Williams).7 The image of the future Cardinal that comes through these letters is not a pleasant one; and when scholars, like D. Newsome, profess their inability to understand why people prefer Newman to Manning,8 they might look at this correspondence for their answer. Manning’s Charge of 1845, in addition, does nothing to enhance his reputation for fairness or accuracy on the Newman question.9

Meetings between Williams and Manning were arranged in London, but we have no knowledge of what was decided. All that we know is that Williams was apparently frightened by some of the measures proposed by Manning and determined, following Keble’s advice, to do nothing.10 The Manning plan or declaration was given up, and he, along with Williams, T. Keble, and Marriott, adopted a partial silence in response to the early converts. Marriott seems to have been the most disturbed among this group, and he coped with the event by adopting a useful piece of slander put forward by James Mozley-Newman had never been a true Anglican.11

What could Manning have been proposing? Something that could have opened them up to charges of libel? Something immoral or illegal or both?

Griffin goes on in "The Anglican Response to Newman's Conversion" to highlight the ongoing campaign in print by Pusey, Keble, Mozley, et al, to paint a portrait of Newman and other converts from the Oxford Movement like Oakley and Wilberforce, as hyper-sensitive, irrational, disloyal, and worse. One particular mode of attack was to claim a precipitous decline in moral qualities among Newman and his converts after they had become Catholics. The Achilli Trial, in which Newman was accused of libel, was used against Newman: he was a liar (of course, that was Kingsley's later charge to which Newman had to answer with the Apologia pro Vita Sua). Griffin also traces these kinds of attacks to some later historians of the Oxford Movement and its aftermath:

For a brief survey, see Abbott, The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman (1892); Williams, Autobiographv (1892); Grafton, A Journey Godward (1910); Donaldson, Five Great Oxford Leaders (1905); Morse-Boycot, They Shine Like Stars (1947); Weatherby, Cardinal Newman and his Age (1973), 235ff; B.A. Smith, Dean Church: The Anglican Response to Newman (1958) contains little that might be construed as an attack on Newman’s moral character or reliability as an historian of the Oxford Movement and it has provided me with a title for this paper, but Smith suggests nothing in Church’s life or writings that might be regarded as a “response” to Newman. (footnote #44)

I have always known what Newman lost (and gained) by becoming a Catholic, but I had not read about this sustained and coordinated campaign against him and his conversion by those who had been his friends--no wonder his reunion with Keble and Pusey was so difficult 20 years later! 

Griffin's conclusion reflects my own reaction:

With those who had known Newman during his Anglican years, it is less easy to be forgiving. I have argued that his friends, E.B. Pusey, John Keble, James Mozley, and the others, deliberately set out to discredit him in order to retain persons in the Church of England. Even this, though I believe it involved lying about Newman, is understandable but for one point. The faith of Keble and Pusey in the system they professed was far too shaky for them to attempt to advise others. Keble described himself once as in the role of “the blind leading the blind.”49 Pusey in many places admitted that the Oxford ideal was not working, in spite of the professed optimism in his published Letters.

It should also be remembered that those who went over to Rome suffered a complete alienation from their friends, the risk of slanderous attacks and estrangement even from relatives. There is one thing more. Those who went over, almost to a man, underwent severe financial reverses. Those who remained “loyal” to the Church of England, whatever may have been their relationship to bishops and laity,50 were at least spared that.

I noticed one interesting, ironic line in Charles Marriott's biography, linked above:  "He acquired possession of Newman's buildings at Littlemore in order to prevent them from being turned into a Roman catholic establishment, and used them for a printing-press for religious works, a scheme which caused him endless worry and expenditure." Newman's College at Littlemore since 1987 has been a "Roman catholic establishment" dedicated to Newman's memory, cared for by the sisters of The Spiritual Family the Work:

Newman’s oratory has again become a place of prayer and worship, with the officium, daily hours of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and regular masses. A substantial and specialized collection of Newman-related literature has been built up on the site of Newman’s own library, together with an exhibition of Newman memorabilia (prints, etchings, photographs, sculptures and original letters).

I visited The College in 2009, prayed in the chapel, and enjoyed the gardens--the photos above are from that visit (C) 2010 by Stephanie A. Mann. 

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

July 14: "National Apostasy" and John Keble

In the Church of England, today is the feast day of John Keble, Tractarian, pastor, and poet. He was born on April 25, 1792 and died on March 29, 1866--so obviously his feast is not celebrated on the date of his death. The date chosen for his memorial in the Church of England is the anniversary of his "National Apostasy" sermon, delivered in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in 1833. John Henry Newman always considered that date the beginning of the Oxford Movement. As this biography on the Project Canterbury website describes that event:

The text of the sermon was i Sam. xii. 23: 'As for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you; but I will teach you the good and the right way.' The preacher's aim was to draw public attention to the grave and pressing dangers that threatened the Church both from State interference with her liberties, and from the widespread decay of religious convictions. At such a time it was the duty of all who valued the cause of the Apostolic Church to devote themselves to its defence. 'Surely,' said the preacher, 'it will be no unworthy principle if any man is more circumspect in his behaviour, more watchful and fearful of himself, more earnest in his petitions for spiritual aid, from a dread of disparaging the holy name of the English Church in her hour of peril, by his own personal fault and negligence. . . . There may be, as far as he knows, but a very few to sympathize with him. He may have to wait long, and very likely pass out of this world, before he see any abatement in the triumph of disorder and irreligion. But if he be consistent, he possesses to the utmost the personal consolations of a good Christian; and as a true Churchman, he has the encouragement which no other cause in the world can impart in the same degree; he is calmly, soberly, demonstrably sure that, sooner or later, his will be the winning side, and that the victory will be complete, universal, eternal.'

The sermon was published on July 22, under the title National Apostasy. It does not seem to have excited much attention at the time. One of the two judges before whom it was preached is said to have remarked that it was 'an appropriate discourse.' Dr. Pusey, we are told, considered 'some passages rather too pointed.' But there were others who had a truer realization of its significance. To Newman's judgment, already quoted, may be added the words of Dr. J. B. Mozley, one of the ablest of the Tractarians, and one of the deepest thinkers of his time: 'I cannot help thinking it a kind of exordium of a great revolution--shall I call it?--coming on, whether rapidly or slowly we cannot tell, but at any rate most surely.'

Mozley's comment about "a great revolution" matches one of the other great historical events we remember this day: the Storming of the Bastille in 1789, usually identified as the beginning of the French Revolution--Bastille Day.

