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[Since the other Newman thread pertains to history, I did not want to derail it by addressing Ladislaus's impertinent responses there, opting instead to do so here instead.]
LETTER
In which Pope Pius X approves the work of the Bishop of Limerick
on the writings of Cardinal Newman.
To his Venerable Brother
Edward Thomas Bishop of Limerick
Venerable Brother, greetings and Our Apostolic blessing. We hereby inform you that your essay, in which you show that the writings of Cardinal Newman, far from being in disagreement with Our Encyclical Letter Pascendi, are very much in harmony with it, has been emphatically approved by Us: for you could not have better served both the truth and the dignity of man.
It is clear that those people whose errors We have condemned in that Docuмent had decided among themselves to produce something of their own invention with which to seek the commendation of a distinguished person. And so they everywhere assert with confidence that they have taken these things from the very source and summit of authority, and that therefore We cannot censure their teachings, but rather that We had even previously gone so far as to condemn what such a great author had taught.
Incredible though it may appear, although it is not always realised, there are to be found those who are so puffed up with pride that it is enough to overwhelm the mind, and who are convinced that they are Catholics and pass themselves off as such, while in matters concerning the inner discipline of religion they prefer the authority of their own private teaching to the pre-eminent authority of the Magisterium of the Apostolic See. Not only do you fully demonstrate their obstinacy but you also show clearly their deceitfulness.
For, if in the things he had written before his profession of the Catholic faith one can justly detect something which may have a kind of similarity with certain Modernist formulas, you are correct in saying that this is not relevant to his later works. Moreover, as far as that matter is concerned, his way of thinking has been expressed in very different ways, both in the spoken word and in his published writings, and the author himself, on his admission into the Catholic Church, forwarded all his writings to the authority of the same Church so that any corrections might be made, if judged appropriate.
Regarding the large number of books of great importance and influence which he wrote as a Catholic, it is hardly necessary to exonerate them from any connection with this present heresy. And indeed, in the domain of England, it is common knowledge that Henry Newman pleaded the cause of the Catholic faith in his prolific literary output so effectively that his work was both highly beneficial to its citizens and greatly appreciated by Our Predecessors: and so he is held worthy of office whom Leo XIII, undoubtedly a shrewd judge of men and affairs, appointed Cardinal; indeed he was very highly regarded by him at every stage of his career, and deservedly so.
Truly, there is something about such a large quantity of work and his long hours of labour lasting far into the night that seems foreign to the usual way of theologians: nothing can be found to bring any suspicion about his faith. You correctly state that it is entirely to be expected that where no new signs of heresy were apparent he has perhaps used an off-guard manner of speaking to some people in certain places, but that what the Modernists do is to falsely and deceitfully take those words out of the whole context of what he meant to say and twist them to suit their own meaning. We therefore congratulate you for having, through your knowledge of all his writings, brilliantly vindicated the memory of this eminently upright and wise man from injustice: and also for having, to the best of your ability, brought your influence to bear among your fellow-countrymen, but particularly among the English people, so that those who were accustomed to abusing his name and deceiving the ignorant should henceforth cease doing so.
Would that they should follow Newman the author faithfully by studying his books without, to be sure, being addicted to their own prejudices, and let them not with wicked cunning conjure anything up from them or declare that their own opinions are confirmed in them; but instead let them understand his pure and whole principles, his lessons and inspiration which they contain. They will learn many excellent things from such a great teacher: in the first place, to regard the Magisterium of the Church as sacred, to defend the doctrine handed down inviolately by the Fathers and, what is of highest importance to the safeguarding of Catholic truth, to follow and obey the Successor of St. Peter with the greatest faith.
To you, therefore, Venerable Brother, and to your clergy and people, We give Our heartfelt thanks for having taken the trouble to help Us in Our reduced circuмstances by sending your communal gift of financial aid: and in order to gain for you all, but first and foremost for yourself, the gifts of God’s goodness, and as a testimony of Our benevolence, We affectionately bestow Our Apostolic blessing.
Given in Rome at St. Peter’s, on 10 March 1908, in the fifth year of Our Pontificate.
Pius PP. X
(Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Tuum Illud (http://newmanreader.org/canonization/popes/acta10mar08.html); original in Acta Sanctae Sedis XLI [1908] (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ass/docuмents/ASS-41-1908-ocr.pdf), pp. 200-202; underlining and paragraph breaks added.)
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Novus Ordo Watch rightly defending the orthodoxy of Cardinal Newman:
https://novusordowatch.org/2019/10/pope-pius10-on-cardinal-newman/
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No, he was a Proto-Modernist and the Father or Modernism, plus had suspect inclinations.
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No, he was a Proto-Modernist and the Father or Modernism, plus had suspect inclinations.
So a Catholic can follow Ladislaus, or he can follow Pope St. Pius X, but he cannot follow both, since they say the opposite.
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https://www.traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/Internet_Files/A_028_Another_Look_at_Newman.pdf
https://archive.org/details/AnotherLookAtNewman/mode/2up
The Liberal Cardinal Newman
Americans Dont Know
Like many American conservatives, growing up I heard the words of Card. John Henry Newman often in sermons and catechism classes. A prayer card with his well-known Marian prayer was in my mothers prayer-book. There was a Newman Center for Catholics at the nearby State University. I assumed that the converted Anglican minister who caused a stir at Oxford was orthodox and praiseworthy.
It only has been in the last 10 years that I began to realize that there is a difference between the myth about Card. Newman and the reality. The American myth, nurtured on anthologies of sermons, prayers and sayings of Newman, presents a pious, devotional and pastoral priest and teacher. The reality is different.
Newman was a complex, controversial man, universally considered a liberal in his day, almost always in a tug of war with Rome, almost always in opposition to her orthodox authorities. His revolutionary stands have not been made known to Catholics of our century because the biographies of him either downplayed or excused his liberal positions and heterodox leanings or were written from the liberal standpoint.
So, when Tradition in Action recently asked me to read and comment on the e-book Another Look at John Henry Cardinal Newman by Richard Sartino, I was happy to comply. In this book, which you can read here, the author insists that Catholics must look at the work and thinking of the whole man, not just at some of his prayers and sermons.
The most dangerous man in England
What we find in this book is the Newman who advocated for openness in theological thinking and a broader role for the laity in the Church. On the growth of doctrine, he held that revelation was given, according to the divine plan, as a seed destined to grow in the course of centuries. Newman was convinced that human conscience would have such a decisive role in doctrine that it should be seen a mediator between defined dogmas and individual knowledge, a position formally condemned by the Church. He was openly hostile to the Syllabus against Liberalism and the definition of papal infallibility because he could not conceive an unchangeable theological truth.
Sartino tells us, The best witness we have of his Liberalism is, ironically, the consensus fidelium of the 19th century, and in particular the Roman Curia and the Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX. (p. 36)
Orthodox theologians like the Jesuits Giovanni Perrone and J.B. Franzelin opposed his ideas. The authentic ultramontane champions of that time Card. Manning, Fr. Faber, Msgr. Talbot and W.G. Ward - all suspected one or another of Newmans writings and schemes. Msgr. Talbot went so far as to call him the most dangerous man in England. (p. 5)
The deep antagonism between the solidly orthodox Card. Manning and the liberal Card. Newman is usually minimized by conservative writers, reduced to nothing more that a lack of sympathy between Newman the theologian and Manning the practical pastor, between Newman, a temperamental scholar with a somewhat feminine hue and Card. Manning, the virile outdoorsman.
The strong opposition was, in fact, based on doctrinal differences. Sartino relates this interesting incident recorded by J.E.C. Bodley about a meeting he had with Manning:
"The conversation moved to theological ground, and Mannings tone changed.
"From an observation you made,' he said, 'I gather that you are under the impression that Dr. Newman is a good Catholic.' I replied that such was my vague belief. He retorted: 'Either you are ignorant of the Catholic doctrine or of the works of Dr. Newman' he always said Dr. Newman in Oxford fashion, and never gave him the title of Cardinal.
"After asking me which of Newmans books I had read, he proceeded to tick off on his tapering fingers, in his usual way, 10 distinct heresies to be found in the most widely-read works of Dr. Newman." (p. 7)
Later, Sartino lists - just in his book Grammar of Assent - eight philosophical teachings that the Church has always held and Newman rejected (p. 13). He starts with Newmans assertion that the concrete is superior to the abstract, the practical superior to the speculative. He also sustained that the dogmas and doctrines of the Church should be interpreted in a subjective fashion rather than be apprehended objectively. For Newman there were no unchangeable principles.
It is sad to say, but it was for this subjectivism in doctrine, which today is called Newmans richness of thinking, that he is considered a precursor of Vatican II. Manning, indeed, was right - he had read Newman carefully in the light of Catholic theology and condemned his writings accordingly.
Opponent of Papal Infallibility & the Syllabus
Pope Pius IX distrusted Newman and refused to give him the cardinals hat. Was he moved by just some personal animus against the Anglican convert? Not at all, for, as Sartino clearly shows, the Pontiff had legitimate grounds for his suspicions.
Newman openly criticized papal infallibility. When it was declared as a dogma he wrote I never expected to see such a scandal in the Church, and affirmed that it was orchestrated by those who wished the Churchs downfall. He reluctantly accepted the dogma but predicted that the day would come when the whole Church will be heard and Catholic instincts and ideas would assimilate into the living tradition of the faithful. (p. 36) In fact, that day came at a Second Vatican Council a century later.
When Pius IX issued the Syllabus of Errors against the multiple of modern errors, Newman was also reluctant to accept its content and criticized it, again putting him in open confrontation with Card. Manning, Msgr. Talbot and W.G. Ward. The suffering that came from opposing the Three Tailors of Tooley Street would be great, Newman sarcastically wrote his companions, but it is worth the suffering if we effectually oppose them.
Sartino continues: In one of his writings Newman asserted that the Syllabus, qua Syllabus, was not binding as an object of faith, in other words, as a collection of condemnations decreed in the past it was not binding per se. This allowed him to dodge the Decree with tact, but we can ask why the same could not be applied to the Creed which is also a Symbol or collection of divinely revealed dogmas. (pp. 25-26)
Newmans criticisms of the traditional Magisterium increased after 1870. Although outwardly he always professed obedience to it, interiorly he admitted dissent. He counseled his liberal friends to have patience. Let us have faith, a new Pope and a re-assembled Council may trim the boat."
Ambiguous language and questionable orthodoxy
The praise of progressivists for Newman and his influence on Vatican II is as interminable as the justifications made by conservatives who try to prove his orthodoxy. I believe that one reason for the confusion is the ambiguous language Newman carefully employed to introduce novel and dangerous thinking, on one hand, and to avoid an outright condemnation of Rome, on the other.
His elastic language gave the liberal Catholics a springboard to move forward, while the conservatives could spend their labor demonstrating how Newmans thinking could be interpreted in light of Tradition. It sounds very familiar to traditional Catholics of our day who are seeing the same scenario play out in relation to Vatican II
Newmans beliefs as outlined in his two chief works, The Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) and The Grammar of Assent (1875), brought Liberalism into the Church. Sartino carefully analyzes the ambiguities in both of these works and presents their dangerous consequences against the Faith.
For example, his underlying position in The Grammar of Assent revealed an aversion for Thomistic theology for being abstract and impersonal. Cautiously choosing his words, he aimed to demonstrate that there is another way other than demonstration and syllogistic inference to arrive at the knowledge of God. The purpose of his treatise is to support subjectivism and liberty of conscience by establishing a subjective mode of assenting to truth, which cannot be experienced by other men in exactly the same manner.
Newman continually asserted that his new way did not deny the old way. He called his way a real assent to the concrete accompanied by vivid images, distinguishing it from what he calls notional assent, the traditional method based on mere abstract notions. In effect, Sartino explains, what he said is that truth and dogma are one thing, while a real, living, personal religion is another. What theologians perceive in one thing; what the living faithful understand and interpret are quite another. Theology is one interpretation of dogma; living religion is another interpretation.
Sartino explains the enormous and deadly consequences of Newmans new method of assent:
The effect of this false dichotomy is to open the door for a Catholic to think one way and act in another, for it divorces the contemplative and speculative mind of man (which for Newman is governed only by notional assents) from his practical intellect (the realm of Newmans real assents).
According to this view a man can interpret the dogma Jesus Christ is the Son of God in two ways; either as an abstract doctrine which is objective and indifferent to the person believing it, or as a concrete religious fact that is meaningful to the person accepting it. The error of this position lies in defining a theological truth in relation to the person, as if something of the believer enters into the definition of theological truth. Truth, consequently, becomes dependent on the person; that is, relative (p. 14).
This explains Newmans hostility to the Syllabus and the dogma of Pontifical Infallibility, for he could not conceive how someone could make an absolute and unconditional assent to a rigid and unchangeable theological truth. Sartino continues:
Another dire consequence of this position is that living religion, or religion in the concrete, takes on primary importance while dogmas and theological truths become secondary. (p. 15)
From this comes the modernist heresy that dogmas are merely provisional formulas whose utility is determined, not by themselves, but by their relevant and practical application to the here and now, and the norm of their practical application is the person. The entire theology is turned upside down.
Precursor of Vatican II
Where did Newman find support and congenial company? In his own time, it was among the declared liberals like the excommunicated Benedictine Dllinger and Lord Acton who were determined to undermine the Faith.
The renown and influence that came to him after his death were not due to his orthodoxy, but precisely the opposite, because of his Liberalism. In the first half of the 20th century, it was the modernist intellectual movements who championed his thinking as ahead of his times. Newman was a man so various. A primer of infidelity could be compiled from his works," said Thomas Huxley. (p. 34)
Benedict XVI
Benedict: Newman is "my passion"
Today, it is Progressivism who rallies behind Newman as one of its prophets. One contemporary enthusiast tells us that Newmans concept of a universal revelation runs parallel to those of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and Richard Niebuhr. (2)
The Scholarly Boston Encyclopedia of Western Theology assures us that Newmans understanding of natural religion and his expression crypto-Christians - referring to those who have assented to all they have been exposed to of true religion - anticipated the understanding of anonymous Christians of Karl Rahner.
Avery Dulles finds elements in Newmans theology that facilitated the development of ecuмenism. He points out Newman had a great desire for restoring the unity of all Christian churches. His view on freedom of conscience made him sensitive to the religious beliefs of other Christians, and he was on guard against unsettling them in their faith. To this Dulles adds that Newman had a measure of appreciation for the workings of grace in other Christian communions. Dulles concludes by stating that Newman was a forerunner, standing on the threshold of a new ecuмenical age. (3)
What all the enthusiasts of Newman insist is that his insights into the nature of the Church, theological development of dogma, personal conscience, the laity, universal revelation, and biblical interpretation were at the heart of Vatican IIs work. As the progressivist London The Tablet affirmed in an editorial celebrating Newmans coming beatification, To be a Newman Catholic is to endorse the Council, for it was this most English of Holy Men who provided its key inspiration. (4)
Taking a closer look
It is no surprise that the Conciliar Church is clamoring for Newmans canonization. That Benedict XVI promotes him without qualification is also understandable, given his views on subjective revelation, ecuмenism, the evolution of dogmas, religious liberty and biblical study.
What is not comprehensible is the number of traditionalist Catholics who follow the old party line, accepting Newman for sentimental or secondary reasons, ignoring that he was a forerunner of Vatican II and its disastrous consequences.
I believe it is time to take another look at Newman. A good place to start is with this book that analyzes the whole man.
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Novus Ordo Watch rightly defending the orthodoxy of Cardinal Newman:
https://novusordowatch.org/2019/10/pope-pius10-on-cardinal-newman/
Ah, so now you accept NOW as an authority, while rejecting 95% of everything else they have to say. Just like you accept Siscoe and Salza when it's convenient for you.
(https://i.ibb.co/hMh8QhM/newman.png)
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[Since the other Newman thread pertains to history, I did not want to derail it by addressing Ladislaus's impertinent responses there, opting instead to do so here instead.]
LETTER
In which Pope Pius X approves the work of the Bishop of Limerick
on the writings of Cardinal Newman.
To his Venerable Brother
Edward Thomas Bishop of Limerick
St. Pius X obviously never had the time to read the voluminous works of Newman and was relying on someone else's assessment, the writings here of this Bishop who was favorable to Newman and therefore was cherry-picking stuff from Newman's work in an attempt to prove his orthodoxy. Newman, however, played the Modernist game of making both orthodox and heterodox statements, and someone who wanted to cherry-pick the orthodox ones could paint Newman as the most orthodox writer since St. Robert Bellarmine.
NOW tries to paint even Manning as favorable to Newman by cherry-picking out some kind words he had to say about Newman after the latter had died. That's completely dishonest. Manning was a fierce opponent of Newman, refused to call him a Cardinal (but referred to him as "Doctor Newman"), telling someone that he found at least 10 heresies in Newman's works. This hostility of Manning toward Newman is not disputed by anyone ... except NOW, who cherry-picked one nice thing he had to say about him to paint the opposite picture. Newman opposed Vatican I and Pius IX Syllabus (over which points Pius IX refused to make him a Cardinal). Several Great Britain bishops denounced Newman for heresy. Newman hobnobbed with the Modernists, including expressing great esteem for the excommunicated Modernist Dollinger. His ideas about "Christian unity" and Ecuмenism and Liberty of Conscience all foreshadowed the same in Vatican II.
And Newman was also in a highly sucpicious relationship with Ambrose St. John (and I don't need to post many of his disturbing sentiments toward the latter).
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St. Pius X obviously never had the time to read the voluminous works of Newman and was relying on someone else's assessment,
St. Pius X:
"Truly, there is something about such a large quantity of work and his long hours of labour lasting far into the night that seems foreign to the usual way of theologians: nothing can be found to bring any suspicion about his faith."
That means he had his works scoured, and found no cause aginst him.
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Ah, so now you accept NOW as an authority, while rejecting 95% of everything else they have to say. Just like you accept Siscoe and Salza when it's convenient for you.
(https://i.ibb.co/hMh8QhM/newman.png)
Umm...yes...when someone is right, it is very convenient to quote them?
Is there some reason I should be precluded from quoting them (particularly on a question not invloving the pope)?
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Words spoken by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster at the Solemn Requiem at the Oratory, South Kensington, 20th August 1890.
