Last week, Aldo Maria Valli reflected on Blessed John Henry Newman and called attention to one of the English cardinal's most famous texts that I must confess I had not read before...
At Mass with Newman
Translated from
August 3, 2017
Last Sunday, during the Ambrosian Rite Mass at the shrine of my natal city (what feelings it aroused to hear again the organ and the sacred songs in the Marian shrine erected at the wish of the future San Carlo Borromeo).
[Valli refers to the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows (Maria Addolorata) in Rho, a municipality of the Milan metropolitan region. In 1583, two males from the town observed that the image of the Pieta venerated in a small chapel built in 1522 by a local aristocrat to thank Our Lady for a favor, was shedding tears of blood. Detailed investigation of the occurrence was ordered by the then Archbshop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo, and after reviewing all the reports, said, "This is the finger of God". He ordered the construction of a shrine and laid the cornerstone in 1584.]
In the face of the objectivity and truth of such beauty, I thanked the Lord for having welcomed me into the Catholic faith, and then, through one of those interior coincidences which astonish above all whoever happens to experience it, I was reminded of Cardinal John Henry Newman and his conversion from the Anglican Church to the Roman Catholic Church because of acknowledging the truth of the Catholic faith.
In particular, I thought of his so-called 'biglietto speech' which he gave in Rome on May 12, 1879 – it is so-called because he delivered it after receiving the letter from a Vatican messenger whereby Pope Leo XIII informed him that he had just awarded him a caridnal's hat in a just concluded secret consistory.
Addressing an audience of English and American Catholics at the Palazzo della Pigna in Rome, Newman did not hide his emotion. His first words of gratitude were in Italian, but he chose to proceed in his own English, coming forth with a reflection of extraordinary actuality today, especially when the new cardinal tackled the issue of liberalism in the religious field – specifically,
that current of theological and secular thought according to which there is no objective religious truth, but that each faith is good and valid as any other, that no religion can claim to be acknowledged and lived as the true religion, and that every individual can tailor a religious message to his own needs.
- What is the Church?
- How is Tradition to be considered?
- What good are dogmas for?
- And Church authority?
It was while interrogating himself on these questions, in the light of the teachings of the Fathers of the Church, and also thanks to his friends in Oxford, that Newman had come to the great decision to become a Catholic. His
professio fidei is a hymn to the truth of faith in the Catholic Church:
"I believe in all revealed dogmas as they were taught by the Apostles, as they were entrusted by the Apostles to the Church, and as they have been taught to me by the Church".
If the Church does not have dogmatic foundations, it ends up being prey to the spirit of the time. If her doctrinal scaffolding – in the name of
aggiornamento, dialog and openness to the world – renounces her patrimony that is rooted in Tradition, then the entire structure will fall down, or will take on connotations conforming to the world in which over and above everything is man, not God – indeed in which man himself becomes god.
[The very consequences of the Satanic 'spirit of Vatican II'.]
In Victorian England, in which positivism and scientism heavily conditioned dominant thought, and
man had begun not just to think it was possible to reject God but that it was a duty to do so, Newman saw the Catholic Church as the only ship that could ride through the waves of modernity without ending up in shipwreck. And that it was a solid ship because it was dogmatic.
So at the moment when he expressed his gratitude to the pope for naming him a cardinal, he affirmed these conclusions with great clarity – and they concern us now directly especially when he speaks about the question of truth in religion and about religious tolerance.
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.
Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant Churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternise together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them".
It has been almost a century and a half since he said those words, but Newman truly seems to be describing our current reality. Commenting on the above words, Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute recently noted that if Newman were alive today and said those words in public, he would immediately be denied any position in any Catholic theological faculty
[Any? Maybe most,but not all,d because surely there are still faculties like, say, the Benedict XVI Institute at Heiligenkreuz, where orthodoxy is not just uniformly professed but also required of its teachers.] Indeed, he would quickly be declared persona non grata.
On September 19, 2010, Benedict VXI beatified John Henry Newman, and at the prayer vigil in London the night before, he paid tribute to the cardinal, underscoring that his conversion was "an immediate experience of the truth of God’s word, of the objective reality of Christian revelation as handed down in the Church". He said:
At the end of his life, Newman would describe his life’s work as a struggle against the growing tendency to view religion as a purely private and subjective matter, a question of personal opinion.
Here is the first lesson we can learn from his life: In our day, when an intellectual and moral relativism threatens to sap the very foundations of our society, Newman reminds us that, as men and women made in the image and likeness of God, we were created to know the truth, to find in that truth our ultimate freedom and the fulfilment of our deepest human aspirations. In a word, we are meant to know Christ, who is himself “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6)…
Newman’s life also teaches us that passion for the truth, intellectual honesty and genuine conversion are costly. The truth that sets us free cannot be kept to ourselves; it calls for testimony, it begs to be heard, and in the end its convincing power comes from itself and not from the human eloquence or arguments in which it may be couched…
Finally, Newman teaches us that if we have accepted the truth of Christ and committed our lives to him, there can be no separation between what we believe and the way we live our lives. Our every thought, word and action must be directed to the glory of God and the spread of his Kingdom. Newman understood this, and was the great champion of the prophetic office of the Christian laity.
