Stephanie A. Mann's Blog, page 23

St. Thomas Aquinas on Doctrine and Salvation

Last month, during two of my hours of Adoration I read Sanctifying Truth: Thomas Aquinas on Christian Holiness by Father Romanus Cessario, OP, published by Magnificat. It's short book, just 95 pages. 
The pages that stood for me were from 74 to 77, in the chapter titled "To Rise into Speculation". I wrote several paragraphs in a notebook to help me remember the connection St. Thomas Aquinas made between assenting to certain doctrines and achieving holiness, and herewith provide some excerpts from those notes:
How does Aquinas come to recognize the article of faith as more than a mere formula on which adherents of the Catholic faith agree? How does he come to recognize that the articles of faith as they appear in the Christian creeds are capable of uniting the believer to the very divine reality, the very Christian mystery that the article affirms?
I remember reading years and years ago an article in the magazine U.S. Catholic in which the author said he saw no purpose in reciting the Nicene Creed at Sunday Mass every week because it did not move him or elicit any emotional, devotional feeling. (At least, that's how I recall the gist of the argument.) 
Father Cessario is explaining how St. Thomas Aquinas relates the recitation and thus the assent to the articles of faith in the Creed to our acceptance of "the broader range of matters that the Church proposes for belief", so that when we proclaim that "Christ is born of the Virgin Mary, suffers under Pontius Pilate, and will come again in glory" we are also proclaiming that we believe that "Mary is the Mother of the Church", etc. As Cessario affirms, "the Creed that we recite every Sunday represents a recognizable body of saving truths to which Catholics assent. This assent of salvific faith carries with it the graces necessary to live in accord with all that the Church holds and teaches." (pp. 73-74)
I think this answers that decades old article I remember reading: it's not our emotions that matter while we recite the Creed, proclaiming that we believe those articles of faith stated in the Creed, but our assent, intellectual and willful, through the grace of faith God gives us, to "all that the Church holds and teaches" as revealed by God.
This implicit assent to the "broader range of matters that the Church proposes for belief" also reminds us that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed that we profess on Sundays is a symbol of all that we believe as Catholics: it does not mention all of the Seven Sacraments (just Baptism), our doctrine of justification, or other aspects of our faith. We do not proclaim our belief, for example, that the Holy Communion we are about to receive is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Savior, really and sacramentally present under the appearances of bread and wine. But we assent to those beliefs by professing the Creed.
Cessario goes on to state that
Aquinas subordinates the articles of faith to God, who as First Truth energizes them with saving power. This means that when the believer professes the articles of faith, he or she adheres to God himself, First Truth in Being and Speaking. . . . the act of faith reaches beyond the expression of doctrines and brings the believer into contact with God himself. . . . Faith stops not at words but at reality. (p. 75)
The reason these pages are so crucial to Father Cessario's and St. Thomas Aquinas's efforts is that:
The intelligible character of the articles of faith lies at the heart of Aquinas's account of sanctifying truth. The articles have the capacity to unite us to the very mystery which the statement of the article enunciates. . . . In short, the believer is invited to make of the profession of faith a prayer of union between himself and the divine mystery confessed. (p. 77)
And, of course, the believer needs the reality behind what she professes to make that "prayer of union" between her and "the divine mystery" through the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit: Knowledge and Understanding.
I highly recommend this book which Magnificat describes thus:
Get to know the life and work of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the great Doctor of the Church who dedicated his life to the search for truth.

An inviting introduction to the saint and his insight for all who want to grow holy by immersing themselves in the Divine Truth that is the Word of God.

These insightful reflections from Father Cessario explore the riches of thought that have become known as Thomist theology in a way that makes them accessible to anyone interested in growing closer to the Divine Wisdom that permeates all creation.
Please note that I purchased my copy of the book.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!
Image credit (public domain): Icon depicting Constantine I, accompanied by the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325), holding the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381.

Vittoria Colonna and Pole's "Spirituali" after Trent

I've nearly finished reading Father Dermot Fenlon's book about Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Lutheran doctrine of Justification, the Council of Trent, and the Counter-Reformation in Italy (and in England, to a lesser extent). One figure among the spirituali Cardinal Pole gathered around him in Viterbo is Vittoria Colonna, who died on February 25, 1547. According to the old Catholic Encyclopedia :

She was the daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, lord of various Roman fiefs and grand constable of Naples. Her mother, Agnese da Montefeltro, was a daughter of Federigo da Montefeltro, first Duke of Urbino. In 1509 Vittorio was married to Ferrante Francesco d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, a Neapolitan nobleman of Spanish origin, who was one of the chief generals of the Emperor Charles V. Pescara's military career culminated in the victory of Pavia (24 February, 1525), after which he became involved in Morone's conspiracy for the liberation of Italy, and was tempted from his allegiance to the emperor by the offer of the crown of Naples. Vittoria earnestly dissuaded him from this scheme, declaring (as her cousin, Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, tells us) that she "preferred to die the wife of a most brave marquis and a most upright general, than to live the consort of a king dishonoured with any stain of infamy". Pescara died in the following November, leaving his young heir and cousin, Alfonso d'Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, under Vittorio's care.