"We have lost our greatest witness for the Faith, and we are all poorer and lower by the loss."
https://www.newmanreader.org/biography/manning90.html
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I just ordered this book:
A Preface to Newman’s Theology (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004XN8DHC/interregnumnow-20) (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1945).
(https://i.imgur.com/bscA59R.png)
From NOW:
"A succint preview of what the reader can expect is found on the inside flap of the dust jacket of the original 1945 edition: “A PREFACE TO NEWMAN’S THEOLOGY is a close study of the great man’s Catholic orthodoxy. Was Newman a Modernist or did he have Modernist leanings? If so, he would be an unsafe guide. This question is here discussed with scholarly acuмen. Some writers have criticized Newman’s teaching on the development of Christian doctrine. The arguments on this question also are carefully sifted and scrutinized….
The author, Fr. Benard, was an incredibly gifted young priest who was just rising to prominence as a Newman scholar. He died a premature death in his study at the Catholic University of America, during a fire on Feb. 4, 1961, presumably of smoke inhalation. However, knowing all the evils that would afflict the Church and society afterwards, we can see what a great mercy of Almighty God it was to call him to judgment when He did. Fr. Benard died at the young age of 46, but he lived long enough to leave to posterity this magnificent vindication of Newman’s orthodoxy."
Online free here:
https://archive.org/details/prefacetonewmans0000bena/mode/2up
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https://www.traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/Internet_Files/A_028_Another_Look_at_Newman.pdf
https://archive.org/details/AnotherLookAtNewman/mode/2up
The Liberal Cardinal Newman
Americans Dont Know
Like many American conservatives, growing up I heard the words of Card. John Henry Newman often in sermons and catechism classes. A prayer card with his well-known Marian prayer was in my mothers prayer-book. There was a Newman Center for Catholics at the nearby State University. I assumed that the converted Anglican minister who caused a stir at Oxford was orthodox and praiseworthy.
It only has been in the last 10 years that I began to realize that there is a difference between the myth about Card. Newman and the reality. The American myth, nurtured on anthologies of sermons, prayers and sayings of Newman, presents a pious, devotional and pastoral priest and teacher. The reality is different.
Newman was a complex, controversial man, universally considered a liberal in his day, almost always in a tug of war with Rome, almost always in opposition to her orthodox authorities. His revolutionary stands have not been made known to Catholics of our century because the biographies of him either downplayed or excused his liberal positions and heterodox leanings or were written from the liberal standpoint.
So, when Tradition in Action recently asked me to read and comment on the e-book Another Look at John Henry Cardinal Newman by Richard Sartino, I was happy to comply. In this book, which you can read here, the author insists that Catholics must look at the work and thinking of the whole man, not just at some of his prayers and sermons.
The most dangerous man in England
What we find in this book is the Newman who advocated for openness in theological thinking and a broader role for the laity in the Church. On the growth of doctrine, he held that revelation was given, according to the divine plan, as a seed destined to grow in the course of centuries. Newman was convinced that human conscience would have such a decisive role in doctrine that it should be seen a mediator between defined dogmas and individual knowledge, a position formally condemned by the Church. He was openly hostile to the Syllabus against Liberalism and the definition of papal infallibility because he could not conceive an unchangeable theological truth.
Sartino tells us, The best witness we have of his Liberalism is, ironically, the consensus fidelium of the 19th century, and in particular the Roman Curia and the Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX. (p. 36)
Orthodox theologians like the Jesuits Giovanni Perrone and J.B. Franzelin opposed his ideas. The authentic ultramontane champions of that time Card. Manning, Fr. Faber, Msgr. Talbot and W.G. Ward - all suspected one or another of Newmans writings and schemes. Msgr. Talbot went so far as to call him the most dangerous man in England. (p. 5)
The deep antagonism between the solidly orthodox Card. Manning and the liberal Card. Newman is usually minimized by conservative writers, reduced to nothing more that a lack of sympathy between Newman the theologian and Manning the practical pastor, between Newman, a temperamental scholar with a somewhat feminine hue and Card. Manning, the virile outdoorsman.
The strong opposition was, in fact, based on doctrinal differences. Sartino relates this interesting incident recorded by J.E.C. Bodley about a meeting he had with Manning:
"The conversation moved to theological ground, and Mannings tone changed.
"From an observation you made,' he said, 'I gather that you are under the impression that Dr. Newman is a good Catholic.' I replied that such was my vague belief. He retorted: 'Either you are ignorant of the Catholic doctrine or of the works of Dr. Newman' he always said Dr. Newman in Oxford fashion, and never gave him the title of Cardinal.
"After asking me which of Newmans books I had read, he proceeded to tick off on his tapering fingers, in his usual way, 10 distinct heresies to be found in the most widely-read works of Dr. Newman." (p. 7)
Later, Sartino lists - just in his book Grammar of Assent - eight philosophical teachings that the Church has always held and Newman rejected (p. 13). He starts with Newmans assertion that the concrete is superior to the abstract, the practical superior to the speculative. He also sustained that the dogmas and doctrines of the Church should be interpreted in a subjective fashion rather than be apprehended objectively. For Newman there were no unchangeable principles.
It is sad to say, but it was for this subjectivism in doctrine, which today is called Newmans richness of thinking, that he is considered a precursor of Vatican II. Manning, indeed, was right - he had read Newman carefully in the light of Catholic theology and condemned his writings accordingly.
Opponent of Papal Infallibility & the Syllabus
Pope Pius IX distrusted Newman and refused to give him the cardinals hat. Was he moved by just some personal animus against the Anglican convert? Not at all, for, as Sartino clearly shows, the Pontiff had legitimate grounds for his suspicions.
Newman openly criticized papal infallibility. When it was declared as a dogma he wrote I never expected to see such a scandal in the Church, and affirmed that it was orchestrated by those who wished the Churchs downfall. He reluctantly accepted the dogma but predicted that the day would come when the whole Church will be heard and Catholic instincts and ideas would assimilate into the living tradition of the faithful. (p. 36) In fact, that day came at a Second Vatican Council a century later.
When Pius IX issued the Syllabus of Errors against the multiple of modern errors, Newman was also reluctant to accept its content and criticized it, again putting him in open confrontation with Card. Manning, Msgr. Talbot and W.G. Ward. The suffering that came from opposing the Three Tailors of Tooley Street would be great, Newman sarcastically wrote his companions, but it is worth the suffering if we effectually oppose them.
Sartino continues: In one of his writings Newman asserted that the Syllabus, qua Syllabus, was not binding as an object of faith, in other words, as a collection of condemnations decreed in the past it was not binding per se. This allowed him to dodge the Decree with tact, but we can ask why the same could not be applied to the Creed which is also a Symbol or collection of divinely revealed dogmas. (pp. 25-26)
Newmans criticisms of the traditional Magisterium increased after 1870. Although outwardly he always professed obedience to it, interiorly he admitted dissent. He counseled his liberal friends to have patience. Let us have faith, a new Pope and a re-assembled Council may trim the boat."
Ambiguous language and questionable orthodoxy
The praise of progressivists for Newman and his influence on Vatican II is as interminable as the justifications made by conservatives who try to prove his orthodoxy. I believe that one reason for the confusion is the ambiguous language Newman carefully employed to introduce novel and dangerous thinking, on one hand, and to avoid an outright condemnation of Rome, on the other.
His elastic language gave the liberal Catholics a springboard to move forward, while the conservatives could spend their labor demonstrating how Newmans thinking could be interpreted in light of Tradition. It sounds very familiar to traditional Catholics of our day who are seeing the same scenario play out in relation to Vatican II
Newmans beliefs as outlined in his two chief works, The Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) and The Grammar of Assent (1875), brought Liberalism into the Church. Sartino carefully analyzes the ambiguities in both of these works and presents their dangerous consequences against the Faith.
For example, his underlying position in The Grammar of Assent revealed an aversion for Thomistic theology for being abstract and impersonal. Cautiously choosing his words, he aimed to demonstrate that there is another way other than demonstration and syllogistic inference to arrive at the knowledge of God. The purpose of his treatise is to support subjectivism and liberty of conscience by establishing a subjective mode of assenting to truth, which cannot be experienced by other men in exactly the same manner.
Newman continually asserted that his new way did not deny the old way. He called his way a real assent to the concrete accompanied by vivid images, distinguishing it from what he calls notional assent, the traditional method based on mere abstract notions. In effect, Sartino explains, what he said is that truth and dogma are one thing, while a real, living, personal religion is another. What theologians perceive in one thing; what the living faithful understand and interpret are quite another. Theology is one interpretation of dogma; living religion is another interpretation.
Sartino explains the enormous and deadly consequences of Newmans new method of assent:
The effect of this false dichotomy is to open the door for a Catholic to think one way and act in another, for it divorces the contemplative and speculative mind of man (which for Newman is governed only by notional assents) from his practical intellect (the realm of Newmans real assents).
According to this view a man can interpret the dogma Jesus Christ is the Son of God in two ways; either as an abstract doctrine which is objective and indifferent to the person believing it, or as a concrete religious fact that is meaningful to the person accepting it. The error of this position lies in defining a theological truth in relation to the person, as if something of the believer enters into the definition of theological truth. Truth, consequently, becomes dependent on the person; that is, relative (p. 14).
This explains Newmans hostility to the Syllabus and the dogma of Pontifical Infallibility, for he could not conceive how someone could make an absolute and unconditional assent to a rigid and unchangeable theological truth. Sartino continues:
Another dire consequence of this position is that living religion, or religion in the concrete, takes on primary importance while dogmas and theological truths become secondary. (p. 15)
From this comes the modernist heresy that dogmas are merely provisional formulas whose utility is determined, not by themselves, but by their relevant and practical application to the here and now, and the norm of their practical application is the person. The entire theology is turned upside down.
Precursor of Vatican II
Where did Newman find support and congenial company? In his own time, it was among the declared liberals like the excommunicated Benedictine Dllinger and Lord Acton who were determined to undermine the Faith.
The renown and influence that came to him after his death were not due to his orthodoxy, but precisely the opposite, because of his Liberalism. In the first half of the 20th century, it was the modernist intellectual movements who championed his thinking as ahead of his times. Newman was a man so various. A primer of infidelity could be compiled from his works," said Thomas Huxley. (p. 34)
Benedict XVI
Benedict: Newman is "my passion"
Today, it is Progressivism who rallies behind Newman as one of its prophets. One contemporary enthusiast tells us that Newmans concept of a universal revelation runs parallel to those of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and Richard Niebuhr. (2)
The Scholarly Boston Encyclopedia of Western Theology assures us that Newmans understanding of natural religion and his expression crypto-Christians - referring to those who have assented to all they have been exposed to of true religion - anticipated the understanding of anonymous Christians of Karl Rahner.
Avery Dulles finds elements in Newmans theology that facilitated the development of ecuмenism. He points out Newman had a great desire for restoring the unity of all Christian churches. His view on freedom of conscience made him sensitive to the religious beliefs of other Christians, and he was on guard against unsettling them in their faith. To this Dulles adds that Newman had a measure of appreciation for the workings of grace in other Christian communions. Dulles concludes by stating that Newman was a forerunner, standing on the threshold of a new ecuмenical age. (3)
What all the enthusiasts of Newman insist is that his insights into the nature of the Church, theological development of dogma, personal conscience, the laity, universal revelation, and biblical interpretation were at the heart of Vatican IIs work. As the progressivist London The Tablet affirmed in an editorial celebrating Newmans coming beatification, To be a Newman Catholic is to endorse the Council, for it was this most English of Holy Men who provided its key inspiration. (4)
Taking a closer look
It is no surprise that the Conciliar Church is clamoring for Newmans canonization. That Benedict XVI promotes him without qualification is also understandable, given his views on subjective revelation, ecuмenism, the evolution of dogmas, religious liberty and biblical study.
What is not comprehensible is the number of traditionalist Catholics who follow the old party line, accepting Newman for sentimental or secondary reasons, ignoring that he was a forerunner of Vatican II and its disastrous consequences.
I believe it is time to take another look at Newman. A good place to start is with this book that analyzes the whole man.
LOL.
TIA: "The most dangerous man in England."
Cardinal Manning: "We have lost our greatest witness for the faith..."
Desisions, decisions...an easy one for me.
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I just ordered this book:
Good for you. You know have a patron saint for your R&R that was also responsible for the modern ideas that led to Vatican II.
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No, he was a Proto-Modernist and the Father or Modernism, plus had suspect inclinations.
Spot on Ladislaus.
‘The Germ of Modernism:
Around 1860, the Catholic learned world began to feel fully for the first time the impact of that extensive thing, modern thought. Dazzled by the prestige of 19th century science and scholarship and the technical marvels that went with them, they began accepting a whole range of speculative ideas and ideologies as established truths. Their original intention was apostolic, to detach all that was acceptable in modern thought and show how it could be harmonised with Catholic belief so that no unnecessary obstacles would prevent the men of their age from seeing Christ in the Catholic Church and the faithful themselves would not uselessly oppose what was naturally good. The wheat in modern thought had to be separated from the chaff — a praiseworthy intention. This is the idea behind all true concepts of what Pope John XXIII meant [at Vatican II] by aggiornamento. The Church, it was said, must be reconciled with “modern times” or “the spirit of the age.” By the 1870s, the learned Catholics I am talking about had begun trying to make supernatural knowledge or faith, look “reasonable” to their unbelieving generation. This was the origin of Modernism, and the intellectual subordination of the Church to secular learning its foundation stone. At the end of this process - which is now being reached - all of Revelation has been cast aside as a fairy story, which men invented to explain things before they could think, and “science” and “modern thought,” accepted in their totality as the only source of knowledge, are woven into a religion. We are watching a bit of genuine evolution - the transformation of one kind of creature into another. When complete, the Christian steps forth, a Christian no longer, but a full-fledged man of the enlightenment.’ (Philip Trower: The Church Learned and the Revolt of the Scholars, Wanderer Press, 1979.)
Modernism began in 1820 when Pope Pius VII inferred that the scientific lie of a proven heliocentrism 'according to {Galileo] and modern astronomers' could now officially replace the moving-sun of Scripture that his predecessors Pope Paul V and Pope Urban VIII has defined and declared as formal heresy. By then the natural origin of heliocentrism had been proposed by the 'Nebular theory.' History records everywhere that churchmen were so 'embarrassed' by the 'scientific proofs' that showed the Church of 1616 and 1633 got its hermeneutics and exegesis wrong that they were SCARED to condemn any of the evolutionary proposals after 1820. This allowed the Bible to be classed as 'poetry' and the supernatural content of Genesis was eliminated. Now remember that Genesis tell us why it was necessary for JESUS to become man and open up the possibility of heaven for mankind once again.
In my next post I will introduce the modernism of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), often referred to as ‘a pioneer and prophet of Vatican Council II,’ a title few could disagree with.
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Newman opposed papal infallibility the entire time but finally acquiesed under this condition. Newman:
Looking at early history, it would seem as if the Church moved on to perfect truth by various successive declarations, alternately in contrary directions, and thus perfecting, completing, supplying each other. Let us have a little faith in her, I say. Pius is not the last of the Popes. . . . Let us be patient, let us have faith, and a new Pope, and a re-assembled Council may trim the boat.
This is where he exposed his "Development of Doctrine" theory as being effectively a Hegelian dialectic. He believed that he subject of papal infallibility was not "closed" but would be corrected by a future Pope and a "re-assembled [Vatican] Council." In this he was quite prophetic.
Those minority bishops who opposed papal infallibility also used this notion that the "decision wasn't final" to feign acquiescence to the definition. From an academic paper with no theological agenda:
Newman’s concept of development became the solid ground on which Minority bishops could plant their feet and make their submission. Indeed some of the staunchest anti-infallibilists at the Council, like Kenrick, submitted with an appeal to doctrinal development. Newman’s theory provided a theological reasoning that employed history as a means of accounting for shifting understandings of theological ideas.
So they submitted to Vatican I based on this notion that its definitions could change or be modified based on successive "contrary" definitions.
Newman was a Modernist and the Father of Vatican II. From the same paper cited above:
Whether one argues that [Vatican II] was Newman’s council or not, its docuмents reflected a historical consciousness grounded in his theory of development. Christianity’s most immovable rock budged, and Roman Catholic theological reasoning has never been the same.
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Spot on Ladislaus.
...
In my next post I will introduce the modernism of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), often referred to as ‘a pioneer and prophet of Vatican Council II,’ a title few could disagree with.
Indeed. I don't have the quotes in front of me, but Newman also questioned the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture ... akin to the other Modernists out there.
In that last quote I cited from Newman after he reluctantly acquiesced to Vatican I, he predicted a "reassembled Council" to correct Vatican I. Nowhere do we see more in evidence his notion of "Development of Doctrine" than at Vatican II.
Catholic notion of development of doctrine is very clear. Propositions are drawn from the Deposit of Revelation. But Newman had this notion of a Hegelian Dialectic development where the Church's doctrine keeps going back and forth in "alternate" directions before it leads closer to the ultimate truth.
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Henry Newman was not unlike Galileo, who also boasted of his superior intellect. When Newman stood for the Oriel Fellowship, he confided to his father that;
‘Few have ever attained the facility and comprehension which I arrived at from the regularity and constancy of my reading and the laborious and nerve-bracing and fancy-repressing study of mathematics, which has been my principal subject.’ (Vincent Ferrer Belhl: Pilgrim’s Journey. John Henry Newman, Paulist Press, 2002, p.45)
‘Galileo was the one stock argument against the Church.’--- Cardinal Newman.