He saw clearly that we do not so much accept the truth in a purely intellectual act as embrace it in a spiritual dynamic that penetrates to the core of our being. Truth is passed on not merely by formal teaching, important as that is, but also by the witness of lives lived in integrity, fidelity and holiness; those who live in and by the truth instinctively recognize what is false and, precisely as false, inimical to the beauty and goodness which accompany the splendour of truth, veritatis splendor.
Passion for truth is costly. It is a price we must be ready to pay. The prophetic office of the Christian laity. I promise that I will reflect further on these expressions of Benedict XVI.
But now let us return to Newman's Biglietto Speech, in which Newman makes another observation on the 'modern' way of regarding faith:
Since, then, religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man's religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is in no sense the bond of society".
Valli goes on to quote more from the Italian translation of 'biglietto speech', so I thought it would be best to simply post the entire text as it was written and delivered in English. It is most striking that everything he says appears to describe the situation in the Church today and of Christianity in general:
THE BIGLIETTO SPEECH
by John Henry Cardinal Newman
May 12, 1879
From The NEWMAN READER
Vi ringrazio, Monsignore, per la participazione che m'avete fatto dell' alto onore che il Santo Padre si è degnato conferire sulla mia umile persona — [I thank you, Monsignor, for the information you have given me on the high honor that the Holy Father has deigned to confer on my humble person.]
And, if I ask your permission to continue my address to you, not in your musical language, but in my own dear mother tongue, it is because in the latter I can better express my feelings on this most gracious announcement which you have brought to me than if I attempted what is above me.
First of all then, I am led to speak of the wonder and profound gratitude which came upon me, and which is upon me still, at the condescension and love towards me of the Holy Father in singling me out for so immense an honour. It was a great surprise. Such an elevation had never come into my thoughts, and seemed to be out of keeping with all my antecedents. I had passed through many trials, but they were over; and now the end of all things had almost come to me, and I was at peace. And was it possible that after all I had lived through so many years for this?
Nor is it easy to see how I could have borne so great a shock, had not the Holy Father resolved on a second act of condescension towards me, which tempered it, and was to all who heard of it a touching evidence of his kindly and generous nature. He felt for me, and he told me the reasons why he raised me to this high position.
Besides other words of encouragement, he said his act was a recognition of my zeal and good service for so many years in the Catholic cause; moreover, he judged it would give pleasure to English Catholics, and even to Protestant England, if I received some mark of his favour. After such gracious words from his Holiness, I should have been insensible and heartless if I had had scruples any longer.
This is what he had the kindness to say to me, and what could I want more? In a long course of years I have made many mistakes. I have nothing of that high perfection which belongs to the writings of Saints, viz., that error cannot be found in them; but what I trust that I may claim all through what I have written, is this — an honest intention, an absence of private ends, a temper of obedience, a willingness to be corrected, a dread of error, a desire to serve Holy Church, and, through Divine mercy, a fair measure of success.
And, I rejoice to say, to one great mischief I have from the first opposed myself. For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth; and on this great occasion, when it is natural for one who is in my place to look out upon the world, and upon Holy Church as in it, and upon her future, it will not, I hope, be considered out of place, if I renew the protest against it which I have made so often.
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.
Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant Churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternise together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them.
Since, then, religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man's religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is in no sense the bond of society.
Hitherto the civil Power has been Christian. Even in countries separated from the Church, as in my own, the dictum was in force, when I was young, that: "Christianity was the law of the land". Now, everywhere that goodly framework of society, which is the creation of Christianity, is throwing off Christianity.
The dictum to which I have referred, with a hundred others which followed upon it, is gone, or is going everywhere; and, by the end of the century, unless the Almighty interferes, it will be forgotten. Hitherto, it has been considered that religion alone, with its supernatural sanctions, was strong enough to secure submission of the masses of our population to law and order; now the Philosophers and Politicians are bent on satisfying this problem without the aid of Christianity.
Instead of the Church's authority and teaching, they would substitute first of all a universal and a thoroughly secular education, calculated to bring home to every individual that to be orderly, industrious, and sober, is his personal interest.
Then, for great working principles to take the place of religion, for the use of the masses thus carefully educated, it provides — the broad fundamental ethical truths, of justice, benevolence, veracity, and the like; proved experience; and those natural laws which exist and act spontaneously in society, and in social matters, whether physical or psychological; for instance, in government, trade, finance, sanitary experiments, and the intercourse of nations. As to Religion, it is a private luxury, which a man may have if he will; but which of course he must pay for, and which he must not obtrude upon others, or indulge in to their annoyance.
The general character of this great apostasia* is one and the same everywhere; but in detail, and in character, it varies in different countries. For myself, I would rather speak of it in my own country, which I know. There, I think it threatens to have a formidable success; though it is not easy to see what will be its ultimate issue.
At first sight it might be thought that Englishmen are too religious for a movement which, on the Continent, seems to be founded on infidelity; but the misfortune with us is, that, though it ends in infidelity as in other places, it does not necessarily arise out of infidelity.
It must be recollected that the religious sects, which sprang up in England three centuries ago, and which are so powerful now, have ever been fiercely opposed to the Union of Church and State, and would advocate the un-Christianising of the monarchy and all that belongs to it, under the notion that such a catastrophe would make Christianity much more pure and much more powerful.
Next the liberal principle is forced on us from the necessity of the case. Consider what follows from the very fact of these many sects. They constitute the religion, it is supposed, of half the population; and, recollect, our mode of government is popular.
