A 19th Nineteenth Century Quixotic Quest (Book Review)

William Palmer of Magdalen College, University of Oxford, was not really a member or follower of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement, unlike William Palmer of Worcester College at the University of Oxford. 

Magdalen's Palmer did take some inspiration from Newman's interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles in Tract 90, but he went in a completely direction--or more accurately, he went further east than Rome and all the way to Russia. He sought to receive Holy Communion in the Russian Orthodox Church without renouncing his communion with the Church of England. His attempt to base his claim on Newman's image of the Church of England as a Via Media and part of the one Church founded by Jesus Christ was consistently refuted by Russian Orthodox clergy and never supported by any but a very few members of the Church of England or the Anglican Church of Scotland.

I purchased William Palmer: The Oxford Movement and a Quest for Orthodoxy from Eighth Day Books. According to the publisher,  Holy Trinity Seminary Press:

This is a fascinating account of a failed "journey to Orthodoxy" that should provide food for thought to all who may follow this path in the future and offer grounds for reflection to Orthodox believers on how to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks that can arise on the path to their Church.

This book charts the eccentric career of William Palmer, a fellow of Magdalen College and deacon of the Anglican Church. Seemingly destined for a conventional life as a classics don at Oxford, in 1840 and 1842 he travelled to Russia to seek communion with the Russian Orthodox Church. In interactions with Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret (Drozdov), the lay theologian Khomyakov, and others, he sought their affirmation that the Anglican Church was part of the ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church world-wide. Their discussions clarify the mutual misgivings and sincere theological disagreements that ultimately ended Palmer’s quest.

After some years in ecclesiastical limbo, Palmer followed the example of his Oxford friends such as John Henry Newman, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in Rome in 1855. He lived in Rome as a Catholic layman until his death in 1879.

This is a new edition of the work previously entitled Palmer's Pilgrimage: The Life of William Palmer of Magdalen, published by Peter Lang in 2006.

I might take issue with the description of "fascinating account" but certainly agree that Palmer of Magdalen had an "eccentric career". He pursued this quixotic quest of inter-communion with Russian Orthodoxy almost entirely alone, and author Robin Wheeler outlines the quest in great detail but sometimes flagging sympathy. My sympathy for the author and the publisher sometimes flagged too, because of the numerous typographical and formatting errors. One particular fault I found with the narrative is that biographical information on any personage introduced is placed in the end notes (at least it could have been in footnotes to the page!), meaning that the reader has to break off from the narration to find the notes at the back of the book. That might have been the required format for a PhD dissertation (?) but it's not helpful in a book. Also, the publisher should have provided some maps, since this is at least partially a travelogue. My sympathies never flagged with Palmer's father and brother, alternatively referred to as Selborne or Roundell (why?), and Dr. Martin Joseph Routh*, President of Magdalen College, who worked with Russell on his letters, proposals, and other documents, smoothing out his eccentricities of expression (calling himself the unworthy chief of sinners, etc), and other possibly offensive methods of presentation and persuasion. 

As he pursues these efforts, Palmer also continually urges the Russian Orthodox officials he meets with that they should be working to bring Anglicans, Lutherans, other Protestants, and Catholics into their Church, since (if) they believe it is the True Church founded by Jesus Christ. He is perplexed by their lack of zeal for conversions.

As Wheeler sums up the result of Palmer's unrelenting efforts on page 183: "Palmer's determined adherence to 'his private opinions' and his refusal to let sleeping dogs lie, meant that he was now regarded as an eccentric nuisance by both the Anglican and the Orthodox Churches." 

It is clear throughout Palmer's quest to be admitted to the Russian or Greek Orthodox communion that he wants his Sacramental Baptism in the Church of England to be accepted. As the old Dictionary of National Biography states the Catholic Church accepted his Baptism as valid so that he "was received into the Roman church, the rite of baptism being dispensed with, in the chapel of the Roman College on 28 Feb. 1855." The same, of course, had been true for Newman: he made a general confession, received absolution, and then received his First Holy Communion--there was no issue with his baptism in the Church of England. His brother Selborne supported him financially after his conversion to Catholicism and life in Rome.

On pages 230-232, Wheeler summarizes Palmer's "intellectual position" after his conversion: as being still with the Eastern Church liturgically and dogmatically, having "suspended his intellect" while expressing his "comfort in [his] present communion" and his "real peace" in  his "religious position" which he felt "able to defend." Rome (the Catholic Church) "spoke with one voice" and "the cultural difficulties remained" with his becoming Orthodox. By becoming Catholic he could receive "certain sacraments" as he could not in the Church of England--nor in the Eastern Churches without being re-baptized as he saw it--and hold "positive doctrine on certain points on which the Anglican church cannot, strictly speaking, be said to have any doctrine at all." (LP MS 1878, f. 255) 

He was already suffering from gout when he moved to Rome; then he began to suffer chest pain and insomnia, was bedridden, contracted pneumonia, and died on April 4, 1879. His brother Edwin attended the Catholic Funeral Mass.

Wheeler notes what a great classical scholar or ecclesiastic William Palmer could have been, except for his absolute refusal to compromise (although he seems to have compromised by becoming a Catholic), his "logical and stubborn" character and his lack of "common-sense". Nevertheless he never became "an eccentric nuisance" to the Pope or any Catholics in Rome.

I assure you that I had not read this characterization of him as an "ecclesiastical Don Quixote" (p. 249) before I wrote my headline! Palmer indeed "dream[ed] the impossible dream".

I do wonder if Wheeler, in that summary, should have done more to make clear the "grounds for reflection to Orthodox believers on how to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks that can arise on the path to their Church" highlighted in the publisher's blurb. By focusing at the end on Palmer's faults, he may have missed an opportunity.

The back matter of Abbreviations, End Notes, and Bibliography demonstrates Wheeler's in-depth research with access to many of Palmer's letters, journals, and works (some at the Birmingham Oratory since Palmer willed many unpublished works to Newman).

