Apologia for Cardinal Newman Against Unfair Criticisms Concerning the Kingsley Affair, and Unfavorable Comparisons to Chesterton

 Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)
The following all came about in the combox for Brandon Vogt's excellent article, "How Cardinal Newman Handled the Haters" (11-26-12). A fellow Catholic writer, Paul Priest, made some very critical observations about Newman's famous sarcastic retorts to the charges of fundamental dishonesty leveled at him by the Anglican priest and polemicist, Charles Kingsley. Brandon himself asked me my thoughts in response, and I gave them, complete with several Newman quotations, culled from my research for my Quotable Newman and it's eventual follow-up volume. Paul's words will be in blue.
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Newman’s conflict with Charles Kingsley is one of the two historical examples I bring up when I hear the very common and erroneous opinion that one must always turn the other cheek. Not true. It’s not an absolute. The other example is St. Paul’s Socrates-like defense (“apologia”) of himself in the Roman / Jewish courts against untrue accusations (see the latter half of the book of Acts). He even appealed to his Roman citizenship (which eventually saved him from being crucified, like St. Peter). That’s hardly turning the other cheek.

But Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman defended himself with class and as much charity as could be mustered towards a vile, utterly groundless and irrational, scurrilous personal attack. He had heard it for at least 19 years up to that time (since his conversion), and was totally fed up with it. I know something about the whole process, because I recently compiled a volume of his quotations and read most of his books and many of his letters. He had agonized for years over the lies being spread about him (as any normal human being would have).

The result of his extended counter-reply was that he literally won over the affections of the English people, and this had truly momentous consequences in terms of an acceptance of Catholicism in a country with a record of bitter (and often hateful) anti-Catholicism for the previous 300 years. When high-profile Catholics are attacked, it is never solely about them. It's about the Church: that is always the target: at least in Satan’s strategy that ultimately lies behind all lies, and particularly those against Holy Mother Church and her leaders.

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Sorry Brandon but you’re missing the Victorian English barbs within Bl. JHN’s missive. It spews fury, venom, contempt and condescension via enthymemes and that which is left defiantly unsaid; there is even disdain at the worth of Rev. Kingsley himself; not merely what he wrote.

The use of ‘gentlemen’ is perjorative [i.e. if you were gentlemen you should never have allowed such a comment to be published - so you'd better start acting like gentlemen now!]

The trolls are most definitely being fed – Mr Kingsley is being attacked with vituperation and accused of being an unworthy slanderer and the publisher/editor is being accused of being either gullibly reckless or even complicit with Rev Kingsley’s sentiments.

The ‘politeness’ inferred by a modern reader is very far from complimentary – rather the reverse. JHN hasn’t assumed the best either – rather than it being taken for what it was – as a mocking side-swipe at the ‘Jesuitical’ approach that virtually every Anglican would use as a weapon against a Papist; rather JHN decides to take the term literally and outside of its context – you might not notice it but JHN’s also launching a vicious left-hook at the editors/publishers that their ungentlemanly conduct demands restitution lest they be found guilty by association. The ad hominems in his letter swoop in for the attack like valkyries.

I’m really sorry to rain on your parade, but seriously: Your first proposed ‘contemporary blog-like’ response with its tirade of well-worn insults is actually significantly less ascerbic, vitriolic and ‘below the belt’ than the one Blessed John Henry Newman wrote himself.

It’s a different culture in a different era but everyone reading JHN’s letter would wince – but the letter is redolent of Aneurin Bevan’s comment on Prime Minister Anthony Eden “If the Prime Minister is sincere, and he very well may be; then he is too stupid to be Prime Minister”.

No-one from a spanish background would denounce anyone as a thief even if they knew they were…it would be too socio-culturally demeaning for all involved; instead they would confront the criminal with “I appear to have mislaid my wallet” [which is a euphemism for I know you've taken it - give it back or I'll break you neck!]

Quentin Crisp said of the British “The Americans always say “Oh the British are so polite” without realising that the British are only ever polite to people they can’t stand!” If the British like someone a conversation will be filled with cordial familiarity and jovial put-downs, cynicisms and sarcasms.

Heart may speak unto heart – but there was certainly not an ounce of cordiality in that letter – to those who understand the tone I think the response would be a cringing shock.

. . . you’re being dazzled by the halo and the assumption that words can be interpreted at face value without the locale, the era or the cultural argot and the terminologies utilised being taken into consideration. They can’t.

You’re presuming this is the height of politeness, courtesy, civility and decorum with neither a raised word nor any imputation on another’s reputation; when it reality this is a withering character assassination and the remarks of someone who is incandescently livid and casts insults accordingly!

Take a look at what he REALLY says about Charles Kingsley [and the editor]
 
“I neither complain of them for their act, nor should I thank them if they reversed it.”