Every dozen men taken at random whom you meet in the streets has a share in political power — when you inquire into their forms of belief, perhaps they represent one or other of as many as seven religions; how can they possibly act together in municipal or in national matters, if each insists on the recognition of his own religious denomination? All action would be at a deadlock unless the subject of religion was ignored. We cannot help ourselves.
And, thirdly, it must be borne in mind, that there is much in the liberalistic theory which is good and true; for example, not to say more, the precepts of justice, truthfulness, sobriety, self-command, benevolence, which, as I have already noted, are among its avowed principles, and the natural laws of society.
It is not till we find that this array of principles is intended to supersede, to block out, religion, that we pronounce it to be evil. There never was a device of the Enemy so cleverly framed and with such promise of success. And already it has answered to the expectations which have been formed of it. It is sweeping into its own ranks great numbers of able, earnest, virtuous men, elderly men of approved antecedents, young men with a career before them.
Such is the state of things in England, and it is well that it should be realised by all of us; but it must not be supposed for a moment that I am afraid of it. I lament it deeply, because I foresee that it may be the ruin of many souls; but I have no fear at all that it really can do aught of serious harm to the Word of God, to Holy Church, to our Almighty King, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Faithful and True, or to His Vicar on earth.
Christianity has been too often in what seemed deadly peril, that we should fear for it any new trial now. So far is certain; on the other hand, what is uncertain, and in these great contests commonly is uncertain, and what is commonly a great surprise, when it is witnessed, is the particular mode by which, in the event, Providence rescues and saves His elect inheritance.
Sometimes our enemy is turned into a friend; sometimes he is despoiled of that special virulence of evil which was so threatening; sometimes he falls to pieces of himself; sometimes he does just so much as is beneficial, and then is removed. Commonly the Church has nothing more to do than to go on in her own proper duties, in confidence and peace; to stand still and to see the salvation of God.
"Mansueti hereditabunt terram, Et delectabuntur in multitudine pacis" (But the poor will inherit the earth, and will delight in great prosperity) (Psalm 37, 11).
[This Reply was telegraphed to London by the correspondent of The Times and appeared in full in that paper the next morning. Moreover, through the kindness of Fr. Armellini, S.J., who during the night translated it into Italian, it was also given in full in the Osservatore Romano of the following day.]
*
I am gratified to see that Blessed Newman used the term 'great apostasy' to describe liberalism in religion, because it validates my opinion that Bergoglio and his followers are really de facto apostates rather than heretics - because the faith they proclaim, with all its half-truths and omissions relative to what Jesus really taught, is no longer the Catholic faith but Bergoglianism, a separate faith for all intents and purposes, even if for now, it has made itself into incubus on the Catholic Church. [Canon law defines apostasy as total rejection of the Christian faith. Yet, I think that to cherrypick only what one wants to accept of Christ's teaching is just as much of a rejection of Christianity as a total rejection of it.]
To speak of the Bergoglians as heretics is to consider them still part of the Church, but they have set themselves apart, and though everything this pope and his minions say and do is ostensibly in the name of the Roman Catholic Church, they are really lying and thereby blaspheming the Church. Bergoglianism is not the Catholicism that has survived two millennia but a wannabe faith that right now wishes to make it appear that it represents Catholicism. And the one true Church of Christ can certainly never be the church of Bergoglio.
Valli also quoted from another Newman text which is even more apropos to our situation today. In particular, much of what he says seems to describe one Jorge Mario Bergoglio, servant of Satan (excuse me for saying so).
Sermon 24. The Religion of the Day
by John Henry Cardinal Newman
August 26, 1832
From the NEWMAN READER
"Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire." Heb. xii. 28, 29.
In every age of Christianity, since it was first preached, there has been what may be called a religion of the world, which so far imitates the one true religion, as to deceive the unstable and unwary.
The world does not oppose religion as such. I may say, it never has opposed it. In particular, it has, in all ages, acknowledged in one sense or other the Gospel of Christ, fastened on one or other of its characteristics, and professed to embody this in its practice; while by neglecting the other parts of the holy doctrine, it has, in fact, distorted and corrupted even that portion of it which it has exclusively put forward, and so has contrived to explain away the whole - for he who cultivates only one precept of the Gospel to the exclusion of the rest, in reality attends to no part at all.
Our duties balance each other; and though we are too sinful to perform them all perfectly, yet we may in some measure be performing them all, and preserving the balance on the whole; whereas, to give ourselves only to this or that commandment, is to incline our minds in a wrong direction, and at length to pull them down to the earth, which is the aim of our adversary, the Devil.
It is his aim to break our strength; to force us down to the earth - to bind us there. The world is his instrument for this purpose; but he is too wise to set it in open opposition to the Word of God. No! he affects to be a prophet like the prophets of God. He calls his servants also prophets; and they mix with the scattered remnant of the true Church, with the solitary Micaiahs who are left upon the earth, and speak in the name of the Lord. And in one sense they speak the truth; but it is not the whole truth; and we know, even from the common experience of life, that half the truth is often the most gross and mischievous of falsehoods.
Even in the first age of the Church, while persecution still raged, he set up a counter religion among the philosophers of the day [Gnosticism, Arianism], partly like Christianity, but in truth a bitter foe to it; and it deceived and made shipwreck of the faith of those who had not the love of God in their hearts.