Newman edited and published Palmer's Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church after Palmer's death in 1879, 24 years years after being received into the Catholic Church. Then Cardinal Newman wrote in the Prefatory Notice in 1882 how this came about:

 . . . So much on the contents of this volume, which I have brought together and put into shape, to the best of my power, out of the materials and according to the evident intentions of Mr. Palmer, and, I should add, with the valuable assistance of the Rev. Father Eaglesim of this Oratory. I need hardly say I have no acquaintance with the Russian language, a condition, if not necessary, at least desirable, for my present undertaking; but I have been called to it, as a religious duty, in the following way:—I had often heard speak of Mr. Palmer's journals of foreign travel at the date when they were written; and years after, when he was wont to pay me an annual visit here in the summer or autumn, the only seasons in which the English climate was possible to him, I used to urge upon him their publication. But he never gave me any hopes of it, and I ceased to trouble him on the subject. After a time his spells of serious indisposition became so frequent, that when we took leave of each other, {xv} it was on my part with the sad feeling that I was bidding him a last farewell. At length the end came, in 1879, just before I, in turn, was to have been his guest at Rome [during Newman's trip to Rome to receive the Cardinalate from Pope Leo XIII]; and then I found to my surprise that, so far from passing over my wish about his journals, he had by will left me all his papers. This is how he answered my importunity, showing a loving confidence in me, though involving me in an anxious responsibility. Of course he did not anticipate that at my advanced age I could myself do much; but it will be a true satisfaction to me, if, as I am sanguine enough to expect, this volume, illustrative of his first visit to Russia, should prove interesting and useful generally to Christian readers.

I will say one word more:—I cannot disguise from myself that to common observers, Mr. Palmer was a man difficult to understand. No casual, nay, no mere acquaintance would have suspected what keen affections and what energetic {xvi} enthusiasm lived under a grave, unimpassioned, and almost formal demeanour. To unsympathetic or hostile visitors he was careless to defend, or even to explain, himself or his sayings and doings; and he let such men go away, indifferent what they might report or think of him. They would have been surprised to find that what in conversation they might think a paradox or conceit in him, was, whether a truth or an error, the deep sentiment and belief of a soul set upon realities and actuated by a severe conscientiousness. But, whatever might be the criticisms of those who saw him casually, no one who saw him much could be insensible to his many and winning virtues; to his simplicity, to his unselfishness, to his gentleness and patience, to his singular meekness, to his zeal for the Truth, and his honesty, whether in seeking or in defending it; and to his calmness and cheerfulness in pain, perplexity, and disappointment. However, I do not pretend to draw his character; {xvii} apart from all personal attributes, he was to me a true and loyal friend, and his memory is very dear to me.

I cannot help from comparing Newman and Palmer, because Palmer does not seem to have the same intellectual, spiritual, and moral certitude Newman did, nor make a real assent to the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church as Newman did. Newman writes in the fifth chapter of the Apologia pro Vita Sua, the "Position of My Mind Since 1845", that after becoming a Catholic, he had “no further history of [his] religious opinions to narrate”. Of course he was still thinking about theological and doctrinal matters, but he didn't have to form private judgments about them in the same way as he did before. For instance, he mentions the teaching on transubstantiation:

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe?

It seems that Palmer still maintained that private judgment or opinion and could not assent certainly to the belief that "the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God". Perhaps Wheeler would say that Newman was the one who compromised . . . but Newman in his search for truth had achieved certitude; Palmer may never have done . . . 

*Newman dedicated his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church to President Routh:

 

MARTIN JOSEPH ROUTH, D.D., PRESIDENT OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, WHO HAS BEEN RESERVED TO REPORT TO A FORGETFUL GENERATION WHAT WAS THE THEOLOGY OF THEIR FATHERS, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, WITH A RESPECTFUL SENSE OF HIS EMINENT SERVICES TO THE CHURCH AND WITH THE PRAYER THAT WHAT HE WITNESSES TO OTHERS MAY BE HIS OWN SUPPORT AND PROTECTION IN THE DAY OF ACCOUNT. (Feb. 24, 1837.)

More about Routh here, including this appreciation of Newman: 

Routh had a great personal regard for Newman and often they would meet for extended discussion of theological matters. He spoke of Newman as that ‘clever young gentleman of Oriel, Mr. Newman’, and later as ‘the great Newman’.

Image Credit (Public Domain): The Revd. Dr. Martin Routh (1755-1854), President of Magdalen College, Oxford (1791-1854). Anonymous daguerreotype): Routh was 99 years old when he died and "wore a wig and knee-britches in the Georgian manner to the end of his days", according to the history page on the Magdalen College website.

St. J.H. Newman, the Holy Name of Mary, and "Newman's Marian Theology of History"

Today is the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, a feast, like that of the Holy Rosary in October, inspired by a great defensive victory over the Turkish armies/navies. This feast commemorates the defeat of the Turks who were besieging Vienna on September 12, 1683. Remember that the Battle of Vienna began on September 11, 1683. Pope Blessed Innocent XI instituted the today's feast of the Holy Name of Mary to commemorate that victory. After the Second Vatican Council the feast was suppressed, but Pope St. John Paul II restored it to the universal Roman Calendar in 2002, the year after the 9-11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, DC (and Shanksville, PA before the plane reached its target). Pope St. John Paul II also restored the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus that year (celebrated on January 3).

Saint John Henry Newman composed a Litany on the Holy Name of Mary in his Meditations and Devotions.

I've been listening to this podcast of Dr. Rebekah Lamb's lecture on "Newman's Marian Theology of History" posted by the Thomistic Institute, given on April 26, 2022 at Oxford University. Here are a couple of quotations from her lecture, which the Thomistic Institute used on their Facebook page announcements of this lecture:

"Newman's early poetic interests in the relationship between hiddenness and holiness demonstrate how his heart already stirred after the Marian even before he recognized, let alone fully accepted, the Mother of God's central and distinctive importance within salvation history." —Dr. Rebekah Lamb

"The Marian influences on Newman's thought are Marian in character: that is, they're hidden, humble, and yet profoundly essential." —Dr. Rebekah Lamb

It's interesting that she cites many of the same sources (the Apologia pro Vita Sua, Parochial and Plain Sermons, the Development of Doctrine, etc) I highlighted in the August series on the Son Rise Morning Show! Rather "affirms" me that I do know what I'm talking about!