That’s Victorianese for “I don’t give a [expletive deletive] what they do – they’re not worth it – those [expletive deleted] can go [expletive deleted] themselves for all I care. I expect nothing less from [derogatory term] like that of [derogatory term] intellect and [derogatory term] morality – and as for a retraction or an apology it would be of as much worth and contain as much false authenticity and sincerity as the [expletive deleted] they’ve already written/allowed to be written”

..how’s that for an ad hominem?

..this is confirmed by the accusation that they didn’t merely commit grave slander but ‘gratuitous’ slander too.
 
[thinking the best of them?]

…and the word ‘gentlemen’ [especially in the sign off] is used as a provocative confrontational bludgeon that they are not being deemed gentlemen or considered gentlemen because the evidence suggests they have not acted like gentlemen and should bloody well start to act like gentlemen – if that’s at all possible…

[that can hardly be considered any of the three aspects of your advice]

…he even twists the knife by saying that he doesn’t and would never normally read the publication – the only reason he’s responding is because he was notified…

With the English you have to notice the extraneous, the peripheral and the nuances – hardly anything ever means what it says and a word is hardly ever wasted – if it’s there – it’s there for a purpose and usually has a big motive pushing it – you just need to find it…

We rarely write, say or do anything which isn’t contaminated with a[n] [un]healthy dose of irony or sarcasm. Newman was an exemplar of it.


I doubt if anyone had more ideological adversaries in the world than GKC – but is there one among them who didn’t adore him? Even when he’d slain their heretical dragons and exorcised their fallacious phantoms and was the field marshal of the army whose unending onslaught ravaged everything in which they lived and believed? To Bernard Shaw and HG Wells when GKC died the moon was twice as lonely and the stars were half as bright – they loved him like a brother. Why? Because Gilbert spent his whole life arguing – so much so that he had no time for quarrelling…

Now if we are to love and honour Blessed John Henry Newman for who he was – we have to stop rewriting who he was – he was no plaster saint – no saint ever was..they all [bar one] had their flaws…they had feet of clay because they were picked out of the mud where they were walking…and with Newman it was getting upset over minor slights and actuating generations-long pig-headed recalcitrant feuds over the most ridiculous issues…

He may have been good, kind, holy, overflowing in intellect and wisdom..and although he’s very precious to us now – when he was alive he was ‘precious’ in the wrong way.
 
He quarrelled, he took offence, he exacted canly, he sent people to Coventry for decades and had no qualms garnering support against the object of his disdain and antipathy so it might turn into a farcical internecine conflict continuing even after he was long dead…he might have been worthily childlike in so many ways but in one way he was childish..he was very sensitive and got hurt very easily…and was hyperbolic in his distress when he did get hurt..which was probably a path to his salvation…by that wound and its healing maybe Christ was able to enter into his life in ways unimaginable if he hadn’t had that sensitive side? Maybe the prayers and hymns and writings and poems wouldn’t have a tenth of their beauty and understanding if he hadn’t borne that cross?

Anyone who has read the Apologia may sympathise with him and his emotional and civic and intellectual struggles – but even the most warm-hearted of us must concede that there are times the blessed future cardinal was a bit of a narcissistic jessie fretting over non-existent anxieties and self-imposed unnecessary imaginary burdens – and despite being really brave there were times when the best thing for him would to have had a father figure giving him a good shake, or throwing a big bucket of ice-water over him or a good kick in the seat of the pants…

…and a mother figure to force him and his opponent to say sorry and shake hands like nice young gentlemen and make up.

Love Blessed John Henry Newman – but please don’t forget that he had his ‘Sheldon Cooper’ side to him too..we can love and forgive and be willing to excuse at any available opportunity..but to deny it is to turn him into marble..and he’s not!

[all bolded emphases added]

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I think his take is sheer nonsense: armchair psychobabble and reading into completely justified, brilliant satirical barbs (things that Jesus and Paul both did; therefore they are not at all intrinsically sinful in every instance), all kinds of nefarious motives that are not there. It’s assuming the worst of someone rather than the best: which the Christian must not do (1 Corinthians 13).

I think Newman was doing a lot of what I often do, myself: taking an opportunity of a topic immediately at hand to launch off into observations about the larger related issue (in this case, a profound cultural anti-Catholicism).

His book Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851) contains some of the most delightful sarcasm I have read, anywhere. And it is good not only because it is spot-on and matchless prose (as always with him), but precisely because the subject matter offered such treasure-troves of folly and silliness to draw from.