Time went on, and he devised a second idol of the true Christ, and it remained in the temple of God for many a year. The age was rude and fierce. Satan took the darker side of the Gospel: its awful mysteriousness, its fearful glory, its sovereign inflexible justice; and here his picture of the truth ended, "God is a consuming fire;" so declares the text, and we know it.
But we know more, viz. that God is love also; but Satan did not add this to his religion, which became one of fear. The religion of the world was then a fearful religion. Superstitions abounded, and cruelties. The noble firmness, the graceful austerity of the true Christian were superseded by forbidding spectres, harsh of eye, and haughty of brow; and these were the patterns or the tyrants of a beguiled people.
What is Satan's device in this day? A far different one; but perhaps a more pernicious. I will attempt to expose it, or rather to suggest some remarks towards its exposure, by those who think it worth while to attempt it; for the subject is too great and too difficult for an occasion such as the present, and, after all, no one can detect falsehood for another —every man must do it for himself; we can but help each other.
What is the world's religion now? It has taken the brighter side of the Gospel — its tidings of comfort, its precepts of love; all darker, deeper views of man's condition and prospects being comparatively forgotten. This is the religion natural to a civilized age, and well has Satan dressed and completed it into an idol of the Truth.
As the reason is cultivated, the taste formed, the affections and sentiments refined, a general decency and grace will of course spread over the face of society, quite independently of the influence of Revelation.
That beauty and delicacy of thought, which is so attractive in books, then extends to the conduct of life, to all we have, all we do, all we are. Our manners are courteous; we avoid giving pain or offence; our words become correct; our relative duties are carefully performed.
Our sense of propriety shows itself even in our domestic arrangements, in the embellishments of our houses, in our amusements, and so also in our religions profession. Vice now becomes unseemly and hideous to the imagination, or, as it is sometimes familiarly said, "out of taste."
Thus elegance is gradually made the test and standard of virtue, which is no longer thought to possess an intrinsic claim on our hearts, or to exist, further than it leads to the quiet and comfort of others.
Conscience is no longer recognized as an independent arbiter of actions, its authority is explained away; partly it is superseded in the minds of men by the so-called moral sense, which is regarded merely as the love of the beautiful; partly by the rule of expediency, which is forthwith substituted for it in the details of conduct.
Now conscience is a stern, gloomy principle; it tells us of guilt and of prospective punishment. Accordingly, when its terrors disappear, then disappear also, in the creed of the day, those fearful images of Divine wrath with which the Scriptures abound. They are explained away. Everything is bright and cheerful. Religion is pleasant and easy; benevolence is the chief virtue; intolerance, bigotry, excess of zeal, are the first of sins. Austerity is an absurdity — even firmness is looked on with an unfriendly, suspicious eye.
On the other hand, all open profligacy is discountenanced; drunkenness is accounted a disgrace; cursing and swearing are vulgarities. Moreover, to a cultivated mind, which recreates itself in the varieties of literature and knowledge, and is interested in the ever-accumulating discoveries of science, and the ever-fresh accessions of information, political or otherwise, from foreign countries, religion will commonly seem to be dull, from want of novelty.
Hence excitements are eagerly sought out and rewarded. New objects in religion, new systems and plans, new doctrines, new preachers, are necessary to satisfy that craving which the so-called spread of knowledge has created. The mind becomes morbidly sensitive and fastidious; dissatisfied with things as they are, desirous of a change as such, as if alteration must of itself be a relief.
Now I would have you put Christianity for an instant out of your thoughts; and consider whether such a state of refinement as I have attempted to describe, is not that to which men might be brought, quite independent of religion, by the mere influence of education and civilization; and then again, whether, nevertheless, this mere refinement of mind is not more or less all that is called religion at this day.
In other words, is it not the case, that Satan has so composed and dressed out what is the mere natural produce of the human heart under certain circumstances, as to serve his purposes as the counterfeit of the Truth?
I do not at all deny that this spirit of the world uses words, and makes professions, which it would not adopt except for the suggestions of Scripture; nor do I deny that it takes a general colouring from Christianity, so as really to be modified by it, nay, in a measure enlightened and exalted by it.
Again, I fully grant that many persons in whom this bad spirit shows itself, are but partially infected by it, and at bottom, good Christians, though imperfect. Still, after all, here is an existing teaching, only partially evangelical, built upon worldly principle, yet pretending to be the Gospel, dropping one whole side of the Gospel, its austere character, and considering it enough to be benevolent, courteous, candid, correct in conduct, delicate — though it includes no true fear of God, no fervent zeal for His honour, no deep hatred of sin, no horror at the sight of sinners, no indignation and compassion at the blasphemies of heretics, no jealous adherence to doctrinal truth, no especial sensitiveness about the particular means of gaining ends, provided the ends be good, no loyalty to the Holy Apostolic Church, of which the Creed speaks, no sense of the authority of religion as external to the mind: in a word, no seriousness — and therefore is neither hot nor cold, but (in Scripture language) lukewarm.
Thus the present age is the very contrary to what are commonly called the dark ages; and together with the faults of those ages we have lost their virtues. I say their virtues; for even the errors then prevalent, a persecuting spirit, for instance, fear of religious inquiry, bigotry, these were, after all, but perversions and excesses of real virtues, such as zeal and reverence; and we, instead of limiting and purifying them, have taken them away root and branch.