Vittoria henceforth devoted herself entirely to religion and literature. We find her usually in various monasteries, at Rome, Viterbo, and elsewhere, living in conventual simplicity, the centre of all that was noblest in the intellectual and spiritual life of the times. She had a peculiar genius for friendship, and the wonderful spiritual tie that united her to Michelangelo Buonarroti made the romance of that great artist's life. Pietro Bembo, the literary dictator of the age, was among her most fervent admirers. She was closely in touch with Ghiberti, Contarini, Giovanni Morone, and all that group of men and women who were working for the reformation of the Church from within. For a while she had been drawn into the controversy concerning justification by faith, but was kept within the limits of orthodoxy by the influence of the beloved friend of her last years, Cardinal Reginald Pole, to whom she declared she owed her salvation. Her last wish was to be buried among the nuns of S. Anna de' Funari at Rome; but it is doubtful whether her body ultimately rested there, or was removed to the side of her husband at San Domenico in Naples.
She wrote many Petrarchan sonnets to Michelangelo on religious themes; here are two "Recomposed by Anna Key" on Dappled Things, and you may find a translation of a poem he wrote to her on this page ("XII/ To Vittoria Colonna/A Matchless Courtesy)
Here's another biographical source, focused on her poetry.
In Father Dermot Fenlon's Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation, Vittoria Colonna appears last in Chapter 13, "The Tridentine decree and the end of the Viterbo circle", pages 213-217. Fenlon describes how she wanted to help protect Alvise Priuli so he could peacefully achieve "simple acquiescence in the doctrine [of Justification] put forward at the Council" and remain in the Church, as she had. On page 215, he comments that "With her death, the Viterbo circle came to an end". In later chapters, the effect of her death on Cardinal Pole's last years is mentioned, but her efforts to help Priuli is her last dated correspondence.
Image Credit (public domain): Sebastiano del Piombo - Vittoria Colonna (?)

For U.S. President's Day: Review Essay in the NCRegister

While the President's Day Sales are still being advertised, please allow me to announce my review essay of two books in the current issue of the National Catholic Register! After I'd submitted my copy, the editor asked me to add some words about "Prelates and Presidents", and they ended up at the top of the feature (and supplied the title for the article!):

Just in time for Presidents’ Day, take time to learn about how presidents interacted with Catholics.

Father Charles Connor, a theologian and historian who was ordained in the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and is a popular EWTN host, focuses much of his narrative in Toil and Transcendence: Catholicism in 20th-Century America on the relationships between U.S. presidents, from Grover Cleveland to Ronald Reagan, and leading members of the hierarchy, from Baltimore Cardinal James Gibbons to Cardinals Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and John O’Connor of New York. Thus, major events like World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, The New Deal, the Cold War and others are seen mostly at the highest levels of decision-making and reaction.

Some of Cardinal Gibbons’ contacts with U.S. presidents were better than others: Theodore Roosevelt (“T.R.”) was always ready to defend Catholics’ religious rights from the time he was the police commissioner in New York City to his presidency. Relations with President Woodrow Wilson were considerably cooler: “Chilly Wilson” had “anti-Catholic views” (p. 107) and rejected Pope Benedict XV’s peace plans in 1919 at the end of World War I. When Cardinal Gibbons died in 1921, President Warren Harding sent a letter of condolence and praise, commending him as a fine citizen and Churchman (p. 133).

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four presidential victories, his efforts to aid recovery from the Great Depression, and his role as commander-in-chief during World War II provoked various Catholic responses. The radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, who promoted anti-communist and anti-Semitic views, first supported then protested against Roosevelt’s New Deal and other policies. The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman, remonstrated against Allied bombing of Vatican City in 1943 and 1944, especially since the Holy See was considered neutral.

Both Roosevelt and his successor, President Harry Truman, tried to establish diplomatic relations with the Holy See, but anti-Catholicism at the time meant, as Father Connor relates, that it would take 30 more years for it to happen.

The relationship between President Reagan and Pope St. John Paul II receives due coverage (pp. 344-358). Father Connor also describes the negotiations between Cardinal Bernardin and the Reagan administration regarding the U.S. bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter “The Challenge of Peace” (pp. 358-360), concluding his survey of contacts between prelates and presidents with the appointment of William Wilson as the first U.S. ambassador to the Holy See in 1984. . . .
I also reviewed  American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey through Catholic Life in a New World by Christopher Shannon from Augustine Institute/Ignatius Press. As the publishers' blurb states:
Histories of the Catholic Church in the United States abound. Most suffer from an excess of either scholarly detachment or popular triumphalism. American Pilgrimage seeks instead to draw on the best of current scholarship to tell the story of the Church as it understands itself: the Body of Christ, divinely ordained yet marred by sin, charged with the mission of spreading the Gospel and building up the community of the faithful.

In scope, American Pilgrimage narrates the story of the Church from the dramatic efforts at evangelization in the colonial period, to the Catholic urban villages of the immigrant Church, to the struggles to reimagine tradition in the late-20th century. In shape, it follows this story through the Augustinian contours of the ongoing struggle between the City of God and the City of Man—a struggle that takes place between the Church and the world, within the Church itself, and within the soul of every Christian.
I recommend both books (and the other books in Father Connor's trilogy) to anyone who loves to read Church History and well-written, well-researched studies of Catholicism in the United States from the Colonial era to the 20th Century.
I'm eager to see this in print!

Pole and Pate in Tridentine Italy on the Doctrine of Justification

As I'm reading Father Dermot Fenlon's Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation, I just read about one Richard Pate, the Bishop of Worcester appointed by Pope Paul III in 1541 after Henry VIII dismissed the incumbent Italian bishop, Cardinal Jerome Ghinucci in 1535 (the Pope was acting as if nothing had changed!). Bishop Richard Pate would not really take up his see until Queen Mary I came to the throne and was one of the co-consecrators of of Reginald Cardinal Pole in 1556 as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Like many during Henry VIII's reign, and beyond, he had an interesting career. According to the old Dictionary of National Biography (published 1885-1900), he had one great advantage: one of his uncles was Bishop John Longland of Lincoln, his mother's brother, as he was the:
son of John Pate by Elinor, sister of John Longland [q. v.], bishop of Lincoln, was born in Oxfordshire, probably at Henley-on-Thames, and was admitted on 1 June 1522 a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, whence he graduated B.A. on 15 Dec. 1523, according to Wood (Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 63). This degree having been completed by determination, he went to Paris, and there graduated M.A. On 4 June 1523 he was collated by his uncle to the prebend of Centum Solidorum in the church of Lincoln, and he resigned it for that of Cropredy in 1525. He appears to have resided for some time at Bruges, as John Ludovicus Vivès, writing from that city on 8 July 1524 to Bishop Longland, the king's confessor, says: ‘Richard Pate, your sister's son, and Antony Barcher, your dependant, are wonderfully studious’ (Brewer, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 203). In 1526 he was made archdeacon of Worcester. On 11 March 1526–7 he had the stall of Sanctæ Crucis, alias Spaldwick, in the church of Lincoln, and on 22 June 1528 the stall of Sutton cum Buckingham in the same church. On this latter date he was also made archdeacon of Lincoln upon the death of William Smith, doctor of decrees. . . .
He served Henry VIII as Ambassador to the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and heard Katherine of Aragon's nephew express his complaints about "the course adopted by the king of England, and energetically defended his own action on behalf of his aunt, Catherine of Arragon (sic). Subsequently he accompanied the emperor to the Low Countries."