In Chapter 1 of the Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman remembers his high regard for Keble:

The true and primary author of it, however, as is usual with great motive-powers, was out of sight. Having carried off as a mere boy the highest honours of the University, he had turned from the admiration which haunted his steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction in pastoral work in the country. Need I say that I am speaking of John Keble? The first time that I was in a room with him was on occasion of my election to a fellowship at Oriel, when I was sent for into the Tower, to shake hands with the Provost and Fellows. How is that hour fixed in my memory after the changes of forty-two years, forty-two this very day on which I write! I have lately had a letter in my hands, which I sent at the time to my great friend, John William Bowden, with whom I passed almost exclusively my Under-graduate years. "I had to hasten to the Tower," I say to him, "to receive the congratulations of all the Fellows. I bore it till Keble took my hand, and then felt so abashed and unworthy of the honour done me, that I seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground." His had been the first name which I had heard spoken of, with reverence rather than admiration, when I came up to Oxford. When one day I was walking in High Street with my dear earliest friend just mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry out, "There's Keble!" and with what awe did I look at him! Then at another time I heard a Master of Arts of my college give an account how he had just then had occasion to introduce himself on some business to Keble, and how gentle, courteous, and unaffected Keble had been, so as almost to put him out of countenance. Then too it was reported, truly or falsely, how a rising man of brilliant reputation, the present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Milman, admired and loved him, adding, that somehow he was strangely unlike any one else. However, at the time when I was elected Fellow of Oriel he was not in residence, and he was shy of me for years in consequence of the marks which I bore upon me of the evangelical and liberal schools. At least so I have ever thought. Hurrell Froude brought us together about 1828: it is one of the sayings preserved in his Remains,—"Do you know the story of the murderer who had done one good thing in his life? Well; if I was ever asked what good deed I had ever done, I should say that I had brought Keble and Newman to understand each other."

Newman continued to hold Keble in high regard, even after his conversion: In Newman and His Contemporaries, Edward Short quotes a letter Newman wrote to his sister Jemima as he considered becoming an Oratorian that he thought St. Philip Neri and John Keble very similar. The saint and his erstwhile friend shared the same "extreme hatred of humbug, playfulness [Keble and Neri were playful], nay, oddity, tender love for others, and severity" (p. 65). Keble could have become the kind of saint that Neri was, Newman thought. Based on his love and admiration to Neri that is high praise indeed.

After Newman left the Oxford Movement, Oxford, and the Church of England and became a Catholic on October 9, 1845, Newman and Keble did not see each other for years. As this EWTN document notes:

Newman called to see Keble in his vicarage at Hursely on September 12, 1865. They did not recognize each other. "How mysterious that first sight of friends is! For when I came to contemplate him, it was the old face and manner, but the first effect and impression was different."1 Newman was taken aback to discover that Pusey was also paying a visit. "As we three sat together at one table, I had as painful thoughts as ever I recollect, though it was pain, not acute, but heavy. There were three old men, who had worked vigorously in their prime."

Until Keble died, Newman hoped that he would join him in the "one true fold of Christ", the Catholic Church. Newman believed that Keble had many tendencies toward the Catholic Church: his piety, devotion to Mary and the saints, his liturgical and Sacramental emphasis, his desire for apostolic authority--but Keble remained in the Church of England, to Newman's pain and sorrow.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Portrait of John Keble

Book Review, Part Two: Newman's Anglican Difficulties

Before I demonstrate to you how Saint John Henry Newman, just five years after his conversion to Catholicism and three years after his ordination to the Catholic priesthood, attempts to remove any prejudices against the Catholic Church in the hearts and minds of the remaining members of the Movement of 1833 (the Oxford Movement), allow me to comment again on Edward Short's introduction.

Edward Short, who sent me the review copy of this new volume in the Newman Millennium Edition, provides a most comprehensive introduction, describing the occasion of Newman's lectures, the location, the press coverage, Newman's composition of the lectures, and the autobiographical nature of the lectures (his look back at his participation in the Oxford Movement was almost a rehearsal for the Apologia pro Vita Sua 14 years later). Short also provides a precis for each of the lectures, and extensive commentary on the critical reaction to them, from newspapers at the time, William Makepeace Thackeray, John Mason Neale, J.M. Capes (who left the Church of the England for the Catholic Church and then left the Catholic Church to return to the Church of England), and other contemporaries--but also Christopher Dawson, Owen Chadwick, ("the doyen of Newman detractors"), John Griffin, Newman biographer Ian Ker, Robert Pattison (author of The Great Dissent), and Stanley L. Jaki, OSB, the previous editor of these lectures (Real-View Books).

Short's footnotes, which are sometimes so long that the text at the top of the page may be only two or three lines, are equally comprehensive, identifying people, texts, and even the context of Newman's mention and use of those cited sources. I admit that sometimes I merely scanned the notes while reading the text while in the midst of Newman's argument, but they provide great resources for understanding the argument, notwithstanding.

In Part Two of the these lectures, after offering the remaining members of the Movement of 1833--notice that name used by Newman dates the Oxford Movement, placing it in the past--evidence of their parlous position in the Church of England, he admits that these arguments have mainly been negative. Now he will offer more positive arguments to deny their views of the Catholic Church based on five issues:

• The Social State of Catholic Countries (not evidence against the Sanctity of the Catholic Church)
• The Religious State of Catholics (not evidence against the Sanctity of the Catholic Church either)
• Differences among Catholics (not evidence against the Unity of the Catholic Church)
• Heretical and Schismatical Bodies within the Catholic Church (not evidence against the Catholicity--universality--of the Catholic Church)
• Ecclesiastical History of the Catholic Church (not evidence against the apostolicity--the unbroken line of Tradition--of the Catholic Church)

What Newman is trying to do is remove their English prejudice against Italy, France, Spain, and Belgium, which they consider to be behind the (progressive English) times:

No man in his senses, certainly no English gentleman, would abandon the high station which his country both occupies and bestows on him in the eyes of man, to make himself the co-religionist of such slaves, and the creature of such a Creed. . . .