Why? because we have not acted from a love of the Truth, but from the influence of the Age. The old generation has passed, and its character with it; a new order of things has arisen. Human society has a new framework, and fosters and developes a new character of mind; and this new character is made by the enemy of our souls, to resemble the Christian's obedience as near as it may, its likeness all the time being but accidental.
Meanwhile, the Holy Church of God, as from the beginning, continues her course heavenward; despised by the world, yet influencing it, partly correcting it, partly restraining it, and in some happy cases reclaiming its victims, and fixing them firmly and for ever within the lines of the faithful host militant here on earth, which journeys towards the City of the Great King.
God give us grace to search our hearts, lest we be blinded by the deceitfulness of sin! lest we serve Satan transformed into an Angel of light, while we think we are pursuing true knowledge; lest, over-looking and ill-treating the elect of Christ here, we have to ask that awful question at the last day, while the truth is bursting upon us, "Lord, when saw we Thee a stranger and a prisoner?" when saw we Thy sacred Word and Servants despised and oppressed, "and did not minister unto Thee?" [Matt. xxv. 44.]
Nothing shows more strikingly the power of the world's religion, as now described, than to consider the very different classes of men whom it influences. It will be found to extend its sway and its teaching both over the professedly religious and the irreligious.
1. Many religious men, rightly or not, have long been expecting a millennium of purity and peace for the Church. I will not say, whether or not with reason, for good men may well differ on such a subject. But, any how, in the case of those who have expected it, it has become a temptation to take up and recognize the world's religion as I have already delineated it.
They have more or less identified their vision of Christ's kingdom with the elegance and refinement of mere human civilization; and have hailed every evidence of improved decency, every wholesome civil regulation, every beneficent and enlightened act of state policy, as signs of their coming Lord.
Bent upon achieving their object, an extensive and glorious diffusion and profession of the Gospel, they have been little solicitous about the means employed. They have countenanced and acted with men who openly professed unchristian principles.
They have accepted and defended what they considered to be reformations and ameliorations of the existing state of things, though injustice must be perpetrated in order to effect them, or long cherished rules of conduct, indifferent perhaps in their origin but consecrated by long usage, must be violated. They have sacrificed Truth to expedience.
They have strangely imagined that bad men are to be the immediate instruments of the approaching advent of Christ; and (like the deluded Jews not many years since in a foreign country) they have taken, if not for their Messiah (as the Jews did), at least for their Elijah, their reforming Baptist, the Herald of the Christ, children of this world, and sons of Belial, on whom the anathema of the Apostle lies from the beginning, declaring, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha." [1 Cor. xvi. 22.]
2. On the other hand, the form of doctrine, which I have called the religion of the day, is especially adapted to please men of sceptical minds, the opposite extreme to those just mentioned, who have never been careful to obey their conscience, who cultivate the intellect without disciplining the heart, and who allow themselves to speculate freely about what religion ought to be, without going to Scripture to discover what it really is.
Some persons of this character almost consider religion itself to be an obstacle in the advance of our social and political well-being. But they know human nature requires it; therefore they select the most rational form of religion (so they call it) which they can find.
Others are far more seriously disposed, but are corrupted by bad example or other cause. But they all discard (what they call) gloomy views of religion; they all trust themselves more than God's word, and thus may be classed together; and are ready to embrace the pleasant consoling religion natural to a polished age.
They lay much stress on works on Natural Theology, and think that all religion is contained in these; whereas, in truth, there is no greater fallacy than to suppose such works to be in themselves in any true sense religious at all.
Religion, it has been well observed, is something relative to us; a system of commands and promises from God towards us. But how are we concerned with the sun, moon, and stars? or with the laws of the universe? how will they teach us our duty? how will they speak to sinners? They do not speak to sinners at all. They were created before Adam fell. They "declare the glory of God," but not His will. They are all perfect, all harmonious; but that brightness and excellence which they exhibit in their own creation, and the Divine benevolence therein seen, are of little moment to fallen man. We see nothing there of God's wrath, of which the conscience of a sinner loudly speaks.
So that there cannot be a more dangerous (though a common) device of Satan, than to carry us off from our own secret thoughts, to make us forget our own hearts, which tell us of a God of justice and holiness, and to fix our attention merely on the God who made the heavens; who is our God indeed, but not God as manifested to us sinners, but as He shines forth to His Angels, and to His elect hereafter.
When a man has so far deceived himself as to trust his destiny to what the heavens tell him of it, instead of consulting and obeying his conscience, what is the consequence? That at once he misinterprets and perverts the whole tenor of Scripture.
It cannot be denied that, pleasant as religious observances are declared in Scripture to be to the holy, yet to men in general they are said to be difficult and distasteful; to all men naturally impossible, and by few fulfilled even with the assistances of grace, on account of their wilful corruption.
Religion is pronounced to be against nature, to be against our original will, to require God's aid to make us love and obey it, and to be commonly refused and opposed in spite of that aid.
We are expressly told, that "strait is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it;" that we must "strive" or struggle "to enter in at the strait gate," for that "many shall seek to enter in," but that is not enough, they merely seek and therefore do not find; and further, that they who do not obtain everlasting life, "shall go into everlasting punishment" [Matt. vii. 14. Luke xiii. 24. Matt. xxv. 46.]
