CARDINAL NEWMAN

New Zealand Tablet, 16 May 1912, Page 13

CARDINAL NEWMAN

♦ HIS PLACE IN THE INTELLECTUAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND /■.. The %ife.of-:N£wnidn, : by Wilfrid Ward, has attraced considerable attention in English-speaking countries owing principally to the important place which Cardinal Newman." held in the'religious and intellectual life of ]England. f y We take the following review of the work from the Eye-Witness, which is edited by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For many decades the world has been looking forward to an adequate life of Newman. It has now obtained it. No person could have been chosen better fitted for the work than Mr. Wilfrid Ward, who, besides his eminent personal talents, is the son of a man who was closely connected with Newman throughout lis life, sometimes as a disciple, sometimes as an opponent, but always as a compeer. He is in the best possible position.to know his facts he is pre-eminently capable of using them. ; Mr. Ward devotes only two chapters to Newman's career prior to 1845. I expect that this procedure will be much criticised, but it is emphatically a wise one. The story of Newman's Anglican career, of his att mips-to build up an intellectually tenable 'Anglican' theology, of his feeling that he had failed to do so, and. of his gradual conviction that ' the Church of Rome will be found right after all ' —are they not ■written in the incomparable pages of the ' Apologia ' ? Mr. Ward is eminently wise in not attempting a competition where no competition is possible. There are certain masterpieces of human genius which cannot b 3 re-written without humiliation; the ' Apologia' is one of them. Mr. Ward tells, just enough of the fortyfour years of Newman's life to make the rest intelligible, and no more. His book practically begins where the 4 Apologia' leaves off. It is in effect a sequel to it. It is perhaps the highest compliment that we could pay to any biography to say that it is not annihilated by the comparison. ) Yet even as to the earlier period there are facts brought out by Mr. Ward which I was interested to know. For instance, that Newman walked so fast that people could not keep up with him. ' I remember well how exactly the same fact affected my estimate of a very different kind of man— Charles 11. In conventional history Charles is a lounging voluptuary, and in conventional conversation and letters Newman is a dreamy recluse." In both cases the revelation of a fund f restless physical energy, though it may prove nothing rectly, subtly alters the picture. * Ward's Picture of Newman. j Mr. Ward, without once obtruding his own views, has contrived to achieve a very remarkable piece of portraiture. Newman stands out of the canvas; not perhaps as a Saint, but rather as a superb Athlete of the Faith. We see all the qualities of the man, his keen intellectual curiosity, his intense certitudes, his quiet pugnacity, his restrained humor, his occasional outbursts of a peculiar meek maliciousness tliatj was all his own, :. ■■■--:■" "•":"

- ■ He was a born fighter. It was when his blood was up that he was greatest. To my mind the most astounding products of his genius are his lectures on 'The Present Position of Catholics in England'; and it is notable that they were written when all England was in a ferment of 'No-Popery' fanaticism. It is curious to observe how his "spirits seemed to rise when he saw the face of battle. His humor is always delicate and, just, but here and here alone it becomes riotous. Here-and here alone he gave his laughter its head, and I do not think much of the sense of humor of any one who can read the delicious invective of the Russian General against the British Constitution, or the account of the Protestant Scripture Readers' attendance at Benediction without laughing till he cries. It is as good as anything in Dickens. The Achilli Case. Out of those lectures arose one of the most interesting and characteristic episodes in Newman's career. A dirty fellow named Achilli, who had been a Catholic priest and had been turned out for his profligacy, had become (as such men too often become) a Protestant lecturer. He was at that moment holding forth at Birmingham on the secret iniquities of Rome. Newman noticed him in a passage of terrible severity ; Ah! Dr. Achilli, • I might have spoken- of him last week had time admitted. The Protestant world flocks to hear him because he .has something to tell of the Catholic Church. He has something to tell; he has a scandal to reveal; he has an argument to exhibit. It is a simple one ; and a powerful one, as far as it

