Catholic Thought discussion
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
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Chapter 4, Part 1
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Newman begins to rely on the moral argument in this chapter. How the Catholic Church doesn’t follow the moral aspects of the Gospel in its secular political leanings and actions. Later, he makes an Biblical argument which I don’t buy.
Does Newman discuss the Ten Tribes of Israel in this section? I have the first edition, so it’s not split.
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No he does not b
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Later, he makes ..."
I don’t understand what you mean. Can you elaborate?
The note of sanctity, is what I meant. The Roman Catholic Church isn’t worth joining because of the morally scandalous actions of its agents. He needs something that doesn’t criticize Catholic doctrine, while also rejecting the church. Again, it may be too early in the chapter.
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So here’s the paragraph. I’m going to break it up to show his progression of thought, but remember it’s all one paragraph. Here’s the first chunk.
While my old and true friends were thus in trouble about me, I suppose they felt not only anxiety but pain, to see that I was gradually surrendering myself to the influence of others, who had not their own claims upon me, younger men, and of a cast of mind in no small degree uncongenial to my own. A new school of thought was rising, as is usual in doctrinal inquiries, and was sweeping the original party of the Movement aside, and was taking its place.
So Newman talks about the new Oxford Movement rising with a new generation, but even there he juxtaposes two thoughts. (1) That his friends were “troubled” he was drifting from their influence and (2) coming under the influence of a new group that was “rising.”
The most prominent person in it, was a man of elegant genius, of classical mind, of rare talent in literary composition:—Mr. Oakeley. He was not far from my own age; I had long known him, though of late years he had not been in residence at Oxford; and quite lately, he has been taking several signal occasions of renewing that kindness, which he ever showed towards me when we were both in the Anglican Church. His tone of mind was not unlike that which gave a character to the early Movement; he was almost a typical Oxford man, and, as far as I recollect, both in political and ecclesiastical views, would have been of one spirit with the Oriel party of 1826-1833. But he had entered late into the Movement; he did not know its first years; and, beginning with a new start, he was naturally thrown together with that body of eager, acute, resolute minds who had begun their Catholic life about the same time as he, who knew nothing about the Via Media, but had heard much about Rome.
From those two half points of that first subdivision, he turns in what feels like a digression into a characterization of “the most prominent person” of that new movement, Mr. Oakeley. It’s a lovely piece of writing, but it feels connected to the first sentences. But then he returns to the thesis of the new movement.
This new party rapidly formed and increased, in and out of Oxford, and, as it so happened, contemporaneously with that very summer, when I received so serious a blow to my ecclesiastical views from the study of the Monophysite controversy. These men cut into the original Movement at an angle, fell across its line of thought, and then set about turning that line in its own direction. They were most of them keenly religious men, with a true concern for their souls as the first matter of all, with a great zeal for me, but giving little certainty at the time as to which way they would ultimately turn. Some in the event have remained firm to Anglicanism, some have become Catholics, and some have found a refuge in Liberalism.
So after concentrating on Mr. Oakeley, he gives a generalization of the other men in the new movement. He continues on the men of the new movement but notice his thesis has expanded.
Nothing was clearer concerning them, than that they needed to be kept in order; and on me who had had so much to do with the making of them, that duty was as clearly incumbent; and it is equally clear, from what I have already said, that I was just the person, above all others, who could not undertake it.
These men of the new movement were in need of a leader, and he would have been the logical person to lead them but because of his sympathies to Rome (unmentioned but implied from the general context) he was not the logical person. When I say this paragraph is this section of the chapter in a microcosm, I am referring to this tension of one foot with the Anglicans and one foot with the Catholics. Next Newman returns to the “old friends” of the first sentence.