This is the dark side of religion; and the men I have been describing cannot bear to think of it. They shrink from it as too terrible. They easily get themselves to believe that those strong declarations of Scripture do not belong to the present day, or that they are figurative. They have no language within their heart responding to them. Conscience has been silenced.
The only information they have received concerning God has been from Natural Theology, and that speaks only of benevolence and harmony; so they will not credit the plain word of Scripture. They seize on such parts of Scripture as seem to countenance their own opinions; they insist on its being commanded us to "rejoice evermore;" and they argue - that it is our duty to solace ourselves here (in moderation, of course) with the goods of this life
— that we have only to be thankful while we use them,
that we need not alarm ourselves, that God is a merciful God,
— that amendment is quite sufficient to atone for our offences,
— that though we have been irregular in our youth, yet that is a thing gone by,
—that we forget it, and therefore God forgets it,
—that the world is, on the whole, very well disposed towards religion, —that we should avoid enthusiasm,
—that we should not be over-serious,
—that we should have large views on the subject of human nature,
—and that we should love all men.
This indeed is the creed of shallow men, in every age, who reason a little, and feel not at all, and who think themselves enlightened and philosophical. Part of what they say is false, part is true, but misapplied; but why I have noticed it here, is to show how exactly it fits in with what I have already described as the peculiar religion of a civilized age; it fits in with it equally well as does that of the (so called) religious world, which is the opposite extreme.
One further remark I will make about these professedly rational Christians; who, be it observed, often go on to deny the mysteries of the Gospel. Let us take the text: "Our God is a consuming fire."
Now supposing these persons fell upon these words, or heard them urged as an argument against their own doctrine of the unmixed satisfactory character of our prospects in the world to come, and supposing they did not know what part of the Bible they occurred in, what would they say? Doubtless they would confidently say
- that they applied only to the Jews and not to Christians;
- that they only described the Divine Author of the Mosaic Law;
- that God formerly spoke in terrors to the Jews, because they were a gross and brutish people, but that civilization has made us quite other men;
- that our reason, not our fears, is appealed to, and that the Gospel is love. And yet, in spite of all this argument, the text occurs in the Epistle to the Hebrews, written by an Apostle of Christ.
I shall conclude with stating more fully what I mean by the dark side of religion; and what judgment ought to be passed on the superstitious and gloomy.
Here I will not shrink from uttering my firm conviction, that it would be a gain to this country, were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows itself to be. Not, of course, that I think the tempers of mind herein implied desirable, which would be an evident absurdity; but I think them infinitely more desirable and more promising than a heathen obduracy, and a cold, self-sufficient, self-wise tranquillity.
Doubtless, peace of mind, a quiet conscience, and a cheerful countenance are the gift of the Gospel, and the sign of a Christian; but the same effects (or, rather, what appear to be the same) may arise from very different causes. Jonah slept in the storm — so did our Blessed Lord. The one slept in an evil security: the Other in the "peace of God which passeth all understanding."
The two states cannot be confounded together, they are perfectly distinct; and as distinct is the calm of the man of the world from that of the Christian. Now take the case of the sailors on board the vessel; they cried to Jonah, "What meanest thou, O sleeper?" — so the Apostles said to Christ; "Lord, we perish."
This is the case of the superstitious; they stand between the false peace of Jonah and the true peace of Christ; they are better than the one, though far below the Other.
Applying this to the present religion of the educated world, full as it is of security and cheerfulness, and decorum, and benevolence, I observe that these appearances may arise either from a great deal of religion, or from the absence of it; they may be the fruits of shallowness of mind and a blinded conscience, or of that faith which has peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And if this alternative be proposed, I might leave it to the common sense of men to decide (if they could get themselves to think seriously) to which of the two the temper of the age is to be referred.
For myself I cannot doubt, seeing what I see of the world, that it arises from the sleep of Jonah; and it is therefore but a dream of religion, far inferior in worth to the well-grounded alarm of the superstitious, who are awakened and see their danger, though they do not attain so far in faith as to embrace the remedy of it.
Think of this, I beseech you, my brethren, and lay it to heart, as far as you go with me, as you will answer for having heard it at the last day. I would not willingly be harsh; but knowing "that the world lieth in wickedness," I think it highly probable that you, so far as you are in it (as you must be, and we all must be in our degree), are, most of you, partially infected with its existing error, that shallowness of religion, which is the result of a blinded conscience; and, therefore, I speak earnestly to you.
Believing in the existence of a general plague in the land, I judge that you probably have your share in the sufferings, the voluntary sufferings, which it is spreading among us.
The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; till you see Him to be a consuming fire, and approach Him with reverence and godly fear, as being sinners, you are not even in sight of the strait gate.
I do not wish you to be able to point to any particular time when you renounced the world (as it is called), and were converted; this is a deceit.
Fear and love must go together; always fear, always love, to your dying day. Doubtless, still you must know what it is to sow in tears here, if you would reap in joy hereafter. Till you know the weight of your sins, and that not in mere imagination, but in practice, not so as merely to confess it in a formal phrase of lamentation, but daily and in your heart in secret, you cannot embrace the offer of mercy held out to you in the Gospel, through the death of Christ.