Fr Henry Newman’s Galileo, Revelation, and the Educated Man. (1861)
‘One of the characteristics of the day is the renewal of that collision between men of science and believers in Revelation, and of that uneasiness in the public mind as to its results, which are found in the history of the 17th century. Then, Galileo raised the jealousy of Catholics in Italy; but now in England the religious portion of the community, be they Catholic or not, is startled at the discoveries or speculations of geologists, natural historians and linguists. Of course I am speaking, as regards both dates, of the educated classes, of those whose minds have been sufficiently opened to understand the nature of proof, who have a right to ask questions and to weigh the answers given to them. It was of such, we must reasonably suppose, that Father Commissary was tender in 1637 [1633?], and to such he allied in his conversation with Galileo, as he took him in his carriage to the Holy Office. “As we went along,” says Galileo, “he put many questions to me, and showed an earnestness that I should repair the scandal, which I had given to the whole of Italy, by maintaining the opinion of the motion of the Earth; and for all the solid and mathematical reasons which I presented to him, he did but reply to me: “Terra autem in aeternum stabit,’ because ‘Terra autem in aeternum stat,’ as Scripture says.” There could not be a greater shock to religious minds of that day than Galileo’s doctrine, whether they at once rejected it as contrary to the faith, or listened to the arguments by which he enforced it. The feeling was strong enough to effect Galileo’s compulsory recantation, though a pope was then on the throne who was personally friendly to him. Two Sacred Congregations represented the popular voice and passed decrees against the philosopher, which were in force down to the years 1822 and 1837. Such an alarm never can occur again, for the very reason that it has occurred once. At least, for myself, I can say that, had I been brought up in the belief of the immobility of the Earth as though a dogma of Revelation, and had associated it in my mind with the incommunicable dignity of man among created things, with the destinies of the human race, with the locality of Purgatory and Hell, and other Christian doctrines, and then for the first time had heard Galileo’s thesis, and, moreover, the prospect held out to me that perhaps there were myriads of globes like our own all filled with rational creatures as worthy of the Creator’s regard as we are, I should have been at once indignant at its presumption and frightened at its speciousness, as I never can be at any parallel novelties in other human sciences bearing on religion; no, not though I found probable reasons for thinking the first chapters of Genesis were not of an economical character, that there was a pre-Adamite race of rational animals, or that we are now 20,000 years from Noah. For that past controversy and its issue have taught me beyond all mistake, that men of the greatest theological knowledge may firmly believe that scientific conclusions are contrary to the Word of God, when they are not so, and pronounce that to be heresy which is truth. It has taught me, that Scripture is not inspired to convey mere secular knowledge, whether about the heaven or the Earth, or the race of man; and that I need not fear for Revelation whatever truths may be brought to light by means of observation and experience out of the world of phenomena which environs us. And I seem to myself here to be speaking under the protection and sanction of the Sacred Congregation of the Index itself, which has since the time of Galileo prescribed to itself a line of action, indication of its fearlessness of any results which may happen to religion from physical sciences… Consider then the case before us: Galileo on his knees abjured the heresy that the Earth moved but the course of human thought, of observation, investigation and induction, could not be stayed; it went on and had its way. It penetrated and ran through the Catholic world as well as through the nations external to it. And then at length, in our own day, the doctrine, which was the subject of it, was found to be so harmless in a religious point of view, that the books advocating it were taken off the Index, and the prohibition to print and publish the like was withdrawn. But of course the investigation has gone further, and done, or is now even doing, some positive service to the cause which it was accused of opposing. It is on the way to restore to the Earth that prerogative and pre-eminence in the creation which it was thought to compromise. How true it is that nature and revelation are but two separate communications from the same infinite Truth. Nor is this all. Much has been said of late years of the dangerous tendency of geological speculations or researches [long ages]. Well, what harm have they done to the Christian cause... In answer to the supposed improbability of their being planets with rational inhabitants, considering that our globe has such, geology teaches us that, in fact, whatever our religion may accidentally teach us to hope or fear about other worlds, in this world at least, long ages past, we had either no inhabitants at all, or none but those rude and vast brutal forms, which could perform no intelligent homage and service to their Creator. Thus one order of spiritual researches bears upon another, and that in the interest or service of Christianity; and supposing, as some persons seem to believe in their hearts, that these researches are all in the hands of the enemy of God, we have the observable phenomenon of Satan casting out Satan and restoring the balance of physical arguments in favour of Revelation. Now let us suppose that the influences which were in the ascendant throughout Italy in 1637 [1633?] had succeeded in repressing any free investigation on the question of the motion of the Earth. The mind of the educated class would have not the less felt that it was a question, and would have been haunted, and would have been poisoned, by the misgiving that there was some real danger to Revelation in the investigation; for otherwise the ecclesiastical authorities would not have forbidden it. There would have been in the Catholic community a mass of irritated, ill-tempered, feverish and festering suspicion, engendering general scepticism and hatred of the priesthood, and relieving itself in a sort of tacit Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ, of which secret societies are the development, and then in sudden outbreaks perhaps of violence and blasphemy. Protestantism is a dismal evil; but in this respect Providence has overruled it for the good. It has, by allowing free inquiry in science, destroyed a bugbear, and thereby saved Catholics so far from the misery of hollow profession and secret infidelity…. If I find that scientific inquiries are running counter against certain theological opinions, it is not expedient to refuse to examine whether these opinions are well founded, merely because those inquiries have not yet reached their issue or attained a triumphant success. The history of Galileo is the proof of it. Are we not at a disadvantage as regards that history? Why, except because our theologians [like who, all the Fathers of the Church, popes and theologians like St Bellarmine?], instead of cautiously examining what Scripture, that is, the Written Word of God, really said, thought it better to put down with a high hand the astronomical views which were opposed to its popular interpretation? The contrary course was pursued in our own day; but what is not against the faith now, was not against the faith three centuries ago; yet Galileo was forced to pronounce his opinions a heresy. It might not indeed have been prudent to have done in 1637 [1633?] what was done in 1822 [1820?]; but, though in the former date it might have been unjustifiable to allow the free publication of his treatises with the sanction of the Church, that does not show that it was justifiable to pronounce that they were against the faith and to enforce the abjuration. I am not certain that I might not go further and advocate the full liberty to teach the motion of the Earth, as a philosophical truth, not only now, but even three centuries ago. The Father Commissary said it was a scandal to the whole of Italy; that is, I suppose, an offence, a shock, a perplexity. This might be, but there was a class, whose claims to consideration are too little regarded now, and were passed over then. I mean the educated class; to them the prohibition would be a real scandal in the true meaning of the word, an occasion of their falling. Men who have sharpened their intellects by exercise and study anticipate the conclusions of the many by some centuries. If the tone of public opinion in 1822 [1820] called for a withdrawal of the prohibition at Trent of the Earth’s movement, the condition of the able and educated called for it in Galileo’s age; and it is as clear to me that their spiritual state ought to be consulted for, as it is difficult to say why in fact it is so often is not… I cannot help feeling that, in high circles, the Church is sometimes looked upon as made up of the hierarchy and the poor, and that the educated portion, men and women, are viewed as a difficulty, an encuмbrance, as the seat and source of heresy, as almost aliens to the Catholic body, whom it would be a great gain, if possible, to annihilate. For all these reasons, I cannot agree with those who would have us stand by what is probably or possibly erroneous, as if it were dogma, till it is acknowledged on all hands, by the force of demonstrations to be actually such. If she affirms, as I do not think she will affirm, that everything was made and finished in a moment though Scripture seems to say otherwise, and though science seems to prove otherwise, I affirm it too, and with an inward and sincere assent. .. It would be nothing else than a great gain to be rid of the anxiety which haunts a person circuмstanced as I am, lest, by keeping silence on points as that on which I have begun to speak, I should perchance be hiding my talent in a napkin..’--- Fr John Henry Newman, 1861.
‘As the Copernican system first made progress... it was generally received... as a truth of Revelation, that the Earth was stationary, and that the sun, fixed in a solid firmament, whirled round the Earth. After a little time, however, and on full consideration, it was found that the Church had decided next to nothing on questions such as these... it surely is a very remarkable feat, considering how widely and how long one certain interpretation of these physical statements in Scripture had been received by Catholics, that the Church should not have formally acknowledged it... Nor was this escape a mere accident, but rather the result of providential superintendence.’--- Fr Henry Newman: The Idea of a University, 1852, p.468.
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Henry Newman was not unlike Galileo, who also boasted of his superior intellect. When Newman stood for the Oriel Fellowship, he confided to his father that;
‘Few have ever attained the facility and comprehension which I arrived at from the regularity and constancy of my reading and the laborious and nerve-bracing and fancy-repressing study of mathematics, which has been my principal subject.’ (Vincent Ferrer Belhl: Pilgrim’s Journey. John Henry Newman, Paulist Press, 2002, p.45)
Before that fellowship, however, he failed his oral examination at another institution because he choked (his nerves got to him).
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Feeling safe in his opinion of heliocentrism, uniformitarian long-ages and Darwin’s evolution, a ‘talent’ according to himself, it was easy for John Henry Newman to dismiss Genesis as little more than 50 chapters of science fiction. Again, by separating Catholics into the educated classes and the uneducated classes, he knows that the Church will no longer ‘affirm, that everything was made and finished in a moment though Scripture seems to say otherwise.’
The Patron Saint of Evolution
‘I mean that it is as strange that monkeys should be so like men with no historical connection between them, as the notion that there should be no course of history by which fossil bones got into rocks.’--- H. Newman, quoted in Chieflifejournal.
Then there is the Newman who indicates he would have had no problem with Darwin’s ape-to-man evolution, pre-humans who ‘could perform no intelligent homage and service to their Creator,’ if God chose to do it that way. Again, so much for Moses’s revelation that God created Adam in His image directly from clay, gifted with full knowledge of God and the world necessary for humans.
‘On the question whether Genesis and the theory of evolution would contradict each other, Newman considers the verse “All are of dust” (Eccles 3:20) and concludes: “yet we never were dust—we are from fathers. Why may not the same be the case with Adam? I don’t know why Adam needs be immediately out of dust—Formavit Deus hominem de limo terrae (“God formed man from the dust of the earth” (Gen 2:7)-i.e., out of what really was dust and mud in nature, before He made it what it was, living.” Newman was one of the first theologians (together with Rev. Charles Kingsley and Rev. Frederick Temple, both Anglicans) who were positive voices acknowledging that Darwin’s theory did not contradict the Christian faith.’--- H. Newman, quoted in Chieflifejournal.
Henry Newman also brings up the question of ‘the supposed improbability of their being planets with rational inhabitants,’ hinting he would also have no problem if there were such aliens. Here then, we find again the old Pythagorean heresies that Pope Urban VIII predicted would happen if the Galilean heresy was allowed as a truth of faith and reason. Prof. A. A. Martinez tells us:
‘[St] Thomas also denied the claim that there are multiple worlds. Like Hippolytus, he attributed this false claim to those who did not acknowledge the ordering wisdom of God. St Thomas declared: “Those who posit many worlds do not believe in any ordaining wisdom, but in chance, as Democritus, who said that this world and infinitely many others came from a concourse of atoms.”’--- Burned Alive.
Matthew 24:24: ‘For false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.’
The U-turn of 1820 by Pope Pius VII set the scene for Modernism in the Church. From that day onward every Pope and clergyman had to accept the heresy of heliocentrism as it affected history and the proper understanding of Scripture. Pope Leo went on to give such 'corrections' a licence in his Providentissimus Deus and that was carried on by every churchman thereafter.
Notre Dame University’s Church Life Journal called Henry Newman ‘the patron saint of evolution.’ Then there was Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
‘Recently I was happy to read a similar assessment by Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979) written after the 1962 monitum. In an article on Teilhard entitled Personality: Earth and Heaven, Venerable Sheen wrote: “It is very likely that when all the trivial, verbal disputes about Teilhard's ‘unfortunate’ vocabulary will have died away or have taken a secondary place, Teilhard will appear like John of the Cross or Saint Teresa of Avila, as a spiritual genius of the twentieth century.”’--- In the Fullness of Time, Asian Trading Corporation, Bangalore, India, 1999, twentieth anniversary of Venerable Sheen’s death, pp. 71-72.
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‘Recently I was happy to read a similar assessment by Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979) written after the 1962 monitum. In an article on Teilhard entitled Personality: Earth and Heaven, Venerable Sheen wrote: “It is very likely that when all the trivial, verbal disputes about Teilhard's ‘unfortunate’ vocabulary will have died away or have taken a secondary place, Teilhard will appear like John of the Cross or Saint Teresa of Avila, as a spiritual genius of the twentieth century.”’--- In the Fullness of Time, Asian Trading Corporation, Bangalore, India, 1999, twentieth anniversary of Venerable Sheen’s death, pp. 71-72.
:facepalm:
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Good for you. You know have a patron saint for your R&R that was also responsible for the modern ideas that led to Vatican II.
I await your refutation, instead of your tiresome blathering.
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Catholic notion of development of doctrine is very clear. Propositions are drawn from the Deposit of Revelation. But Newman had this notion of a Hegelian Dialectic development where the Church's doctrine keeps going back and forth in "alternate" directions before it leads closer to the ultimate truth.
Lies and ignorance on display, from one who’s never read the book he’s commenting on.
He says exactly the opposite of the position you attribute to him.
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Henry Newman was not unlike Galileo, who also boasted of his superior intellect. When Newman stood for the Oriel Fellowship, he confided to his father that;
‘Few have ever attained the facility and comprehension which I arrived at from the regularity and constancy of my reading and the laborious and nerve-bracing and fancy-repressing study of mathematics, which has been my principal subject.’ (Vincent Ferrer Belhl: Pilgrim’s Journey. John Henry Newman, Paulist Press, 2002, p.45)
Are you sure that wasn’t a quote from Ladislaus?
:laugh2:
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I await your refutation, instead of your tiresome blathering.
Refute what, Sean? There's no argument here, just a gratuitous statement from a man of suspect orthodoxy that's never been taught or supported by any Catholic theologian. Newman makes a gratuitous assertion, without any evidence or even argument, and I gratuitously reject it. Cf. the explanation from Bishop Sanborn on the other thread you devote to the great Conciliar Saint.
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:facepalm:
Yes Ladislaus, :facepalm: every churchman from 1820 went along with the 'scientific' modernism brought about by the concession to heliocentrism, defined and declared in 1616 and 1633 by popes Paul V and Urban VIII as formal HERESY. That said, every pope up to Pius XII tried to stop Modernism but they couldn't because they had to go along with their predecessor Pius VII who was conned by Fr Olivieri into permitting a heliocentric reading of Scripture. Even Pope St Pius x, was dragged into the greatest deceit in Church history;
Pope St Pius X - on the advice of Italian astronomer Cardinal Pietro Maffi - designated Fr G. Hagen S.J. (1847-1930) as director of the Specola Vaticana. Such was Fr Hagan’s reputation on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1927, that he was visited at the observatory by Pope Pius XI (1922-39) who presented him with a special gold medal. So, what service to astronomy was such that Fr Hagan deserved to be made director of the observatory and get a holy gold medal from reigning popes?
‘The Rev. William F. Rigge, S.J., professor of physics and astronomy at Creighton University, has a long article running through the April and May [1913] numbers of Popular Astronomy on “Experimental Proofs of the Earth’s Rotation.” It is an abridged and popular presentation of the book published by Father Hagen, S.J., director of the Vatican Observatory in 1911. It is divided into four parts. The first treats of bodies falling from a height, which on account of their being farther from the Earth’s axis of revolution when on the top of a tower, move eastward faster than the ground and must therefore fall east of the point directly below them. The second mentions various forms of pendulums, especially Foucault’s, whose plane of vibration, while really fixed, appears to shift on account of the Earth’s rotation. The third part treats of gyroscopes, and shows how they are used to prove that our Earth turns on an axis. The fourth part explains various other apparatus, including two machines of Father Hagen’s own invention. “It looks like an amende honorable to the Galileo imbroglio,” says Fr. Rigge in the Creighton Chronicle “that the Pope’s own astronomer should come openly before the world with such a learned work and should even produce two new experiments to prove the fact of the Earth’s rotation. Not that we imply that Galileo was condemned for the sole reason that he upheld this doctrine of the Earth’s motion — for which however he had absolutely no proof whatever — but that we have now one argument more, and one that fully offsets any fault that may have been committed before.”’--- Fr W. F. Rigge, S.J. (The Fortnightly Review: Mission Press of the Society of the Divine Illinois, 1913)
‘It looks like an amende honourable [English law. A penalty imposed upon a person by way of disgrace or infamy, as a punishment for any offence, or for the purpose of making reparation for any injury done to another, as the walking into church in a white sheet, with a rope about the neck, and begging the pardon of God, or the king, or any private individual, for some delinquency.] to the Galileo imbroglio,’ [An acutely painful or embarrassing misunderstanding] adds Fr. Rigge S.J., describing the humiliation with which churchmen of his time viewed the Catholic Church supposedly getting its Biblical and philosophical meaning wrong in 1616 and in Galileo’s trial in 1633. Above we see the Jesuits of the Vatican Observatory, in Pope St Pius X’s and Pope Pius XI’s time, were now, in the name of the Church, trying to convince all how Galileo’s science and heretical Biblical hermeneutics were correct and Catholic. They did this by regurgitating all the so-called proofs for a rotating Earth, even when cosmologists were admitting relativity prevails so no proof for an orbiting Earth ever existed. This then is how the ‘intellectual’ Jesuits tried to stop all ‘accusations against the Church as an enemy of scientific progress,’ by defending the false science.
Matthew 24:24: ‘For false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.’
See then that the greatest error ever made in the Catholic Church was in 1820 when 'material' heresy entered the womb of the Church. I say material because it was not an intentional rejection of a dogma, it was based on ignorance and the wrong advice. The Devil fooled the whole world including popes of the Catholic Church, proving what Jesus said, that he was 'the Father of lies.' Not only did popes go along with the lie that their predecessors in 1616 and 1633 made a mistake when defining what Holy Scripture really means, what Trent said was the opinion of ALL the Fathers, inferring ALL the Fathers were also wrong, but they cannot admit to the truth now because the lie is less harmful to the credibility of the Catholic Church than the truth. So, it is history now, that since 1820 modernist Catholicism became more credible than supernatural Catholicism which in turn has lost millions of Catholics from the faith plunging our generation into the worst time ever to defend tradition.
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Refute what, Sean? There's no argument here, just a gratuitous statement from a man of suspect orthodoxy that's never been taught or supported by any Catholic theologian. Newman makes a gratuitous assertion, without any evidence or even argument, and I gratuitously reject it. Cf. the explanation from Bishop Sanborn on the other thread you devote to the great Conciliar Saint.
Gratuitous assertions, but no arguments.
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Words spoken by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster at the Solemn Requiem at the Oratory, South Kensington, 20th August 1890.