Rebekah Ann Lamb is a Lecturer in Theology, Imagination and the Arts in the School of Divinity at St Mary's College at the University of St. Andrew in Scotland. Her research interests pique my interest:

Dr. Lamb focuses on intersections between theology, visual arts and literature, from the long nineteenth century to the present. However, her research and teaching has also led her into Biblical Studies, Dante, and Christian Personalism. She is especially interested in the religious and aesthetic implications of inter-art projects, such as Pre-Raphaelite poem and painting pairings, and links between writing and theology in the Victorian period and late modernity. Her research increasingly focuses on John Henry Newman, Christina Rossetti, TS Eliot, Catherine Doherty, and Michael O’Brien. She is completing a book on the aesthetic and religious implications of boredom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (McGill-Queen’s University Press), and is currently co-editing a special issue on the life and thought of John Henry Newman with Michael D. Hurley (Cambridge) for Religion and Literature.

Dr Lamb has published articles, encyclopedia entries, book chapters, and review essays in The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing, New Blackfriars, Religions, Theology in Scotland, and elsewhere. A developing branch of her research involves a series of essays on the relationship between history, theology and formation--in the contexts of the university and digital culture--as informed by the thought of John Henry Newman, Stratford Caldecott and Joseph Ratzinger.

I'll be on the lookout for her book Suspended in Time: Boredom and Other Discontents in the Pre-Raphaelites and Their Circle and will subscribe to Religion and Literature forthwith.

Queen Henrietta Maria Dies in France, 1669

I checked in earlier this week with Elena Maria Vidal, author of several historical novels and a biography of Marie Antoinette. She is working on the second volume in her "Henrietta of France" trilogy. (I participated in the blog tour last year.) I made contact with her since this is the anniversary of the death of Henrietta Maria, widowed Dowager Queen of Charles I. This website provides a narration of her last days and death:

10 September 1669 [According to the Gregorian Calendar in effect in France] - The Death of Henrietta Maria of France, Queen of England, Scotland & Ireland:

Gradually Henrietta was preparing for death… She had already made a general confession of all her sins, “with great application and very firm designs to apply herself to the care of her salvation.” Now she often said “that she saw clearly that is was necessary to think of leaving.” … She was fed up with doctors and medicines, she said: she would think of them no more, “but only of her salvation.” But still, at [her daughter] Henrietta Anne’s insistence, France’s leading physicians descended on Colombes… Their examination, on Saturday, August 28, was promising. All the Queen’s symptoms - the fainting fits, insomnia, recurring fevers, and chest infections - were “painful, but without danger of death,” pronounced Antoine Vallot, first physician to Louis XIV. He prescribed a regime of opiates and purges… Henrietta was reluctant, she knew from experience that laudanum “disagreed with her”: “the famous English physician, Monsieur de Mayerne, had warned her never to take any.” But Vallot persisted… So unwillingly, Henrietta agreed. All the next day, Henrietta was occupied with religious observances, it being Lady Day… That night she took her “usual remedy,” and on Monday morning she was purged “with a certain opiate designed for that purpose.” That day was also tiring, as the queen received “several visits” from friends and spent hours in “long spiritual conversations” with her confessor, preparing to receive Communion the next day. . . .When she retired to bed, she was rather feverish, so her physician, Antone d’Aquin, decided not to give her the laudanum after all. On Henrietta’s orders, the curtains were drawn around her bed and her courtiers departed. But Henrietta could not sleep, so around 11 p.m. she summoned d’Aquin and demanded the dose. Reluctantly, he gave it to her, mixed into a raw egg yolk. At once the queen fell asleep. But d’Aquin, sitting by her bedside and observing her shallow, sighing breaths and irregular pulse,realized that she was sleeping “too profoundly.” Desperately, he “endeavored by all means he could to walk her,” but “all the several remedies used in such cases” had no effect. Her valets de chambre were sent rushing to summon more doctors and Henrietta’s priests, who begged her to confess her sins or at least “to give some sign that she understood.” But they met only “a mortal silence…” “Seeing that there was no abatement of her malady,” Father Gamache gave orders for the queen to receive Extreme Unction. Through the dark night, the village curé of Colombes “came in haste” bearing holy oil, with which he anointed the queen’s eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, and feet. Between three and four in the morning of Tuesday, August 31 [O.S.], “without violence, without the slightest convulsion, with great serenity, and a sweet expression of countenance,” the fifty-nine-year-old queen slipped away into death. (source: A Royal Passion: The Turbulent Marriage of King Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France, by Katie Whitaker)

Henrietta Maria was interred in the great royal necropolis and basilica, St. Denis. Therefore, her remains were desecrated during the French Revolution in 1793 and now are mixed in with the other royals in the mass graves in the crypt.

There's a special poignancy to remembering the death of this Queen (consort) of England as the death of Queen Elizabeth II was announced on Thursday (September 8, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary). 

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and the may the souls of the Faithful Departed rest in peace.

Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop, Named a Cardinal

On the 10th of September in 1515, Pope Leo X, who would later name Henry VIII "Defender of the Faith" (on October 11, 1521), elevated the Archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, to the office of Cardinal. Christopher Cardinal Bainbridge, his predecessor as Cardinal and Archbishop of York, had died on July 14, 1514 in Rome.

As this biography by Glenn Richardson from History Extra demonstrates, this was just another step in Wolsey's rise to power and influence in England:

Known for: Being England’s greatest medieval cardinal. Wolsey had a brilliant mastery of foreign policy, as well as the legal and ecclesiastical administration of England under King Henry VIII. He organised three major peace treaties which improved Henry’s strategic position when war did not succeed. Wolsey oversaw Parliament and the Court of Chancery, introduced legal changes and exercised crown authority over nobles and commoners alike. He also oversaw the running of the church in England, countered Lutheran heresy and introduced monastic and educational reforms. Most famously, however, he could not secure from Pope Clement VII the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Responsibilities: He was made the royal almoner (responsible for charitable giving) and royal counsellor in 1509. He became quarter-master general of war against France in 1512–3. Wolsey was made Bishop of Tournai in 1513, Bishop of Lincoln and then Archbishop of York in 1514. Pope Leo X created him Cardinal Saint-Cecilia-beyond-Tiber in 1515. The same year, Henry made him lord chancellor of England. In 1518 he became a papal legate (high representative), confirmed for life in 1524. He was also abbot of St Albans and successively bishop of Bath and Wells (1518–23); Durham (1523–9), and Winchester (1529–30).