Till you know what it is to fear with the terrified sailors or the Apostles, you cannot sleep with Christ at your Heavenly Father's feet. Miserable as were the superstitions of the dark ages, revolting as are the tortures now in use among the heathen of the East, better, far better is it, to torture the body all one's days, and to make this life a hell upon earth, than to remain in a brief tranquillity here, till the pit at length opens under us, and awakens us to an eternal fruitless consciousness and remorse.
Think of Christ's own words: "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Again, He says, "Fear Him, who after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear Him."
Dare not to think you have got to the bottom of your hearts; you do not know what evil lies there. How long and earnestly must you pray, how many years must you pass in careful obedience, before you have any right to lay aside sorrow, and to rejoice in the Lord?
In one sense, indeed, you may take comfort from the first; for, though you dare not yet anticipate you are in the number of Christ's true elect, yet from the first you know He desires your salvation, has died for you, has washed away your sins by baptism, and will ever help you; and this thought must cheer you while you go on to examine and review your lives, and to turn to God in self-denial.
But, at the same time, you never can be sure of salvation, while you are here; and therefore you must always fear while you hope. Your knowledge of your sins increases with your view of God's mercy in Christ.
And this is the true Christian state, and the nearest approach to Christ's calm and placid sleep in the tempest — not perfect joy and certainty in heaven, but a deep resignation to God's will, a surrender of ourselves, soul and body, to Him; hoping indeed, that we shall be saved, but fixing our eyes more earnestly on Him than on ourselves; that is, acting for His glory, seeking to please Him, devoting ourselves to Him in all manly obedience and strenuous good works; and, when we do look within, thinking of ourselves with a certain abhorrence and contempt as being sinners, mortifying our flesh, scourging our appetites, and composedly awaiting that time when, if we be worthy, we shall be stripped of our present selves, and new made in the kingdom of Christ.
P.S. I would be remiss not to post here Samuel Gregg's recent article on Newman and liberalism that Valli used as a take-off point...
John Henry Newman’s long war on liberalism
His devastating critique of liberal religion
remains even more relevant in our own time
by Samuel Gregg
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT
July 30, 2017
There is truly nothing new under the sun. That’s the pedestrian conclusion at which I arrived after recently re-reading the address given by one of the nineteenth century’s greatest theologians, Blessed John Henry Newman, when Pope Leo XIII made him a cardinal on May 12, 1879.
Known as the Biglietto Speech (after the formal letter given to cardinals on such occasions), its 1720 words constitute a systematic indictment of what Newman called that “one great mischief” against which he had set his face “from the first.”
Today, I suspect, the sheer force of Newman’s critique of what he called “liberalism in religion” would make him persona non grata in most Northern European theology faculties.
When reflecting upon Newman’s remarks, it’s hard not to notice how much of the Christian world in the West has drifted in the directions against which he warned. Under the banner of “liberalism in religion,” Newman listed several propositions. These included
(1) “the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion,”
(2) “that one creed is as good as another,”
(3) that no religion can be recognized as true for “all are matter of opinion,”
(4) that “revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective faith, not miraculous,” and
(5) “it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.”
Can anyone doubt that such ideas are widespread today among some Christians?
- Exhibit A are the rapidly-collapsing liberal Protestant confessions. - Another instance is that fair number of Catholic clergy and laity of a certain age who shy away from the word “truth” and who regard any doctrine that conflicts with the post-1960s Western world’s expectations as far from settled.
Yet Newman’s description of liberal religion also accurately summarizes the essentially secular I’m-spiritual-not-religious mindset.
At the time, the directness of Newman’s assault on liberal religion surprised people. It wasn’t for idle reasons that the speech was reprinted in full in
The London Times on 13 May, and then translated into Italian so that it could appear in the Holy See’s own newspaper
L’Osservatore Romano on 14 May. Everyone recognized that Newman’s words were of immense significance.
The newly-minted cardinal had hitherto been seen as someone ill-at-ease with the Church’s direction during Pius IX’s pontificate. Newman’s apprehensions about the opportuneness of the First Vatican Council formally defining papal infallibility were well-known. Not well-understood was that concerns about Catholics being misled into thinking they must assent to a pope’s firm belief that, for example, the optimal upper-tax rate is 25.63 percent, didn’t mean that you regarded religious belief as a type of theological smorgasbord.
Those who had followed the trajectory of Newman’s thought over the previous fifty years would have recognized that the Biglietto Speech harkened back to a younger Newman and a consistent record of fierce opposition to liberal religion.
In 1848, for instance, Newman had lampooned liberal religion in his novel
Loss and Gain (1848). One character in the book, the Dean of Nottingham, is portrayed as someone who believes that
“there was no truth or falsehood in received dogmas of theology; that they were modes, neither good nor bad in themselves, but personal, national, or periodic.”
Such opinions mirror the views of those today who primarily regard Scripture, the Church and Christian faith as essentially human historical constructs: a notion that invariably goes hand-in-hand with a barely-disguised insistence that the Church always requires wholesale adaptation to whatever happens to be the zeitgeist.
The end-result is chronic doctrinal instability (and thus incoherence) and the degeneration of churches into mere NGO-ism: precisely the situation which characterizes contemporary Catholicism in the German-speaking world. [Even more true and pernicious, however, of the Bergoglianism that the current pope is seeking to propagate as Catholicism!]
Another of the novel’s characters is Mr. Batts, the director of the Truth Society. This organization is founded on two principles.
- First, it is uncertain whether truth exists.
