No Newman scholar he.

Speaking of smug experts (see the end of the previous post) certain authors have a problem with "keepers of the flame" who seem to read no author other than – and who grandly assume that they are the only ones who can say anything sensible about –  their favourites. (This is a harsh interpretation, but you get the idea). In some cases, such as Ayn Rand, it is no better than the author deserved. Indeed, in Rand's case, it seems to be what she actually wanted. G. K. Chesterton's keeperitis appears terminal but, the infecting organisms seem to be fairly genial, so I may be wrong (about the terminality, of the infection there is no doubt).

John Henry Cardinal Newman is another example. In that case the sheer range of his knowledge makes it hard for keeperitis to take a firm hold. How many people are able to read and write English, French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac?* And that is just for starters. Newman read pretty much all of the Fathers, the Anglican Divines as well as the Classics. He shows a detailed knowledge of, for example, the long and somewhat crabbed Theologia Moralis of St Alphonsus Liguori. His ideas are subtle and varied. It is probably too much even for bacillus keeperitiensis to conquer.

That is not to say people don't try. In 2002 Stanley Jaki OSB had the temerity to publish Newman to Converts: An Existential Ecclesiology. It received a favourable review in the Catholic Herald, in the course of which the reviewer passed some unfavourable comments about one of Newman's keepers, Fr Ian Ker. The next week there appeared a letter from Fr Ker, in reply:

I have not read Jaki’s book, nor do I intend to do so, having in his previous writings already sampled his ill-informed and tendentious approach to Newman.

Jaki at least read Fr Ker's books. Fr Ker has merely sampled Jaki's. Then comes the kicker:

Jaki is a recognised authority on religion and science; he is not by any stretch of the imagination a plausible guide to Newman.

How dare this man write about ("my!!!") Newman without a permit! One  might ask, if Jaki is not a plausible guide then what is the problem? If he is not plausible then nobody will believe him. Of course that is not what Fr Ker means. He means it is not plausible to think of Jaki in the club of Newman guides; one cannot believe it. For all the world as though Newman is a hidden mountain which only the experts may dare ascend alone.

As for myself. I have edited a book called Newman and Conversion (1997), papers delivered at a conference dedicated to this very theme.

Well that's alright then. We have the subject covered. Jaki can go back to his grubby laboratory.

Fr Ker's attitude even makes me sympathetic to John Cornwell, another one of those base slanderers of Pius XII. In 2010 Cornwell published an article in the New Statesman which was covered in the Catholic Herald. Cornwell put forward some silly ideas about Newman, opposing him to the asceticism of St John Vianney, and claiming Newman held that expansive meaning for "conscience" where, if it feels good, then it must be right.

The following week the Herald published an op-ed by Fr Ker which eviscerated Cornwell's article. But he could not stop himself from rebuking Cornwall for his presumption:

As the biographer of Newman and the author and editor of more than 20 books on Newman, I can claim to have consulted these “unexpurgated works” to which Cornwell (who is no Newman scholar) appeals in his attempt to present Newman as a dissident theologian of the “spirit of Vatican II” school.

I read Ker's biography of Newman once. He takes the narrative for the period 1833-1845 almost holus bolus from the Apologia. But one of the most interesting things about the Apologia is whether Newman's own recollection of the course of his development is in fact right. Did he forget things? Did he suppress them? Moreover Ker does not explain the puzzling aspects of historical matters such as what is the significance of the tutorships, or how Oxford in the early 19th century worked. The modern University is somewhat mysterious to outsiders.† Its 19th century predecessor is positively opaque.

But Cornwall is "no Newman scholar". Either Cornwall is right or he is wrong. If he is wrong then someone like Fr Ker should be able to point this out – particularly in the space afforded to an article as opposed to a letter to the editor. He does not need to pull rank. It is hard not to feel sympathy with Cornwall as he makes this reply.

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.

Fr Ker replied to this. But he did not press the point on "no Newman scholar". The debate continued with other writers (John Cornwell no longer appeared although I stopped looking after the issue of 21st May 2010) week after wearying week. You can follow it in the Herald's archive. Or not.

*(And probably a few others I haven't noticed: Newman translated some of St Ephraim's hymns from Syriac. I am not saying he had enough knowledge to translate Ulysses into that language).