Peter Marshall, in Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England , according to Wikipedia notes that Pate in 1537 [perhaps influenced the Emperor?] ". . . was removed from that position, after he had advocated for the legitimate status of Princess Mary; but he was reinstated in 1540.[2]" He also notes that that Pate was thought lukewarm toward the king's marital matters, and was recalled to England soon after that reinstatement (p. 235). But he stayed on the Continent and went to Rome, where he was named the Bishop of Worcester as noted above. On page 238 of the same volume, Marshall notes that Pate and his chaplain, Seth Holland, were attainted as traitors by Parliament in 1542.
As Pope Paul III's Bishop of Worcester, Richard Pate attended the Council of Trent. When Reginald Cardinal Pole left the first session of the Council of Trent because of illness, Pate remained as one of the spirituali of Pole's community, and he argued for a more Lutheran doctrine of Justification. (Chapter 9. The 'spirituali' at Trent)
Fenlon states on page 149 that on 9 July 1546 Pate argued "'faith alone' was the instrument of justification, while seeming to imply as well, that good works performed after justification were not meritorious, although they remained necessary as being in accordance with the will of God." Later that month, on 20 July, Pate supported the statement that "justice increased to the extent faith increased; good works were the fruit of justification, and a sign to man that his salvation was assured." (pp. 149-150) Fenlon also comments that Pate was "significantly more opposed to the doctrine [on Justification] was about to define . . . [than] any other prelate present at Trent" (p. 150), and after a detailed survey of Pate's educational, clerical, and diplomatic career (pp. 149 to 160) concludes that Pate "was convinced of Luther's orthodoxy on the fundamental question of salvation". (p. 150).

How Pole and Pate will respond to the Doctrine of Justification as defined by the Council of Trent, I have yet to find out. This is a post in medias res. The next chapter is 10. Pole's Protest!
The Dictionary of National Biography continues his life story:
Pate attended the council of Trent as bishop of Worcester, his first appearance there being in the session which opened on 21 April 1547. He was also present at the sittings of the council in September 1549 and in 1551. He remained in banishment during the reign of Edward VI. In 1542 he had been attainted of high treason, whereupon his archdeaconry was bestowed on George Heneage, and his prebend of Eastharptre in the church of Wells on Dr. John Heryng.

On the accession of Queen Mary he returned to this country. His attainder was reversed, and on 5 March 1554–5 he obtained possession of the temporalities of the see of Worcester (Rymer, Fœdera, xv. 415). . . .
Historian Jack Scarisbrick describes how Pate finally took up the see of Worcester in this 2019 Catholic Herald article:
. . . Worcester was very complicated. For a while in 1554 there were four people with the title of bishop: the long-since-resigned Hugh Latimer; his successor Thomas Heath, future archbishop of York, who was deprived of his see in 1551 by the Protestant regime and replaced by one Thomas Hooper (who was eventually burnt, along with Latimer and Cranmer).

Heath was restored to Worcester by Mary – only to be soon translated to York, thus making way for Pate – and enabling the latter at last to take up residence in the see of which he had been pastor in absentia for 13 years.

The Dictionary of National Biography entry concludes:
Queen Elizabeth deprived him of the temporalities in June 1559, and cast him into prison. He was in the Tower of London on 12 Feb. 1561–2, when he made his will, which has been printed by Brady. On regaining his liberty he withdrew to Louvain, where he died on 5 Oct. 1565. Mass is still said for him every year at the English College, Rome, on the anniversary of his death. 
One of the figures in Holbein's celebrated picture of ‘The Ambassadors,’ now in the National Gallery, is believed to represent Pate (Times, 8 Dec. 1891).

I wonder if that annual Mass is still celebrated at the VEC in Rome? 
The identity of the figures in Holbein's The Ambassadors I think is settled now (and one of them is not Pate!) according to The National Gallery in London.

The Cult of St. Thomas of Canterbury in Music

The Cambridge Core website recently announced:
British Catholic History, the journal of the Catholic Record Society, is delighted to announce the winner of its Best Article Prize in 2022:

Katherine Emery, ‘Destruction, Deconstruction, and Dereliction: Music for St Thomas of Canterbury during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, 1530-1600’

Katherine’s article was described by the judges as follows:

‘This is an impressive piece of innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship at the forefront of the 'sonic turn’ in the study of lived religion. Focusing on music written and performed in honour of St Thomas of Canterbury, this carefully researched article looks back to the pre-Reformation world but concentrates on the Tudor period, offering a new narrative of English cultural and religious history. Interleaving rich manuscript research with the parsing of a substantial historiography on devotion to the saint, it offers an original angle on pre-Reformation and Counter-Reformation music making and liturgical performances. This is an outstanding article from an early career scholar which eloquently attests to, and will further advance, the expansion and diversification of British Catholic studies.
The article is available for free now (don't know how long) and here is the abstract:
Between the late-twelfth and early-sixteenth centuries, much music (both liturgical and non-liturgical) was written in honour of St Thomas of Canterbury. However, in the 1530s his cult became a major target for reformers and, in 1538, Henry VIII (1491-1547) ordered the destruction of his shrine and the obliteration of all music written in his honour. This article will examine how music composed to memorialise St Thomas was treated during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. It explores the process of self-censorship prompted by Henry’s proclamation on the cult of St Thomas that led to his erasure from liturgical books in England. It analyses the attempts by reformers to discredit music concerning St Thomas, particularly by radical reformer John Bale (1495-1563). Finally, it examines music that was composed by Catholics for St Thomas during the Counter-Reformation and asks what it can tell us about the state of the cult in the late sixteenth century. This approach results in an overview of St Thomas’ cult during the later sixteenth century and contributes to our understanding of changing conceptions of the saint by Catholic communities in the post-Reformation world.
I'm still reading the article now, but one thing we should keep in mind is that St. Thomas of Canterbury was and is not just a saint in England--he was and is a saint honored by the whole Catholic Church (and he is recognized on the Church of England sanctoral calendar)! For example, in 2016 a relic of St. Thomas was brought back to Canterbury from Hungary. As a British Museum article stated in 2019: "In death Becket remained a figure of opposition to unbridled power and became seen as the quintessential defender of the rights of the Church. To this end you can find images of his murder in churches across Latin Christendom, from Germany and Spain, to Italy and Norway. Becket was, and remains, a truly European saint." That's why Pope Paul III finally issued the Bull announcing Henry VIII's excommunication in 1538 after the King ordered the destruction of St. Thomas's shrine and the desecration of his remains. 
So, for example, when Emery writes: "Yet Becket’s paramount cultural position was not to last forever. Although reformer James Bainham was burnt at the stake partly for daring to question Becket’s saintly status in 1532, by the late 1530s the mood had turned decisively against St Thomas.", her comment applies to England at that time--not to the Catholic Church as a whole.

Newman's Dialogues on "Doctrinal Corruption": A Book Review

Matthew Levering's Newman on Doctrinal Corruption could be considered an alternative interpretation of Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. By exploring Newman's dialogues with the (deceased) historian Edward Gibbon, his friend Richard Hurrell Froude, his own younger brother Francis Newman, his erstwhile Tractarian friend E.B. Pusey, and his German contemporary Ignaz von Döllinger, Levering helps readers understand Newman's search for religious Truth and the moral certainty that he was living in the "one True fold of Christ" (as he wrote on October 8, 1845 before Blessed Dominic Barberi received him in to the Catholic Church the next day).
As the publisher, Word on Fire Academic, describes the book:
Newman on Doctrinal Corruption examines John Henry Newman’s understanding of history and doctrine in his own context, first as an Oxford student and professor reading Edward Gibbon and influenced by his close friend Hurrell Froude, then as a new Catholic convert in dialogue with his brother Francis, and finally as an eminent Catholic during the controversies over the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (in dialogue with Edward Pusey) and papal infallibility (in dialogue with Ignaz von Döllinger).

Author Matthew Levering argues that Newman’s career is shaped in large part by concerns about doctrinal corruption. Newman’s understanding of doctrinal development can only be understood when we come to share his concerns about the danger of doctrinal corruption—concerns that explain why Newman vigorously opposed religious liberalism. Particularly significant is Newman’s debate with the great German Church historian Döllinger since, in this final debate, Newman brings to bear all that he has learned about the nature of history, the formation of Church doctrine, the problem with private judgment, and the role of historical research.
As Levering notes states in the Introduction, "Whenever Newman thinks about doctrinal development, he always has the threat of doctrinal corruption in view" (p. 5). Furthermore, "one of the Essay's [The Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine] major subplots has to do with religious liberalism's impact upon all Christian churches and traditions" (pp. 6-7) because by embracing doctrinal corruption--denying the necessity and the fact of authentic doctrinal development--"religious liberalism ultimately leaves little in Christianity worth retaining" (p. 34). So Newman's concern that he find and defend the Church that has through the centuries retained, with true development, the Deposit of the Faith, is essential to all of the following chapters in Levering's book. 
The book fulfills all the claims of the blurb: Levering does justice to each of Newman's correspondents, exploring their own efforts to understand Christian history as they sought to know how to love, worship, and serve God (except perhaps Gibbon, who imposed on his own view on history of Christians in the The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as being the source of the corruption of the that fine, humane, and tolerant culture and civilization, with Nero burning Christians like torches in the Colosseum). 
Levering describes how Newman's history of reading Gibbon's masterpiece was informed by his reading of other historians who believed in God and saw His providential action in human history, like Joseph Milner's Church History and Bishop Butler's Analogy. From the former he took his budding interest in the Fathers of the Church (as he was "nothing short of enamoured of the long extracts from St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and the other Fathers which I found there") and from the latter the "inculcation of a visible Church, the oracle of truth and a pattern of sanctity, of the duties of external religion, and of the historical character of Revelation", as Newman described later in the first chapter of the Apologia pro Vita Sua. As Levering notes, Gibbon's religious skepticism and particular animus against the Catholic Church means he cannot be objective at all about the Christian faith during the end of the Empire. Levering concludes that Newman sees "development and truth" where Gibbon sees "corruption and fanaticism", and that Newman "is arguably much more self-aware about the impact of his antecedent beliefs than Gibbon . . ." (p. 100).