What, then, you are saying comes, in fact, to this: We would rather deny our initial principles, than accept such a development of them as the communion of Rome, viewed as it is; we would rather believe Erastianism, and all its train of consequences, to be from God, than the religion of such countries as France and Belgium, Spain and Italy. This is what you must mean to say, and nothing short of it. (pp. 264-265)

The main thrust of his arguments in these five lectures is what the Catholic Church is and what she aspires to achieve--in contrast to an Erastian church dedicated to serving the worldly ends of the State and the progress of the Nation--saving souls:

The world believes in the world's ends as the greatest of goods; it wishes society to be governed simply and entirely for the sake of this world. Provided it could gain one little islet in the ocean, one foot upon the coast, if it could cheapen tea by sixpence a pound, or make its flag respected among the Esquimaux or Otaheitans, at the cost of a hundred lives and a hundred souls, it would think it a very good bargain. What does it know of hell? it disbelieves it; it spits upon, it abominates, it curses its very name and notion. Next, as to the devil, it does not believe in him either. We next come to the flesh, and it is "free to confess" that it does not think there is any great harm in following the instincts of that nature which, perhaps it goes on to say, God has given. How could it be otherwise? who ever heard of the world fighting against the flesh and the devil? Well, then, what is its notion of evil? Evil, says the world, is whatever is an offence to me, whatever obscures my majesty, whatever disturbs my peace. Order, tranquillity, popular contentment, plenty, prosperity, advance in arts and sciences, literature, refinement, splendour, this is my millennium, or rather my elysium, my swerga; I acknowledge no whole, no individuality, but my own; the units which compose me are but parts of me; they have no perfection in themselves; no end but in me; in my glory is their bliss, and in the hidings of my countenance they come to nought.

Such is the philosophy and practice of the world;—now the Church looks and moves in a simply opposite direction. It contemplates, not the whole, but the parts; not a nation, but the men who form it; not society in the first place, but in the second place, and in the first place individuals; it looks beyond the outward act, on and into the thought, the motive, the intention, and the will; it looks beyond the world, and detects and moves against the devil, who is sitting in ambush behind it. It has, then, a foe in view; nay, it has a battle-field, to which the world is blind; its proper battle-field is the heart of the individual, and its true foe is Satan.

My dear brethren, do not think I am declaiming in the air or translating the pages of some old worm-eaten homily; as I have already said, I bear my own testimony to what has been brought home to me most closely and vividly as a matter of fact since I have been a Catholic; viz., that that mighty world-wide Church, like her Divine Author, regards, consults for, labours for the individual soul; she looks at the souls for whom Christ died, and who are made over to her; and her one object, for which everything is sacrificed—appearances, reputation, worldly triumph—is to acquit herself well of this most awful responsibility. Her one duty is to bring forward the elect to salvation, and to make them as many as she can:—to take offences out of their path, to warn them of sin, to rescue them from evil, to convert them, to teach them, to feed them, to protect them, and to perfect them. (pp. 267-269)

This passage really jumped out at me as so perfect for our current "Cancel Culture" situation. After describing how the Catholic Church will offer God's forgiveness to any repentant sinner, Newman notes:

With the world it is the reverse; a member of society may go as near the line of evil, as the world draws it, as he will; but, till he has passed it, he is safe. Again, when he has once transgressed it, recovery is impossible; let honour of man or woman be sullied, and to restore its splendour is simply to undo the past; it is impossible. (p. 281)

The problem is now that the line keeps moving and the worldly can't keep behind it!

Just a page after that Newman presents the example that created the greatest scandal to his English readers:

Take a mere beggar-woman, lazy, ragged, and filthy, and not over-scrupulous of truth—(I do not say she had arrived at perfection)—but if she is chaste, and sober, and cheerful, and goes to her religious duties (and I am supposing not at all an impossible case), she will, in the eyes of the Church, have a prospect of heaven, which is quite closed and refused to the State's pattern-man, the just, the upright, the generous, the honourable, the conscientious, if he be all this, not from a supernatural power—(I do not determine whether this is likely to be the fact, but I am contrasting views and principles)—not from a supernatural power, but from mere natural virtue. (p. 282)

Perhaps they should have read again the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, another scandalous comparison!

In the next lecture, Newman provides his auditors or readers an especially appropriate reminder of the recent Anglican crisis over the Sacrament of Baptism, when he describes what the Catholic Church believes about its effects on the soul and the Church's effort to maintain that state of grace:

A soul which has received the grace of baptism receives with it the germ or faculty of all supernatural virtues whatever,—faith, hope, charity, meekness, patience, sobriety, and every other that can be named; and if it commits mortal sin, it falls out of grace, and forfeits these supernatural powers. It is no longer what it was, and is, so far, in the feeble and frightful condition of those who were never baptized. But there are certain remarkable limitations and alleviations in its punishment, and one is this: that the faculty or power of faith remains to it. Of course the soul may go on to resist and destroy this supernatural faculty also; it may, by an act of the will, rid itself of its faith, as it has stripped itself of grace and love; or it may gradually decay in its faith till it becomes simply infidel; but this is not the common state of a Catholic people. What commonly happens is this, that they fall under the temptations to vice or covetousness, which naturally and urgently beset them, but that faith is left to them. Thus the many are in a condition which is absolutely novel and strange in the ideas of a Protestant; they have a vivid perception, like sense, of things unseen, yet have no desire at all, or affection, towards them; they have knowledge without love. Such is the state of the many; the Church at the same time is ever labouring with all her might to bring them back again to their Maker; and in fact is ever bringing back vast multitudes one by one, though one by one they are ever relapsing from her. The necessity of yearly confession, the Easter communion, the stated seasons of indulgence, the high festivals, Lent, days of obligation, with their Masses and preaching,—these ordinary and routine observances and the extraordinary methods of retreats, missions, jubilees, and the like, are the means by which the powers of the world unseen are ever acting upon the corrupt mass, of which a nation is composed, and breaking up and reversing the dreadful phenomenon which fact and Scripture conspire to place before us. (pp. 304-305)

I would have to quote almost the entire chapter on Ecclesiastical History of the Catholic Church to represent the rich detail Newman provides to describe his studies of the Fathers of the Church in the history of the Arian heresy (in 1839). As Newman concluded in the Apologia Pro Vita Sua:

I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite. The Church of the Via Media was in the position of the Oriental communion, Rome was where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians.