When Pope Leo X died, Henry VIII wanted his Lord Chancellor to be elected as Pope and was willing to spend money at the conclave of 1521-1522, although he would have been happy if Giulio de' Medici, Cardinal Protector of England from 1514 to 1518, would have succeeded. Instead, Adriaan Floriszoon Boeyens was elected and reigned as Pope Adrian VI for little more than a year--then Cardinal Medici was elected and reigned as Pope Clement VII. (Henry thought his former Cardinal Protector would continue to serve England's--his--interests as Pontiff!)

But as the article later notes, Wolsey would fall from power because of that failure, highlighted above, to secure the annulment Henry VIII sought from that former Cardinal Protector of England:

Thomas Wolsey fell from power in October 1529, in the aftermath of his inability to obtain an annulment of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Virtually from the outset of the campaign in 1527, Henry was convinced of the rightness of his cause. The outcome of the legatine trial of the marriage at Blackfriars in July 1529 was Catherine’s direct appeal to Rome, and a consequent campaign of intimidation against the church in England. Following this outcome, Wolsey lost favour with Henry and last saw the king at Grafton in September 1529.

Glenn Richardson is the author of the latest biography of Thomas Wolsey, and he concludes this History Extra article with a point that his biography, according to the publisher's blurb, contends:

On 17 October, Wolsey was commanded to surrender the Great Seal of England he held as Chancellor, and in April 1530 travelled to York, finally to take up his seat as its archbishop. On 4 November, however, he was arrested for treason for allegedly plotting outside the realm, seeking to have himself restored to power. In reality, there was little substantial evidence for the charge.

History Extra also provides an analysis of Anne Boleyn's role in Wolsey's fall.

Sacred Music: St. John Henry Newman's Words and Music

I purchased and have listened to Harry Christophers and The Sixteen's new CD of various settings of St. John Henry Newman's poetry and famous meditation adapted for commissioned works:

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.

He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.

Harry Christophers went to a Church of England minister for a "translation" of Newman's Meditation more suited to be set to music and Christophers is most pleased that Robert Willis, the Dean of Canterbury, eliminated the use of the third person singular masculine pronoun when referring to God. So listening to the CD, one hears five different variations on the theme of Newman's Meditation, with different texts. They are all meditative, virtuosic, and inward looking. 

But Harry Christophers has programmed more traditional settings of Newman's works: Sir William Henry Harris's version of "Lead, Kindly Light", Richard Runciman Terry's of "Praise to the Holiest in the Height, and "Firmly I Believe and Truly" with a hymn tune by William Boyce (Halton Holgate). So these are works for congregations to sing, and the Sixteen sing them gloriously. 

The adapted works for Meditation mostly just glided by as I listened to them, while the three quoted hymns stand out as praise to God, declarations of faith, and thanksgiving for providence.

I've also listened twice to the recent performance of Sir Edward Elgar's setting of Newman's poem, The Dream of Gerontius at the Proms. Critical reception of this work, almost always from a secular publication, is always mixed: admiring Elgar's achievement, but descrying Newman's religion (what Harry Christophers refers to as his "ideology" in the Meditation CD liner notes). For example, The Guardian review has to remind us:

First performed in Birmingham town hall, Gerontius has always provoked extreme reactions, initially to its Roman Catholicism in a mostly Anglican country, now because its religiosity, with all the resonance of that word, is too much for some.

I don't think that Newman should be even indirectly accused of religiosity, with its implications of falsity and hypocrisy of excessive piety. And certainly not Elgar, who as this article from The Newman Review notes, had a very common-man view of the title character:

I imagined Gerontius to be a man like us, not a Priest or a Saint, but a sinner, a repentant one of course but still no end of a worldly man in his life, & now brought to book. Therefore I’ve not filled his part with Church tunes & rubbish but a good, healthy full-blooded romantic, remembered worldliness, so to speak. It is, I imagine, much more difficult to tear one’s self away from a well to do world than from a cloister.[3]

Perhaps Elgar went a little far in his judgment of the title character, but he sees Gerontius, even in this Dream, as a real human being. I rather think Gerontius was not as worldly as Elgar thinks, as he proclaims:

Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the man;
and through such waning span
Of life and thought as still has to be trod,
Prepare to meet thy God.
And while the storm of that bewilderment
Is for a season spent
And, ere afresh the ruin on me fall,
Use well the interval.

Gerontius is more aware of his condition than someone who has been "no end of a worldly man in his life"; he's been well-instructed in the Faith and believes it, even as he faces the crisis of his death.

Nevertheless, every time I listen to live or recorded performance, I appreciate how Elgar created a dramatic, almost operatic musical narrative. The deathbed sequence in the first part is filled with Gerontius' expressions of both faith and fear, as he tries to rouse himself even before he dies to declare his faith and trust in his Saviour. Elgar sets Newman's quotations from the traditional prayers for the dying with clarity, while Gerontius' fears are also sensitively set as he fades away from life. The Priest confidently send Gerontius on his way:

Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!
Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the Name of God
The Omnipotent Father, Who created thee!

And the second part, as the Soul adjusts to eternal life "temporarily" without a body, is imaginative and inspires awe. The dialog between the Soul and Angel transports the listener to the Soul's particular judgment, and the long interlude of the Choirs of Angelicals prepares us for the denouement of the promised-to-be-brief parting of the Angel from the Soul, with the final intrusion of the Soul's deathbed on earth, even as the Souls in Purgatory join him in the hopes to "see Him in the truth of everlasting day." And the Angel's loving farewell! Glorious!

Elgar's music is transcendent and Newman's drama is based on doctrine and devotion. Perhaps Elgar's work--not an oratorio, as he would not allow that term--is something only a Catholic may fully appreciate. 

Nevertheless, the announcers on the BBC mentioned the audience's rapt silence during the performance in Albert Hall, and the ovation was enthusiastic at the end. Such a confident, promising conclusion, as the orchestra, choirs, and Angel serenade the Soul demonstrates more than the audience may have dreamed as true--even as that final Amen and timpani roll presage a warning for the rest of us.