Levering next explores Richard Hurrell Froude's influence on Newman as they collaborated with Keble and Pusey in the Oxford or Tractarian movement. (R.H. Froude's younger brother James Anthony Froude and Newman would have their own dialogues on Church History!) R.H. Froude influenced Newman to accept what he had thought doctrinal corruptions: devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, admiration for "the Church of Rome", and developing belief in the Real of Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. The main Doctrinal Corruption Froude and Newman feared in the Church of England at that time was the Erastian take over of the Church by the Prime Minister and the Parliament. Levering cites, for example, a letter John Keble sent to them recounting Thomas Arnold's proposal that the Church of England just become a part of the State, "internalized as the conscience of the nation . . . superfluous . . . [becoming] the real substance of the political order." (pp. 117-118)
This letter reminded me of a poem we'd read during our December meeting of the Lovers of the Newman, "Christmas without Christ" which I'd mentioned here before. That proposal by Arnold--the reduction of the Church ("the Bride")--may be behind the stanzas:
O Britons! now so brave and high,    How will ye weep the dayWhen Christ in judgment passes by,    And calls the Bride away! {99}
Your Christmas then will lose its mirth,    Your Easter lose its bloom:Abroad, a scene of strife and dearth;    Within, a cheerless home!
If the Church is just a department of the State, what do the feasts of Christmas and Easter mean? Where's the mirth, or the bloom, or the home for the Christian believer if the Church is just a political entity, a disembodied "conscience of the nation"? What will the Incarnation or the Resurrection even mean in a such a state?
[To conclude this distraction from the immediate topic: isn't this one of the joys of reading? Understanding something you've read and wondered about a little more because you've read just one more book, not expecting that recognition?]
But it's really not a distraction after all, because this extreme Erastianism proposed by Arnold is an example of how Newman, Pusey, Keble and Froude thought the doctrines--the 39 Articles, etc--of the Church of England would be corrupted either by dis-establishment or government control. And Levering proposes, in this chapter, through an examination of Newman's works on The Via Media, the "Essay on the Development", and "Anglican Difficulties" that  Newman's "Roman Catholic sense of the importance of the role of the pope and the bishops flows partly from his anti-Erastian concerns as an Anglican." (p. 104) 
In the chapter recounting Francis Newman's path away from orthodox Christianity, Levering posits that John Henry Newman was answering his own brother in the Apologia pro Vita Sua as much as he was answering Charles Kingsley, defending his integrity by detailing his religious opinions over the course of his life until he became a Catholic, owning his errors and expressing his gratitude to those who helped him in the past and from whom those opinions and his conversion had estranged him. Levering documents how Francis Newman's critical examination of Christian doctrine led him to accept only two beliefs: God loves us and we must be perfect. Questions about Who God Is, and what it means to be perfect in comparison of Who God Is are beside the point, to Francis.
Regarding Newman's answer to Pusey's Eirenicon, which Newman called an olive branch discharged "from a catapult" (p. 259), Levering provides a thorough summary of all of Pusey's criticisms of Catholic devotions and practices--a salvo Newman deflects by noting, for example, that one cannot cite the late Father Faber as the representative expression of all Catholic devotion in England--and then documents Newman's statements about the Development of "Marian Doctrines" in his famous Essay--and covers his arguments in his Letter to Pusey based on the early doctrines of Mary being the Mother of God and the New Eve. Newman thus defends the Catholic Church's doctrinal definition of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin (and, in advance, as Levering demonstrates in a book I previously reviewed, of her Assumption) as being the fitting consequence and development. 
I think of all the opponents Newman faced in his efforts to defend the Catholic Church against charges of Doctrinal Corruption, Ignaz von Döllinger may have been the most formidable, because he based his argument so much on the Fathers of the Church, the Councils of the Church and their authority vis-a-vis the papacy, and historical precedent in the Middle Ages. Until I looked him up, I did not realize what almost exact contemporaries Döllinger and Newman were. Döllinger was born on February 28, 1799; Newman on February 21, 1801; Döllinger died on January 14, 1890 (90 years old); Newman on August 11, 1890 (89 years old)! 
At least part of Newman's argument against Döllinger --and Gladstone, whom Döllinger assisted in his Kulturkampf-tinged pamphlets against Papal Infallibility--was that this doctrinal definition (which Newman thought needed another Council for greater context since the Vatican Council had been prorogued) was an important step in protecting the Catholic Church from Erastian interference. Remember that in  Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church , John W. O’Malley demonstrated that the call for a definition of the pope's role in defending the Church and its teachings and discipline had begun as a grassroots movement in the context of State interference (like Gallicanism, Febronianism, and Josephinism, etc through which the state or the ruler controlled education, formation of priests, selection of bishops, monastic and religious foundations, etc.) Newman saw this centralization of ecclesiastical power as God's Providence overseeing "doctrinal development" and "the course of history so as to lead all things to Christ" (pp. 333-334) at the same time that he warned against anyone--inside or outside of the Church--from taking it to extremes. As he said before, during, and the after the Council, he had already believed in papal infallibility but didn't think it was an opportune time to define it as a doctrine. Once the bishops had agreed to the definition, he, unlike Döllinger, could not in good conscience dissent from it. (Conciliar agreement was one of Döllinger's standards.)
In his Conclusion, Levering discusses Newman's thoughts on the "consensus or sensus fidelium" of the lay faithful, noting that Newman "does not mean that when the consensus of the faithful becomes difficult to perceive--as for instance during the Reformation . . . the solution is to get rid of the contested doctrines, so that only doctrines most clearly support by a supposed "consensus of the faithful" remain in place" (p. 348) and Newman believes that "the laity is not empowered to overturn solemnly taught doctrines of prior eras". (p. 350) Thus, to cite Newman in support of lay dissent from Church teaching on abortion, artificial contraception, marriage, etc., is to misinterpret Newman's On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.
Levering evaluates the success and failures of Newman's arguments/debates with Gibbon, Froude, Newman, Pusey, and Döllinger, and discusses David Bentley Hart's criticisms of Newman's views in Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief. 
The fact that John Henry Newman was alive at the time of two such great doctrinal definitions (the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility) is itself a proof of Divine Providence. As the visiting priest told us at the Traditional Latin Mass this past Sunday, our being alive at this time (he did cite birth dates in the 1980's, 1990's and 2000's, revealing his own chronological bias) is not an accident: Our Lord meant us to be alive now as this is the time for each of us to be faithful and be saints. As Saint John Henry Newman's Meditation "Hope in God--Creator" declares: 
GOD has created all things for good; all things for their greatest good; everything for its own good. . . . God has determined, unless I interfere with His plan, that I should reach that which will be my greatest happiness. He looks on me individually, He calls me by my name, He knows what I can do, what I can best be, what is my greatest happiness, and He means to give it me.
Levering's book might be better for someone who has read Newman's works and is familiar with his life and times than for one reading about Newman for the first or even second time. While he does not assume great prior knowledge, it helped me to have read Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, and his Letters to Pusey and the Duke of Norfolk, and to have consulted the Apologia pro Vita Sua a few times. General familiarity with the Newmanian bibliography and the state of Newman scholarship is also helpful. I was pleased to see Levering cite and refute Pattison's The Great Dissent, which I think is a rather obscure study of Newman's life and work.
Now I'm reading Father Dermot Fenlon's book on Reginald Cardinal Pole (I'm on the fourth chapter: Pole and the spirituali are trying to figure out how to accept Luther's doctrine on justification and remain Catholic after the breakdown of the Regensburg conference of 1541) . . . Heresy and Obedience are the issues in the title . . . 
Image Credit (Public Domain): Ignaz von Döllinger (1799-1890)