†(I read an article recently, decrying the fact that C. S. Lewis did not get a professorship until late in life and attributing this to anti-Christian bigotry. The author seemed to be totally unaware that Oxford has very few real professorships (one or two per subject) and not that many titular professorships. The flip side is that Oxford graduates find other Universities rather puzzling. You mean to say you are allowed to determine the content of your course? How very revolutionary.)

The architecture of Keble

When I was at Oxford I encountered two ideas which startled me (alright, I am sure I encountered more than two, I was never that jaded). The first was High Anglicanism; here were these Protestants, begorrah, and adherents of the 39 Articles:

Article 19: …  As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith. … Article 22:  THE Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping, and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God. … Article 28:  … Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.

And yet they artlessly claimed "but we are Catholic". At school I had had a through history of the Reformation (and yes we had read the 39 Articles)  but, as I complained later to my headmaster, "you did nothing to prepare us for High Anglicans!" "Harry," he replied, "nothing would prepare you for High Anglicans." (This post is not going finally to explain the Church of England, I am sure that would overflow allotted bandwidth, but you can try Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction by Mark Chapman, if you are interested).

The second idea, possessed by almost everyone, was this visceral and unreasoning loathing of brick, specifically the college built of brick, Keble. This loathing extended even to one friend, who should have been proud of her membership of such an institution, but was embarrassed by the brick of the Great Gate (1530) of Trinity College, Cambridge.

These ideas combine in this video from Oxford Today about the architecture of Keble College. Keble, you see, was made of brick and for reasons I never understood, it was a standing joke. There is a story that a French visitor remarked "C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la gare,"* thinking perhaps of St Pancras Railway Station.

It was John Keble who, on 14th July 1833, had preached the sermon which, so far as Newman was concerned, kicked off the Oxford Movement (last paragraph). And it was thanks to the Oxford Movement that all these Anglicans were saying (39 Articles notwithstanding) "but we are Catholic."

(Look, I know what the Anglican claims are. The current project means I have to make myself intimately acquainted with them. But you have to understand it from the point of view of a young man fresh out of Shack. The idea was not so much blasphemous as hilarious. It was as though the graduate student, Fritz Helmutkohlenberger, had announced at breakfast "but we are Englisch, ja!")

Note the quotation from the College's architect William Butterfield at 1:20, and the presenter's gloss on it. "Not the Roman Catholic Church, but a Catholic Church that they believed the Church of England to have been part of – to still be part of – but the Catholic Church which had lost something at the Reformation." Hmmm, yes.

Keble was also the location of a famous graffito "Hands off Vietnam" still clearly visible, more than twenty years after the Fall of Saigon, when I was up. It seems to have faded almost to invisibility since then.

*h/t Ceridwen.

A cornucopia for copy and paste

My current project requires the transcription of large slabs of text, specifically Magisterial documents of the Catholic Church. I recently discovered a French website, catho.org which has the 1917 Code of Canon Law in Latin and French as well as the 1996 edition of Denzinger's Dogma. So I was able to save myself typing out DS 1247-1279 (the questions to be posed to those accused of the Hussite or Wycliffite heresies, decreed by the Council Of Constance 22nd February 1418). Also Catho.org gives the older paragraph numbers of Denzinger right next to the current number. This is useful for using pre-1963 works of theology. From the home page you navigate to the French versions but there is a little button ("Latin" hand written with a mouse it looks like) to switch to the original. It does not provide the Greek texts of the early councils. Also it only provides French texts of the Fathers. Clicking on the pair of blue semi-circular arrows (looks like a refresh button) within a given text takes you to citations of the passage which you are reading. As they say on the home page:

Un système UNIQUE AU MONDE, issu de la technologie exclusive du logiciel Ictus, permet de savoir immédiatement où un document est cité. Ainsi, vous découvrirez comment les Pères de l'Église commentent un passage des Saintes Écritures, ou bien comment un texte du Magistère (concile, encyclique) est utilisé par un autre document. … Grâce à Internet et aux techniques les plus modernes appliquées à ce trésor de textes, ayez l'érudition d'un vrai moine!

Quite so.