Father Dermot Fenlon, RIP: Newman and Pole

A Facebook friend sent me a link to an obituary of Father Dermot Fenlon, one of the famous "Birmingham Three" who were removed from St. John Henry Newman's Birmingham Oratory in 2010 before Newman's beatification that September by Pope Benedict XVI. There's a blog dedicated to their defense, particularly to him (which actually linked to this blog in 2011 when I posted a story about the connection between Sophie Scholl of the White Rose resistance movement against Nazism and Newman, one of Father Fenlon's contributions to Newman scholarship). 

He died on August 17, 2022. According to the homily delivered at his funeral he was

. . . Born in 1941, the son of Dermot & Mary (nee Tutty) Fenlon. His elder brother Frank predeceased him. He grew up in Booterstown, Co. Dublin. After attending Willow Park Primary School and Blackrock College, he tried his vocation, as they used to say, with the Holy Ghost Fathers (the Spiritans) but then left and opted for the study of history at UCD, where he took his B.A. and then M.A, under the direction of Professor Desmond Williams. It was around this time that he published for the first time on 17th-century Irish history in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.

He then went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where his supervisor was the preeminent historian of Tudor England Geoffrey ( G.R. ) Elton (later Sir Geoffrey Elton). There he worked on Cardinal Reginald Pole (eventually the subject of his book published by Cambridge University Press). In 1969 he became a University assistant lecturer, later University Lecturer in history and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College. There he remained for 10 more years, when he published articles on Thomas More and the French historian Lucien Febvre. He enjoyed a universal reputation in Cambridge, a reputation that is untarnished to this day. A promising academic future beckoned to him, but then he abandoned it to study for the priesthood.

Father Vincent Twomey continued in his homily to described how Father Fenlon's interest in Newman led him to the Oratory in Birmingham:

During his time in Cambridge, he had developed a great interest in Cardinal John Henry Newman, who, after his conversion, became a priest in the order St Philip Neri founded, the Oratorians. This in turn led him to study St Philip Neri the great counter reformation theologian, scholar and poet. Not only did he become a world expert on the life and times of these two saints, but, it would seem, his study of them led him back to God.

In 1978 he entered the Pontifical Beda College in Rome. Ordained in 1982, he served as a priest in the East Anglia diocese. But his love of St Philip Neri and St John Henry Newman led him to enter the Birmingham Oratory in 1991 which had been founded by Newman. There he spent two decades as Newman archivist.

And Twomey also recounts the troubles at the Oratory in 2010 and Father Fenlon's exile, later years, and death. Please read the rest there.  

I've ordered a copy of Father Fenlon's book on Cardinal Pole:

Reginald Pole was one of the most complex figures in sixteenth-century history. The only Englishman to follow a career at the Roman Curia in the crucial decades of the Reformation, the victim successively of the Tudor Reformation and the Roman Inquisition, his life was marked by misunderstanding, failure and tragedy. This book is a study of his career in Italy, his involvement in the Council of Trent and his share in the vain attempt to obtain reunification with the Protestants. Dr Fenlon discusses in great detail Pole's attitudes towards the doctrine of the Protestant reformers, its influence within Italy and the development of his group of `spirituals' at Viterbo. But this is not simply a biography of Pole nor an analysis of his influence. Rather it is an examination of the crisis the Catholic Church and its adherents faced in the Reformation, the conflict exemplified in Pole's personal experience and that of the groups among which he moved, between obedience to the established ecclesiastical order and sympathy with Luther's tenets. The crisis and its resolution reflect the genesis of the Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation which resulted in the final confessional divisions of Christian Europe.

Although it deals mainly with that particular Italian period of Reginald Cardinal Pole's life, I am eager to read more about the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, whom (and his mother) I have blogged about often. The Table of Contents and the Preface are available here and ten pages of chapter one here.

Here's the complete article about Newman and Scholl published in the National Catholic Register, describing Father Fenlon's research. I would like to be able to read this article, "Elite and Popular Religion: The Case of Newman" but it's behind a paywall and would cost as much as the book! There's also a video of Father Fenlon discussing Newman and education.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let Your perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. May Father Dermot Fenlon rest in peace. Amen.

Saint Giles and the Book of Common Prayer

Today is the feast of St. Giles on the calendar for the 1962 Roman Missal and for the Church of England. He is the patron saint of the Church of Scotland Cathedral in Edinburgh. It was, course, founded as a Catholic church, but in the throes of the Scottish Reformation during the regency of Mary of Guise for her daughter, Mary, changed hands between the Catholics and Reformers a couple of times.

According to the History page on the Cathedral website, John Knox took over in 1559:

John Knox was a Scottish priest who converted to Protestantism in the 1540s and fled into hiding and exile. In Geneva he befriended the French reformer John Calvin. On his return to Scotland he marched an army of followers into St Giles’ and preached there for the first time. The following week he was elected its minister and the building was stripped of its Catholic decoration.

And by government fiat in 1560, it was desecrated and descralized as a Catholic church:

The Scottish Parliament abolished papal authority in 1560 and decreed that Scotland was now a Protestant country. This was despite Scotland still having a Catholic queen, Mary Queen of Scots. St Giles’ 400 years as a Catholic church officially came to an end. Inside the building the stained-glass windows were removed and old church silver was melted down and sold to raise funds for redecoration. To read a more detailed account of the Reformation, click here.

When King Charles I of England and Scotland attempted to impose the Book of Common Prayer, there was a riot:

Scotland and England began to share the same monarch following the 1603 Union of the Crowns, though the two countries still had separate legislatures. In 1637 King Charles I attempted to draw the Scottish church, which was Presbyterian, into line with the English church, which was Anglican. Scottish opposition came to the boil when Charles I attempted to impose a new prayer book in St Giles’ and made St Giles’ a cathedral. A local woman named Jenny Geddes picked up her stool and threw it at the preacher, starting a riot. Church services were suspended for a week for fear of public uprising.

And that event is depicted above!

Although he didn't succeed in imposing the Book of Common Prayer, St. Giles in Edinburgh is still a cathedral.