goes—and it is one.' That one argument is himself; it is his presence that is the triumph of Protestants; it is the sight of him that is the Catholic's confusion. It is indeed our great confusion that our Holy Mother could have had a priest like him. : ""'''.•'.'' - Then follows a terrible examination of Achilli's record, 'ending with a burst of renewed eloquence: 'Yes, you are a proof that priests may fall and friars break their vows ' and ending: ' No, Dr. Achilli does not dote; they dote who listen to himl' Defeated but Victorious. '■-.'' Achilli, emboldened by the violent state of public feeling brought an action for criminal libel. Many Catholics advised Newman to give way, but his fighting blood was up, and he stood his ground. He proved his case up to the. hilt. From Corfu to Birmingham women were found to bear witness to Achilli's atrocities. Yet, so violent at that moment was antiCatholic excitement that the jury returned a verdict for the prosecution. Campbell, the judge, one of the most intolerant Protestants of the time, summed up in a. manner that rather recalls Scroggs' charges at the time of the ' Popish Plot.' He succeeded in persuading the jury, but not, to do them justice, in persuading" the mass of Protestant Englishmen. Every one felt that a gross miscarriage of justice had taken place. Even the Times, which had lately led the attack on the Catholics, said that ' Roman Catholics will henceforth have only too good reason for asserting that there is no justice for them in cases tending to arouse the Protestant feelings of judges and juries.' All England felt the same. Never was such a Pyrrhic victory. Newman, defeated, left the court assured of the passionate devotion and gratitude of Catholics and of at least the good-will and sympathy of all Protestants and unbelievers who respected courage and loved fair play. The victorious Achilli left it a disgraced and. ruined man, and hid himself from the public sight, having only this rewardwhich, it must be admitted, his insignificant vileness ill deserved —that his wretched name is enshrined as in a monument more enduring than brass, in Newman's imperishable invective. Newman's Various Abilities. ■ So various were Newman's abilities that it' might seem. at first sight difficult to fix the exact element in him which marine him great. He was a most careful and accurate and at the same time a most picturesque and readable historian. His History of the Arimis would be as popular as Maeaulay's History of gland' if its subject and spirit appealed as much to pur age. The

■m. . / VI; - o- ' -; —“: — — “ Grammar of Assent is perhaps the best and clearest piece of philosophical apologetic since the Summa of St‘ Thomas. He was also an eloquent preacher and no contemptible poet. ■ But, though there were many | points in which he was admirable, there was one in i which he was supreme. He was, I think, immeasurably the greatest master of the art of controversy that ji England has ever seen. He was not only a brilliant controversial tactician ; he was a great controversial strategist. Nothing is more remarkable about his writings than the far-seeing patience with which he will forego an immediate advantage in order to make full use of his ultimate position. He was always ready to lose a battle ,in order to win a campaign. Read carefully his 'controversy with Kingsleynote , how throughout Kingsley behaves like Rupert while Newman behaves like Napoleon. I do not wonder that some have seen something almost cruel 4 in Newman’s ruthless crushing of an opponent so inferior to him, gross as was the provocation. I can understand people pitying poor Kingsley, as he dashes, now to the right, now to the left, only to find every pass occupied by the, overpowering guns of his terrible and omnipresent enemy. It is always so with Newman,.. He ever defers his triumph that he may make it the more complete. That . chapter of the ‘-Essay on Development,’ which deals with the Early Church is an excellent example. For pages he goes on describing the attitude of the Pagan World towards Christianity in so pleasant a style, with i>uch a wealth of interesting and picturesque illustrations, a that one of interesting and picturesque illustraions, that one forgets to ask whither his words are ending, until suddenly his guns open : ‘lf there is a form of Christianity now, in the world accused of gross > Superstition, etc. ... it is not unlike Christianity as. that same world viewed it when first it came forth from its Divine Founder.’ A parallel case may be found in the Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in the manner in which he treats the lie about St. Eligius. Newman may, I think, almost be palled the inventor of this use of the masked battery in controversy.

What Newman Sacrificed.

Endowed with such qualities, Newman, had he marched with his age, would have been inevitably recognised as the greatest of its children. Instead, he chose deliberately to set himself against his age. No one will ever understand the greatness of the man who does not realise that he lived in a time when for an intelligent man to join the Catholic Church was regarded as, an outrage on common sense or common honesty. Kingsley probably had the general opinion with him when he said bluntly that a man who professed to believe in the intercession of saints or in miracles worked by relics must be either a hypocrite or a fool. For all the representative men of that era, however different their talents, . temperaments, "or opinions, for Dickens, for Macaulay, for Carlyle, for Mill, for Huxley, the Catholic Church o was not so much an enemy as a thing simply left behind. . We have left all that behind. People may still think the Catholic doctrines untrue. But no one is now surprised at an intellectual man believing them. Kingsley s sarcasms sound strange in the ears of a generation which has seen, in England, in France, everywhere, the ablest minds one after another returning to the old European philosophy. But all this should not make us forget to honor a man who accepted ? o uca ted people as an alternative between lunacy i.- \ intellectual revival of Catholicism which these days have witnessed was in no small degree is work; but to that work his own fame was sacrificed an d he hardly lived to see it accomplished. Now, of course, the situation is in the acutest degree reversed, Newman, so far from being sneered at as a reactionary, is often acclaimed as the founder or Modernism.” The accusation is fully as unjust and much crueller. Newman was certainly never a Modernist. Even before his reception he had put his finger on Pantheism as the great peril of the age: and most Modernism works out a Pantheism. It is true

that the Modernists have tried to use some of Newman’s ideas (‘ the easier one as Matthew Arnold’s ‘ Arminius ’ said), but Newman would certainly have hated the muddle-headed thing as he would have scorned the absurd, name. It is, however, true that there were elements in the Catholic organisation in England that regarded Newman with a tinge of distrust, and that he was not given as free a hand as might have been wise. For this reason his genius never, perhaps, produced all the effect that it ought to have done in defence of the Church to which from the moment he joined it he was passionately loyal.