Meanwhile I am agog at developments on Newman Reader. Although they have adopted a rather odd looking font (looks like Papyrus) for the front page we can forgive all that because they have put PDF scans of all 32 volumes of Newman's Letters and Diaries (it would cost thousands to assemble a collection of printed copies) as well as of modern collections of Newman's miscellaneous papers. They seem to have done an OCR job on it so the text is searchable, at any rate it is as searchable as something on Google books (presumably Google did the work, since "snippet view" and "preview" versions of L&D are available on Google books). I cannot find Newman's preface to Hutton's Anglican Ministry, but I just gave you that. Nor is there the full version of his ejaculation in favour of the Papacy beginning "Deeply do I feel…"

Last, but not least, (via Chant Café) the complete four volume Missale Romanum cum lectionibus is now online.  Each volume is split into four files. They take an age to download. They have been gone through a first run with optical character recognition so you can copy and paste up to a point. It is not very accurate however. But it is better than nothing. Much better.

The trinkets of Rome

At some point in the early 1890s the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson*, carried out the third visitation of his diocese.  His addresses to the clergy on that occasion were collected in a book Fishers of Men  (London: Macmillan, 1893), which is available at the Internet Archive.  I could not find it directly through Google Books and I was only getting the top half of each page when I tried to use the online reader (which is useful for linking you directly to a given page). YMMV.

I have not read this book, I was only flicking through it to see the context for a quotation. In Chapter 5, Archbishop Benson discusses "Spiritual Power".

The Power we speak of is of course power in relation to human life. Power to mould and to invigorate the life of man.  So the person or the institution in which spiritual power is, has gained and keeps the Divine view of life, and deals with life in the Divine method.  It is from Jesus Christ alone that the Divine view and the Divine method can be learnt (p.111).

He contrasts this with a purely mechanical method of power. From this Archbishop Benson gradually unfolds an elegant expression of the standard Protestant "corruption theory" of the medieval Church.

You may trace the rise of the mechanical system of compulsory confession in and about Orleans in the ninth century, part of the tremendous effort to raise the barbarian lords and subjects; the gradual formalising, the destruction of spontaneity, the tariff of penances, the numerous repetition of devotional formulas, the gradual assumption of more and more authority in the form of absolution, the growth of a new sacrament, the fabulous basis and mockery of Indulgence. (pp.115-116).

He even quotes St Teresa of Avila against the Church, who "again and again speaks of her directors as lowering and impairing her spiritual strength."  The doctrine of the Real Presence is seen as a way to ease the difficulty of ascending in heart and mind to God by translating God "at any moment" "into the material world" and localising Him here. "The curious application of a transient figment of philosophy [i.e. transubstantiation CCC 1374-1376] to the mystery of Communion rationalised this and pronounced it done. The very earthly flesh of Christ was brought back to be worshipped." (pp.116-117). The same materialism leads "Rome" to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and devotion to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. (He calls it the worship of "two Sacred Hearts", but that is just an oversight.) This devotion, he claims is the restoration of the Manichaean heresy (p.117).

The reason Archbishop Benson brings all this up is he detects some of it in the Church of England, particularly in ritualism ("solicitude for deayed usages"). In his view the end of Catholic devotions is devotionalism: "the Kingdom will be a mustard-tree no more; it will be a petty herb of mint or anise: no more nested in by all the Birds of heaven—great, swift strong winged minds, as well as the shy and tender." (p.121). He digresses briefly on the power of Anglican laymen (what Newman called the State's pattern man, in a passage denounced by Kingsley) to remedy devotional "weakness" in the Anglican clergy, and then returns to his theme. 

What a moment is this to be fingering the trinkets of Rome! The very moment when it is denying not the "power" (that would be hopeless) but the "authority" of  the church of this country with an audacity never used before. The "power" shines in dark places, and strikes to the edge of the world. So it is the "authority" which must be disparaged now. [Earlier he had distinguished between power and authority, both of which the Church possessed; the latter without the former belonging to the Prophets, the former without the latter belonging to the Pharisees]. Large-minded men may be amused, but surely not without indignation, at being assured that 1200 Roman Catholic Bishops have refused to admit the validity of English orders; as if that contained some argument—as if we did not not know what the position of thesegood men is; at being assured that a pallium  not being received here from Romeis a proof that the continuity of the British and English Church is broken; at being assuredthat England has been just dedicated as "Mary's Dowry" and placed "to-day" under the Patronage of St. Peter. Is it a time to be introducing among our simple ones the devotional life of that body? (pp.122-123).

[Reference to a power which "shines in dark places, and strikes to the edge of the world" probably means the British Empire. Of course a baby born in the course of this visitation would have been old enough to be ordained into the Church of England in 1914 just as the British Empire entered the first of two wars which would destroy it and lead to Britain's utter humiliation. Even though they won.]