Likewise, with Kingsley. Newman knew full well what was behind the attack: it was directed against Catholicism in the usual garden-variety way, with allusions to jesuitical casuisty, etc: every timeworn stereotype in the book. And so he was simultaneously dealing with that. We know that, from what he wrote about the exchange. It was an opportunity to slay the beast of cultural anti-Catholicism, using the vehicle of a ridiculous personal attack, handed to him on a silver platter. So, e.g., he wrote in a letter, while putting the Apologia pro vita Sua together:

So far as my character is connected with the fact of my conversion I have wished to do a service to Catholicism, . . . (Letter to Frederick Rogers, 1 May 1864)

Any true contempt was towards the incessant lying and revisionism of English anti-Catholicism: not towards Kingsley per se. He was just a pawn in that larger game. Hence Newman wrote eleven years later:

The death of Mr Kingsley, so premature, shocked me. I never from the first have felt any anger towards him. As I said in the first pages of my Apologia, it is very difficult to be angry with a man one has never seen. A casual reader would think my language denoted anger – but it did not. . . . much less could I feel any resentment against him when he was accidentally the instrument in the good Providence of God, by whom I had an opportunity given me, which otherwise I should not have had of vindicating my character and conduct in my Apologia. (Letter to Sir William Henry Cope, 13 February 1875)

Now, we can take Cardinal Newman’s own report of his interior feelings at face value, or we can rashly speculate and attribute ill will. I try to extend good will to any man. In this case, we have a saintly and rather extraordinary man: all the more reason to accept his own report. Justified sarcasm does not prove ill will or personal derision and detestation.

We also know from his account of writing the “Apologia” that this was a very unpleasant task for him indeed: a state of mind quite contrary to the imaginary fiction that our friend has dreamt up:

In writing I kept bursting into tears—and, as I read it to St. John, I could not get on from beginning to end. (Letter to William John Copeland, 19 April 1864)

. . . the most trying work which I ever had to do for nothing. During the writing and reading of my Part 3, I could not get on from beginning to end for crying . . . (Letter to Frederick Rogers, 22 April 1864)

It has been a great misery to me. (Letter to R. W. Church, 26 April 1864)

I have never been in such stress of brain and such pain of heart, and I have both trials together. Say some good prayers for me. . . . I have been constantly in tears, and constantly crying out in distress. . . . And then the third great trial and anxiety, lest I should not say well what is so important to say. (Letter to James Robert Hope-Scott, 2 May 1864)

. . . I have done a book of 562 pages, all at a heat; but with so much suffering, such profuse crying, . . . (Letter to Sister Mary Gabriel du Boulay, 25 June 1864)

I never had such a time, and once or twice thought I was breaking down. (Letter to Mother Imelda Poole, 25 June 1864) 

None of these letters, by the way, are in my current book, The Quotable Newman. It had to be edited down . . . They will be in a Vol. II eventually, filed under a section devoted to his own thoughts about the Apologia.

One line in Paul’s observations is very telltale, I think: “with Newman it was getting upset over minor slights and actuating generations-long pig-headed recalcitrant feuds over the most ridiculous issues…”

That was surely the case at times for Newman, as with any sensitive or thoughtful person who loves God and others. But it is not the case in the dispute with Kingsley. Far from being a “minor” thing or “ridiculous” it was of the highest importance in the history of Catholicism in England and the world (Newman being perhaps the most notable and brilliant convert since St. Augustine).

The subsequent favorable reaction of England proves this as no amount of analysis from anyone could. It was God’s providence for it to happen. Newman, being very spiritually attuned and discerning, thankfully knew that and endured the misery that he did, in defending himself (and really, the Church) against scurrilous lies.

Lastly, as to the juxtaposition of Chesterton to Newman: people react in very different ways to different personas. Who doesn’t (almost instinctively) like the jovial, congenial, always smiling and wisecracking, big cuddly teddy bear Chestertonian type? Who could resist that? But not all men are of that type. It was God’s will that we have different temperaments (and thank heavens for that). Newman may not have been “warm fuzzy” likeable in that vein, but he was no less deeply admired and loved by virtually all who knew him: including many thousands of Protestants in his last 26 years of life. I collected some personal impressions from several people on a Photograph and Portrait Page.


Chesterton was also bitingly satirical, especially about atheists and intellectuals: make no mistake about it. Again, I know a little about that, having compiled a book of his quotations, too! Here is one of my very favorites (I have it on my Facebook profile page):

And those who have been there will know what I mean when I say that, while there are stupid people everywhere, there is a particular minute and microcephalous idiocy which is only found in an intelligentsia. (Illustrated London News, “The Defense of the Unconventional,” 10-17-25)

Or how about this delightful tidbit:

I have frequently visited such societies, in the capacity of a common or normal fool, and I have almost always found there a few fools who were more foolish than I had imagined to be possible to man born of woman; people who had hardly enough brains to be called half-witted.
(The Thing: Why I am a Catholic, 1929, ch. 6)

Now, in person (utilizing his charm), Chesterton probably could get away with such withering, acerbic comments, but if one merely reads them (especially without knowing who wrote them), they are every bit as “negative” and as difficult to be a recipient of, as Newman’s barbs. Therefore, in terms of sarcasm considered in and of itself, apart from personality, I see little difference, if any, between the two men.

