Catholic Thought discussion
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
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Chapter 4, Part 2
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Newman struggles with Mary and the saints here, especially the communion of saints as the Catholic Church proclaims it. Even though Newman had a devotion to the Blessed Mother prior to conversion, his suspicion of Catholicism as a pagan religion still lingers. This is what he needs to surmount. Saints Alphonsus Liguori and Ignatius of Loyola bring him across that threshold. I’ve never read Liguori, so I can’t say I understand his lessons. I definitely understand Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, and I can see how this appealed to Newman.
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Such devotional manifestations in honour of our Lady had been my great crux as regards Catholicism; I say frankly, I do not fully enter into them now; I trust I do not love her the less, because I cannot enter into them. They may be fully explained and defended; but sentiment and taste do not run with logic: they are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.
His biggest hang up it seems was that he could not accept an intermediary between man and God. His term for this is "solus cum solo,” which Newman translate as “face to face.” Newman feels that one is only face to face with God at judgment. It seems that for Newman’s Protestantism the “cloud of witnesses” on Hebrews 12:1 have no bearing with God. But through Liguori’s sermons, he had the intuition that certain Catholic doctrines that appeared to him to be outside of Christinaity were indeed found in kernel form in early Christianity, and so the idea of the development of doctrine came to him and would justify these Catholic practices. This intellectual process Newman summarizes in six points, but I’ll quote the fourth through sixth.
4. And thus I was led on to a further consideration. I saw that the principle of development not only accounted for certain facts, but was in itself a remarkable philosophical phenomenon, giving a character to the whole course of Christian thought. It was discernible from the first years of the Catholic teaching up to the present day, and gave to that teaching a unity and individuality. It served as a sort of test, which the Anglican could not exhibit, that modern Rome was in truth ancient Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, just as a mathematical curve has its own law and expression.
5. And thus again I was led on to examine more attentively what I doubt not was in my thoughts long before, viz. the concatenation of argument by which the mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea; and I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other. And I hold this still: I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I feel it impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that fact I am quite sure) without believing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal, All-seeing, All-judging Being in my conscience. Now, I dare say, I have not expressed myself with philosophical correctness, because I have not given myself to the study of what metaphysicians have said on the subject; {199} but I think I have a strong true meaning in what I say which will stand examination.
6. Moreover, I found a corroboration of the fact of the logical connexion of Theism with Catholicism in a consideration parallel to that which I had adopted on the subject of development of doctrine. The fact of the operation from first to last of that principle of development in the truths of Revelation, is an argument in favour of the identity of Roman and Primitive Christianity; but as there is a law which acts upon the subject-matter of dogmatic theology, so is there a law in the matter of religious faith.
And this thought process was conclusive.
I have nothing more to say on the subject of the change in my religious opinions. On the one hand I came gradually to see that the Anglican Church was formally in the wrong, on the other that the Church of Rome was formally in the right; then, that no valid reasons could be assigned for continuing in the Anglican, and again that no valid objections could be taken to joining the Roman. Then, I had nothing more to learn; what still remained for my conversion, was, not further change of opinion, but to change opinion itself into the clearness and firmness of intellectual conviction.
So he was there intellectually, but he still he found it difficult at the time to convert.
Indeed. It addresses the fact that apologetics aren’t enough—it takes a relationship with Jesus to come to Catholicism and Christianity in general.
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In 1843, I took two very significant steps:—1. In February, I made a formal Retractation of all the hard things which I had said against the Church of Rome. 2. In September, I resigned the Living of St. Mary's, Littlemore included…
The word actually is “Retractation.” I thought it was a typo, retractation but Oxford Diction provides a definition: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/...
1. A reconsideration or re-examination of something previously discussed. Usually in plural.
Chiefly in the title of or with reference to a book by St Augustine containing further treatment and corrections of matters dealt with in his earlier writings.
2. The action or an act of withdrawing a statement, accusation, etc., which is now admitted to be erroneous or unjustified; = "retraction". Chiefly formal in later use.
It is synonymous with “retraction” but it’s a retraction based on a re-examination rather than a mistake. It is also more formal in nature.
Newman’s excuse for his prior attacks on Catholic theology were based on purely what he had been taught, and that when he examined the original documents (Church Fathers) of what he had been taught he found the error on the side of what the Church of England taught, not on Catholicism. From his Retractation which he quotes in this chapter:
"If you ask me how an individual could venture, not simply to hold, but to publish such views of a communion so ancient, so wide-spreading, so fruitful in Saints, I answer that I said to myself, 'I am not speaking my own words, I am but following almost a consensus of the divines of my own Church. They have ever used the strongest language against Rome, even the most able and learned of them. I wish to throw myself into their system. While I say what they say, I am safe. Such views, too, are necessary for our position.' Yet I have reason to fear still, that such language is to be ascribed, in no small measure, to an impetuous temper, a hope of approving myself to persons I respect, and a wish to repel the charge of Romanism."