There are no friends like old friends; but of those old friends, few could help me, few could understand me, many were annoyed with me, some were angry, because I was breaking up a compact party, and some, as a matter of conscience, could not listen to me. When I looked round for those whom I might consult in my difficulties, I found the very hypothesis of those difficulties acting as a bar to their giving me their advice. Then I said, bitterly, "You are throwing me on others, whether I will or no." Yet still I had good and true friends around me of the old sort, in and out of Oxford too, who were a great help to me. But on the other hand, though I neither was so fond (with a few exceptions) of the persons, nor of the methods of thought, which belonged to this new school, as of the old set, though I could not trust in their firmness of purpose, for, like a swarm of flies, they might come and go, and at length be divided and dissipated, yet I had an intense sympathy in their object and in the direction in which their path lay, in spite of my old friends, in spite of my old life-long prejudices.
Now that is an extended riff on his alienation from his compatriots of the original Oxford movement. I use the word “riff” because if this paragraph were music, this subdivision would be in a different musical key from before. On the one hand it appears to be a completely different topic. And yet, that topic was there in the opening sentence of this great paragraph. It is integrated as a thought. And now he shifts to another subject.
In spite of my ingrained fears of Rome, and the decision of my reason and conscience against her usages, in spite of my affection for Oxford and Oriel, yet I had a secret longing love of Rome the Mother of English Christianity, and I had a true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, in whose College I lived, whose Altar I served, and whose Immaculate Purity I had in one of my earliest printed Sermons made much of. And it was the consciousness of this bias in myself, if it is so to be called, which made me preach so earnestly against the danger of being swayed in religious inquiry by our sympathy rather than by our reason.
In this subdivision, he captures the tension within himself, the fear of Rome and the love of Rome, justifying why he has been forced into this alienation of his own volition. Perhaps this whole book, this testimony, can be reduced to those two sentences. Finally he concludes by bringing together all the motifs of the subdivisions into a coherent whole.
And moreover, the members of this new school looked up to me, as I have said, and did me true kindnesses, and really loved me, and stood by me in trouble, when others went away, and for all this I was grateful; nay, many of them were in trouble themselves, and in the same boat with me, and that was a further cause of sympathy between us; and hence it was, when the new school came on in force, and into collision with the old, I had not the heart, any more than the power, to repel them; I was in great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood; I took their part; and, when I wanted to be in peace and silence, I had to speak out, and I incurred the charge of weakness from some men, and of mysteriousness, shuffling, and underhand dealing from the majority.
The old movement in conflict with the new movement, and he caught in between which results in his alienation. Remember this is all one paragraph. I chose to break it into seven subdivisions, and you might have a slightly different way to break it up, but you can see how it appears to meander. But does it really meander? Or is it a cohesive thought?
Depending on how you answer that, you might consider it a masterpiece of a paragraph—and I’ve come to the conclusion it is—or you might find it a rambling thought that somehow got pulled together at the end. I doubt any contemporary editor would keep that paragraph as is today. I have to say, I enjoyed it!
Newman does meander with his prose, but his main ideas really still resonate with modernity. He writes as a 19th century academic, but his conclusions are still relevant, and his ideas profound.
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a multitude of factors coming together and he has to make sense of each one of them. They have to fit the whole. This entire stage in the conversion process is very meandering. I know :-)
What this reminds me of is Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism by Scott Hahn. He presents us in detail how intense and unrelenting this mental wrestling match can be for someone who has already given his life to the Protestant church and of high intellect.
Summary
In Part 1 of this chapter, Newman finds himself in a sort of no man’s land, neither in the Catholic Church, which he is now convinced of her authority, nor with his heart in the Anglican Church which has fallen in his eyes. He recapitulates why the Catholic Church is holy and why the Via Media is lacking. He speaks of the rise of a new Oxford movement, one in which he mostly looks on from the outside, finding himself in a difficult position given it is now apparent he has Catholic sympathies. He spends a good deal of space in this half chapter rebutting the charges he has been a closeted Catholic all along, refuting individual claims against his theology. He ponders what his future might look like, continuing in this half in, half out state, still deciding he could never convert to the Catholic Church.