So why mention this? Well the Daily Telegraph in London just published an interview with +Justin, the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury.

“I am a spiritual magpie,” he says. As well as speaking in tongues (a Protestant practice), he adores the sacrament of the eucharist (a Catholic one).

And again: 

For his own spiritual discipline, Justin Welby uses Catholic models – the contemplation and stability of Benedictines, and the rigorous self-examination of St Ignatius. And, in a choice that could not possibly have been made since the 16th century – until now – the Archbishop’s spiritual director is Fr Nicolas Buttet, a Roman Catholic priest.

A Catholic Priest as the spiritual director of an Anglican! And not answering questions so as to clear the way for a conversion, mind. Newman would do his nut.  To be fair, Justin Cantuar:'s evocation of Catholic models could be justified in Benson's terms, for the latter seems to have some sympathy with the spirituality of St Teresa of Avila.(Although Benson could simply have been quoting a Catholic to twit the Catholics, just like I, erm, am doing here, quoting one AofC against another).

Fingering the trinkets of Rome indeed.

* (Archbishop Benson's youngest son, Robert Hugh Benson, became a Catholic in 1903 and subsequently a priest. He was the author of Lord of the World and The Friendship of Christ.)

Proper Treatment of a Blessed Pope and a Blessed Cardinal

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Breviary Propers for the Diocese of Cologne. Blessed John Paul II has, with the consent of the Holy See, been inserted into the Liturgical Calendar of the United States as an optional memoria. That page has links to the Mass Propers in Latin and English (and Spanish) and to the Breviary Propers ditto, all from the Vatican website. These are all within the pages of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Nevertheless there is no mention of these Propers on the English page. I mention that because in all the other languages of the Vatican site there is a link to all the material pertaining to John Paul II's beatification and liturgical cult: Italian, German, Spanish, French, and Portugese. Even the Latin page has a link to the decree of 2nd April 2011 De cultu liturgico in honorem Beati Ioannis Pauli ii, papae, tribuendo.

Anamnesis, the bulletin of the Liturgical Commission of the Polish Bishops has a pdf of the decree and another one of the Mass and Office Propers combined into a single document. ("Dekret o kulcie bł. Jana Pawła II, papieża" for the decree, "Teksty liturgiczne o bł. Janie Pawle II, papieżu" for the propers).

The Liturgy Office of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales has inserted the optional memoria of Blessed John Henry Newman for October 9th. This is seen in the Recent Additions page last updated (it says here) on 24th September 2010. Newman does not appear in the National Calendar for England. The Recent Additions page links to a pdf, without preamble or explanation, of the liturgical texts in Latin and then in English of the Propers for Mass and the Divine office of Blessed John Henry Newman (pdf).

Recent Additions also has links to an index page for downloadable resources for Gregorian chant in the form of extracts from Jubilate Deo. Something seems to have happened in the Liturgy Office. It was thanks to a scathing review on its site that I discovered Laszlo Dobszay's The Bugnini-Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform (2003). From the reviewer's contempt it sounded like the sort of thing that would be just my cup of tea – and it was. From there it was a short step to Dobszay's recordings with the Schola Hungarica.

But if it is now publishing propers in Latin, as well as materials for Gregorian chant, there must have been some kind of change of attitude.

The Prince of Wales, the German Bishops, and Cardinal Newman

The Daily Telegraph in London is held up as a conservative newspaper. It is far more conservative than any Australian daily. And yet in a piece dated 3rd October 2012 (£1m from those who die without wills passes to Prince Charles's estate) we find this:

More than £1 million has passed to the Prince of Wales’s Duchy of Cornwall estate in the last six years from people who died without making a will or having an heir, latest accounts show. Under powers dating back to medieval times, the Duchy is entitled to all unclaimed property and estates left when someone dies in Cornwall, in an arrangement known as bona vacantia. In the last financial year alone, £552,000 passed to the Duchy under the ancient law, which was put in place when the Duchy was created by Edward III in 1337 for his son and heir, Edward, the Black Prince.

Note the oogedy boogedy of "dating back to medieval times" and all that crap about the Black Prince. This is not some part-time hack. The author is Gordon Rayner "Chief Reporter". Note the sense that this is all something rather strange and peculiar. It may not help matters to observe that bona vacantia is in fact a concept far older than the Middle Ages, something that can be confirmed by the obscure modern practice of looking things up on Google.

In most of Britain, the estates of people who die without making a will, and who have no obvious heirs, go to the Government.