I agree that Paul is a dazzling writer. Would that he concentrated his rare gift on more defensible and edifying subject matter.

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I would add that, at least in his initial response (cited in the article) there is liberal use of socratic irony, or tongue-in-cheek understatement:

This can be done entirely without anger (as usually in Socrates himself) The task at hand is how to interpret Newman’s sarcasm and irony, as to motive? Why did Newman do it? It seems to me that there is definitely more than one way to look at this.

We can assume that every use of the irony is born of a seething resentment and proof positive of (some or all of Paul’s many colorful terms: take your pick) fury, venom, contempt, condescension, disdain, vituperation, ad hominem, vitriol, or being “incandescently livid” (all of which emotions starkly contradict Newman’s own report of his state of mind).

Or we can conclude (with much more charity) that, yes, Newman had contempt for the lies being told (that happened to be at his expense, but could have been directed to any one of a thousand Catholics), but not for the person telling them.

Like I said, sarcasm alone — even biting, acerbic sarcasm — is not at all a proof of all these descriptions being applicable in Newman’s case, let alone of actual sin (since Jesus could call Pharisees “vipers” and “whitewashed tombs” while not sinning). It’s perfectly possible for a person to truly “hate the sin and not the sinner” as most Christians learn at some point in their spiritual odyssey. Jesus turned over the tables of the moneychangers; He didn’t smack them (though He had very choice words for them, calling them “thieves” or “robbers”): again without sin.

I did a similar thing last night, in writing an Introduction to my upcoming book on Catholic so-called “traditionalism”, stating with regard to theological liberalism:

I detest these false notions; have nothing but intellectual contempt for them (while trying to love the persons, as I should).

This is rather elementary Christian ethics. Why is it that it is not assumed that Cardinal Newman’s “fury, venom,” etc. (insofar as it did exist), was simply directed towards the lies about Catholicism that were ubiquitous in England: pointedly expressed by Kingsley at his expense, rather than at Kingsley himself? Why is it that the conclusion is so quickly (easily?) drawn that it all stems from personal derision?

I don’t think this follows at all, and I know for a fact that it certainly doesn’t necessarily follow, because I do this sort of thing all the time, myself, as an apologist: i.e., have a seething contempt for some falsehood and the harm that it causes, while (many times, but not always, being human) not being “opposed” to or wishing ill to persons ultimately victimized by and pawns of same, in the slightest. I did it last night in a lengthy, “controversial” exchange with several people. It’s part and parcel of apologetics, and in fact, if we apologists didn’t have such contempt for falsehood, we wouldn’t be nearly as motivated as we are to oppose and refute it. It’s good energy to go out and do constructive things with.

The motive is, or should be love. Life is too short for petty personal squabbles. I don’t believe for a second that this was Newman’s motivation regarding Kingsley. I take him at his word. And that remains true as the most plausible explanation, in my opinion, from the relevant personal and circumstantial evidence, regardless of what view one takes on the notorious “Newman’s [real or alleged] hypersensitivity” mantra, which Paul trots out.

From my own extensive biographical research in compiling my quotations book, I personally think this larger charge is a bum rap, while not denying that Cardinal Newman was a sensitive person (most of the deepest thinkers and saintly people are) or asserting that he was perfect. I deny that oversensitivity or hypersensitivity is accurately applied to Newman as a leading character trait or flaw. This is the issue: it’s a matter of degree and whether it was a sort of besetting sin for him.

I think, again, that my own personal experience gives me a small amount of insight on the matter (and personalism of this sort was a big emphasis in Newman’s thought, as also in, e.g., Blessed Pope John Paul II’s). I have been accused many times in my apologetic endeavors (usually by anti-Catholics, as Kingsley was) of being “angry” or “sensitive” or some other emotional state that I knew was not true to the slightest extent in the given situation I was in (just last night, in fact, I was called a “crybaby” by a semi-sedevacantist, before he stalked off and blocked me). These things were applied to me, based on words I had written, but (in most cases) were untrue. They came either from an illogical or ill-formed conclusion drawn, or from projection of other people’s temperament onto my own (rather cool and easy-going, while being very passionate about ideas and truth).

Why can it not be that Newman was simply passionate about principle and fact and truth, without this charge of personal pique being thrown at him? I deny that the evidence of his life and actions proves indubitably that the man was oversensitive. I could be wrong, of course (I don’t claim to be an expert on him: I simply collected his quotations), but I’m just giving my own opinion on that and the reasons why I hold it.



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