In the Apologia he even cites his own account of how he reached that realization from the final lecture in this book:

It was difficult to make out how the Eutychians or Monophysites were heretics, unless Protestants and Anglicans were heretics also; difficult to find arguments against the Tridentine Fathers, which did not tell against the Fathers of Chalcedon; difficult to condemn the Popes of the sixteenth century, without condemning the Popes of the fifth. The drama of religion, and the combat of truth and error, were ever one and the same. The principles and proceedings of the Church now, were those of the Church then; the principles and proceedings of heretics then, were those of Protestants now. I found it so,—almost fearfully; there was an awful similitude, more awful, because so silent and unimpassioned, between the dead records of the past and the feverish chronicle of the present. The shadow of the fifth century was on the sixteenth. It was like a spirit rising from the troubled waters of the old world, with the shape and lineaments of the new. The Church then, as now, might be called peremptory and stern, resolute, overbearing, and relentless; and heretics were shifting, changeable, reserved, and deceitful, ever courting civil power, and never agreeing together, except by its aid; and the civil power was ever aiming at comprehensions, trying to put the invisible out of view, and substituting expediency for faith. What was the use of continuing the controversy, or defending my position, if, after all, I was forging arguments for Arius or Eutyches, and turning devil's advocate against the much-enduring Athanasius and the majestic Leo? Be my soul with the Saints! and shall I lift up my hand against them? Sooner may my right hand forget her cunning, and wither outright, as his who once stretched it out against a prophet of God! anathema to a whole tribe of Cranmers, Ridleys, Latimers, and Jewels! perish the names of Bramhall, Ussher, Taylor, Stillingfleet, and Barrow from the face of the earth, ere I should do aught but fall at their feet in love and in worship, whose image was continually before my eyes, and whose musical words were ever in my ears and on my tongue! (pp. 426-427 in Difficulties of Anglicans)

My final comment about this section of the book is that Newman reminds us today--as Catholic laity, religious, and clerics--of the purpose of the Catholic Church: the salvation of souls. That's the center from which our worship of God, our prayers and works, our charity and activity, in the workplace, in our families, in our parishes and schools, and among our best friends and company, and all should radiate. Thus it may infuse all of actions to achieve God's will, calling people to Jesus and His Church.

This a magnificent volume of Newman's works in an appropriately presented edition. Highly recommended!

Image Credit: (Used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license) Statue outside the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, popularly known as Brompton Oratory, in London (the second location of the London Oratory; Newman presented these lectures at the King William Street location)

Book Review, Part One: Newman's Anglican Difficulties

Re-reading this book after almost thirty years--my late husband Mark gave me a copy of Father Stanley Jaki's edition of Newman's Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching in 1995--I was impressed more this time with the second part of his attempts to persuade his former colleagues in the Oxford or Tractarian Movement to leave the Church of England and become (Roman) Catholics. He called them members of "the Movement of 1833".

In the first part, "Communion with the Roman See the Legitimate Issue of the Religious Movement of 1833", I think Newman succeeded completely proving that those remaining in the Oxford Movement had no true home in the Church of England. He demonstrates to them that they will have no meaningful influence on the Church or the Nation, since the Church serves the Nation and the Nation rules the Church. Newman uses the recent history of the Gorham Judgment to show them this. Queen Victoria's Privy Council ruled that Baptism wasn't really a Sacrament after all and that a minister of the Church of England didn't really need to believe it was a Sacrament, effecting the grace of God it symbolized in the pouring of water and the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." Of course, members of the Movement of 1833 had been totally supportive of Bishop Philpott of Exeter not to ordain the Reverend George Cornelius Gorham and were disappointed in the Queen's Privy Council decision, because it meant the State ruled on a Church issue (the exact reason that Keble presented his sermon on the "National Apostasy" in 1833).

Newman probably convinced many that their position in the Church of England was tenuous: the Movement of 1833 was foreign to the Erastian Church of England; it was not derived from that National Church; it was not moving in the direction of the National Church which was moving in the direction of the Nation ("progressively"); they could not expect to remain a party, a branch, or a sect in the Church of England. So he concludes in the last lecture of this section:

Therefore, I say now,—as I have said years ago, when others have wished still to uphold their party, after their arguments had broken under them—Find out first of all where you stand, take your position, write down your creed, draw up your catechism. Tell me why you form your party, under what conditions, how long it is to last, what are your relations to the Establishment, and to the other branches (as you speak) of the Universal Church, how you stand relatively to Antiquity, what is Antiquity, whether you accept the Via Media, whether you are zealous for "Apostolical order," what is your rule of faith, how you prove it, and what are your doctrines. It is easy for a while to be doing merely what you do at present; to remain where you are, till it is proved to you that you must go; to refuse to say what you hold and what you do not, and to act only on the offensive; but you cannot do this for ever. The time is coming, or is come, when you must act in some way or other for yourselves, unless you would drift to some form of infidelity, or give up principle altogether, or believe or not believe by accident. The onus probandi will be on your side then. Now you are content to be negative and fragmentary in doctrine; you aim at nothing higher than smart articles in newspapers and magazines, at clever hits, spirited attacks, raillery, satire, skirmishing on posts of your own selecting; fastening on weak points, or what you think so, in Dissenters or Catholics; inventing ingenious retorts, evading dangerous questions; parading this or that isolated doctrine as essential, and praising this or that Catholic practice or Catholic saint, to make up for abuse, and to show your impartiality; and taking all along a high, eclectic, patronising, indifferent tone; this has been for some time past your line, and it will not suffice; it excites no respect, it creates no confidence, it inspires no hope.

And when, at length, you have one and all agreed upon your creed, and developed it doctrinally, morally, and polemically, then find for it some safe foundation, deeper and firmer than private judgment, which may ensure its transmission and continuance to generations to come. And, when you have done all this, then, last of all, persuade others and yourselves, that the foundation you have formed is surer and more trustworthy than that of Erastianism, on the one hand, and of immemorial and uninterrupted tradition, that is, of Catholicism, on the other.

Throughout this first part, Newman explores the impact of Erastianism, state control of the Church of England through laws enacted in Parliament and decisions made in the secular courts, and the impact of private judgment, each man or woman deciding what God teaches in the Holy Bible and in His Church--what Erastianism and private judgment mean for what the Movement of 1833 set out to defend. The Church of England, Newman tries to demonstrate to them, cannot be a Branch or a Via Media, of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ as long as it remains a National Church, following the path of the Nation, according to the private judgment of its citizens about what is wrong and what is right, how a Christian gains salvation and goes to Heaven, what the Church teaches, what the Bible means, etc. And the Movement of 1833 has no influence over that State control or that private judgment.

He has to contravene his own arguments in the 1830's and 40's to develop the theory of the Via Media, his own statements against the Catholic Church, his own efforts to establish the apostolicity, universality, holiness, and unity of the Church of England as a Branch Church in his Tracts for the Times!

As Newman presents these arguments to the remaining members of the Movement of 1833, he composes masterful passages, and I have highlighted, underlined, starred, asterisked, and commented on many pages of my book. Just a few examples.