"We have lost our greatest witness for the Faith, and we are all poorer and lower by the loss."
https://www.newmanreader.org/biography/manning90.html
To Cardinal Manning and Pope St. Pius X, we can add Cardinal Merry del Val (Secretary of State under Pope St. Pius X) to the defenders of the orthodoxy of Cardinal Newman:
"Pascendi had in fact been commissioned by a native English-speaking cardinal; indeed, by a consultor to the Index, who actively quoted Newman’s writings and recommended them to others. Far from being a liberal fifth column within the Vatican, this was none other than Pius’ impeccably ultramontane Cardinal Secretary of State, Rafael Merry del Val...It was Merry del Val who commissioned [Fr.] Joseph Lemius, procurator of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, to draft Pascendi; Merry del Val who took a lead role in enforcing its anti-modernist agenda; and – nota bene – Merry del Val who tirelessly championed Newman’s orthodoxy, using the semi-official L’Osservatore Romano to underline the ‘world of difference between what the Cardinal taught and the Modernism which is condemned in the Encyclical."
https://web.archive.org/web/20160127105443/http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2015/10/09/on-the-feast-of-blessed-john-henry-newman-raise-a-glass-to-pius-x/
I think I place more stock in the endorsement and defenses of St. Pius X, Cardinal Manning, and Cardinal del Val, than in the condemnations of Ladislaus and Cassini.
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I agree Sean-- It should be remembered that some think that Popes Leo X & Pius X actually kept a "freemason OTO" Cardinal Rampolla as Sec of State, Chmn Pontifical Biblical Commission, Director of Vatican Library, as well as Arch-priest of Vatican Cathedral( personal custodian of relics of S Peter). I hope no one is dumb enough to swallow this or any other shinola from any Dogmatic geo-centrist or FE clown thinking they know better. It should also be remembered that Card Merry Del Val ( Card Raphael) is consecrated as Bishop by Rampolla. :popcorn:
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Cardinal Newman was a total pre-Modernist. The great Orestes Brownson, a convert, and one of the greatest writers in American history, totally destroyed Newman's liberalism.
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I agree Sean-- It should be remembered that some think that Popes Leo X & Pius X actually kept a "freemason OTO" Cardinal Rampolla as Sec of State, Chmn Pontifical Biblical Commission, Director of Vatican Library, as well as Arch-priest of Vatican Cathedral( personal custodian of relics of S Peter). I hope no one is dumb enough to swallow this or any other shinola from any Dogmatic geo-centrist or FE clown thinking they know better. It should also be remembered that Card Merry Del Val ( Card Raphael) is consecrated as Bishop by Rampolla. :popcorn:
Yeah, Cardinal Rampolla, another example of the problems of Pope Leo XIII’s papacy.:laugh1:
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I suppose we should investigate Sean’s sources on Card Newman with a fine tooth comb.
In looking at Newman’s motivations to convert, it appears there’s a good argument that he was a Marrano who bought his high office with his Jєωιѕн banker Daddy’s wealth, with the purpose to infiltrate and undemine the the Church.
He’s definitely not a Saint and more likely a ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ.
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I suppose we should investigate Sean’s sources on Card Newman with a fine tooth comb.
In looking at Newman’s motivations to convert, it appears there’s a good argument that he was a Marrano who bought his high office with his Jєωιѕн banker Daddy’s wealth, with the purpose to infiltrate and undemine the the Church.
The sources are all at your disposal, in the citations provided.
If you were referring to the citations I transcribed from his book in the other thread, you will find then enumerated just as I gave them here;
https://www.newmanreader.org/works/rambler/consulting.html
As regards the notion that Newman was a heterodox infiltrator, you have established neither his heterodoxity, nor his insincerity, and more than this, your theory implicates his defenders (which include St. Pius X, whose sainthood you would thereby also call into question).
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Yeah, Cardinal Rampolla, another example of the problems of Pope Leo XIII’s papacy.:laugh1:
I am not aware of any problems w/ the Papacy of Leo XIII...:confused:
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I am not aware of any problems w/ the Papacy of Leo XIII...:confused:
‘In the nineteenth century, as man’s knowledge of antiquity increased, many strange voices began to attack the divine origin and truthfulness of the Bible. In the ensuing storm, the traditional voice of Christendom rose clear and calm in the person of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) with his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, solemnly affirming that the entire Bible is God’s word, holy and true. He outlined a stricter scientific method for studying the Holy books, which was to bear great fruit in the following years.’---The Holy Bible, Catholic Press, Inc., Chicago, 1950.
Given the history of Biblical changes undertaken by the 1950s when the above piece was written, one could take the idea that Providentissimus Deus (1893) or any other encyclical on the study of Scripture ‘bore great fruit’ with a pinch of salt. The tell-tale words in the paragraph above are ‘as man’s knowledge of antiquity increased,’ that is, as man’s ‘secular theories of origins increased.’ By 1893, with ‘proof’ for an evolved heliocentric reading of Scripture now falsified, surely it was time to address and correct this matter of Biblical history and Pope Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus was surely the place to do it.
As any Catholic would expect, having first introduced the reader to a proper view of the Catholic Bible, its divine inspiration, its purpose and use by the Church over the centuries, its inerrancy in all its parts, all done in the most beautiful holy language, this good Pope then correctly identified the false science of those attacking the Scriptures and the faith contained within them. With all this in mind, let us continue with Providentissimus Deus:
‘14: His teaching [St Irenaeus] and that of other holy Fathers, is taken up by the Synod of the Vatican I, adopted the teaching of the Fathers, when, as it renewed the decree of Trent on the interpretations of the divine Word, it declared this to be its mind, that “in matters of faith and morals, which pertain to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the true sense of Holy Scripture which Mother Church has held and holds, whose prerogative it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of Scripture; and therefore, it is permitted to no one to interpret the Holy Scriptures against this sense, or even against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” By this very wise law the Church by no means retards or blocks the investigations of Biblical science, but rather keeps it free of error, and aids it very much in true progress
Now let us look back at one of the reasons why a Biblical heliocentrism was defined as formal heresy:
(1) “That the sun is in the centre of the world and altogether immovable by local movement,” was unanimously declared to be “foolish, philosophically absurd, and formally heretical [denial of a revelation by God] inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the declarations of Holy Scripture in many passages, according to the proper meaning of the language used, and the sense in which they have been expounded and understood by [all] the Fathers and theologians.”
Providentissimus deus continues: ‘18. In the second place, we have to contend against those who, making an evil use of physical science, minutely scrutinize the Sacred Book in order to detect the writers in a mistake, and to take occasion to vilify its contents. Attacks of this kind, bearing as they do on matters of sensible experience, are peculiarly dangerous to the masses, and also to the young who are beginning their literary studies; for the young, if they lose their reverence for the Holy Scripture on one or more points, are easily led to give up believing in it altogether...
Now while Pope Leo XIII above was explicitly pointing out the danger of ‘an evil use of physical science’ to change the revelations of Scripture, little did he know the damage was already done when previous popes (the elect) had fallen into the trap of false science in 1820 when Pius VII gave the thumbs up to a heliocentric reading of the Bible. Knowledge of the natural sciences, says the encyclical, will be a great help to ‘refute fallacious arguments of the kind drawn up against the Scriptures.’ True again, provided of course the science is true. Yes, all said in this guide so far is wonderful, and anyone reading this encyclical could expect corrections would follow now that the Airy and M&M science tests demonstrated geocentrism was never falsified. Alas, the opposite followed:
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‘18: To understand how just is the rule here formulated we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost “Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation” (St Augustine). Hence, they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time, and which in many instances are in daily use at this day [‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’?], even by the most eminent men of science. Ordinary speech primarily and properly describes what comes under the senses; and somewhat in the same way the sacred writers, as the Angelic Doctor also reminds us, “went by what sensibly appeared,” or put down what God, speaking to men, signified, in the way men could understand and were accustomed to.’--- Providentissimus Deus.
St Augustine’s ‘essential nature of the visible universe,’ is best described as the immaterial quality that defines something as the kind of thing it is; like the Holy Ghost did not intend to teach us things like universal gravity, how such motions are caused, or the mathematical dimensions of the universe. A Biblical geocentric revelation however, was profitable for salvation as St Thomas Aquinas demonstrated when developing the Sacred Doctrine of Geocentrism, in his Summa Theologica? Didn’t the Lord Himself also say:
If I have“ told you earthly things, and ye believe not,
how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” (John 3:12).
‘Since Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893), Catholic exegetes have abandoned the idea that the Bible is meant to teach science, adding this principle to the age-old Catholic principle that the Bible must be reconciled with science, at least with settled science. Pope Leo explicitly states that Sacred Scripture speaks in a popular language that describes physical things as they appear to the senses, and so does not describe them with scientific exactitude. The Fathers of the Church were mistaken in some of their opinions about questions of science. Catholics are only obliged to follow the opinion of the Fathers when they were unanimous on questions of faith and morals, where they did not err, and not on questions of science, where they sometimes erred.’--- Fr Paul Robinson, SSPX.
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History records Providentissimus Deus failed to stop the ‘rationalists’ from using scientific theories to give modernist meanings to the Bible and Catholic faith, but actually gave approval to such changes under the guise of ‘Church teaching.’ Proof of this is found in the following quotes over the last 120 years.
‘Similarly, “the sun stood still,” like our “the sun rises,” is a popular method of speaking, and involves the fact that in some way or another God Almighty did prolong the hours of light in the case of Joshua; They were men of their own time and not in front of it, and they fell into the errors natural to what figured in those days of science. But we should be careful to make use of the better guidance which we have obtained in such utterances as the “Providentissimus Deus” and avoid the mistakes which we can see our predecessors have made and which, indeed, it would have been exceedingly difficult for them to have avoided.’ (Sir Bertram Windle: The Church and Science, Catholic Truth Society, 1920, p.81.)
‘Anyone who will compare this [Galileo’s] wonderful letter with the encyclical Providentissimus Deus of Pope Leo XIII on the study of Holy Scripture will see how near in many places Galileo came to the very words of the Holy Father.’ (James Brodrick, S.J: The life of Cardinal Bellarmine, Burns Oats, 1928, p.351.)
‘But Bellarmine erred in its application, for the theological principles with which Galileo supported his system were merely those afterwards officially adopted and taught us by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical, Providentissimus Deus.’ (E. C Messenger: Evolution and Theology, Burns, Oats and Washbourne, 1931.)
‘A century ago (1893), Pope Leo XIII echoed this [Galileo’s] advice in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus.’--- (Pope John Paul II: Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences when presenting the findings of the 1981-1992 Galileo Commission.)
‘Actually, almost 100 years before Pope John Paul II’s apology, an earlier Pope (Leo XIII) effectively reinstated Galileo in an encyclical dealing with how Catholics should study the Bible…. “In 1893, Pope Leo XIII made honorable amends to Galileo’s memory by basing his encyclical Providentissimus Deus on the principles of exegesis that Galileo had expounded.”’ (D. A. Crombie’s ‘A History of Science from Augustine to Galileo,’ Vol. 2, 1996, p.225)
‘Galileo’s principle has apparently become the official hermeneutic criterion of the Catholic Church. It is alluded to in the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus by Pope Leo (1893), referred to in Guadium et Spes of the Vatican Council II (1965).’ (The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, 1998, p.367.)
‘On the other hand, Galileo was right about heliocentricism. Moreover, some of his theological wanderings eventually found themselves mirrored in several papal encyclicals of the last two centuries. Providentissimus Deus by Pope Leo XIII and Humani Generis by Pope Pius XII, for instance, both have pieces that could have been extracted from Galileo’s Letters to the Grand Duchess Christina… Galileo seems to have won out both on theological as well as scientific grounds…’ (J. T. Winschel: Galileo, Victim or Villain, The Angelus, Oct. 2003, p.38.)
‘Galileo’s views on the interpretation of scripture were fundamentally derived from St Augustine. Galileo’s views, expounded in the Letter to Castelli and his Letter to Christina and elsewhere, are in fact close to those expounded three centuries later by Pope Leo XIII, who in his encyclical on the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture [Providentissimus Deus], declared….’ (Cardinal Cathal Daly: The Minding of Planet Earth, Veritas, 2004, p.68.)
‘A sort of climax of the hermeneutical aspect of the Galileo affair occurred in 1893 with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter Providentissimus Deus, for this docuмent put forth a view of the relationship between Biblical interpretation and scientific investigation that corresponded to the one advanced by Galileo in his letters to Castelli and Christina.’ (M. A. Finocchiaro: Retrying Galileo, 2007, p.264.)
‘Galileo addressed this problem in his famous Letter to Castelli. In its approach to Biblical exegesis, the letter ironically anticipates Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893), which pointed out that Scripture often makes use of figurative language and is not meant to teach science. Galileo accepted the inerrancy of Scripture; but he was also mindful of Cardinal Baronius’s quip that the Bible “is intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”’ (Catholics United for the Faith – what the Catholic Church teaches, 2010.)
‘The Society of Saint Pius X holds no such position [Biblical geocentrism]. The Church’s magisterium teaches that Catholics should not use Sacred Scripture to assert explanations about natural science, but may in good conscience hold to any particular cosmic theory. Providentissimus Deus also states that Scripture does not give scientific explanations and many of its texts use “figurative language” or expressions “commonly used at the time”, still used today “even by the most eminent men of science” (like the word “sunrise”)’--- SSPX press release, 30/8/2011.
‘When Pope Leo XIII wrote on the importance of science and reason, he essentially embraced the philosophical principles put forth by Galileo, and many statements by Popes and the Church over the years have expressed admiration for Galileo. For example, Galileo was specifically singled out for praise by Pope Pius XII in his address to the International Astronomical Union in 1952.’ (Vatican Observatory website 2013.)
‘To excite Catholic students to rival non-Catholics in the study of the Scriptures, and at the same time guide their studies, Pope Leo XIII in 1893 published “Providentissimus Deus,” which won the admiration even of Protestants.’ (New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia: Largest Catholic website in the world, 2013.)
Having stated when all the Father agree on a reading of Scripture, Pope Leo then goes along with a rejection of a reading of all the Fathers. This concession to Galileo's heretical heliocentrism has popes contradicting themselves and each other. And that is how the Catholic Church has ended up where it is today.
‘… The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are. We cannot but deplore certain attitudes (not unknown among Christians) deriving from a short-sighted view of the rightful autonomy of science; they have occasioned conflict and controversy and have misled many into opposing faith and science.’---VATICAN II Gaudium et spes, # 36.
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Thank you very much cassini. Your posts here are magnificent. Let the truth shine forth in all its beauty and glory.
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It never ceases to amaze me how many people think that they are Il Papa...:fryingpan:
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Fr. Feeney wasn't a fan of Newman, as the following shows:
Fr. Feeney's The Point newsletter, October 1952:
The Point newsletter, October 1952:
BY FATHER FEENEY
John Henry Newman was constantly praised for the clarity of his English prose and the limpid lucidity of his style. That he possesses these qualities, no one can deny. But his is the cold clarity of clear water in a fish bowl, in which one looks in vain for the fish.
The more you read Newman, the less you remember what he says. He is an author whom it is impossible to quote. What you recall, after you have finished reading him, is never what the clarity of his style was revealing, but some small, unwarranted queerness that it was almost concealing. You remember that Newman said that a chandelier “depends” from a ceiling; and if you look up “depends” in the dictionary, you will find that “hangs from” is exactly what it means. You remember that Newman felt entitled to mispronounce deliberately one English word to show his proprietorship over the language. He pronounced “soldier” as sol—dee—err. You remember that Newman was perpetually fussing about Reverend E. B. Pusey, who seems, in some refined way, to have gotten under his skin.
You remember Newman was shocked that Catholics were giving Protestants the grounds for declaring that “the honor of Our Lady is dearer to Catholics than the conversion of England,” as though anything else could be the childlike truth. You remember that Newman particularly disliked the Marian writings of St. Alfonso Liguori, a Doctor of the Universal Church, and said of these writings, “They are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.” You remember that, with regard to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Newman insisted, in scholarly fashion, that “her case is essentially the same as St. John the Baptist, save for a difference of six months” — which is precisely the difference this dogma demands. You remember that, though Newman was in favor of Papal Infallibility, he was not in favor of its being infallibly defined by the Pope.
(from London is a Place, The Ravengate Press, Boston)
https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-october-1952/
Fr. Feeney's The Point newsletter, October 1953:
The Newman Clubs
Amid the ordered barbarism which the late Dr. Roosevelt was wont to call “our American way of life,” there is established a pattern which may be identified by the name of “our club culture.” For the levels of American sociability lend themselves admirably to a breakdown by “clubs” — beginning at the top with the polo club, the yacht club, the country club, descending through the women’s club, the bridge club, the Lions Club, and terminating inelegantly at “Mike’s Club — Beer Ten Cents a Glass.”
Distributed up and down this vertical hierarchy (generously in the middle, sparsely at either end) are the subsidiary clubs — aggregations of button collectors, bird watchers, and the offspring of American Revolutionaries. With pompous Mesdames President and dutiful sub-chairmen, the members of the clubs sustain themselves in that one interest which provides their common unity — to wit, bizarre buttons, odd birds, or rabble-rousing ancestors.
In the midst of these lesser gatherings, and willing to be taken for one of them, is the Newman Club Federation, that appraisal of the Catholic Faith as “something to have a doubt about.”
Newman Clubs are now about fifty years old. Their members are those tragically misplaced persons, Catholic students at non-Catholic colleges. And their very name, Newman, gives them away.
It was the spirit of Newman’s writings, quite as much as his over-esteemed clarity, which made him so fit the purposes of American Catholics at non-Catholic colleges. For in everything that Newman said in print, after he rationalized his way into the Church, there is a clear determination to dissociate himself from all that he considered vulgar (that is, not English) in his new-found religion. He felt, for example, that devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was being carried too far, and that the infallibility of the Pope was something to keep quiet about!
As they started off, the Newman Clubs selected John Henry Cardinal Newman as their patron for many reasons, one of which was their certainty that he would never embarrass them by getting canonized and turning into a patron-saint. Newman, they decided, was an eminently acceptable variety of Catholic to bring to the attention of our secular universities. To begin with, he was not a noisy Irish-American Catholic, but an ex-Anglican English one. And he was not only literate, he was even literary.
The establishers of the Newman Clubs must have realized, however, that in importing his spirit, much of Newman’s Oxford refinement and Anglican propriety would be lost in transit. For when it is found on a Midwestern university campus, clad in blue-jeans at a Newman Club weenie roast, the spirit of John Henry Cardinal Newman as stripped of all but its most basic elements: compromise of and apology for the Faith.
The Newman Club maintains that a Catholic student can “stick it out” at a secular college and preserve his Faith by means of weekly teas, monthly dances and an occasional festive breakfast, preceded by a hasty Holy Communion. In fact, Newman Club bulletins point proudly to recent surveys which report that although the percentage of Catholic students who leave the Faith at secular colleges is very high, the number is considerably lower among those students who are Newman Clubbers.