Report on the 13th Annual EDI Symposium: "Be Not Afraid!"

Evidently, no one who attended the 13th Annual EDI Symposium starting on Friday, January 13, suffers from or succumbed to Paraskevidekatriaphobia, taking the title to heart: Be Not Afraid! (of Friday the 13th)!
One of the banners near the speaker's table featured a stanza from this poem by Saint John Henry Newman:
Consolation
"It is I; be not afraid."
WHEN I sink down in gloom or fear,
Hope blighted or delay'd,
Thy whisper, Lord, my heart shall cheer,
"'Tis I; be not afraid!"

Or, startled at some sudden blow,
If fretful thoughts I feel,
"Fear not, it is but I!" shall flow,
As balm my wound to heal.

Nor will I quit Thy way, though foes
Some onward pass defend;
From each rough voice the watchword goes,
"Be not afraid! ... a friend!" 

And oh! when judgment's trumpet clear
Awakes me from the grave,
Still in its echo may I hear,
"'Tis Christ; He comes to save."

At Sea.
June 23, 1833.
The symposium this year featured James Matthew Wilson (Catholic), Jake Meador (Protestant), & Fr. John Strickland (Orthodox), and was held at St. George Orthodox Cathedral here in Wichita, Kansas. Eighth Day Books had an annex of the store on-site selling books, icons, etc, especially featuring the presenters' publications and books on associated topics.
The main feature I want to mention is the post-Covid atmosphere of the event. That may be controversial to say, but since James Matthew Wilson's first presentation was "T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, & Quarantine Notebook: What Writing Taught Me About Our Divided Times", it seems appropriate. Wilson provided an overview of the historical occasion of Eliot's The Four Quartets, inspired in part to demonstrate that there was an "England" to be defended, fought for, and died for during World War II, and then discussed his own poetic production of news reports in iambic pentameter published serially in Dappled Things online. As Wilson noted, the composition of the poems bore two fruits: "The concrete fruit was a book-length poem; the intellectual fruit was a new and deepened perspective on the divisions in our country and the strange commonality Americans experience in and through that division." 
He also presented a second Plenary session as the keynote speaker, which a close friend of mine really enjoyed because she's studied and read the works of Hans Urs von Balthasar since she wrote her master's thesis: "A World without Beauty: von Balthasar, Plato, & the Ordering of the Soul".
It's also appropriate to bring up this post-Covid aspect because this year all our speakers could attend and arrive on time (in spite of the FAA shut down earlier in the week). Last year Rod Dreher HAD Covid and could not even offer his presentations via Zoom (laryngitis!). Nevertheless everything went well last year: we just all stayed in the Fellowship Hall for all the presentations.
We had competing breakouts this year, with two held in the Cathedral's chapel which I did not attend (described here and here), and two held in the Fellowship Hall, which I did attend (described here and here).
As usual, we had a beautiful Festal Banquet Friday night, with music, including hymns and chants by the St. George Orthodox Cathedral Choir, the story of the saint honored that night, St. Paul of Thebes, a desert hermit whose story we know because St. Anthony of the Desert visited him--and we know the story of that visit because St. Athanasius wrote about in his Life of St. Anthony! The three speakers also presented reflections.
After all that talk of the desert, the only way your table could have dessert after dinner was if someone at the table won a dessert in the raffle!! I won three $!$!$! (Shared one at our table; shared another at a table without a dessert; saved one (cinnamon rolls) for breakfast at the second day of the Symposium.)
We ended the Symposium on Saturday with a panel discussion and then with a special meeting of those Eighth Day Institute members who had attended--with a wine and cheese reception.
As I've said before, the EDI Symposium is a great event, well worth travelling to each Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Weekend! The Dates and Theme for the 2024 Symposium are already set:
The Dates: January 10 through 13, 2024 (January 10 and 11 for the Pre-Symposium Seminar at the EDI Ladder and January 12 and 13 for the Symposium at St. George Orthodox Cathedral). 
The Theme: "Attend Unto Thyself". At least one speaker is confirmed: Mark Bauerlein of Emory University and First Things . 
Please bookmark the EDI website, sign up for email updates, and join us--as a member and an attendee--for "Conversations you can't have anywhere else!" with friends you didn't know you had!

Roland Millare at Eighth Day Books

Last Wednesday, January 18, Eighth Day Books hosted a presentation and book signing by Roland Millare. He was in Wichita for a program at the Spiritual Life Center and wanted to visit Eighth Day Books.
His book--adapted from his dissertation under the director of Matthew Levering--is titled A Living Sacrifice: Liturgy and Eschatology in Joseph Ratzinger which

. . .  focuses on the inherent relationship between eschatology and the liturgy in light of Ratzinger’s insistence upon the primacy of logos over ethos. When logos is subordinated to ethos, the human person becomes subjected to a materialist ontology that leads to an ethos that is concerned above all by utility and progress, which affects one’s approach to understanding the liturgy and eschatology. How a person celebrates the liturgy becomes subject to the individual whim of one person or a group of people. Eschatology is reduced to addressing the temporal needs of a society guided by a narrow conception of hope or political theology. If the human person wants to understand his authentic sacramental logos, then he must first turn to Christ the incarnate Logos, who reveals to him that he is created for a loving relationship with God and others.