On page 72 in Lecture II "The Movement of 1833 Foreign to the National Church":

Faith has one meaning to a Catholic, another to a Protestant. And life,—is it the religious "life" of England, or of Prussia, that he [Archdeacon Hare, whom Newman quoted in previous paragraphs] means, or is it Catholic life, that is, the life which belongs to Catholic principles? Else he will be arguing in a circle, if he is to prove that Protestants have that life, which manifests "the presence of the Spirit," on the ground of their having, as they are sure to have, a life congenial and in conformity to Protestant principles. If then "life" means strength, activity, energy, and well-being of any kind whatever, in that case doubtless the national religion is alive. It is a great power in the midst of us; it wields an enormous influence; it represses a hundred foes; it conducts a hundred undertakings. It attracts men to it, uses them, rewards them; it has thousands of beautiful homes up and down the country, where quiet men may do its work and benefit its people; it collects vast sums in the shape of voluntary offerings, and with them it builds churches, prints and distributes innumerable Bibles, books, and tracts and sustains missionaries in all parts of the earth. In all parts of the earth it opposes the Catholic Church, denounces her as antichristian, bribes the world against her, obstructs her influence, apes her authority, and confuses her evidence. In all parts of the world it is the religion of gentlemen, of scholars, of men of substance, and men of no personal faith at all. If this be life,—if it be life to impart a tone to the court and houses of parliament, to ministers of state, to law and literature, to universities and schools, and to society,—if it be life to be a principle of order in the population, and an organ of benevolence and almsgiving towards the poor,—if it be life to make men decent, respectable, and sensible, to embellish and refine the family circle, to deprive vice of its grossness, and to shed a gloss over avarice and ambition,—if indeed it is the life of religion to be the first jewel in the Queen's crown, and the highest step of her throne, then doubtless the National Church is replete, it overflows with life; but the question has still to be answered, Life of what kind? Heresy has its life, worldliness has its life. Is the Establishment's life merely national life, or is it something more? Is it Catholic life as well? Is it a supernatural life? Is it congenial with, does it proceed from, does it belong to, the principles of Apostles, Martyrs, Evangelists, and Doctors, the principles which the movement of 1833 thought to impose or to graft upon it, or does it revolt from them? If it be Catholic and Apostolic, it will endure Catholic and Apostolic principles; no one doubts it can endure Erastian; no one doubts it can be patient of Protestant; this is the problem which was started by the movement in question, the problem for which, surely, there has been an abundance of tests in the course of twenty years.

This quotation demonstrates how often and fairly Newman proposes the arguments of those who do want to remain in the Church of England and then identifies the weakness and flaws of their arguments: what good is lots of activity if it's based on bad ideas and principles?

From Lecture III, "The Life of the Movement of 1833 Not Derived from the National Church", pages 105 to 106:

You tell me, my brethren, that you have the clear evidence of the influences of grace in your hearts, by its effects sensible at the moment or permanent in the event. You tell me, that you have been converted from sin to holiness, or that you have received great support and comfort under trial, or that you have been carried over very special temptations, though you have not submitted yourselves to the Catholic Church. More than this, you tell me of the peace, and joy, and strength which you have experienced in your own ordinances. You tell me, that when you began to go weekly to communion you found yourselves wonderfully advanced in purity. You tell me that you went to confession, and you never will believe that the hand of God was not over you at the moment when you received absolution. You were ordained, and a fragrance breathed around you; you hung over the dead, and you all but saw the happy spirit of the departed. This is what you say, and the like of this; and I am not the person, my dear brethren, to quarrel with the truth of what you say. I am not the person to be jealous of such facts, nor to wish you to contradict your own memory and your own nature, nor am I so ungrateful to God's former mercies to myself, to have the heart to deny them in you. As to miracles, indeed, if such you mean, that of course is a matter which might lead to dispute; but if you merely mean to say that the supernatural grace of God, as shown either at the time or by consequent fruits, has overshadowed you at certain times, has been with you when you were taking part in the Anglican ordinances, I have no wish, and a Catholic has no anxiety, to deny it.

Why should I deny to your memory what is so pleasant in mine? Cannot I too look back on many years past, and many events, in which I myself experienced what is now your confidence? Can I forget the happy life I have led all my days, with no cares, no anxieties worth remembering; without desolateness, or fever of thought, or gloom of mind, or doubt of God's love to me and providence over me? Can I forget,—I never can forget,—the day when in my youth I first bound myself to the ministry of God in that old church of St. Frideswide, the patroness of Oxford? nor how I wept most abundant, and most sweet tears, when I thought what I then had become; though I looked on ordination as no sacramental rite, nor even to baptism ascribed any supernatural virtue? Can I wipe out from my memory, or wish to wipe out, those happy Sunday mornings, light or dark, year after year, when I celebrated your communion-rite, in my own church of St. Mary's; and in the pleasantness and joy of it heard nothing of the strife of tongues which surrounded its walls? . . .

What a magnificent and magnanimous appeal to shared feelings, demonstrating his empathy with them--while they know Newman is now a Catholic and cannot support their decision to remain in the Church of England. That last clause "and in the pleasantness and joy of it heard nothing of the strife of tongues which surrounded its walls?" is the warning that all those joys would be scorned by the Bishops, the Establishment, etc, outside the Oxford Movement. They won't find the kind of sympathy and empathy Newman offers them in their own Church.

He can be pretty tough on them too, as in this passage from Lecture V, "The Providential Course of the Movement of 1833 not in the Direction of a Party in the National Church", pages 188-191:

And now, my brethren, will it not be so, as I have said, of simple necessity, if you attempt at this time to perpetuate in the National Church a form of opinion which the National Church disowns? You do not follow its Bishops; you disown its existing traditions; you are discontented with its divines; you protest against its law courts; you shrink from its laity; you outstrip its Prayer Book. You have in all respects an eclectic or an original religion of our own. You dare not stand or fall by Andrewes, or by Laud, or by Hammond, or by Bull, or by Thorndike, or by all of them together. There is a consensus of divines, stronger than there is for Baptismal Regeneration or the Apostolical Succession, that Rome is, strictly and literally, an anti-Christian power:—Liberals and High Churchmen in your Communion in this agree with Evangelicals; you put it aside. There is a consensus against Transubstantiation, besides the declaration of the Article; yet many of you hold it notwithstanding. Nearly all your divines, if not all, call themselves Protestants, and you anathematize the name. Who makes the concessions to Catholics which you do, yet remains separate from them? Who, among Anglican authorities, would speak of Penance as a Sacrament, as you do? Who of them encourages, much less insists upon, auricular confession, as you? or makes fasting an obligation? or uses the crucifix and the rosary? or reserves the consecrated bread? or believes in miracles as existing in your communion? or administers, as I believe you do, Extreme Unction? In some points you prefer Rome, in others Greece, in others England, in others Scotland; and of that preference your own private judgment is the ultimate sanction.