Preview: St. J.H. Newman on Mary as the Second Eve in his Letter to Pusey

In our concluding discussion on Saint John Henry Newman and the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Son Rise Morning Show this month, on Monday, August 29, we'll look at one of his controversial works, A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E.B. Pusey, D.D., on Occasion of His Eirenicon. 

I'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here or on your local EWTN affiliate station.

In Newman's collected works, this Letter is accompanied by his 1875 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk regarding Papal Infallibility as Volume 2 of Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching. 

In this work, Newman responds to Pusey's comments about the recently proclaimed doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and what that proclamation might mean for the issues of Anglican and Catholic unity. Remember that Newman had been challenged by Charles Kingsley just two years before on his integrity and truthfulness about his conversion, writing his Apologia pro Vita Sua in response. He and his old Oxford Movement colleagues, John Keble and Edward Pusey had met again after almost 20 years of tension and distance.

As I've commented in a couple of previous posts (here and here), I'd never read this work through before. While it's like a mini-Apologia pro Vita Sua, Newman seems very comfortable responding to Pusey directly, although he fears that he might wound his friend as his friend has wounded him. He bases his arguments against Pusey's work on their shared study of the Fathers of the Church. Pusey knows that the Fathers of the Church described the Blessed Virgin Mary as being the Second Eve, and thus he can and should follow Newman's argument carefully.

In fact, in the fifth chapter of this public correspondence with Pusey ("Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin"), Newman remonstrates with his old friend that he hasn't been as forthcoming as he could be regarding his own knowledge of and devotion to the Mother of God:

. . . that the height of our offending in our devotion to the Blessed Virgin would not look so great in your Volume as it does, had you not deliberately placed yourself on lower ground than your own feelings towards her would have spontaneously prompted you to take. I have no doubt you had some good reason for {90} adopting this course, but I do not know it; what I do know is, that, for the Fathers' sake who so exalt her, you really do love and venerate her, though you do not evidence it in your book. I am glad then in this place to insist on a fact which will lead those among us, who know you not, to love you from their love of her, in spite of what you refuse to give her; and lead Anglicans, on the other hand, who do know you, to think better of us, who refuse her nothing, when they reflect that, if you come short of us, you do not actually go against us in your devotion to her.

2. As you revere the Fathers, so you revere the Greek Church; and here again we have a witness on our behalf, of which you must be aware as fully as we are, and of which you must really mean to give us the benefit. In proportion as the Greek ritual is known to the religious public, that knowledge will take off the edge of the surprise of Anglicans at the sight of our devotions to our Lady. It must weigh with them, when they discover that we can enlist on our side in this controversy those "seventy millions" (I think they do so consider them) of Orientals, who are separated from our communion.

Pusey already knew the answer to Newman's question in chapter 3 ("The Belief of Catholics concerning the Blessed Virgin, as distinct from their Devotion to her"), "What is the great rudimental teaching of Antiquity from its earliest date concerning her?": that Mary is the Second Eve:

Now let us consider what this implies. Eve had a definite, essential position in the First Covenant. The fate of the human race lay with Adam; he it was who represented us. It was in Adam that we fell; though Eve had fallen, still, if Adam had stood, we should not have lost those supernatural privileges which were bestowed upon him as our first father. Yet though Eve was not the head of the race, still, even as regards the race, she had a place of her own; for Adam, to whom was divinely committed the naming of all things, named her "the Mother of all the living," a name surely expressive, not of a fact only, but of a dignity; but further, as she thus had her own general relation to the human race, so again had she her own special {32} place, as regards its trial and its fall in Adam. In those primeval events, Eve had an integral share. . . . As the history stands, she was a sine-qua-non, a positive, active, cause of it. And she had her share in its punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her, she was recognized as a real agent in the temptation and its issue, and she suffered accordingly. In that awful transaction there were three parties concerned,—the serpent, the woman, and the man; and at the time of their sentence, an event was announced for a distant future, in which the three same parties were to meet again, the serpent, the woman, and the man; but it was to be a second Adam and a second Eve, and the new Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." The Seed of the woman is the Word Incarnate, and the Woman, whose seed or son He is, is His mother Mary. This interpretation, and the parallelism it involves, seem to me undeniable; but at all events (and this is my point) the parallelism is the doctrine of the Fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, we are able, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration.

Then Newman provides many excerpts from the works of the Fathers of the Church on this doctrine, commenting summarily:

Such is the rudimental view, as I have called it, which the Fathers have given us of Mary, as the Second Eve, the Mother of the living: I have cited ten authors. I could cite more, were it necessary: except the two last, they write gravely and without any rhetoric. . . .

He then outlines Mary's role in our Redemption, in a parallel contrast to Eve's role in our Fall: 

She holds, as the Fathers teach us, that office in our restoration which Eve held in our fall:—now, in the first place, what were Eve's endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace. And this she had;—a heavenly gift, which was over and above and additional to that nature of hers, which she received from Adam, a gift {45} which had been given to Adam also before her, at the very time (as it is commonly held) of his original formation. This is Anglican doctrine, as well as Catholic . . .

Now, taking this for granted, because I know that you and those who agree with you maintain it as well as we do, I ask you, have you any intention to deny that Mary was as fully endowed as Eve? is it any violent inference, that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a help-mate to her husband, did in the event but cooperate with him for its ruin? If Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had even a greater grace? And this consideration gives significance to the Angel's salutation of her as "full of grace,"—an interpretation of the original word which is undoubtedly the {46} right one, as soon as we resist the common Protestant assumption that grace is a mere external approbation or acceptance, answering to the word "favour," whereas it is, as the Fathers teach, a real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the first moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference:—well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I say the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace); and it really does seem to me bound up in the doctrine of the Fathers, that Mary is the second Eve. . . .

Mary may be called, as it were, a daughter of Eve unfallen. You believe with us that St. John Baptist had grace given to him three months before his birth, at the time that the Blessed Virgin visited his mother. He accordingly was not immaculately conceived, because he was alive before grace came to him; but our Lady's case only differs from his in this respect, that to her the grace of God came, not three months merely before her birth, but from the first moment of her being, as it had been given to Eve.

