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Newman: The Limits of Certitude

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Marvin R. O'Connell
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Extract

“What then does Dr. Newman mean?” The question was Charles Kingsley's, the title of his maladroit little pamphlet which provoked from Newman the stunning thunderbolt of the Apologia. That was in 1864, but the same question, free of Kingsley's tone of baffled and outraged masculinity, had been asked many times before that date. Indeed, suspicion of Newman's gorgeously serpentine prose, and so of the man himself, ran like a dark thread through Newman's Anglican and Catholic careers. Typical was the censure in 1841 of Newman's Tract Ninety by the University of Oxford's Board of Heads of Houses, which declared the tract “evaded rather than explained the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles and reconciled subscription to them with the adoption of errors which they were designed to counteract.” And 18 years later, when Newman, now a Catholic, published an article called “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine,” an English bishop formally denounced it in Rome as “sophistical and dishonest,” while the premier English Catholic theologian termed it “the most alarming phenomenon of our times.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 1973 , pp. 147 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1973

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References

1 The full text of Kingsley's pamphlet is in Martin Svaglic's superb edition of the Apologia (Oxford, 1967), pp. 356–384.Google Scholar

2 Printed in Newman, J. H., Via Media (London, 1918), II, 362 ff.Google Scholar

3 Brown, Thomas to Bedini, Gaetano, 10 3, 1859Google Scholar. Archives of Propaganda (q. Dessain, C. S. [ed.]. The Letters and Diaries, of John Henry Newman, XIX [London, 1969], 241).Google Scholar

4 Brown, quoting Gillow, John, to Bedini, , 10 30, 1859Google Scholar, ibid., 208.

5 Church, Richard to Keble, John, 03 23, 1841Google Scholar. Archives of Keble College, Oxford.

6 Butler, Cuthbert, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne (London, 1926), II, 159.Google Scholar

7 Tristram, Henry (ed.), John Henry Newman, Autobiographical Writings (New York, 1957), p. x.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 262.

9 Trevor, Meriol, Newman, the Pillar of the Cloud (London, 1962)Google Scholar and Newman, Light in Winter (New York, 1963)Google Scholar. See the perceptive review by Newsome, David, “‘Newmania,’” The Journal of Theological Studies, XIV (1963), 420 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Bodley, J. E. C., Cardinal Manning and Other Essays (London, 1912), p. 15.Google Scholar

11 See Vargish, Thomas, Newman, the Contemplation of Mind (Oxford, 1970), pp. 33 ff.Google Scholar

12 Ward, Wilfrid, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman (London, 1913), I, 560.Google Scholar

13 See Boekraad, A. J., The Personal Conquest of Truth According to J. H. Newman (Louvain, 1955)Google Scholar and Sillem, Edward, The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry Newman (Louvain, 1969), Vol. I.Google Scholar

14 What follows is taken from my Oxford Conspirators (New York, 1969), pp. 326 ff.Google Scholar

15 See, for example, Oakeley, Frederick, Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement (London, 1865), p. 20.Google Scholar

18 “The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, worshipping and adoration as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fine thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.”

17 Autobiographical Writings, pp. 254 ff.Google Scholar

18 A story told well by Altholz, Josef, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England (London, 1962), pp. 63–112Google Scholar and less well by John Coulson in his long introduction to Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (New York, 1961), pp. 1–49.Google Scholar

19 Altholz, , pp. 101 f.Google Scholar

20 Partial text in Letters and Diaries, XIX, 134.Google Scholar

21 Coulson, , pp. 18 ff.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 76 ff.

23 Ibid., p. 36.

24 Full text in Letters and Diaries, XIX, 204 ff.Google Scholar

25 Newman's answer, whether “satisfactory” or not, was certainly frigid. See ibid., 205.

26 Brown, to Bedini, , 10 3 and 30, and 12 12, 1859Google Scholar (q. ibid., 175 f., 207 f., 238, 240 f. and 281).

27 Trevor, , Light in Winter, pp. 204–221.Google Scholar

28 See Liddon, Henry et al. , Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey (London, 1893–1997), II, 185 ff.Google Scholar

29 Coulson, , p. 18.Google Scholar