What am I to say in answer to conduct so preposterous? Say you go by any authority whatever, and I shall know where to find you, and I shall respect you. Swear by any school of Religion, old or modern, by Ronge's Church, or the Evangelical Alliance, nay, by Yourselves, and I shall know what you mean, and will listen to you. But do not come to me with the latest fashion of opinion which the world has seen, and protest to me that it is the oldest. Do not come to me at this time of day with views palpably new, isolated, original, sui generis, warranted old neither by Christian nor unbeliever, and challenge me to answer what I really have not the patience to read. Life is not long enough for such trifles. Go elsewhere, not to me, if you wish to make a proselyte. Your inconsistency, my dear brethren, is on your very front.

 

I cannot nor should not cite every extraordinary passage; but Newman also demonstrates his mastery of Church history as when he describes the conflict between St. Ambrose of Milan and the Arian Empress Justina (pp. 82-84) or the protracted controversy between Henry II and St. Thomas Becket (pp. 211-214)--and he will further explore the history of the Arian controversy in the Part Two, "Difficulties in Accepting the Communion of Rome as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic".

I'll comment further on Newman's line of argument in Part Two in a second post on this marvelous book.

Adam de Brome, Founder of Oriel College, RIP

Adam de Brome, the founder of Oriel College of the University of Oxford, died on June 16, 1322 and was buried in St. Mary's the Virgin (then a Catholic Church). His DNB entry is brief:

founder of Oriel College, Oxford, of whose early life nothing is known, was rector of Hanworth in Middlesex in 1315, chancellor of Durham in 1316, archdeacon of Stow in 1319, and in the same year was made vicar of St. Mary in Oxford. He was also a clerk in chancery and almoner of Edward II. In 1324 he received the royal license to purchase a messuage [a dwelling house with outbuildings and land assigned to its use] and found a college in Oxford to the honour of the Virgin Mary. He obtained several benefactions from Edward II for his new foundation, which was to consist of a provost and ten fellows or scholars, who were to devote themselves to the study of divinity, logic, or law. He was appointed the first provost by the king in 1325, and drafted his statutes in the following year. The statutes bear a close resemblance to those which Walter de Merton had framed for Merton College. Brome died in June 1332, and was buried in St. Mary's Church, Oxford.

More about the founder of the college at Oriel's website.

Saint John Henry Newman would succeed Father Brome centuries later as the Vicar of the University Church of St. Mary's the Virgin in 1828, as an Anglican. As this introduction to an article on Newman and Oriel demonstrates, Newman's tenure as Tutor and Fellow at Oriel College was crucial to his development and leadership:

From 12 April 1822 when John Henry Newman was elected a Fellow until 3 October 1845 when he tendered his resignation to Provost Hawkins, Oriel College was to be the centre of Newman's life. As Newman later recorded:

he ever felt this twelfth of April, 1822 to be the turning point of his life, and of all days most memorable. It raised him from obscurity and need to competency and reputation. He never wished anything better or higher than, in the words of the epitaph, 'to live and die a fellow of Oriel'. Henceforth his way was clear before him; and he was constant all through his life, as his intimate friends knew, in his thankful remembrance year after year of this great mercy of Divine Providence, and of his electors, by whom it was brought about.

Newman went on to assert that but for Oriel, he would have been nobody, entirely lacking in influence. It was through Oriel (and the pulpit of the Oriel living of St. Mary the Virgin) that he was able to exert such a dominant religious and pastoral influence on his academic generation and those that followed. It was through Oriel that he would be in a position to emerge by 1833 as the well-known leader of that great movement of religious revival in the Church of England known as the ‘Oxford Movement’ or ‘Tractarianism’ (the name being coined in consequence of the series of Tracts for the Times published by Newman and his cohorts).

And this biographical sketch from the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University also demonstrates how crucial those Oriel years were to Newman:

. . . In 1822, he was elected as a fellow at Oriel, where he developed a friendship with Edward Bouverie Pusey (Mss. 064). On June 13, 1824, he was ordained as a deacon in the Anglican Church and, at Pusey's suggestion, became curate of St. Clement's, Oxford. In 1825, Newman served as vice-principal to Richard Whatley (Mss. 102) at St. Albans Hall. On May 29, 1825, he was ordained into the Anglican priesthood.

From 1826 to 1832 Newman served as a tutor at Oriel College, developing a close relationship with Pusey, John Keble . . . and Hurrell Froude. From 1827 to 1828 he served as public examiner in classics in the university's B.A. degree program. In 1828, he was appointed as vicar of the university church, St. Mary's. By the late 1820's Newman's evangelical, low-church, views were changing, assuming a more eccleastical, high-church, tone. On March 8, 1830, he was dismissed from the Church Missionary Society because of his opinions on Nonconformists and church control of society. Three months later Newman broke his last ties with the low church when he dissolved his relationship with the Bible Society.

From 1831 to 1832 Newman served as university select preacher. . . .

Newman was also the Chaplain of Oriel College's Chapel twice (1826-31,1833-35). 

So the founding of Oriel College by Adam de Brome was consequential for Newman, the Oxford Movement, and the Catholic Church. Oriel College certainly celebrates their former fellow and chaplain.

Image Credit: An image of Adam de Brome in a stained glass window in the hall of Oriel College, Oxford.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's Nephew, RIP

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the Episcopalian convert to Catholicism and first native born canonized saint of the USA, had a nephew who like her grew up Protestant and then became Catholic: James Roosevelt Bayley. From his middle name you may surmise that he was related to the Roosevelts: his mother was Grace Roosevelt, Jacobus Roosevelt's only surviving daughter by his first marriage to Maria Eliza Walton. Jacobus was FDR's great-grandfather. More about the Bayley and Roosevelt family connections here.

James Roosevelt Bayley was born on August 23, 1814 in New York City and died on October 3, 1877 as the Archbishop of Baltimore (but in Newark, NJ!). In between those dates, he had been an Episcopalian minister, a student of the Oxford Movement and the Fathers of the Church, a convert to Catholicism, an ordained priest, and the first Bishop of Newark, New Jersey.