The Newman policy is blithely and blindly to assume that the student who does not openly break with the Faith must therefore still have it. And this policy explains the Newman Club alumni, those secularly-educated thousands who are, in name, Catholic, but who are, in sympathy, outlook, judgment, appreciation, manner, in their very impulse, non-Catholic, and what is worse, unconcerned that this is the case.
The declared purpose of the Newman Club movement is, “the religious, intellectual, and social betterment of its members.” Understood, is the qualification, “provided such betterment in no way interferes with that primary consideration, the Catholic student’s acquisition of a secular college degree.” Thus, the effectiveness of a Newman Club as a secular college is the effectiveness of the boy who held his finger in the leaking dike, hoping to keep back the flood which was pouring in over the top.
Our necessary conclusion? We prefer degree-less Catholics to drowned ones.
https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-october-1953/
Fr. Feeney's The Point newsletter, December 1954:
THE PRESENT POSITION OF CARDINAL NEWMAN
Q. What is it about John Henry Newman, English convert and Cardinal, that Catholics chiefly remember?
A. His mastery of English prose.
Q. What is it about John Henry Newman that Catholics of our day generally forget?
A. They forget, or never have been told of, his Jєωιѕн descent.
Q. If we Catholics were to bear in mind Newman’s real ancestry when we are appraising his literary ability, could we not then boast that we have had in our fold the greatest Jєωιѕн writer in the English language?
A. We could — except for the fact that there have been in the English language other Jєωιѕн writers, like Robert Browning, Max Beerbohm, and Philip Guedalla, who never once thought of joining the Catholic Church.
Q. Apart from his literary abilities, did not Newman make a good conversion to the Catholic Church?
A. He made a nostalgic conversion.
Q. What sort of conversion is that?
A. It is a conversion effected in a typical Old Testament manner, in which one is always sighing after the “flesh-pots” of things one has abandoned, and which in Newman’s case required an Apologia Pro Vita Sua, an apology for his own life, to justify.
Q. After his conversion, and his ordination to the priesthood, is it really true that Newman used often to forego theological studies and pastoral pursuits in order to devote more time to reading from the pagan Greeks?
A. Biographers disagree. Newman’s only comment in the matter was his repeated remark, “I shall never be a saint, for I love the pagan classics too intensely.”
Q. Did not the blood which he inherited, from the Jєωιѕн moneylender who was his father, allow Newman to bring to the Faith some of those same racial qualities possessed by the very earliest Christians, by Our Lord’s own Apostles and disciples?
A. The Jєωιѕн qualities which Newman brought to the Faith have been very tidily set in order by Canon William Barry, S. T. D., the eminent English authority on Newman. Canon Barry reports that to Newman’s “Hebrew affinities” the following qualities are attributed: “ … his cast of features, his remarkable skill in music and mathematics, his dislike of metaphysical speculations, his grasp of the concrete, and his nervous temperament.”
Q. What was it that Newman called those fellow Catholics of his who, at the time of the Vatican Council, were in favor of having the Pope’s personal infallibility defined?
A. Newman nervously called them, “an aggressive and insolent faction.”
Q. Was this attitude toward the definition of Papal infallibility the reason why Pope Pius IX so totally mistrusted Newman?
A. It was one of the reasons.
Q. If Pope Pius IX so frowned upon him, why was Newman made a Cardinal?
A. Newman was made a Cardinal after Pope Pius IX died, when the Catholic Duke of Norfolk prevailed upon the newly installed Leo XIII to brighten the aged Newman’s final years with a red hat.
Q. Is it in England that Cardinal Newman’s spirit best survives today?
A. It is not. Modern Catholic Englishmen, without analyzing it, sense that Cardinal Newman was, religiously, the kind of interloper in their midst that Prime Minister Disraeli was politically.
Q. Where then have Newman’s name and fame been most perpetuated?
A. In America, in the form of clubs. Newman Clubs, they are called.
Q. What is a Newman Club?
A. It is an organized excuse for the presence, the sinful presence, of Catholic students at secular universities founded and fostered by Masons and, lately, indoctrinated by Jews.
https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-december-1954/
There's also another brief mention of the "Newman Clubs" in the May 1955 issue of The Point:
This propensity for Judaizing young Gentiles was one of Dr. Sachar’s principal recommendations for the Brandeis presidency. The other was a repeated declaration, following necessarily from his Zionist loyalty, that America is not a “melting pot,” and that Jews must not only stick to being Jews, they must even rejoice in their Jєωιѕнness.
In order to attract Gentile students, for processing under his experienced direction, Dr. Sachar has allowed a Newman Club and a Student Christian Association to take their places beside Brandeis University’s lively Hillel chapter. Profoundly touched by the limitless opportunities thus afforded him, Dr. Sachar has resolved upon a rededication of himself to the spirit and ideals of that Rabbi Hillel for whom the Hillel movement was named — the rabbi who, until his death in 10 A.D., was head of the Jerusalem sanhedrin and who was, as such, the chief promoter of King Herod’s “slaughter of the Holy Innocents,” the first of the Jєωιѕн attempts to get rid of Jesus.
https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-may-1955/
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Fr. Feeney wasn't a fan of Newman, as the following shows:
Fr. Feeney's The Point newsletter, October 1952:
The Point newsletter, October 1952:
BY FATHER FEENEY
John Henry Newman was constantly praised for the clarity of his English prose and the limpid lucidity of his style. That he possesses these qualities, no one can deny. But his is the cold clarity of clear water in a fish bowl, in which one looks in vain for the fish.
The more you read Newman, the less you remember what he says. He is an author whom it is impossible to quote. What you recall, after you have finished reading him, is never what the clarity of his style was revealing, but some small, unwarranted queerness that it was almost concealing. You remember that Newman said that a chandelier “depends” from a ceiling; and if you look up “depends” in the dictionary, you will find that “hangs from” is exactly what it means. You remember that Newman felt entitled to mispronounce deliberately one English word to show his proprietorship over the language. He pronounced “soldier” as sol—dee—err. You remember that Newman was perpetually fussing about Reverend E. B. Pusey, who seems, in some refined way, to have gotten under his skin.
You remember Newman was shocked that Catholics were giving Protestants the grounds for declaring that “the honor of Our Lady is dearer to Catholics than the conversion of England,” as though anything else could be the childlike truth. You remember that Newman particularly disliked the Marian writings of St. Alfonso Liguori, a Doctor of the Universal Church, and said of these writings, “They are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.” You remember that, with regard to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Newman insisted, in scholarly fashion, that “her case is essentially the same as St. John the Baptist, save for a difference of six months” — which is precisely the difference this dogma demands. You remember that, though Newman was in favor of Papal Infallibility, he was not in favor of its being infallibly defined by the Pope.
(from London is a Place, The Ravengate Press, Boston)
After reading this, those with eyes to see... can appreciate the power of Father Feeney's Catholic intellect.
Being of Irish descent, he was intuitively suspicious of any monied, Anglican, Brit-jew convert.
And as our British Bishop Williamson would say, "Naturally!"
(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsecure.i.telegraph.co.uk%2Fmultimedia%2Farchive%2F01681%2FNewman-1_1436217c_1681505c.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=ebd1d1a5c5257c4fe092ed55b3bf86d3046f8d27b7979a73db44c95397d40257&ipo=images)
In the BBC's propaganda efforts to help manufacture the Newman-saint, they gave us a glimpse of Card. Newman's production room study.
His library was extensive, even today they have yet to complete the categorization of his writings and collections.
His study didn't so much represent the study of an intellectual, holy man seeking the truth, but of a man with an agenda.
Surely, Newman and his assistants could cut & paste Catholic writings to imitate the Faith, but in his high office, he was positioned to undermine the Church.
The fact that Bl. Pope Pius IX didn't trust him should be good enough for trads.
But if Sean Johnson, truly thinks Newman is a saint, perhaps Matthew should organize and monitor a forum debate on the topic?
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Newman wrote:
Protestantism is a dismal evil; but in this respect Providence has overruled it for the good. It has, by allowing free inquiry in science, destroyed a bugbear, and thereby saved Catholics so far from the misery of hollow profession and secret infidelity….' (Fr John Henry Newman, 1861.
Here God used Protestantism to bring out the truth of Biblical heliocentrism that saved the Catholic Church from having to hold to its 1616 and 1633 decrees on a formal heresy.
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Fr. Feeney wasn't a fan of Newman, as the following shows:
Fr. Feeney's The Point newsletter, October 1952:
Msgr. Fenton didn't care for him either. And Cardinal Manning couldn't stand him. About a half dozen bishops in Great Britain denounced him to Rome for being suspect of Modernistm and heresy.
Newman agitated against papal infallibility and only accepted it later under his notion that a future pope would "correct" the Church's understanding of infallibility as defined at Vatican I. That's clearly a quintissentially Modernist viewpoint.
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Father Feeney (cited above):
The more you read Newman, the less you remember what he says. He is an author whom it is impossible to quote. What you recall, after you have finished reading him, is never what the clarity of his style was revealing, but some small, unwarranted queerness that it was almost concealing.
hmmmm
This is true, though. I've read Newman and he rambles without saying anything of substance.
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Newman wrote:
Protestantism is a dismal evil; but in this respect Providence has overruled it for the good. It has, by allowing free inquiry in science, destroyed a bugbear, and thereby saved Catholics so far from the misery of hollow profession and secret infidelity….' (Fr John Henry Newman, 1861.
Here God used Protestantism to bring out the truth of Biblical heliocentrism that saved the Catholic Church from having to hold to its 1616 and 1633 decrees on a formal heresy.
You might want to review the conclusion of the CE, which I posted here, and nuance your opinion a bit:
https://www.cathinfo.com/catholic-living-in-the-modern-world/correcting-fr-paul-robinson's-catholic-faith-and-science/msg882418/?topicseen#msg882418
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(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsecure.i.telegraph.co.uk%2Fmultimedia%2Farchive%2F01681%2FNewman-1_1436217c_1681505c.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=ebd1d1a5c5257c4fe092ed55b3bf86d3046f8d27b7979a73db44c95397d40257&ipo=images)
Hmmm. He strongly resembles Michael Voris here.
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Hmmm. He strongly resembles Michael Voris here.
And why does he keep holding his ear?
He uses the same pose in many photos.
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Father Feeney was so funny!
"It was the spirit of Newman’s writings, quite as much as his over-esteemed clarity, which made him so fit the purposes of American Catholics at non-Catholic colleges. For in everything that Newman said in print, after he rationalized his way into the Church, there is a clear determination to dissociate himself from all that he considered vulgar (that is, not English) in his new-found religion. He felt, for example, that devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was being carried too far, and that the infallibility of the Pope was something to keep quiet about!"
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He’s definitely not a Saint and more likely a ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ.
This disgusting unfounded rumor originated in a sodomist magazine (in a lame attempt to normalize their perversion) and was picked up and spread far and wide by the TIA cult.
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This disgusting unfounded rumor originated in a sodomist magazine (in a lame attempt to normalize their perversion) and was picked up and spread far and wide by the TIA cult.
That relationship with Fr. Ambrose sounds disgusting.
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This disgusting unfounded rumor originated in a sodomist magazine (in a lame attempt to normalize their perversion) and was picked up and spread far and wide by the TIA cult.
Uhm, no. Suspicions regarding Newman and Ambrose St. John long predate these modern publications. Even the Modernist Vatican realized that something was off there, ordering that the remains of Newman be separated from those of Ambrose due to their desire to canonize Newman and to take this problem out of the spotlight. After Ambrose died, Newman spent the entire night lying with his corpse and weeping inconsolably. He also wrote that no spouse could have such deep feelings for a departed spouse as he had for Ambrose, and then willed that his mortal remains be mingled with those of Ambrose after his own death.
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This is an excellent book, by Father Paul Kimball ...
Cardinal Newman: Trojan Horse in the Church
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This is an excellent book, by Father Paul Kimball ...
Cardinal Newman: Trojan Horse in the Church
Here's a better one, pre-empting that one:
(https://i.imgur.com/cj0vRTB.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/0Zd5VnT.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/XSj682p.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/16vMNgw.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/6FTdpjD.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/nz3GFGO.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/uIOwnpI.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/ACS3mNZ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/FTNXOjE.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/848aJ1D.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/9LNo4IU.png)
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The more you read Newman, the less you remember what he says. He is an author whom it is impossible to quote. What you recall, after you have finished reading him, is never what the clarity of his style was revealing, but some small, unwarranted queerness that it was almost concealing.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA :laugh1:
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I have not yet read this thread, but I have read what Dr. Brownson says about the then "Mr. Newman" and his ideas of "The Development of Doctrine." Brownson and Card. Newman had a 17-year debate on this theory, and, I think the record shows, old Dr. Brownson got the better of him. http://www.orestesbrownson.org/newmans-theory-of-christian-doctrine.html (http://www.orestesbrownson.org/newmans-theory-of-christian-doctrine.html) Let the record state that Brownson respected Card. Newman, but certainly called into question his theory on the issue of "The Development of Doctrine."
In fact, Brownson was not in favor of Newman being promoted to cardinal, nor was he in favor of any Protestant convert being promoted to bishop/cardinal. And Brownson himself was a convert, the most famous of all lay converts. In fact the 1876 Jesuit publication, American Ecclesiastical Review (obituary article), ranks Brownson one of the top three minds of all time, ranking him alongside Plato and St. Augustine.
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I have not yet read this thread, but I have read what Dr. Brownson says about the then "Mr. Newman" and his ideas of "The Development of Doctrine." Brownson and Card. Newman had a 17-year debate on this theory, and, I think the record shows, old Dr. Brownson got the better of him. http://www.orestesbrownson.org/newmans-theory-of-christian-doctrine.html (http://www.orestesbrownson.org/newmans-theory-of-christian-doctrine.html) Let the record state that Brownson respected Card. Newman, but certainly called into question his theory on the issue of "The Development of Doctrine."
From the same book, regarding the objectoins of Dr. Brownson:
(https://i.imgur.com/bCWni65.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/DU5byP4.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/8j54a6m.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/EVWVxn3.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/PeeEf1H.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/Rv2CWC6.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/Oo1Glu9.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/go1jnK9.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/Ntc8VB9.png)
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Here's a better one, pre-empting that one:
Nonsense. Newman was one of the precursors of Modernism making it's way into the Church, thus Father Kimball's title calling him out as a Trojan Horse. Newman has often been called, quiet correctly, the Father of Vatican II.
We've already docuмented how he disliked papal infallibility and felt that a future pope would fix/correct it. This appeal to a future pope / Council and the notion that dogmas don't have to be believed as they were defined, in the sense they were defined at the time, is quintissential / textbook Modernism.
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Thanks Sean, will give this a read as well as the rest of the thread. It is worth any man's time to give Brownson a thorough read on the Newman question. If I recall it was Bishop John "The Dagger" Hughes of New York who asked Dr. Brownson to write a refutation of Newman, as he felt the "Development theory" dangerous.
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Nonsense. Newman was one of the precursors of Modernism making it's way into the Church, thus Father Kimball's title calling him out as a Trojan Horse. Newman has often been called, quiet correctly, the Father of Vatican II.
Complete ignorance from a man who obviously never read anything from the author he is criticizing.
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Thanks Sean, will give this a read as well as the rest of the thread. It is worth any man's time to give Brownson a thorough read on the Newman question. If I recall it was the Bishop John "The Dagger" Hughes of New York who asked Dr. Brownson to write a refutation of Newman, as he felt the "Development theory" dangerous.
Yet it was largely his development theory which rescued me from the modernist seminary and conciliarism. While they were trumpeting Newman's theory in their defense (just as te intro I posted above mentioned), I actually read the book and found them roundly and unambiguously condemned by it.
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Guilt by association?
Regarding Reverend Edmond Darvil Benard, I found mention of him (and Maritain and Newman), at some length in the following:
Seven Teachers in the Tradition
John T. Noonan Jr.
https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3224&context=vlr
The third of my teachers at this time was a theologian Edmund Darvil
Benard, a priest of the diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts and a gradu-
ate of Le Grande S´eminarie in Montreal. Benard was deeply conscious of
his American identity. He enjoyed singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
In preparing this paper, I discovered that in high school Benard was a
runner-up in a national contest of students speaking on the Constitution
of the United States. Despite this American identity, he had a Gallic qual-
ity, a finesse of feature and of mind, a quickness of intellect, and a re-
sourcefulness in argument that made every argument with him
exhilarating.
He taught a course at Catholic University that was, I believe, entitled
“Apologetics,” and apologetics is what I undertook to study with him. The
name, not very common today, suggests apology, but in its Latin root apolo-
gia it means “a rational defense” as in Newman’s autobiography, Apologia
pro Vita Sua. Benard was adept in a rational defense of the doctrines of the
Church.
Once more I cast myself as the questioner, the aggressive questioner,
more so with him than with the other two because he enjoyed it more. I
invited him out at times to dinner. He introduced me to his friend Eu-
gene Burke, a Paulist, and sometimes I went golfing with them. Our
friendship continued over the next several years as I settled into the philo-
sophical graduate program at Catholic University.
What stands out in particular memory is a trip I took back to Washing-
ton from North Carolina, where I had been visiting John Kennedy (not
the president). Benard and Burke had been on vacation, playing golf at
Pinehurst. I met them by prearrangement and rode back with them. All
the way, or so it seemed to my clerical companions, I argued with them
about John Courtney Murray’s new argument for religious liberty. How
was religious liberty for all reconcilable with the teachings of Leo XIII, of
Pius IX, of Gregory XVI, not to mention the teachings and actions of me-
dieval popes? Benard never shut off my challenges, although I think that
he tired a bit on this trip of six or seven hours. “You ought to talk to
Murray yourself,” he said, and I eventually did at Woodstock in Maryland.
At this time, and for some time to come, I had a narrow sense of the
development of doctrine.
Benard, I should add, was an authority on Newman and wrote a book
about Newman. Newman’s name was scarcely unknown to me, but I
should credit Benard with leading me to a greater appreciation of New-
man’s range and depth as the best of all theologians writing in English.
Smith, Arbez, Benard. I turn from the special pleasure of touching
on memories of my twenties to teachers I learned from later.