Newman deals with some other objections, most notably what the Catholic Church means by Original Sin as contrasted with Anglican/Protestant views (that "it is a term denoting Adam's sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it seems to be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual sin. We, with the Fathers, think of it as something negative, Protestants as something positive."). Thus he concludes:

All this we teach, but we deny that she had original sin; for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this only, the deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation,—deprivation and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God's free bounty, from the {49} very first moment of her existence, and thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege, in order to fit her to become the Mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit her mentally, spiritually for it; so that, by the aid of the first grace, she might so grow in grace, that, when the Angel came and her Lord was at hand, she might be "full of grace," prepared as far as a creature could be prepared, to receive Him into her bosom.

I have drawn the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, as an immediate inference, from the primitive doctrine that Mary is the second Eve. The argument seems to me conclusive: and, if it has not been universally taken as such, this has come to pass, because there has not been a clear understanding among Catholics, what exactly was meant by the "Immaculate Conception." To many it seemed to imply that the Blessed Virgin did not die in Adam, that she did not come under the penalty of the fall, that she was not redeemed, that she was conceived in some way inconsistent with the verse in the Miserere Psalm. If controversy had in earlier days so cleared the subject as to make it plain to all, that the doctrine meant nothing else than that in fact in her case the general sentence on mankind was not carried out, and that, by means of the indwelling in her of divine grace from the first moment of her being (and this is all the decree of 1854 has declared), I cannot believe that the doctrine would have ever been opposed . . .

As we conclude this Son Rise Morning Show series on Saint John Henry Newman's assent and defense of Catholic doctrines regarding the Mother of God, it's wonderful to realize that Newman, in this work, as he would later in the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk regarding Papal Infallibility, provided an argument that has been accepted in so many ways to justify Catholic Church teaching. 

As least part of the reason he could argue so convincingly was that he knew that Pusey (and Keble) shared the same foundation for these insights: their study of the Fathers of the Church, the early interpreters of the Holy Bible and the Tradition of the Church. As he reminds his old friends: "The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. . . . with the Fathers I am content . . . Here, let me say, as on other points, the Fathers are {25} enough for me." One could say that this was Saint John Henry Newman's "Old Time Religion": "If it was good enough for Justin Martyr. it's good enough for me;" "If it was good enough for Irenaeus of Lyon, it's good enough for me" . . . but maybe one shouldn't.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

Queen conceived without original sin, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (public domain): Vanity Fair caricature, 1875 of E.B. Pusey.

Image Credit (public domain): Tiepolo's Inmaculada Concepción, 281 × 155 cm. Madrid, Museo del Prado.

Saint J.H. Newman on Shakespeare and Catholic Churches

There were two other passages in Newman's "Letter Addressed to the Rev. E.B. Pusey, D.D., on the Occasion of his Eirenicon" that impressed me. They don't immediately touch upon the topic of Newman and Marian doctrine and devotion in the Catholic Church, our subject for this month's Son Rise Morning Show series, which will conclude on August 29th. So that's why I'm posting them separately.

One concerns the waxing and waning of Shakespeare's reputation in England. Newman uses it as an example of the distinction he wants to make between faith and devotion. Shakespeare has been considered a great poet and playwright (faith) but national affection has varied; he has fallen out of fashion or returned to center stage:

By "faith" I mean the Creed and assent to the Creed; by "devotion" I mean such religious honours as belong to the objects of our faith, and the payment of those honours. Faith and devotion are as distinct in fact, as they are in idea. We cannot, indeed, be devout without faith, but we may believe without feeling devotion. Of this phenomenon every one has experience both in himself and in others; and we bear witness to it as often as we speak of realizing a truth or not realizing it. It may be illustrated, with more or less exactness, by matters which come before us in the world. For instance, a great author, or public man, may be acknowledged as such for a course of years; yet there may be an increase, an ebb and flow, and a fashion, in his popularity. {27} And if he takes a lasting place in the minds of his countrymen, he may gradually grow into it, or suddenly be raised to it. The idea of Shakespeare as a great poet, has existed from a very early date in public opinion; and there were at least individuals then who understood him as well, and honoured him as much, as the English people can honour him now; yet, I think, there is a national devotion to him in this day such as never has been before. This has happened, because, as education spreads in the country, there are more men able to enter into his poetical genius, and, among these, more capacity again for deeply and critically understanding him; and yet, from the first, he has exerted a great insensible influence over the nation, as is seen in the circumstance that his phrases and sentences, more than can be numbered, have become almost proverbs among us.

Indeed, the Folger Library and other sites provide many examples of those "phrases and sentences" from Shakespeare's works that have been become so commonly used that we forget their source.

And the other passage--both of these are from Chapter 3. The Belief of Catholics concerning the Blessed Virgin, as distinct from their Devotion to her--is Newman's description of the interior of a Catholic church. It is so vivid that it calls to mind many memories of churches I've visited. It's a demonstration of what we talked about so often in the class I taught for Newman University in June and July this summer: Newman's ability to help his congregation or audience see something in a new way by engaging their imaginations:

This distinction is forcibly brought home to a convert, as a peculiarity of the Catholic religion, on his first introduction to its worship. The faith is everywhere one and the same, but a large liberty is accorded to private judgment and inclination as regards matters of devotion. Any large church, with its collections and groups of people, will illustrate this. The fabric itself is dedicated to Almighty God, and that, under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, or some particular Saint; or again, of some mystery belonging to the Divine Name or the Incarnation, or of some mystery associated with the Blessed Virgin. Perhaps there are seven altars or more in it, and these again have their several Saints. Then there is the Feast proper to this or that day; and during the celebration of Mass, of all the worshippers who crowd around the Priest, each has his own particular devotions, with which he follows the rite. No one interferes with his neighbour; agreeing, as it were, to differ, they pursue {29} independently a common end, and by paths, distinct but converging, present themselves before God.

  

Then there are confraternities attached to the church,—of the Sacred Heart, or of the Precious Blood; associations of prayer for a good death, or for the repose of departed souls, or for the conversion of the heathen; devotions connected with the brown, blue, or red scapular; not to speak of the great ordinary Ritual observed through the four seasons, or of the constant Presence of the Blessed Sacrament, or of its ever-recurring rite of Benediction, and its extraordinary forty hours' Exposition. Or, again, look through such manuals of prayers as the Raccolta, and you at once will see both the number and the variety of devotions, which are open to individual Catholics to choose from, according to their religious taste and prospect of personal edification.