The Oxford Movement connection is indicated by his biographer, Sister M. Hildegarde Yeager. Another source, an archived biography from the Archdiocese of Baltimore, gives this explanation for the process of his conversion:

Bayley’s work with the poor in his community, many of who were Irish immigrants, and the friendships he formed with neighboring Catholic pastors, led to his being increasingly drawn to Catholicism. Over the next three years, he read and prayed his way into the Catholic Church, receiving instruction from the future Cardinal Archbishop of New York, Fr. John McCloskey. He also received counsel from his first cousins, the children of his father’s stepsister, St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, foundress of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, to whom he remained close throughout his life. 

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia he went to Europe to effect his conversion to Catholicism and begin his studies for the priesthood:

Bayley's early school days were spent at Amherst College, where he once thought of going to sea and obtained a commission of midshipman in the navy. He abandoned the plan, however, and continuing his studies, entered Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, to prepare for the Episcopalian ministry. He graduated here in 1835 and after receiving orders was appointed rector of St. Peter's church, Harlem, New York. He resigned this charge in 1841 and went to Rome, where on 28 April, 1842, he was baptized and received into the Catholic church in the room of St. Ignatius by Father Esmond, S.J. He then entered the seminary of St. Sulpice at Paris for his theological studies. Returning to New York, he was ordained priest by Bishop Hughes, 2 March, 1844, and made a professor and the vice-president of the seminary at Fordham. He was acting president there in 1846 and was next given charge of the parish at the Quarantine Station on Staten Island, so long the residence of his grandfather, Dr. Bayley. Bishop Hughes then appointed him his private secretary, an office he held for several years and in which his administrative ability was specially manifested. . . .

When the Diocese of Newark was established he was named its first bishop and consecrated 30 October, 1853, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, by Archbishop Bedini, the Apostolic Nuncio to Brazil, who wan then en route to Rome. The Bishops of Brooklyn and Burlington were consecrated at the same time, the first occurrence of such an elaborate ceremony in the United States. Bishop Bayley's work of organizing the new diocese was not easy. He had more than 40,000 Catholics mainly of Irish and German extraction, with only twenty-five priests to minister to them. There was not a single diocesan institution, no funds, and poverty on all sides.

The website of the Archdiocese of Newark has more details about his accomplishments there. He became the eighth Archbishop of Baltimore in 1872:

At the death of Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore he was promoted, on 30 July, 1872, to succeed that prelate. He left Newark with much reluctance. In 1875 as Apostolic Delegate he imposed the cardinal's biretta on Archbishop McCloskey of New York. In May, 1876, he consecrated the Baltimore cathedral, having freed it from debt. Convening the Eighth Provincial Synod of the clergy, August, 1875, he enacted many salutary regulations, particularly with regard to clerical dress, mixed marriages, and church music. Illness obliged him to ask for a coadjutor and Bishop Gibbons of Richmond was appointed to that position 29 May, 1877. The archbishop then went abroad to seek for relief, but in vain. He returned to his former home in Newark in August, 1877, and after lingering for two months, died in his old room, where he had laboured for so long. At his own request he was buried beside his aunt, Mother Seton, at the convent at Emmitsburg, Maryland.

The archived biography cited above notes that he had Bright's Disease during his tenure in Baltimore.

James Collinson, PRB, RIP

James Collinson was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (the PRB), who died on January 24, 1881. He was a follower of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement and almost married Christina Rossetti. Collinson left the PRB, as this website contends, over religious issues. He was a convert to Catholicism--but returned to the Church of England when he was going to marry Christina--who then returned to the Catholic Church and even studied for the priesthood as a Jesuit at Stonyhurst. He left his seminary studies and married, and continued to paint religious subjects and what are termed genre studies. The same website provides many details about Collinson's life and works.

His painting of the "Renunciation of St. Elizabeth of Hungary" probably represents his Pre-Raphaelite period best:

The bright colors, the architectural and textual detail, the dramatic scene and scale, and religious subject are all PRB traits.

May he rest in peace.

How the Tractarians Changed Christmas

Charles Dickens' revival of Christmas concentrated on celebrations at home and in the city. The Oxford Movement, also called the Tractarian movement, influenced the liturgical celebration of the Christmas in the Church of England, according to this 1993 article in History Today by the then Anglican chaplain at Keble College, later Bishop Geoffrey Rowell:

Although Christmas was a time of festivity its church celebration in the nineteenth century owed much to the Oxford Movement. A significant feature of the concerns of the Tractarians was the revival and enrichment of the Prayer Book forms of service, and a proper observance of the seasons and festivals of the church calendar. It was no accident that John Keble's influential book of poems of 1827 entitled The Christian Year, providing verses and meditations on the Prayer Book services and on the Sundays and holy days observed by the Church of England. At St Saviour's, the church built by Dr Pusey in the slums of Leeds, a midnight Eucharist was celebrated on Christmas Eve in contrast to Leeds Parish Church where W.F. Hook had begun a midnight Eucharist on New Year's Eve, as an Anglican response to Methodist watch-night services. . . .

What began as part of the Catholic revival in the Church of England spread to other sections of Anglicanism, and indeed to other churches. In 1887 John Hunter, a notable Church of England minister in Glasgow pioneered the keeping of Christmas Day in the kirk. In 1875 a clerical journalist, the Reverend C.M. Davies, whose collected articles on the London religious scene are invaluable vignettes of church life, noted that Christmas decorations in churches and special Christmas observances were no longer a party badge of High Churchmanship.

This influence of the Oxford Movement extended to music, mostly through the work of John Mason Neale, who published Carols for Christmastide in 1853, while the popularity of the Nine Lessons and Carols grew through the latter part of the century, into the 20th and still today--as evidenced by the broadcast around the world of the service at King's College Cambridge.

As Rowell concludes:

In the course of the century, under the influence of the Oxford Movement’s concern for the better observance of Christian festivals, Christmas became more and more prominent. By the later part of the century cathedrals provided special services and musical events, and might have revived ancient special charities for the poor . . .

So it wasn't just Dickens!

West Gallery Music and The Oxford Movement

The Church Times (access may be limited) posts an article about "West Gallery Music" and its decline. West Gallery Music was common in English country churches from 1740 to 1860 and including a style of congregational singing called "lining" in which the song leader sings a line or a part of a line and the congregation responds. This style was also common in Southern Baptist and other churches in the USA into the twentieth century. If you've read To Kill a Mockingbird you might remember when Jim and Scout attend Sunday services at their maid Calpurnia's church--they use "lining" because they can't afford hymnals.