- Second, it is certain that it cannot be found.
Welcome to the world of philosophical skepticism which, Newman understood, is based on
the contradiction of holding that we know the truth that humans really cannot know truth.
Newman’s antagonism towards liberal religion, however, also reflected another side of his thought that, I suspect, some today would also prefer to ignore. This concerns
Newman’s critical view of liberalism as a social philosophy.
Newman was fully aware of the ambiguity surrounding terms like “conservatism” and “liberalism.” In his
Apologia Pro Sua Vita (1864), Newman specified that his criticism of liberalism shouldn’t be interpreted as slighting French Catholics such as Charles de Montalembert and the Dominican priest Henri-Dominique Lacordaire — “two men whom I so highly admire” — who embraced the liberal label but in the context of post-Revolutionary France: a world which differed greatly from the Oxford and England of Newman’s time.
We get closer to the “liberalism” against which Newman protested when we consider a letter to his mother dated 13 March 1829. Here Newman condemns, among others, “the Utilitarians” and “useful knowledge men” whose ideas were propagated by philosophical Radical periodicals such as the Westminster Review.
These beliefs and publications were clearly associated with utilitarian thinkers and political radicals such as Jeremy Bentham (the Westminster Review’s founder), James Mill and, later, John Stuart Mill. In this sense,
liberalism was Newman’s way of describing what we today call doctrinaire secularism.
This is borne out by the Biglietto Speech’s portrayal of a society’s fate as it gradually abandons its Christian character, invariably at the behest of those Newman calls “Philosophers and Politicians.” Newman begins by referencing their imposition of “a universal and a thoroughly secular education, calculated to bring home to every individual that to be orderly, industrious, and sober, is his personal interest.”
Recognizing, however, that utility, pragmatism and self-interest aren’t enough to glue society together, liberals promote, according to Newman, an alternative to revealed religion. This, he says, is made up of an amalgam of “broad fundamental ethical truths, of justice, benevolence, veracity, and the like; proved experience; and those natural laws which exist and act spontaneously in society, and in social matters, whether physical or psychological; for instance, in government, trade, finance, sanitary experiments, and the intercourse of nations.”
But while liberals uphold this mixture of particular moral principles, matter-of-factness and science, Newman points out that they simultaneously insist that religion is “a private luxury, which a man may have if he will; but which of course he must pay for, and which he must not obtrude upon others, or indulge in to their annoyance.”
It’s not, Newman says, that things like “the precepts of justice, truthfulness, sobriety, self-command, benevolence” etc. are bad in themselves. In fact, Newman adds, “there is much in the liberalistic theory which is good and true.”
Nor did Newman adopt an “anti-science” view at a time when some Christians worried about how to reconcile the Scriptures with the tremendous expansion in knowledge of the natural world which marked the nineteenth century. Newman wasn’t, for example, especially troubled by Darwin’s
Origin of the Species. As he wrote to the biologist and Catholic convert St George Jackson Mivart in 1871, “you must not suppose I have personally any great dislike or dread of his theory.”
What Newman opposed was a problem with which we are all too familiar today. This consists of
(1) absolutizing the natural sciences as the only objective form of knowledge and
(2) using the empirical method to answer theological and moral questions that the natural sciences cannot answer.
In such cases, Newman wrote in his
Idea of a University (1852),
“they exceed their proper bounds, and intrude where they have no right.”
It also fosters
a mentality which has seeped into the minds of those Christians who prioritize sociology, psychology, opinion-polls, and what they imagine to be the “established scientific position” when discussing what the Catholic position on any subject should be.
More generally, Newman argued that
it’s precisely because these principles are un-objectionable in themselves that they become dangerous when liberals include them in the “array of principles” they use “to supersede, to block out, religion.”
In these circumstances, those who maintain that religion, in the sense of divinely-revealed truths about God and man, cannot be relegated to the status of football teams competing in a private league are dismissed as unreasonable, intolerant, lacking benevolence, unscientific, and reflective of (to use the curious words employed in a recent L’Osservatore Romano opinion piece) a “modest cultural level.” In a word—illiberal.
Newman well-understood the ultimate stakes involved in the advance of liberal religion and the nihilism it concealed under a veneer of progressive Western European bourgeois morality. It was nothing less, he said, than “the ruin of many souls.” For Newman, there was always the serious possibility that
error at the level of belief can contribute to people making the type of free choices which lead to the eternal separation from God we call hell.
The good news is that Newman had “no fear at all that [liberal religion] can really do aught of serious harm to the Word of God, to Holy Church.” For Newman, the Church was essentially indestructible. That didn’t mean it would be free of disputation or disruption.
Newman himself spent his life immersed in theological controversies. But Newman’s deep knowledge of the Church Fathers made him conscious that
orthodoxy had been under assault since Christianity’s earliest centuries.
Newman believed, however, in Christ’s promises to his Church. Moreover, Newman ended his Biglietto Speech by stating that “what is commonly a great surprise” is
“the particular mode by which . . . Providence rescues and saves his elect inheritance.” Even in times where serious theological and moral error seems rampant, God raises up courageous bishops and priests, clear-thinking popes, new religious orders and movements, lay people who reject liberal Christianity’s mediocrity and soft-nihilism, and, above all, great saints and martyrs.
Against such things, Newman knew — and we should have confidence —liberal religion doesn’t have a chance.