I took the pictures above at St. Joseph's Parish in Andale, Kansas, after it had been restored and renovated after a fire (the first two) and at St. Martin's church in Piqua, Kansas, which has been closed for years as an active parish but is maintained by Catholics in the area to be open for visitors.

And from Servant of God, Chaplain Emil J. Kapaun's home parish in Pilsen, Kansas, honoring the church's patron saint, St. John Nepomucene, which I visited in 2016 on the Solemnity of the Assumption:

And two other side altars in that church:

And finally, here's a picture Mark took during Mass on Christmas Day in 2013 at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Wichita, Kansas (Traditional Latin Mass), depicting the Franciscan saints honored at that parish:

As usual, I'll post my preview of the Son Rise Morning Show discussion this Friday, August 26!

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

Saint Joseph, pray for us!

Saint John Nepomucene, pray for us!

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us!

Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us!

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit for Shakespeare's Works (public domain): Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout. All other images (c) Stephanie A. Mann (2013-2022).

St. J.H. Newman on Life and Change, Corruption and Correction

For my final discussion (scheduled for August 29) on the Son Rise Morning Show of Saint John Henry Newman's development in accepting, understanding, and defending the Marian Doctrine of the Catholic Church and the devotion of Catholics to Mary, I've been reading Newman's reply to E. B. Pusey's Eirenicon for the first time ever! I've read excerpts from it, as in Scepter's The Mystical Rose collection, but never the entire work.

Pusey wrote a public letter to John Keble, one of the other great leaders of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement after the proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In the letter, in which Pusey discussed the obstacles preventing the union of the Catholic Church and Church of England, he mentioned their former colleague in that effort to revive the Apostolic authority of the bishops in the Anglican Church, namely, Newman. 

I have not read Pusey's Eirenicon, but evidently he discussed Father Newman's position in the Catholic Church as a convert; he made comments about statements he mistakenly attributed to Father Newman (shades of Charles Kingsley!); and quoted passages from various Continental Catholic writers in devotional works on the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In January of 1866, Newman replied with his own public letter in five chapters:

1. Introductory Remarks
2. Various Statements introduced into the Eirenicon
3. The Belief of Catholics concerning the Blessed Virgin, as distinct from their Devotion to her
4. The Belief of Catholics concerning the Blessed Virgin, as coloured by their Devotion to Her
5. Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin

Fortunately, Gracewing Publishers will be bringing out a new edition of this work, with Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, as the companion volume to Edward Short's critical edition of Lectures on Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church which I reviewed here and here.

The second chapter this Letter reads like a mini-Apologia pro Vita Sua, as Newman corrects Pusey's errors about things he or didn't say, about what it must be like to accept the Church's authority over one as a convert, and about certain authors and how they wrote about Marian devotions. Thus he states at the end of that chapter:

I write afresh nevertheless, and that for three reasons; first, because I wish to contribute to the accurate statement and the full exposition of the argument in question; next, because I may gain a more patient hearing than has sometimes been granted to better men than myself; lastly, because there just now seems a call on me, under my circumstances, to avow plainly what I do and what I do not hold about the Blessed Virgin, that others may know, did they come to stand where I stand, what they would, and what they would not, be bound to hold concerning her.

In chapter 4, one passage reminded me of one of the most famous quotations taken from Newman's works, "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." (from Chapter 1. On the Development of Ideas, Section 1. On the Process of Development in Ideas, paragraph 7 in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine).

In context:

But whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse with the world around, such a risk must be encountered {40} if a great idea is duly to be understood, and much more if it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited and expanded by trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. Nor does it escape the collision of opinion even in its earlier years, nor does it remain truer to itself, and with a better claim to be considered one and the same, though externally protected from vicissitude and change. It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become wore vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.

[Sometimes that quotation is taken out of context and interpreted to mean that change for change sake is perfection and that change means that "a great idea" is not the same. But the notice the sentence before as Newman is speaking of "a great idea" and its development: "It changes with them [challenges, controversy, etc] in order to remain the same."

As Newman wrote to Pusey in his letter's second chapter, you can't "cherry-pick" quotations (accurately stated or not) from his works, make them say what you want them to say, and be true to what he really said.]

In this passage, as Newman begins to describe the "Belief of Catholics concerning the Blessed Virgin, as coloured by their Devotion to her", Newman returns to the theme of "great ideas" and change:

Life in this world is motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. No rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law, whether in the material world or in the human mind. We can indeed encounter disorders, when they occur, by external antagonism and remedies; but we cannot eradicate the process itself, out of which they arise. Life has the same right to decay, as it has to wax strong. This is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them; or you may refuse them elbow-room; or again, you may torment them with your continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range, and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to expose and restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But you have only this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much wherever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account when abused.

So even the "great idea" of Marian devotion has a right to change and develop, wax and wane, go wrong for a time and be corrected:

If what I have been saying be true of energetic ideas generally, much more is it the case in matters of religion. Religion acts on the affections; who is to hinder these, when once roused, from gathering in their strength and running wild? . . .  And of all passions love is the most unmanageable; nay more, I would not give much for that love which is never extravagant, which always observes the proprieties, and can move about in perfect good taste, under all emergencies. What mother, what husband or wife, what youth or maiden in love, but says a thousand foolish things, in the way of endearment, which the speaker would be sorry for strangers to hear; yet they are not on that account unwelcome to the parties to whom they are addressed. Sometimes by bad luck they are written down, sometimes they get into the newspapers; and what might be even graceful, when it was fresh from the heart, and interpreted by the voice and the countenance, presents but a melancholy exhibition when served up cold for the public eye. So it is with devotional feelings. Burning thoughts and words are as open to criticism as they are beyond it. What is abstractedly extravagant, may in particular persons be becoming and beautiful, and only fall under blame when it is found in others who imitate them. When it is formalized into meditations or exercises, it is as repulsive as love-letters in a police report. 

I'll stop there with the love-letters in the police report! 

I will post one more passage from this work that really impressed me before I prepare my preview for the August 29 Son Rise Morning Show discussion on Newman's response to Pusey on Marian doctrine and devotion in the Catholic Church.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!