The primacy of logos is the central hermeneutical key to understanding the unique vision of Ratzinger’s Christocentric liturgical theology and eschatology. This is coupled with a study of Ratzinger’s spiritual Christology with a focus on how it influences his theology of liturgy and eschatology through the notions of participation and communion in Christ’s sacrificial love. Finally, A Living Sacrifice examines Ratzinger’s theology of hope, charity, and beauty, as well as his understanding of active participation in relationship to the eschatological and cosmic characteristics of the sacred liturgy.

I had seen the book before at Eighth Day Books and commented that the cover, featuring one of Fra Angelico's paintings of the Last Judgment, was a major selling point! It has been added to my growing pile of books to read, received since my birthday and Christmas last month, although I have read the introduction, so I've jumped the gun. I purchased it with a Christmas gift certificate. Several copies are available at the store!
One highlight of the evening was that the author brought his copy of my book all the way from Houston for me to sign--he autographed my copy of his book, and I autographed his copy of mine, which, by the way, is also available at Eighth Day Books! 
We had a good turnout (I'd sent a blurb to the editor of the Catholic Advance for the weekly e-mail newsletter, and the Theology Department at Newman University promoted it too!) 

Some Recent Newman Blog Posts from Father Velez

In the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's death on December 31, 2022, Father Juan Velez has been posting some interesting commentary on connections between the late Pope Emeritus and Saint John Henry Newman. The first I'd like to highlight also includes Pope Saint John Paul II, all on Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio):

Since the sixteenth century there has often been a mistaken understanding and confrontation between faith and reason. John Henry Newman, Carol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger are among the outstanding modern Christian thinkers who have best explained the correct relationship between faith and reason. These authors dealt with the problem of skepticism and moral relativism in culture, philosophy and religion.

In the mid-nineteenth century, John Henry Newman, delivered a series of sermons on the subject of faith and reason.These are known as his Oxford University Sermons. In these sermons Newman defends the rational nature of faith. For him the act of faith involves an act of reason. In other words, the faith is something which does not contradict reason but which reaches beyond the limits of reason. In one of the sermons, Newman explains: “(Thus) Faith is the reasoning of a religious mind, or of what Scripture calls a right or renewed heart, which acts upon presumptions rather than evidence, which speculates and ventures on the future when it cannot make sure of it.” The certainty of human faith is based on the confluence of many associations, perceptions and antecedent beliefs. But religious faith is based on God’s revelation of himself rather than human evidences obtained from the material sciences. . . .
Please read the rest there.
The second is about Pope Benedict XVI and Saint John Henry Newman on the Roman Rite of the Catholic Mass, which includes a discussion of Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum:
It is clear then that Newman found beauty and solace in the Mass. It is because of this very understanding that Pope Benedict sought to clarify his position regarding this venerable Mass of Newman’s time and the post-Conciliar Mass of Paul VI. He made it one of his priorities to introduce the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ to show that the pre-conciliar liturgy of the 1962 Missal is the same liturgy as the Roman Missal of Pope Paul VI. For this reason, he termed the, Traditional Latin Mass “The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite” and the post conciliar Mass of Paul VI he termed “The Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite.” As Bishop Conley of Nebraska wrote, “Pope Benedict desired the traditions to harmonize … so the cross-pollination could take place; the very best of the reforms of the post-conciliar liturgy could be enhanced and influenced, by an open, unbiased acceptance of the Mass that preceded it.” Pope Benedict described his goal of a slow and gradual process that was meant to begin with Summorum Pontificum and could eventually result in a “mutual enrichment” of the two forms.

Newman’s love for Mass is evident, writes Fr. Michael Lang, of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London. He notes that Newman’s love for the Mass is evident in his novel Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert, published anonymously in 1848. In this novel, there are descriptions of Mass and Benediction by the Catholic converts Willis and Reding, which are autobiographical. Fr. Lang writes that we know of Newman’s love of the Roman Breviary before his conversion, since he prayed the Divine Office daily at Littlemore. This prayer of the Church was very influential in his subsequent conversion. (quoted from “St. John Henry Newman and the Liturgy“ in Adoremus Bulletin).
At the end of that article, Father Velez directs readers to a chapter in a new book about Newman, edited by Father Velez and published by Catholic University of America Press: A Guide to John Henry Newman: His Life and Thought (I'll certainly have to wait for the paperback!)
One of my most treasured memories is the day Mark and I watched the Mass on September 19, 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Newman. We had watched as many of the events on EWTN as we could, and I obtained the official record of the State Visit (cover pictured above)! After the Mass and the commentary on EWTN concluded, my recorded episode with Doug Keck aired on EWTN's Bookmark!

SRMS Preview: Newman on the Season of Epiphany

Resuming and completing our Advent/Christmas reflections based on sermons selected and edited by Christopher O. Blum in Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, January 9, 2023! (Trying to get used to that new year number.) Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermon from January 17, 1841, "The Season of Epiphany".

So 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 and remember that you may find the recording of the show later that day on the Son Rise Morning Show website!

Our liturgical calendar this year according to the 1970/2002 revisions of the Roman Calendar makes it a little difficult to see the Season of Epiphany. The "Epiphany of the Lord" is traditionally represented by three events: the Visit of Magi, the Baptism of the Lord, and the Marriage Feast of Cana.