He goes on to show why the language of the Anglican Church was so polemic against Catholicism:
Therefore, though I believed what I said against the Roman Church, nevertheless I could not religiously speak it out, unless I was really justified, not only in believing ill, but in speaking ill. I did believe what I said on what I thought to be good reasons; but had I also a just cause for saying out what I believed? I thought I had, and it was this, viz. that to say what I believed was simply necessary in the controversy for self-defence. It was impossible to let it alone: the Anglican position could not be satisfactorily maintained, without assailing the Roman.
This I believe is a truth for all Protestantism. Protestantism doesn’t exist except in contrast and repudiation by all means of Catholic doctrine.
As to his second action, resigning from the Oxford parish of St. Mary’s Littlemore, his reasoning is that he could no longer preach the Anglican theology. He quotes from one of his letters of resignation:
"May 4, 1843 … At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the over-flowings of His dispensation. I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith…”
And then quotes from a May 18, 1843 letter:
"I do not see how I can either preach or publish again, while I hold St. Mary's;—but consider again the following difficulty in such a resolution, which I must state at some length."
And with these two events he broke from the Church of England and Protestantism for good. However, he did not immediately join the Catholic Church.
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Supposing I were crossing ice, which came right in my way, which I had good reasons for considering sound, and which I saw numbers before me crossing in safety, and supposing a stranger from the bank, in a voice of authority, and in an earnest tone, warned me that it was dangerous, and then was silent, I think I should be startled, and should look about me anxiously, but I think too that I should go on, till I had better grounds for doubt; and such was my state, I believe, till the end of 1842. Then again, when my dissatisfaction became greater, it was hard at first to determine the point of time, when it was too strong to suppress with propriety. Certitude of course is a point, but doubt is a progress; I was not near certitude yet. Certitude is a reflex action; it is to know that one knows. Of that I believe I was not possessed, till close upon my reception into the Catholic Church. Again, a practical, effective doubt is a point too, but who can easily ascertain it for himself? Who can determine when it is, that the scales in the balance of opinion begin to turn, and what was a greater probability in behalf of a belief becomes a positive doubt against it?
So he creates this tension from two conflicting sets of data. If the soundness of the ice represents the soundness of Catholicism, he sees a group of people safely crossing it. But he also hears a voice warning of its dangers. He is caught in a sort of existential middle. In summing this he provides a great and memorable quote: “Certitude of course is a point, but doubt is a progress; I was not near certitude yet.”
So what pushes him over the edge to certitude? He comes to this question in January of 1845: “The simple question is, Can I (it is personal, not whether another, but can I) be saved in the English Church? am I in safety, were I to die tonight? Is it a mortal sin in me, not joining another communion?” So what makes him feel that cannot be saved in the English Church. At the same time as this letter, he began what is his most famous work.
I had begun my Essay on the Development of Doctrine in the beginning of 1845, and I was hard at it all through the year till October. As I advanced, my difficulties so cleared away that I ceased to speak of "the Roman Catholics," and boldly called them Catholics. Before I got to the end, I resolved to be received, and the book remains in the state in which it was then, unfinished.
So it was actually concluding the Catholic development of doctrine came from the original Church, and that Catholics were not heretical. Now it seems to me he had concluded this earlier but it took time and writing for it to make it true in his heart. Later that year he officially converted.
On October the 8th I wrote to a number of friends the following letter:—
"Littlemore, October 8th, 1845. I am this night expecting Father Dominic, the Passionist, who, from his youth, has been led to have distinct and direct thoughts, first of the countries of the North, then of England. After thirty years' (almost) waiting, he was without his own act sent here. But he has had little to do with conversions. I saw him here for a few minutes on St. John Baptist's day last year.
"He is a simple, holy man; and withal gifted with remarkable powers. He does not know of my intention; but I mean to ask of him admission into the One Fold of Christ …
"I have so many letters to write, that this must do for all who choose to ask about me. With my best love to dear Charles Marriott, who is over your head, &c., &c.
"P.S. This will not go till all is over. Of course it requires no answer."
He writes of his conversion so obliquely for so a momentous event. It seems to have been a tendency of English Victorian writers. They build up a tension and then slip the event indirectly. This reminds me of a Henry James novel. But Newman is now in the Catholic Church.
Yes, he truly struggles with the dictates of his own conscience, which he considers essential in any individual moral action.
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Summary
In Part 2 of this chapter, Newman still finds himself in “no man’s land” but here focuses on the events and mindset that pushed him to convert to Catholicism. There were two key events that shaped this section of chapter four: (1) his formal retraction of the negative things he had said about the Catholic Church over the years and (2) his resignation of his position and living at St. Mary’s Church, which stood as a symbol of his connection to Anglicanism. He returns repeatedly to these two events as he works through the logic and feelings of his decision. One thig is evident throughout his process of thought, he has grown to respect the Catholic Church, has grown even to have affection for her, and has come to an understanding of the deficiencies of not just Anglicanism, but of Protestantism in general. By the close of the chapter, Newman has left Oxford, left Anglicanism, and has entered the Catholic Church.