Page 13, 23rd April 2010

23rd April 2010

Page 13

Page 13, 23rd April 2010 — You don’t have to be a Newman scholar to write about his ideas
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You don’t have to be a Newman scholar to write about his ideas

From Mr John Cornwell SIR – Fr Ian Ker (Comment, April 17) accuses me of a “vicious and virulent attack” on the Holy Father in my essay in the Easter edition of the New Statesman. These are strong words to use against a fellow Catholic writer, especially as he signally fails to justify them.
My essay, which is free and online for those who wish to judge for themselves, is on the paedophile priest crisis, containing criticisms of Benedict’s response to it with contrasting reflections on John Henry Newman. If to be critical of the Pope is to be vicious and virulent then it appears that things are much worse in the Catholic Church than many of us ever thought them to be.
He finds it “bizarre” in me, moreover, that I should believe that Newman would not have found St Jean Marie Vianney a commendable model of priesthood, as did John Paul II and now Benedict XVI. The saint, as Fr Ian surely knows, slept on a stone floor with a log for a pillow, beat himself nightly with a metal scourge, and fed himself on cold, rotten potatoes.
Fr Ker well knows that Newman’s mode of “saying and unsaying” allows one to make all manner of conflicting claims about Newman’s viewpoints. While this means that familiarity with all of his writings is essential before making judgments, he surely cannot mean that his, Fr Ian’s, viewpoint alone must prevail in any disagreement with a lay writer. Yet his article implies that that because he is “Newman’s biographer” and that I am “no Newman scholar” I must hold my tongue. I may not be a Newman scholar, but I first began reading Newman in my junior seminary in the 1950s. I studied Newman for several years under the guidance of the late Mgr Henry Francis Davis, who initiated Newman’s Cause in 1958. For the rest of my life I have read and reflected on Newman’s work, I hope carefully and lovingly.
Like Fr Ian, I too have read through the 32 volumes of Newman’s letters and diaries, plus countless monographs, proceedings of conference, and all the major biographies, including Fr Ian’s.
Fr Ian, I note, takes the opportunity to use his attack on me to promote the reissue of his biography. Was it a mere oversight that he failed to mention my own upcoming biography of Newman, Newman’s Unquiet Grave, to be published by Continuum on May 31?
Yours faithfully, JOHN CORNWELL By email From Mr Tom McIntyre SIR – John Cornwell’s attempt to align Newman with liberalism (Report, April 9) was something that Newman in his own day resisted as firmly as he resisted ultramontanism and rigid conservatism. “Rome’s over-centralisation” might make him uneasy; but his conversion itself was an acknowledgement of Rome’s central role. He did criticise the Vatican, but the curia – not the Pope. He did say of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith – which would, he felt, give him “a rap on the knuckles” if he expressed the theological views that the time demanded – that though only “a clerk ... with two or three other clerks under him” it acted “as an arbitrary military power”. But of the Pope: “The Church is a church militant, and as the commander of an army is despotic, so must the visible head of the Church be.” In the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk Newman illustrates the Church’s affirmation of the primacy of conscience. An individual Catholic conscience – as distinct from “the liberty of self-will” – may conflict with a Pope’s non-infallible laws or commands. The grave duty is “with prayer and fasting” to inform conscience and scrutinise motive; only then to follow conscience’s final dictate.
But that Letter also spiritedly defends the 1864 Syllabus of Errors – though distinguishing the Pope’s intention from the curia’s implementation – and argues from the Pope’s thoughtful words of paternal charity on salvation outside the Church. Reciprocally, when the London Oratory accused Newman of violating the Oratorian rule, Pius stood by him against the Congregation.
I doubt if John Cornwell can find one word in Newman critical of Pius IX. Wouldn’t Newman, were he alive today, suffer the same intolerable liberal wooing, the same treatment by conservative officialdom – and regard Benedict exactly as he regarded Pius?
Yours faithfully, TOM McINTYRE Frome, Somerset




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