The article cites how the Oxford Movement led to its demise in the middle of the nineteenth century:

The end, or rather, the deliberate destruction, of WG music is usually credited to the Oxford Movement, the coup de grâce being delivered by Hymns Ancient & Modern. This simplifies a complex progress, and does not explain the simultaneous change in the Free Churches.

From the late-18th century, the Church of England had begun to put its own house in order. The Pluralities Act (1838) stopped well-connected clergymen acquiring a number of benefices. Clerical salar­ies were improved, and those of bishops and higher clergy made more equal. There was renewed church building: more than £500,000 from public funds and £5.6 million from private sources were spent on new Anglican churches between 1831 and 1851 alone. . . .

The Church of England has never issued its own official hymn-book, but for the general public, Hymns Ancient & Modern takes that place. The first edition, in 1861, was published as a private venture, and the proprietors were embarrassed to find their sales running into millions.

Read the rest there.

The author doesn't completely explain what the Oxford Movement had to do with the publication of Hymns Ancient & Modern. Part of the Oxford Movement's purpose was to revive and restore the treasures of ancient hymns in East and West, Byzantine and Latin. Therefore, the new hymnal contained translations of hymns by the Greek Fathers of the Church by John Mason Neale, of hymns by the Latin Fathers by Edward Caswall, and even of Lutheran hymns by Catherine Winkworth and Jane Laurie Borthwick--and from John Keble's The Christian Year, among others. It was edited by William Henry Monk and the first edition contained 273 hymns; it was, as noted above, a tremendous best seller and there several other editions.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This English version of the Shield or Breastplate of St. Patrick (also called the Lorica) was created by Cecil Frances Alexander, an Anglican hymnist much influenced by the Oxford Movement and particularly by John Keble. More about her here. She is probably best known for her Christmas hymn, "Once in Royal David's City." This version of St. Patrick's prayer was included in the Church of Ireland hymnal:

I bind this day to me forever bypower of faith Christ's incarnation,
his baptism in the Jordan river,
his death on the cross for my salvation;
his bursting from the spiced tomb,
his riding up the heavenly way,
his coming at the day of doom I bind
unto myself today.

I bind unto myself today the power of
God to hold and lead,
his eye to watch, his might to stay,
his ear to harken to my need,
the wisdom of my God to teach,
his hand to guide, his shield to ward,
the Word of God to give me speech,
his heavenly host to be my guard.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me;
Christ to comfort and restore me;
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the name,
the strong name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three,
of whom all nature hath creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word;
praise to the God of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord!

Image credit.

The Queen's Six at Ascot Priory

I'm looking forward to receiving the Christmas issue of the BBC Music Magazine because it features the annual Christmas music CD. This year's is by The Queen's Six:

Countertenor: Daniel Brittain, Timothy Carleston;
Tenor: Nicholas Madden, Dominic Bland; 

Baritone/Bass: Andrew Thompson, Simon Whiteley

THE QUEEN'S SIX were established in 2008, the 450th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, from whom they take their name.Elizabeth I was a great patroness of the arts, and often engaged the services of musicians to write and perform for her at court. The notable ‘six’ from this era were Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Thomas Tomkins, Thomas Morley, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Weelkes.

Based at Windsor Castle, all the members of the 21st century 'Queen's Six' are also Lay Clerks of St George's Chapel, whose homes lie within the Castle walls. The Chapel Choir, which consists of boy trebles and twelve professional adult male singers, performs some eight services a week, as well as at private and state occasions, often before the Royal Family.

Some of the musical selections were recorded in St. George's Chapel at Windsor, others at Ascot Priory. 

Ascot Priory was the mother house of a Tractarian, Anglo-Catholic Church of England religious order for women with connections to Florence Nightingale and nursing, according to the priory's website:

For a century and a half, Ascot Priory was the mother house of the Society of the Most Holy Trinity, the first of the Religious Orders re-founded in the Church of England after the Reformation. It began as The Sisterhood of the Holy Cross in Park Village, North London, in 1845 – within just twelve years of the beginning of the Oxford Movement and the start of the revival of catholic life in the Church of England.

In 1856 the Sisterhood of the Holy Cross amalgamated with Priscilla Lydia Sellon’s Devonport Society (founded in 1848), under the title of The Congregation of Religious of the Society of the Most Holy Trinity.

The property at Ascot was purchased with the aid of gifts from Mother Lydia’s father and the Revd Dr E. B. Pusey, and the present buildings – in 40 acres of beautiful woodland and gardens – were begun in 1860, with the aim of supporting the London hospitals by providing convalescent care in healthy surroundings.

More about the organizing of religious orders for women in the Church of England here. The order ceased to exist when the last nun died in 2004; then the priory became a retreat center.

Of course I noticed the name of Blessed John Henry Newman's great friend, the Reverend Doctor E.B. Pusey. The website of Pusey House, St. Giles at the University of Oxford offers this summary of Pusey and his connection to Ascot Priory, where he died:

PUSEY is chiefly remembered as the eponymous representative of the earlier phase of a movement which carried with it no small part of the religious life of England in the latter half of the 19th century. His own chief characteristic was an almost unbounded capacity for taking pains. His chief influence was that of a preacher and a spiritual adviser. As a preacher he lacked all the graces of oratory, but compelled attention by his searching and practical earnestness. His correspondence as a spiritual adviser was enormous; his deserved reputation for piety and for solidity of character made him the chosen confessor to whom large numbers of men and women unburdened their doubts and their sins.

In private life Pusey's habits were simple almost to austerity. Though fierce with his opponents, he was gentle to those who knew him, and his munificent charities gave him a warm place in the hearts of many to whom he was personally unknown. He financed the building of St Saviour's Church, Leeds, and was instrumental in the foundation of Ascot Priory. In his domestic life he had some severe trials; his wife died, after eleven years of married life, in 1839; only one of his daughters survived into adulthood, and his only son, who was a scholar like-minded with himself, who had shared many of his literary labours, and who had edited an excellent edition of St Cyril's commentary on the minor prophets, died in 1880, after many years of suffering. From that time Pusey was seen by only a few people. His strength gradually declined, and he left Oxford to be cared for by the community of nuns he had founded at Ascot, where he died on the 16th September 1882. He was buried at Christ Church in the cathedral of which he had been for fifty-four years a canon, his body being placed in the vault which already held the bodies of his wife and daughters. In his memory his friends purchased his library, and bought for it a house in Oxford, which they endowed with sufficient funds to maintain three librarians, who were charged with the duty of perpetuating the memory of the principles which he taught, the maintenance of the Catholic Faith, and the preaching of the Gospel. Their work continues today.