My fourth teacher in the tradition I met only once, but the occasion
and the lesson were memorable, and I was taught in addition by his books.
About 1950, I was still in graduate studies at the School of Philosophy at
the Catholic University when I heard that Jacques Maritain was teaching a
graduate seminar in philosophy at Princeton. Maritain was widely re-
garded as the preeminent Catholic philosopher in the world. I deter-
mined to attend at least one session of the seminar at Princeton and did
so.
The subject of the session was “evil”, most specifically “moral evil.”
How did it occur? How could it occur in a universe created and ruled by a
good God? Maritain presented a view that was faithfully Thomistic: Evil
was an absence of good, a failure of the will, a kind of nothingness. But
why did an all-good and all-powerful God permit this kind of failure to
occur? Why had God created such fallible creatures? Why did God not
foresee the failures and eliminate the occasions on which the evil would
arise? To questions such as these Maritain had no answer. Evil was a mys-
tery incapable of rational explanation, a blankness of unintelligibility.
The book of Maritain’s that I most valued was entitled The Person and
the Common Good. In it he distinguished between “the person”, that is, each
human being with an end transcending this life, and what he termed “the
individual”, that is, each human being considered as part of humanity with
no end higher than the preservation of its life in this world. In this frame-
work each of us was both a person and an individual. As an individual, we
were properly subjected to the constraints necessary for society to func-
tion. As a person, each of us had a drive and a destiny exceeding our
temporal condition and requiring respect from those shaping social con-
trols. Recognition of the personhood of each human being did not by
itself create a charter of human rights, but rather offered a perspective
and possibilities for the development of such rights. It was no accident
that Maritain was a key draftsman of the United Nations Charter of
Human Rights and a principal mentor of Pope Paul VI.
I valued what I learned from Maritain as well as what I learned from
´Etienne Gilson, who came to teach for a while at Berkeley and whom I
came to know and to entertain. He told me one story of how he and
Maritain were given an audience by Pope Pius XII. The audience went on
for over an hour. A papal attendant then approached the pope with two
large medals to be awarded the philosophers. “No, no,” the pope said.
“The usual ones.”
Fr. Feeney's The Point had negative things to say about Maritain (no mention of Benard, though Benard seems to be in a similar stream to Maritain and Noonan):
Good Night, Sweet Princeton!
https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-july-1952/
Maritainism is a system of thought which allows Catholics to be both Catholic and acceptable in the drawing rooms of Protestant and Jєωιѕн philosophers. Maritainism is not a seeking and a finding of the Word made flesh. It is a perpetual seeking for un-fleshed truth in an abstract scheme called Christianity. Maritainism is the scrapping of the Incarnation in favor of a God Whose overtures to us never get more personal or loving than the five rational proofs for His existence. This plot to encourage only pre-Bethlehem interest in God takes its name from its perpetrator, that highly respected religious opportunist, Jacques Maritain.
The slightest acquaintance with Maritain’s history is sufficient to indicate how awry he must be in his Catholicism. He is a former Huguenot who married a Jєωιѕн girl named Raïssa. During their student days in Paris, both Jacques and Raïssa felt a double pull in the general direction of belief. Intellectually they were attracted to the religious self-sufficiency of a Jєωιѕн intuitionist named Henri Bergson. Sociologically they were attracted to the spurious Catholicism of Leon Bloy, a French exhibitionist who made a liturgy of his own crudeness and uncleaness and tried to attach it to the liturgy of the Church. At some point in their association with an unbaptized Bergson and an unwashed Bloy, the Maritains figured out that there was a promising future ahead of them in Catholicism.
Jacques Maritain is noted for his solemn-high, holier-than-thou appearance. For this reason, more than one priest reports that by the time a Maintain lecture is over, any priest who is present has been made to feel that the Roman collar is around the wrong neck and that perhaps he, the priest, ought to put on a necktie and kneel for Maritain’s blessing.
One explanation of Maritain’s distant expression is that he fancies himself to be the Drew Pearson of the Christian social order. Judging by Maritain’s passion for the abstract, the fulfillment of all his prophecies will come in an era when mothers can sing such songs as “Rock-a-bye Baby, on the Dendrological Zenith,” and children recite such bedtime prayers as “The Hail Mariology.”
Jacques Maritain prefers Thomism to Saint Thomas Aquinas and, similarly, he much prefers the notion of the papacy to the person of the Pope. He could not, however, turn down the prestige of an appointment as French ambassador to the Vatican. Maritain went to Rome, but he protected himself against over exposure to Italian faith by visits to Dr. George Santayana. In Maritain, Santayana recognized a brother, the kind of European intellectual cast-off that is annually being grabbed-up by American Universities.
That Jacques Maritain should now be found preaching at Princeton University is not so strange. It did not require too much insight on Princeton’s part to see that a Catholic who hates Franco, speaks at Jєωιѕн seminaries, and favors “theocentricity” in place of Jesus, would be a bizarre, but harmless, addition to anybody’s faculty club.
Perhaps Princeton realized also that a Catholic’s admirers are a good measure of his militancy. Among Maritain’s more prominent sympathizers are John Wild, Charles Malik and Mortimer Adler, who are, respectively, an Anglican, a Greek schismatic, and a Jew. Naturally Maritain could not insult intellectuals like these by telling them that although they are outside the Church they can get into Heaven because of their “invincible ignorance.” It was necessary that Maritain concoct a new way of getting around the dogma, “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.”
After a lot of abstract deliberation, Maritain decided that a man could be “invisibly, and by a motion of his heart, a member of the Church, and partake of her life, which is eternal life.” According to Maritain’s new covenant, the important salvation-actions in our world are no longer a head bowed to the waters of Baptism, a hand raised in Absolution, a tongue outstretched to receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. “A motion of his heart,” says Maritain, is all that is required before a man may partake of eternal life.
The Sacred Heart might have saved Himself a lot of inconvenience had He only known this, one Friday afternoon on Calvary.
There's a second reference to Jacques Maritain in Fr. Feeney's The Point, Feb 1956:
https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-february-1956/
II — The Refugee
The Point ’s second White Jew is drawn from the religious rather than the secular world, but he has been no less a problem to our readers than Mr. Baruch. He is a refugee from Austria who now conducts, at a Catholic college in New Jersey, a one-man propaganda agency called the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies. So “White” is this Jew that at the age of twenty he submitted himself to the ritual of Christian Baptism, and then went on to become a Catholic priest. His name is Father John M. Oesterreicher.
Before Baptism, John Oesterreicher had been a student of medicine. Three years and a few theology books later, he was ordained a Catholic priest. Even his most prostrate apologists have wondered at such a speeded-up process. And more thoughtful observers have concluded that in the Church which harbors such painful and multiple memories of deceitfully converted “Marrano” Jews, there is something most unusual, to say the least, about the urgency with which John Osterreicher was rushed from Baptism to Holy Orders.
Whether by deliberate design or not, the historical fact is that, for hundreds of thousands of German-speaking Jews, Father Oesterreicher’s sudden priesthood became an immediate weapon against the rising anti-Jєωιѕнness of Adolph Hitler. With the weight of the Catholic Church presumably behind him, and the passion of his Jєωιѕн blood clearly pushing him on, Father Oesterreicher began a frenzied crusade of writing and speaking. He invoked, as authorities, both saints and sociologists, popes and psychiatrists. He devised arguments from demonology and anthropology, from scholastics and rationalists — all to prove to the Catholics of Austria and Germany that anyone who speaks ill of a Jew is actually blaspheming Jesus Christ Himself!
The same Catholics who well knew that the program proposed by Hitler was hardly the Church’s solution to the Jєωιѕн question, knew quite as well that Father Oesterreicher did not have the answer either.
As Hitler proceeded across Europe, Father Oesterreicher managed to keep several towns ahead of him, and finally, in 1941, turned up as a curate in New York City. Since there were in our whole country only about a dozen Jєωιѕн-convert priests, Father Oesterreicher proved to be a popular novelty. He was the object of much parochial curiosity and found no difficulty in gathering an inquisitive crowd for the lectures he started to give within six months of his arrival here. His message was invariably of one theme. Always there was the appeal to respect, to admire, to love, to fall down in the mud and worship the Jєωιѕн race. And always the appeal was subtly charged with what Father Oesterreicher hoped would pass for the binding authority of the Catholic Church.
But Father Oesterreicher did not have to depend solely upon his own initiative. He had a number of American boosters, of whom perhaps the most zealous was Professor Jacques Maritain. Professor Maritain is the French-born, Protestant-reared, Catholic philosopher who married a Russian Jewess named Raïssa Oumansoff. Although known in this country as a speaker at Jєωιѕн seminaries and teacher at Masonic universities, Maritain did try to get a position at a Catholic school. Some years ago, he was interviewed for a job at Fordham University, and stipulated in the course of the discussion that he would expect to be given free rein in all his classes to criticize the pope. Fordham’s Jesuit president turned him down, and Maritain took a job at Princeton, no holds barred.
When Professor Maritain received an honorary degree a few months ago from Jєωιѕн Brandeis University, his support of Father Oesterreicher accounted for much of the genuine applause he received from the assembled representatives of American Jewry. For Father Oesterreicher, in every point of his Judaeo-Christian program, has complied exactly with the publicized objectives of the powerful American Jєωιѕн Committee. In his books, Walls Are Crumbling and The Bridge, Father Oesterreicher’s glorification of the Jews would erase forever from Catholic minds those New Testament texts which the Jєωιѕн Committee has so repeatedly attacked as “anti-Semitic.” Saint Peter’s accusation in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 5, that the Jews are the murderers of Christ; Saint Stephen’s vehement repetition of this charge in chapter 7; Saint Paul’s elaboration on the guilt and curse of the Jews in I Thessalonians, 2:15 — these and all other biblical indictments of the Jєωιѕн people are blotted out and replaced by Father Oesterreicher’s devotion to such unbaptized “saints” as Jєωιѕн logician Edmund Husserl and Jєωιѕн intuitionist Henri Bergson.
In his compliance with the American Jєωιѕн Committee’s declared aim, “to revise Christian religious teaching,” Father Oesterreicher has consistently depreciated the tall stacks of papal legislation against the Jews. And, even more boldly, he has demanded a rewording of the Church’s liturgy, proposing that our annual Good Friday reference to the “perfidious Jews” be changed in meaning! The American Jєωιѕн Committee followed up Father Oesterreicher’s proposal by pulling every string within its grasp from here to Rome. The result? The following half-hearted, much-guarded statement by the Vatican’s Congregation of Rites: “This Sacred Congregation, having been consulted about the matter, has deemed it advisable to make the following declaration only: That, in translations into the vernacular, phrases are not disapproved of which the meaning (for ‘perfidious Jews’) is ‘infidels without belief.’ ”
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The retraction of Orestes Brownson:
(https://i.imgur.com/YqdiaD3.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/F6hfxHP.png)
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Here is an example of Newman's influence:
This is from the 2004 book called The Minding of Planet Earth by the Irish philosopher, theologian, writer and international speaker, Cardinal Cathal Daly (1917-2009), a clerical defender of Galileo; a book produced by the Irish Catholic Church’s publishing body. Commenting on the ex-Jesuit Annibale Fantoli’s work For Copernicanism and for the Church, 1995, Cardinal Daly wrote:
‘This book is a very detailed and remarkably balanced study, putting the Galileo “affair” in its historical context and bringing its history right up to its latest phase in the papacy of Pope John Paul II. Galileo emerges as a decisive figure, not simply in an historical conflict between science and religion, but also, and paradoxically, in the process towards greater mutual respect and understanding between the Church and science. For Galileo Galilei it was never a question of choosing between Copernican science and the Christian and Catholic faith; he remained, to the end of his life, deeply committed to both. Indeed, Galileo, particularly by his reflections on the interpretations of Holy Scripture, hoped to bring about reconciliation between faith and science. A man of unwavering faith in the truth of divine revelation, he also believed strongly in the unity of truth and was convinced that what was proved true by science could not conflict with the truth revealed in Holy Scripture correctly understood; and this, of course, is a profoundly Catholic position… Echoing Pope Leo XIII’s 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus, the same Vatican II declared: “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.” The Constitution owes much of course, to the great work of Catholic scholars since the beginning of the 20th century. If the theologians who advised the Inquisition and who opposed Galileo could have had the benefit of the Vatican II’s teaching, there might never have been a Galileo case. Indeed, if they could have had the benefit of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s thinking, there might never have been a Galileo case. I have to add that if Galileo’s own principles of exegesis as set out in his Letter to Castelli and Christina had been followed by the theologians of the time, there might never have been a Galileo case. The “Galileo Affair” remains, as Fantoli says in his book, “a severe lesson in humility to the Church and a warning, no less rigorous, to the Church, not to repeat in the present or in the future the errors of the past, even the most recent past.” That such words, and a book about Galileo so frank and honest as his, could be published by the Vatican Observatory and printed by the Vatican Press, is one further augury, promising a new era of constructive and mutually enriching dialogue between Church and science.’
There you have it in a nutshell, the full bundle of sophistry offered to Catholics worldwide for centuries, similar to the atheist R. G. Ingersoll’s version and others found in thousands of Catholic and secular books, websites, articles, and lectures. ‘Proven true by science’ Cardinal Brady says; when physicists have long admitted it was never ‘proven true.’ Galileo is, as usual, elevated from the perjuring ‘suspected’ heretic of 1616-1633 who swore to God he was not a heliocentrist, to a Catholic martyr, correcting the Biblical geocentrism of all the Fathers; of Trent, and the popes and theologians of his time, when insisting that heliocentrism is what the Bible really meant. Note how Cardinal Daly ended his illusion, agreeing with Fantoli that the ‘Church’ that defended the geocentrism of Scripture was wrong and that Galileo taught it “a severe lesson in humility, and a warning, no less rigorous, to the Church, not to repeat in the present or in the future the errors of the past.” Cardinal Cathal Daly, a peritus at Vatican II, served as Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh from 1990 to 1996 when Catholics were leaving his post-Vatican II Church in their droves.
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Here is an example of Newman's influence:
This is from the 2004 book called The Minding of Planet Earth by the Irish philosopher, theologian, writer and international speaker, Cardinal Cathal Daly (1917-2009), a clerical defender of Galileo; a book produced by the Irish Catholic Church’s publishing body. Commenting on the ex-Jesuit Annibale Fantoli’s work For Copernicanism and for the Church, 1995, Cardinal Daly wrote:
‘This book is a very detailed and remarkably balanced study, putting the Galileo “affair” in its historical context and bringing its history right up to its latest phase in the papacy of Pope John Paul II. Galileo emerges as a decisive figure, not simply in an historical conflict between science and religion, but also, and paradoxically, in the process towards greater mutual respect and understanding between the Church and science. For Galileo Galilei it was never a question of choosing between Copernican science and the Christian and Catholic faith; he remained, to the end of his life, deeply committed to both. Indeed, Galileo, particularly by his reflections on the interpretations of Holy Scripture, hoped to bring about reconciliation between faith and science. A man of unwavering faith in the truth of divine revelation, he also believed strongly in the unity of truth and was convinced that what was proved true by science could not conflict with the truth revealed in Holy Scripture correctly understood; and this, of course, is a profoundly Catholic position… Echoing Pope Leo XIII’s 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus, the same Vatican II declared: “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.” The Constitution owes much of course, to the great work of Catholic scholars since the beginning of the 20th century. If the theologians who advised the Inquisition and who opposed Galileo could have had the benefit of the Vatican II’s teaching, there might never have been a Galileo case. Indeed, if they could have had the benefit of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s thinking, there might never have been a Galileo case. I have to add that if Galileo’s own principles of exegesis as set out in his Letter to Castelli and Christina had been followed by the theologians of the time, there might never have been a Galileo case. The “Galileo Affair” remains, as Fantoli says in his book, “a severe lesson in humility to the Church and a warning, no less rigorous, to the Church, not to repeat in the present or in the future the errors of the past, even the most recent past.” That such words, and a book about Galileo so frank and honest as his, could be published by the Vatican Observatory and printed by the Vatican Press, is one further augury, promising a new era of constructive and mutually enriching dialogue between Church and science.’
There you have it in a nutshell, the full bundle of sophistry offered to Catholics worldwide for centuries, similar to the atheist R. G. Ingersoll’s version and others found in thousands of Catholic and secular books, websites, articles, and lectures. ‘Proven true by science’ Cardinal Brady says; when physicists have long admitted it was never ‘proven true.’ Galileo is, as usual, elevated from the perjuring ‘suspected’ heretic of 1616-1633 who swore to God he was not a heliocentrist, to a Catholic martyr, correcting the Biblical geocentrism of all the Fathers; of Trent, and the popes and theologians of his time, when insisting that heliocentrism is what the Bible really meant. Note how Cardinal Daly ended his illusion, agreeing with Fantoli that the ‘Church’ that defended the geocentrism of Scripture was wrong and that Galileo taught it “a severe lesson in humility, and a warning, no less rigorous, to the Church, not to repeat in the present or in the future the errors of the past.” Cardinal Cathal Daly, a peritus at Vatican II, served as Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh from 1990 to 1996 when Catholics were leaving his post-Vatican II Church in their droves.
That modernists have misappropriated/hijacked Newman is already understood.
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Incidentally there's a book about Fr. Feeney and Orestes Brownson:
https://loretopubs.org/they-fought-the-good-fight.html
Fr. Feeney's The Point only makes one mention of Brownson:
https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-february-1953/
We have been reminded by a subscriber that this year will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Orestes Brownson, a local Yankee who came into the Faith with much gusto, trying to drag in with him such unspirited souls as Emerson and Thoreau. This reminder has reminded us to re-appreciate our position as Catholics in a country where courage and conversion can still go together.
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That modernists have misappropriated/hijacked Newman is already understood.
Who cares if modernists or anti-modernists like or dislike Newman. Jews are comfortable with him. That matters more than these other stupid categories:
This propensity for Judaizing young Gentiles was one of Dr. Sachar’s principal recommendations for the Brandeis presidency. The other was a repeated declaration, following necessarily from his Zionist loyalty, that America is not a “melting pot,” and that Jєωs must not only stick to being Jєωs, they must even rejoice in their Jєωιѕнness.