The feast of Epiphany was moved from January 6 to the Sunday celebration on January 8, and this year, we celebrate the feast of The Baptism of Jesus on Monday, January 9, instead of the following Sunday! And this liturgical year (B for the Sunday readings; only Year C for Sunday readings includes that Gospel), we won't read about the Marriage Feast of Cana, to which Newman alludes in the verse for this sermon:

"This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him." (John 2:11)
Newman begins with a review of the how the liturgical year helps us reflect on the Life of Christ:

THE Epiphany is a season especially set apart for adoring the glory of Christ. The word may be taken to mean the manifestation of His glory, and leads us to the contemplation of Him as a King upon His throne in the midst of His court, with His servants around Him, and His guards in attendance. At Christmas we commemorate His grace; and in Lent His temptation; and on Good Friday His sufferings and death; and on Easter Day His victory; and on Holy Thursday His return to the Father; and in Advent we anticipate His second coming. And in all of these seasons He does something, or suffers something: but in the Epiphany and the weeks after it, we celebrate Him, not as on His field of battle, or in His solitary retreat, but as an august and glorious King; we view Him as the Object of our worship. 
He does focus on the visit of the Magi and there places Jesus on His earthly throne, His mother's lap:
Then only, during His whole earthly history, did He fulfil the type of Solomon, and held (as I may say) a court, and received the homage of His subjects; viz. when He was an infant. His throne was His undefiled Mother's arms; His chamber of state was a cottage or a cave; the worshippers were the wise men of the East, and they brought presents, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. All around and about Him seemed of earth, except to the eye of faith; one note alone had He of Divinity. As great men of this world are often plainly dressed, and look like other men, all but as having some one costly ornament on their breast or on their brow; so the Son of Mary in His lowly dwelling, and in an infant's form, was declared to be the Son of God Most High, the Father of Ages, and the Prince of Peace, by His star; a wonderful appearance which had guided the wise men all the way from the East, even unto Bethlehem.
And Newman continues that theme of Our Lord's majesty being manifested mostly during His early years--before and after His birth--in the Incarnation and Infancy:
The only display of royal greatness, the only season of majesty, homage, and glory, which our Lord had on earth, was in His infancy and youth. Gabriel's message to Mary was in its style and manner such as befitted an Angel speaking to Christ's Mother. Elisabeth, too, saluted Mary, and the future Baptist his hidden Lord, in the same honourable way. Angels announced His birth, and the shepherds worshipped. A star appeared, and the wise men rose from the East and made Him offerings. He was brought to the temple, and Simeon took Him in His arms, and returned thanks for Him. He grew to twelve years old, and again He appeared in the temple, and took His seat in the midst of the doctors. But here His earthly majesty had its end, or if seen afterwards, it was but now and then, by glimpses and by sudden gleams, but with no steady sustained light, and no diffused radiance. . . .
[Here we might think of the Transfiguration as one of those glimpses or gleams, but even that glorious event was a secret to be shared by the three Apostles until after His Passion and Resurrection--His exodus as St. Luke's Gospel describes what Jesus, Moses, and Elijah are discussing.]
We are told at the close of the last-mentioned narrative, "And He went down with His parents, and came to Nazareth, and was subjected unto them." (Luke 2:51) His subjection and servitude now began in fact. He had come in the form of a servant, and now He took on Him a servant's office. How much is contained in the idea of His subjection! and it began, and His time of glory ended, when He was twelve years old.
After introducing the example of King Solomon above, Newman emphasizes the difference between that King of Israel and the King of the World:
Solomon, the great type of the Prince of Peace, reigned forty years, and his name and greatness was known far and wide through the East. Joseph, the much-loved son of Jacob, who in an earlier age of the Church, was a type of Christ in His kingdom, was in power and favour eighty years, twice as long as Solomon. But Christ, the true Revealer of secrets, and the Dispenser of the bread of life, the true wisdom and majesty of the Father, manifested His glory but in His early years, and then the Sun of Righteousness was clouded. For He was not to reign really, till He left the world. He has reigned ever since; nay, reigned in the world, though He is not in sensible presence in it—the invisible King of a visible kingdom—for He came on earth but to show what His reign would be, after He had left it, and to submit to suffering and dishonour, that He might reign.
Remember that when Our Lord spoke of the lilies of the field, he contrasted their glories with Solomon's: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these." (Matthew 6:28-29)

As always, Newman offers a conclusion to apply what he's elucidated to his congregation. He reminds us that if Our Lord enjoyed but a brief time of glory and majesty, and then submitted to a life of obedience not just to His Heavenly Father's Will but to his earthly parents' wills, we have to follow His pattern and be grateful for the seasons of His Life and our own:
For all seasons we must thank Him, for time of sorrow and time of joy, time of warfare and time of peace. And the more we thank Him for the one, the more we shall be drawn to thank Him for the other. Each has its own proper fruit, and its own peculiar blessedness. Yet our mortal flesh shrinks from the one, and of itself prefers the other;—it prefers rest to toil, peace to war, joy to sorrow, health to pain and sickness. When then Christ gives us what is pleasant, let us take it as a refreshment by the way, that we may, when God calls, go in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb, the mount of God. Let us rejoice in Epiphany with trembling, that after the Baptism we may go into the vineyard with the labourers with cheerfulness, and may sorrow in Lent with thankfulness; let us rejoice now, not as if we have attained, but in hope of attaining. Let us take our present happiness, not as our true rest, but, as what the land of Canaan was to the Israelites,—a type and shadow of it. If we now enjoy God's ordinances, let us not cease to pray that they may prepare us for His presence hereafter. If we enjoy the presence of friends, let them remind us of the communion of saints before His throne. Let us trust in nothing here, yet draw hope from every thing—that at length the Lord may be our everlasting light, and the days of our mourning may be ended.
Newman is advising us to enter into the rhythms of the Liturgical Year as a way of persevering through the seasons of our own lives: times of anticipation; times of fulfillment. He contrasts the times of feasting and celebration with the times of fasting and sorrow--and even reminds us of the ultimate change of season: from our earthly life to everlasting life. Newman loved his friends and family on earth but knows he has even greater friends and family in the communion of saints, and offers us that consolation.
Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!
Image Credit (Public Domain): Gerard David, "Adoration of the Magi".
Image Credit (Public Domain): "Solomon and the plan for the First Temple." Illustration from a Bible card