Well that is not quite the legal way of expressing it. But to say that the property of those who die intestate goes to the Crown would undermine Rayner's snark – and what on earth does he think should happen to such property? To give this process in the rest of the UK its proper legal name, bona vacantia, would blow the gaff completely.

The Telegraph, remember, is a conservative newspaper.

Speaking of ignorance of history, the German bishops came in for some flack recently for their own means of raising revenue. I always assumed it was due to some sort of tidy minded Teutonicism that in Germany the state levies a special church tax which is then passed on to your religion. You can reduce your taxes by declaring that you are not the member of any church. Naturally the Catholic Church regards making such a declaration as a formal defection and so anyone who does this is forbidden the sacraments. And, as night follows day, people are complaining.

The thought that perhaps the Church should look to raise money some other way has occurred to at least one prominent expatriate German Catholic.

Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world. She can live more freely her vocation to the ministry of divine worship and service of neighbour.

The Supreme Pontiff, Servant of the Servants of God, may in fact be on to something. That assumes he was talking about the church tax. The German Bishops don't seem to think so.

"Clearly, someone withdrawing from the Church can no longer take advantage of the system like someone who remains a member," [Archbishop Zollitsch] said at a September 24 press conference as the bishops began a four-day meeting in Fulda. "We are grateful Rome has given completely clear approval to our stance."

But I was struck by the Bishops' defence of the practice. It is nothing to do with efficiency.

In its decree, the bishops' conference said the tax was designed to compensate for state seizures of Church property.

This reminded me of a satirical passage in Newman's Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851), Lecture 6 'Prejudice the Life of the Protestant View' § 4. Newman is talking of a typical English Protestant abroad in Catholic Europe who

 …gets up at an English hour, has his breakfast at his leisure, and then saunters into some of the churches of the place; he is scandalized to have proof of what he has so often heard, the infrequency of communions among Catholics. Again and again, in the course of his tour, has he entered them, and never by any chance did he see a solitary communicant:—hundreds, perhaps, having communicated in those very churches, according to their custom, before he was out of his bedroom. But what scandalizes him most, is that even bishops and priests, nay, the Pope himself does not communicate at the great festivals of the Church. He was at a great ceremonial, a High Mass, on Lady Day, at the Minerva; not one Cardinal communicated; Pope and Cardinals, and every Priest present but the celebrant, having communicated, of course, each in his own Mass, and in his own chapel or church early in the morning. Then the churches are so dirty; faded splendour, tawdriness, squalidness are the fashion of the day;—thanks to the Protestants and Infidels, who, in almost every country where Catholicism is found, have stolen the revenues by which they were kept decent.

Stolen the revenues by which they were kept decent. A pity they can't just give the properties back.

Vetus Latina : The Old Latin Bible

Before Jerome and the Vulgate  – and long before Urban VIII – there was the Old Latin Bible. Strictly speaking I think it is more a case of old Latin Bibles since there were several versions circulating of at least some of the books. Jerome himself produced two versions of the Psalms, the first a revision of Old Latin version and the second a direct translation of the Hebrew. (The whole matter of the Latin psalms, particularly as they have been adapted for liturgical use is extremely puzzling and I have never got it straight).

In Callista : A Tale of the Third Century Newman describes the home of a Christian living near Carthage just before the Decian persecution struck.

So long had been the peace of the Church, that the tradition of persecution seemed to have been lost; and Christians allowed themselves in the profession of their faith at home, cautious as they might be in public places; as freely as now in England, where we do not scruple to raise crucifixes within our churches and houses, though we shrink from doing so within sight of the hundred cabs and omnibuses which rattle past them. Under the cross were two or three pictures, or rather sketches. In the centre stood the Blessed Virgin with hands spread out in prayer, attended by the holy Apostles Peter and Paul on her right and left. Under this representation was rudely scratched upon the wall the word, "Advocata," a title which the earliest antiquity bestows upon her. On a small shelf was placed a case with two or three rolls or sheets of parchment in it. The appearance of them spoke of use indeed, but of reverential treatment. These were the Psalms, the Gospel according to St. Luke, and St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, in the old Latin version. The Gospel was handsomely covered, and ornamented with gold.

John Henry Newman, Callista, chapter 3

Vetus Latina is part of the Verbum Project at the University of Birmingham. The site contains information about the old Latin Bible, bibliographies etc as well as links to manuscripts online.