In order to attract Gentile students, for processing under his experienced direction, Dr. Sachar has allowed a Newman Club and a Student Christian Association to take their places beside Brandeis University’s lively Hillel chapter. Profoundly touched by the limitless opportunities thus afforded him, Dr. Sachar has resolved upon a rededication of himself to the spirit and ideals of that Rabbi Hillel for whom the Hillel movement was named — the rabbi who, until his death in 10 A.D., was head of the Jerusalem sanhedrin and who was, as such, the chief promoter of King Herod’s “slaughter of the Holy Innocents,” the first of the Jєωιѕн attempts to get rid of Jesus.
https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-may-1955/
(https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-may-1955/)It's telling that Dr. Sachar isn't frightened of a Newman Club at Brandeis University.
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Who cares if modernists or anti-modernists like or dislike Newman. Jєωs are comfortable with him.
(https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-may-1955/)
So was Pope St. Pius X.
Was he a judaizer too?
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For any more serious researchers who prefer not to take the guided tour by one side or the other, here’s Ch. 5 of Newman’s Essay on Doctrinal Development (distinguishing them from doctrinal corruptions):
https://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter5.html
See what you think.
The opening paragraph sets the tone and shows his purpose:
{169} I HAVE been engaged in drawing out the positive and direct argument in proof of the intimate connexion, or rather oneness, with primitive Apostolic teaching, of the body of doctrine known at this day by the name of Catholic, and professed substantially both by Eastern and Western Christendom. That faith is undeniably the historical continuation of the religious system, which bore the name of Catholic in the eighteenth century, in the seventeenth, in the sixteenth, and so back in every preceding century, till we arrive at the first;—undeniably the successor, the representative, the heir of the religion of Cyprian, Basil, Ambrose and Augustine. The only question that can be raised is whether the said Catholic faith, as now held, is logically, as well as historically, the representative of the ancient faith. This then is the subject, to which I have as yet addressed myself, and I have maintained that modern Catholicism is nothing else but simply the legitimate growth and complement, that is, the natural and necessary development, of the doctrine of the early church, and that its divine authority is included in the divinity of Christianity.“
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So was Pope St. Pius X.
Was he a judaizer too?
Most everyone is judaized to some degree. I am. If I did a little digging it wouldn't surprise me if any Catholic in the past, including saints, allowed themselves to be somewhat sullied by associating with jews. I read somewhere, and I doubt my memory is failing me here, that St. Pius X had "Jєωιѕн friends." One of them paid for a trip as he lacked funds.
I've long though the Syllabus of Errors was a rear-guard action. I don't have anything critical to say about the docuмent (or St. Pius X) other than that it "beats around the bush." It's like how people love to go on and on about feminism, communism, capitalism, blacks, whites, blah blah blah.
Why not just "call out jews"? And be done with it. As many saints have said all heresies have their taproot in тαℓмυdists. I guess the Church no longer has legions at Her disposal and so has to use rear-guard tactics instead of blunt tactics. Just call a spade a spade. I think if the Church leaders just called a spade a spade the popularity of the Church would go through the roof.
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Most everyone is judaized to some degree. I am.
Bishop Williamson used to say that of Modernism, that we're all infected, even if very subtly (where he meant himself included).
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And Brownson took to task Mr. Francis Newman, the younger brother of Card. Newman, who was also a convert. I give the link to the whole article after the quote:
"Clearly, then, Mr. Francis Newman's doctrine, which is not only rationalism, but mere psychological rationalism, cannot be even entertained, and would deserve no respectful consideration as a system, even if it were conceded that we have received no revelation of a supernatural order ; for without revelation and tradition, by reason alone, man is utterly unable to construct even a complete and self-coherent system of rationalism, and for the best of all reasons, because he does not exist in a purely rational order. Our preliminary difficulties in the way of Mr. Francis Newman's theory are of themselves conclusive against it. We have no occasion to go beyond his title-page. That asserts his principle and method. His principle being false, and his method vicious, his theory, though it may contain by a happy inconsistency some slight traces of rational truth, must be, as a theory, utterly worthless, and, as far as it goes, mischievous. It is entirely unnecessary for us to take it up and examine it in detail. It is clearly antichristian and repugnant to sound reason, and having refuted it in principle, we may dismiss it as unworthy of any further consideration; for a man who starts wrong, and travels in a wrong direction, is pretty sure never to reach the goal." ("Newman on the True Basis of Theology," Brownson's Review, 1851)
Article on Francis Newman (http://www.orestesbrownson.org/208.html)
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And Brownson took to task Mr. Francis Newman, the younger brother of Card. Newman, who was also a convert. I give the link to the whole article after the quote:
"Clearly, then, Mr. Francis Newman's doctrine, which is not only rationalism, but mere psychological rationalism, cannot be even entertained, and would deserve no respectful consideration as a system, even if it were conceded that we have received no revelation of a supernatural order ; for without revelation and tradition, by reason alone, man is utterly unable to construct even a complete and self-coherent system of rationalism, and for the best of all reasons, because he does not exist in a purely rational order. Our preliminary difficulties in the way of Mr. Francis Newman's theory are of themselves conclusive against it. We have no occasion to go beyond his title-page. That asserts his principle and method. His principle being false, and his method vicious, his theory, though it may contain by a happy inconsistency some slight traces of rational truth, must be, as a theory, utterly worthless, and, as far as it goes, mischievous. It is entirely unnecessary for us to take it up and examine it in detail. It is clearly antichristian and repugnant to sound reason, and having refuted it in principle, we may dismiss it as unworthy of any further consideration; for a man who starts wrong, and travels in a wrong direction, is pretty sure never to reach the goal." ("Newman on the True Basis of Theology," Brownson's Review, 1851)
Article on Francis Newman (http://www.orestesbrownson.org/208.html)
I wonder whether any of Dr. Brownson's objections from this 1851 article to Francis Newman remained, in light of his 1864 retraction regarding Cardinal Newman (posted at the top of this page)?
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That relationship with Fr. Ambrose sounds disgusting.
(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Flive.staticflickr.com%2F65535%2F48143484956_a44dbd0519_b.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=d4b09cc85fd96c26c63762a5de31fd37612926c966e11a158be0d5947f04a250&ipo=images)
Letter by Newman on the last encounter he had with Ambrose St. John
The Oratory: May 31, 1875.
My dear Blachford,
I cannot use many words, but I quite understand the kind affectionateness of your letter just come. I answer it first of the large collection of letters which keen sympathy with me and deep sorrow for their loss in Ambrose St. John have caused so many friends to write to me. I cannot wonder that, after he has been given me for so long a time as 32 years, he should be taken from me. Sometimes I have thought that, like my patron saint St. John, I am destined to survive all my friends.
From the first he loved me with an intensity of love, which was unaccountable. At Rome 28 years ago he was always so working for and relieving me of all trouble, that being young and Saxon-looking, the Romans called him my Angel Guardian. As far as this world was concerned I was his first and last. He has not intermitted this love for an hour up to his last breath. At the beginning of his illness he showed in various ways that he was thinking of and for me.
That illness which threatened permanent loss of reason, which, thank God, he has escaped, arose from his overwork in translating Fessler, which he did for me to back up my letter to the Duke of Norfolk. I had no suspicion of this overwork of course, but which reminds me that, at that time, startled at the great and unexpected success of my pamphlet, I said to him, "We shall have some great penance to balance this good fortune."
There was on April 28 a special High Mass at the Passionists two miles from this. He thought he ought to be there, and walked in a scorching sun to be there in time. He got a sort of stroke. He never was himself afterwards. A brain fever came on. After the crisis, the doctor said he was recovering he got better every day we all saw this.
On his last morning he parted with great impressiveness from an old friend, once one of our lay brothers, who had been with him through the night. The latter tells us that he had in former years watched, while with us, before the Blessed Sacrament, but he had never felt Our Lord so near him, as during that night. He says that his (Ambrose's) face was so beautiful; both William Neville and myself had noticed that at different times; and his eyes, when he looked straight at us, were brilliant as Jєωels.
It was the expression, which was so sweet, tender, and beseeching. When his friend left him in the morning, Ambrose smiled on him and kissed his forehead, as if he was taking leave of him. Mind, we all of us thought him getting better every day. When the doctor came, he said the improvement was far beyond his expectation. He said "From this time he knows all you say to him," though alas he could not speak. I have not time to go through that day, when we were so jubilant.
In the course of it, when he was sitting on the side of his bed, he got hold of me and threw his arm over my shoulder and brought me to him so closely, that I said in joke "He will give me a stiff neck." So, he held me for some minutes, I at length releasing myself from not understanding, as he did, why he so clung to me. Then he got hold of my hand and clasped it so tightly as really to frighten me, for he had done so once before when he was not himself. I had to get one of the others present to unlock his fingers, ah ! little thinking what he meant.
At 7 P.M. when I rose to go, and said "Good-bye, I shall find you much better to-morrow" he smiled on me with an expression which I could not and cannot understand. It was sweet and sad and perhaps perplexed, but I cannot interpret it. But it was our parting. W. N. says he called me back as I was leaving the room, but I do not recollect it.
About midnight I was awakened at the Oratory, with a loud rapping at the door, and the tidings that a great change had taken place in him. We hurried off at once, but he had died almost as soon as the messenger started. He had been placed or rather had placed himself with great deliberation and self-respect in his bed they had tucked him up, and William Neville was just going to give him some arrowroot when he rose upon his elbow, fell back and died.
I dare say Church and Copeland, and Lord Coleridge, will like to see this will you let them?
Ever yours affectionately,
John Henry Newman
A text from Wilfrid Philip Ward's biography:
When Ambrose St. John died, Newman threw himself on the bed by the corpse and spent the night there. The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, vol. 1, pp. 21-22.
Source: Link (https://www.traditioninaction.org/polemics/F_05_Newman06.html)
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Newman made up his own Catholic rules.
Orthodoxy of writings
One of the first measures taken to see if a person deserves to have his cause of beatification introduced is the examination of the writings. All the writings of the candidate are checked to see if there is any point that does not agree with the dogmas and teachings of the Catholic Faith. Naz explains: "According to canon 2042, writings include not only his original books, but everything from the pen of the candidate: his printed works, sermons, letters, diaries, autobiographies, personal notes, in brief, everything he wrote himself or dictated to others to be written in his name. (2)
| (https://traditioninaction.org/bev/bevimages(100-149)/BV126_Newman01.jpg) He never completely rejected his past Anglican errors |
In Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique expert Fr. Theofile Ortolan, O.M.I., clearly affirms that a candidate's writings must be orthodox in their entirety: "If some heterodox doctrine is found in his writings, either published or not, it would place the faith of its author under suspicion and permanently stop his cause of canonization. Before a cause is introduced in a supreme tribunal, it is, therefore, convenient to be certain beforehand that an obstacle of this type will not be found. It would be absolutely insurmountable." (3) It is evident that, according to the Catholic Church, anyone who is beatified must have written and preached unquestionably orthodox doctrine all his life.
When we apply this condition to Newman, we cannot understand how he was named blessed. In fact he wrote five books - two when he was Protestant and three when he was Catholic - and he considered them all good. When he finished his Grammar of Assent in 1870, he wrote to Sister Imelda Poole: "This is the fifth constructive work which I have done - two as a Protestant, three as a Catholic." (4) When he was Protestant he also gave sermons at Oxford that were published and became famous. Newman never entirely renounced either those "constructive works" or the sermons of his Protestant period. His letters reveal that he maintained a warm friendship with Protestants and continued to defend many of the Anglican ideas (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_131_Nw-Anglic.html) he formerly upheld.
Now then, how could his process of beatification be introduced and approved in face of this frontal clash with the aforementioned condition? To my knowledge, no restriction was placed on Newman's writings either by Benedict XVI or the Vatican. Does his beatification signify that Catholics must learn from his Protestant writings, as if they expressed a crystalline orthodoxy?
The TIA website has posted many points in which Newman contradicted the Catholic Faith. For example, he wrote against Papal Infallibility (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_139_Nw-Infallibiity.html), devotion to Our Lady (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_132_Nw-OurLady.html) and the Immaculate Conception, the Syllabus (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_133_Nw-Syllabus.html), the immutable character (https://traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_031br_Brownson.htm) of dogma, the Pope's temporal power, and the monarchical structure (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_135_Nw-Revolt.html) of the Church. Any one of these points would normally stop his beatification process. But none of them did. Benedict XVI, using his apostolic authority, declared him blessed – without any known restrictions regarding these points.
What can one think about a beatification that disregards the Catholic Faith of the "blessed"?
Heroic virtues
Another indispensable condition for beatification is the practice of the heroic virtues. The candidate's practice of the theological virtues - Faith, Hope and Charity - and the cardinal virtues - Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Fortitude - must be examined with the greatest care. A stain against any of these virtues should stop the process of beatification.
How could any serious process that scrutinized the practice of virtue of Card. Newman disregard his suspicious relationship (https://traditioninaction.org/Questions/B385_NewmanHomo.html) with Fr. Ambrose St. John? Even if ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity were not proved irrefutably, how can Benedict XVI present a man under this public suspicion as a model for Catholics?
Source: Link (https://traditioninaction.org/polemics/F_05_Newman08.html)
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Newman made up his own Catholic rules.
Orthodoxy of writings
One of the first measures taken to see if a person deserves to have his cause of beatification introduced is the examination of the writings. All the writings of the candidate are checked to see if there is any point that does not agree with the dogmas and teachings of the Catholic Faith. Naz explains: "According to canon 2042, writings include not only his original books, but everything from the pen of the candidate: his printed works, sermons, letters, diaries, autobiographies, personal notes, in brief, everything he wrote himself or dictated to others to be written in his name. (2)
| (https://traditioninaction.org/bev/bevimages(100-149)/BV126_Newman01.jpg) He never completely rejected his past Anglican errors |
In Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique expert Fr. Theofile Ortolan, O.M.I., clearly affirms that a candidate's writings must be orthodox in their entirety: "If some heterodox doctrine is found in his writings, either published or not, it would place the faith of its author under suspicion and permanently stop his cause of canonization. Before a cause is introduced in a supreme tribunal, it is, therefore, convenient to be certain beforehand that an obstacle of this type will not be found. It would be absolutely insurmountable." (3) It is evident that, according to the Catholic Church, anyone who is beatified must have written and preached unquestionably orthodox doctrine all his life.
When we apply this condition to Newman, we cannot understand how he was named blessed. In fact he wrote five books - two when he was Protestant and three when he was Catholic - and he considered them all good. When he finished his Grammar of Assent in 1870, he wrote to Sister Imelda Poole: "This is the fifth constructive work which I have done - two as a Protestant, three as a Catholic." (4) When he was Protestant he also gave sermons at Oxford that were published and became famous. Newman never entirely renounced either those "constructive works" or the sermons of his Protestant period. His letters reveal that he maintained a warm friendship with Protestants and continued to defend many of the Anglican ideas (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_131_Nw-Anglic.html) he formerly upheld.
Now then, how could his process of beatification be introduced and approved in face of this frontal clash with the aforementioned condition? To my knowledge, no restriction was placed on Newman's writings either by Benedict XVI or the Vatican. Does his beatification signify that Catholics must learn from his Protestant writings, as if they expressed a crystalline orthodoxy?
The TIA website has posted many points in which Newman contradicted the Catholic Faith. For example, he wrote against Papal Infallibility (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_139_Nw-Infallibiity.html), devotion to Our Lady (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_132_Nw-OurLady.html) and the Immaculate Conception, the Syllabus (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_133_Nw-Syllabus.html), the immutable character (https://traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_031br_Brownson.htm) of dogma, the Pope's temporal power, and the monarchical structure (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_135_Nw-Revolt.html) of the Church. Any one of these points would normally stop his beatification process. But none of them did. Benedict XVI, using his apostolic authority, declared him blessed – without any known restrictions regarding these points.
What can one think about a beatification that disregards the Catholic Faith of the "blessed"?
Heroic virtues
Another indispensable condition for beatification is the practice of the heroic virtues. The candidate's practice of the theological virtues - Faith, Hope and Charity - and the cardinal virtues - Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Fortitude - must be examined with the greatest care. A stain against any of these virtues should stop the process of beatification.
How could any serious process that scrutinized the practice of virtue of Card. Newman disregard his suspicious relationship (https://traditioninaction.org/Questions/B385_NewmanHomo.html) with Fr. Ambrose St. John? Even if ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity were not proved irrefutably, how can Benedict XVI present a man under this public suspicion as a model for Catholics?
Source: Link (https://traditioninaction.org/polemics/F_05_Newman08.html)
Nonsense:
According to this, St. Augustine must be uncanonized, since he did not write orthodox theology all his life.
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Ascent of Mount Carmel youtube channel has a nice playlist on Cardinal Newman
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9wsq--mkdN3MswdrjDF_dHDzgUFhvHF
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Sean loves Newman now on account of his SVDS (Sedevavantist Derangement Syndrome) because he finds material in Newman that supports R&R. But then you can find support for R&R in the works of any Modernist. Modernists have no use for the teaching authority of the Church.
We have Newman on record coming out against papal infallibility (something R&R dislike and are as hostile to as Newman was), and against the Syllabus of Errors (but Sean ignores that part).
What won’t and can’t go away is Newman’s statement that infallibility will be properly interpreted and corrected by a future pope. That is textbook Modernism. In the condemnations of Modernism, Catholics are taught that we must accept dogmas as they were understood by the Church at the time they were defined and cannot appeal to a future pope or Council to correct or amend them toward a better or clearer understanding.
On the basis of that statement alone, it’s proven that Newman was a Modernist. Case closed.
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Sean loves Newman now on account of his SVDS (Sedevavantist Derangement Syndrome) because he finds material in Newman that supports R&R. But then you can find support for R&R in the works of any Modernist. Modernists have no use for the teaching authority of the Church.
We have Newman on record coming out against papal infallibility (something R&R dislike and are as hostile to as Newman was), and against the Syllabus of Errors (but Sean ignores that part).
What won’t and can’t go away is Newman’s statement that infallibility will be properly interpreted and corrected by a future pope. That is textbook Modernism. In the condemnations of Modernism, Catholics are taught that we must accept dogmas as they were understood by the Church at the time they were defined and cannot appeal to a future pope or Council to correct or amend them toward a better or clearer understanding.
On the basis of that statement alone, it’s proven that Newman was a Modernist. Case closed.
Ladislaus is talking out of his ass again.
Any connection between RR and Newman has never entered into my mind (and I'd be curious to see you cite something from him which you think supports RR, as I've never seen him cited by anyone in support of it).
You are clearly having another SVDS episode.
As for Newman questioning papal infallibility BEFORE IT WAS DEFINED, then you should for the same reason consider St. Thomas Aquinas a modernist for questioning the Immaculate Conception before it was defined. In fact, you should hold Aquinas in even higher derision, since he died in his opinions, whereas Newman sacrificed his own opinion in docility to the Church.
The hubris/narcisissm implicit in your rejection of Leo XIII and Pope St. Pius X's endorsement of Newman (and this without ever having read a thing he wrote) is typical you.
You never even bothered to ask why I like Newman, but prefer to create/invent gratuitous reasons, real only in your overactive imagination, instead.
The reason I like Newman's works is because he is the proto-antimodernist: His essay on the development of doctrine pre-empted anything/everything the modernists did afterwards, howsoever they misappropriate him (easy to do because he was not a scholastic).
Back in my conciliar days, the modernists at the seminary cited him as reason for overturning the preconciliar teachings, andd consequently, unlike you and 99% of the seminarians, I went to the book and foundd it said exactly the opposite of what they attributed to him.
But you really have to be a moron to think that book means what you think it means (ignorantly, because you never read it), with Newman still receiving the vindication of the anti-modernist champion, Pope St. Pius X (as though he wouldn't have condemned both Newman and the book, if it actualy was modernist).
Even Orestes Brownson retracted his previous criticisms.
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Ladislaus is talking out of his ass again.
Any connection between RR and Newman has never entered into my mind (and I'd be curious to see you cite something from him which you think supports RR, as I've never seen him cited by anyone in support of it).
Wow, you can't even be honest about this. You started the whole Newman thing because you found him babbling about a suspended Magisterium during the Arian crisis. You're completely lying about how you like Newman for being an anti-Modernist (which is an utter joke) when the thread you first started about him was exclusively focused on the suspension of the Magisterium ... an opinion that Monsignor Fenton characterized as "bizarre" (and that was his way of being charitable).
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As for Newman questioning papal infallibility BEFORE IT WAS DEFINED ...
:facepalm: Newman's statements came after the definition where in communication with fellow Modernists who were lamenting the definition, he consoled them by appealing to a future pope that would correct or revise the definition. That's in line with his Hegelian-dialectic view of the development of doctrine.
I supposed that his opposition to the Syllabus of Errors also came before the Syllabus was issued, right?
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The hubris/narcisissm implicit in your rejection of Leo XIII and Pope St. Pius X's endorsement of Newman (and this without ever having read a thing he wrote) is typical you.
As has been pointed out, it's hardly possible that St. Pius X himself studied the profusely voluminous writings of Newman. What he was endorsing was some apologetical work from a bishop who cherry-picked the Catholic-sounding quotes from Newman. Newman, like all Modernists, as St. Pius X himself stated, blended orthodox Catholic propositions with Modernist ones, so someone who wanted to be an apologist for Newman could merely cherry-pick the Catholic-sounding ones to put together an apologetic piece.
Cardinal Manning stated that Newman was guilty of at least 10 heresies, and several bishops in the UK denounced Newman to Rome for heresy. Newman was allied with the excommunicated Dollinger in agitating against papal infallibility and then reluctantly paid lip service to it on a prorivional basis, with the hope that a future pope would come along and correct/revise it ... textbook Modernism. In fact, some of the dissidents thanked Newman for his development of doctrine position because it enabled them to retain office by paying lip service to infallibility with the understanding that it was still "under development".
St. Pius X, while a great saint, was only human, and he made a mistake in endorsing Newman based upon his misplaced trust in the bishop who wrote the book that he was endorsing. Archbishop Lefebvre, while a saintly man himself, made some poor judgments in putting his trust in the likes of Fr. Schmidberger and Bishop Fellay (among many others) ... or allowing Urrutigoity to enter STAS, etc. Archbishop Lefebvre made quite a few mistakes, but he's only human. And Archbishop Lefebvre will undoubtedly be canonized some day despite these mistakes.
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Lol…Lad is triggered and having an episode::)
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Msgr. Fenton:
Cardinal Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (certainly the least valuable of his published works), supports the bizarre thesis that the final determination of what is really condemned in an authentic ecclesiastical pronouncement is the work of private theologians, rather than of the particular organ of the ecclesia docens which has actually formulated the condemnation. The faithful could, according to his theory, find what a pontifical docuмent actually means, not from the content of the docuмent itself, but from the speculations of the theologians.
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Wow, you can't even be honest about this. You started the whole Newman thing because you found him babbling about a suspended Magisterium during the Arian crisis. You're completely lying about how you like Newman for being an anti-Modernist (which is an utter joke) when the thread you first started about him was exclusively focused on the suspension of the Magisterium ... an opinion that Monsignor Fenton characterized as "bizarre" (and that was his way of being charitable).
What a total mentally ill dioshit.
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As has been pointed out, it's hardly possible that St. Pius X himself studied the profusely voluminous writings of Newman. What he was endorsing was some apologetical work from a bishop who cherry-picked the Catholic-sounding quotes from Newman. Newman, like all Modernists, as St. Pius X himself stated, blended orthodox Catholic propositions with Modernist ones, so someone who wanted to be an apologist for Newman could merely cherry-pick the Catholic-sounding ones to put together an apologetic piece.
Cardinal Manning stated that Newman was guilty of at least 10 heresies, and several bishops in the UK denounced Newman to Rome for heresy. Newman was allied with the excommunicated Dollinger in agitating against papal infallibility and then reluctantly paid lip service to it on a prorivional basis, with the hope that a future pope would come along and correct/revise it ... textbook Modernism. In fact, some of the dissidents thanked Newman for his development of doctrine position because it enabled them to retain office by paying lip service to infallibility with the understanding that it was still "under development".
St. Pius X, while a great saint, was only human, and he made a mistake in endorsing Newman based upon his misplaced trust in the bishop who wrote the book that he was endorsing. Archbishop Lefebvre, while a saintly man himself, made some poor judgments in putting his trust in the likes of Fr. Schmidberger and Bishop Fellay (among many others) ... or allowing Urrutigoity to enter STAS, etc. Archbishop Lefebvre made quite a few mistakes, but he's only human. And Archbishop Lefebvre will undoubtedly be canonized some day despite these mistakes.
Lol…Manning said Newman was England’s greatest Catholic.
And the imputation of negligence and irresponsibility to Pius X is typical Lad:
For a man willing to reject everything which does not agree with his delusions (flattening the earth, rejecting the Council of Trent, and all the catechisms since on BOD, rejecting the Church’s sacramental theology on ministerial intention, deposing 3 generations of popes and the entire hierarchy), well, flattening Newman is small potatoes.
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What a total mentally ill dioshit.
Project much? :laugh1:
What part of what I wrote was not correct? You started your praise of Newman not because of any "anti-Modernist" statements he allegedly made but because of his suspended Magisterium theory.
I suppose that Monsignor Fenton was "mentally ill" also, and so was Cardinal Manning.
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Project much? :laugh1:
What part of what I wrote was not correct? You started your praise of Newman not because of any "anti-Modernist" statements he allegedly made but because of his suspended Magisterium theory.
I suppose that Monsignor Fenton was "mentally ill" also, and so was Cardinal Manning.
No, they weren’t flat earth Catharinian pope deposing Feeneyite internal forum reading schismatics.
That unique combo is reserved to you alone.
You're simply vomiting your suspicions as though they were true (as you often do), because that’s what you need them to be for your argument.
Of course, you sin rashly in doing so, but I realize sin takes a back seat for the narcissist.
That I also agree with Newman’s historically factual account of the temporary suspension of the Ecclesia docens is irrelevant to the fact that I also find in him the prototypical antimodernist principles which St. Pius X vindicated, and Brownson later accepted.
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Maybe Sean Johnson overestimates Newman, Brownson, and St. Pius X.
I remember St. Thomas Aquinas' view of his own prodigious output:
https://www.catholic.com/qa/when-st-thomas-aquinas-likened-his-work-to-straw-was-that-a-retraction-of-what-he-wrote
Question:
When St. Thomas Aquinas likened his work to straw, was that a retraction of what he wrote?
Answer:
In the Thurston and Attwater revision of Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, the episode is described this way:
On the feast of St. Nicholas [in 1273, Aquinas] was celebrating Mass when he received a revelation that so affected him that he wrote and dictated no more, leaving his great work the Summa Theologiae unfinished. To Brother Reginald’s (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.” (www.catholic-forum.com/saintS/stt03002.htm)
Aquinas died three months later while on his way to the ecuмenical council of Lyons.
Aquinas’s vision may have been a vision of heaven, compared to which everything else, no matter how glorious, seems worthless. We can only speculate on that point. Scholars, hagiographers, and Catholics in general have never understood Aquinas’s comment to be a retraction or refutation of anything he wrote. If it had been, Pope Leo XIII would not have encouraged a renewed interest in Thomistic theology and philosophy, and Aquinas would not have been named a Doctor of the Church.
It is also reported that Aquinas had another mystical experience in which the voice of Christ said to him, “You have written well of me, Thomas” (www2.nd.edu/Departments//Maritain/etext/thomas1.htm).
As I said earlier what is going on with these coy categories "anti-modernist" and "modernist". Why aren't the prevailing categories "enemy of тαℓмυdists," "dupe of тαℓмυdists," and "allies of тαℓмυdists"?
Those are the three categories I use when sizing up people.
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Just to be clear about Orestes Brownson's view of Newman, we quote what he said of Newman just one year prior to his death in 1876:
"A friend, in whose judgment we place great confidence, remarks to us that Dr. Newman does not appear to write in a thoroughly Catholic spirit; that even when his doctrine is orthodox, the animus, the spirit, is at least half-Anglican. Dr. Newman is decidedly an Englishman, with most of the characteristics of Englishmen. He seems to us to retain an affection for Anglicanism which we do not share...His Catholicity, which we do not doubt is very genuine, is something added to his Anglicanism, not something diverse or essentially different from it. It is something more than Anglicanism, but not something different in kind. In fact, we detect no radical change in the habits of his mind effected by his conversion; and his republication of his works written and published when he was still an Anglican, with only very meagre notes, would seem to indicate that in his own judgment none did take place."
("Newman's Reply to Gladstone, 1875" Brownson's Collected Works, vol. 13, p. 500)
This is only one excerpt from Brownson on Newman, but it is very clear that, although some believe that Brownson "patched things up" with Newman in 1864, Brownson, up to the end of his days, held Newman to be suspect of an Anglican spirit.
And I trust Brownson's orthodoxy long before trusting Newman's. In fact, Brownson defended the Immaculate Conception before its definition in 1854, Papal Infallibility before its definition in 1870, and he did an article on Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus. As a side note, Brownson defended the Immaculate Conception long before its formal definition, in lieu of the fact that notable theologians failed to defend it. *Read Brownson's article on the Immaculate Conception. Immaculate Conception (http://www.orestesbrownson.org/the-immaculate-conception-brownsons-quarterly-review-october-1859.html)
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So was Pope St. Pius X.
Was he a judaizer too?
Your use of associations are typically sophomoric.
(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FEWi3vig9o7M%2Fhqdefault.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=b2f3f3032fb09adc7e5d9dc8e9c174bfb0d9aaee981cf7a3fae20d3419f18e2c&ipo=images)
Before he was a Saint, was Pope Pius X comfortable with Cardinal Rampolla?
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Sean loves Newman now on account of his SVDS (Sedevavantist Derangement Syndrome) because he finds material in Newman that supports R&R. But then you can find support for R&R in the works of any Modernist.
That too... but in previous posts Sean alluded to being very influenced by the Newman's writings during his SSPX seminary days.
And because Denzinger published Newman's works and the SSPX endorsed it, the jew Cardinal just had to be Kosher.
It goes to show the power (and the danger) that seminary education has in forming young minds.
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Newman endorsed and encouraged the idea of "development of doctrine". This is a modernist/heretical mindset and he must be treated as suspect, even if his intentions were good.
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Newman endorsed and encouraged the idea of "development of doctrine". This is a modernist/heretical mindset and he must be treated as suspect, even if his intentions were good.
Except that you have no idea what it means.
PS: The Denzinger outlines the development of doctrine throughout the centuries. You'd better hurry up and burn your modernist copy!
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LETTER
In which Pope Pius X approves the work of the Bishop of Limerick
on the writings of Cardinal Newman.
To his Venerable Brother
Edward Thomas Bishop of Limerick
Venerable Brother, greetings and Our Apostolic blessing. We hereby inform you that your essay, in which you show that the writings of Cardinal Newman, far from being in disagreement with Our Encyclical Letter Pascendi, are very much in harmony with it, has been emphatically approved by Us: for you could not have better served both the truth and the dignity of man.
It is clear that those people whose errors We have condemned in that Docuмent had decided among themselves to produce something of their own invention with which to seek the commendation of a distinguished person. And so they everywhere assert with confidence that they have taken these things from the very source and summit of authority, and that therefore We cannot censure their teachings, but rather that We had even previously gone so far as to condemn what such a great author had taught.
Incredible though it may appear, although it is not always realised, there are to be found those who are so puffed up with pride that it is enough to overwhelm the mind, and who are convinced that they are Catholics and pass themselves off as such, while in matters concerning the inner discipline of religion they prefer the authority of their own private teaching to the pre-eminent authority of the Magisterium of the Apostolic See. Not only do you fully demonstrate their obstinacy but you also show clearly their deceitfulness.
For, if in the things he had written before his profession of the Catholic faith one can justly detect something which may have a kind of similarity with certain Modernist formulas, you are correct in saying that this is not relevant to his later works. Moreover, as far as that matter is concerned, his way of thinking has been expressed in very different ways, both in the spoken word and in his published writings, and the author himself, on his admission into the Catholic Church, forwarded all his writings to the authority of the same Church so that any corrections might be made, if judged appropriate.
Regarding the large number of books of great importance and influence which he wrote as a Catholic, it is hardly necessary to exonerate them from any connection with this present heresy. And indeed, in the domain of England, it is common knowledge that Henry Newman pleaded the cause of the Catholic faith in his prolific literary output so effectively that his work was both highly beneficial to its citizens and greatly appreciated by Our Predecessors: and so he is held worthy of office whom Leo XIII, undoubtedly a shrewd judge of men and affairs, appointed Cardinal; indeed he was very highly regarded by him at every stage of his career, and deservedly so.
Truly, there is something about such a large quantity of work and his long hours of labour lasting far into the night that seems foreign to the usual way of theologians: nothing can be found to bring any suspicion about his faith. You correctly state that it is entirely to be expected that where no new signs of heresy were apparent he has perhaps used an off-guard manner of speaking to some people in certain places, but that what the Modernists do is to falsely and deceitfully take those words out of the whole context of what he meant to say and twist them to suit their own meaning. We therefore congratulate you for having, through your knowledge of all his writings, brilliantly vindicated the memory of this eminently upright and wise man from injustice: and also for having, to the best of your ability, brought your influence to bear among your fellow-countrymen, but particularly among the English people, so that those who were accustomed to abusing his name and deceiving the ignorant should henceforth cease doing so.
Would that they should follow Newman the author faithfully by studying his books without, to be sure, being addicted to their own prejudices, and let them not with wicked cunning conjure anything up from them or declare that their own opinions are confirmed in them; but instead let them understand his pure and whole principles, his lessons and inspiration which they contain. They will learn many excellent things from such a great teacher: in the first place, to regard the Magisterium of the Church as sacred, to defend the doctrine handed down inviolately by the Fathers and, what is of highest importance to the safeguarding of Catholic truth, to follow and obey the Successor of St. Peter with the greatest faith.
To you, therefore, Venerable Brother, and to your clergy and people, We give Our heartfelt thanks for having taken the trouble to help Us in Our reduced circuмstances by sending your communal gift of financial aid: and in order to gain for you all, but first and foremost for yourself, the gifts of God’s goodness, and as a testimony of Our benevolence, We affectionately bestow Our Apostolic blessing.
Given in Rome at St. Peter’s, on 10 March 1908, in the fifth year of Our Pontificate.
Pius PP. X
(Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Tuum Illud (http://newmanreader.org/canonization/popes/acta10mar08.html); original in Acta Sanctae Sedis XLI [1908] (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ass/docuмents/ASS-41-1908-ocr.pdf), pp. 200-202; underlining and paragraph breaks added.)
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Case Closed... :incense:
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LETTER
In which Pope Pius X approves the work of the Bishop of Limerick
on the writings of Cardinal Newman.
To his Venerable Brother
Edward Thomas Bishop of Limerick
To be fair to the saintly pontiff, Pius X, if he had read the works of Newman himself, he would have no need to the defer to the letter written by the Bishop of Limerick. Most popes are too busy writing encyclicals, writing their own tomes, than to busy themselves with reviewing the literature of others. My guess is that Pope St. Pius X endorsed Newman on account of his "English convert" status, as well as his voluminous authorship. Most popes rely upon the theologians around them to critique the theological writings which are of questionable orthodoxy, and this is understandable given the various responsibilities to which the pope is subject.
We all know that the modernists were thick in the church even before Cardinal Sarto entered the papal office; in fact, the freemasons in Rome cheered when Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti was elected in 1846, as Pius IX. Thankfully he proved to be their enemy, but it cannot be doubted that the spirit of modernism was prevalent even under the orthodox popes of the nineteenth century.
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To be fair to the saintly pontiff, Pius X, if he had read the works of Newman himself, he would have no need to the defer to the letter written by the Bishop of Limerick. Most popes are too busy writing encyclicals, writing their own tomes, than to busy themselves with reviewing the literature of others. My guess is that Pope St. Pius X endorsed Newman on account of his "English convert" status, as well as his voluminous authorship. Most popes rely upon the theologians around them to critique the theological writings which are of questionable orthodoxy, and this is understandable given the various responsibilities to which the pope is subject.
We all know that the modernists were thick in the church even before Cardinal Sarto entered the papal office; in fact, the freemasons in Rome cheered when Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti was elected in 1846, as Pius IX. Thankfully he proved to be their enemy, but it cannot be doubted that the spirit of modernism was prevalent even under the orthodox popes of the nineteenth century.
Perhaps without realizing it, your post is tantamount to accusing St. Pius X of irresponsibility, dereliction of duty, negligence, and according to the opinions of some here, being an unwitting dupe of modernism, and working against himself by promoting modernism.
No, I think there was sufficient controversy surrounding Newman for the pope to have done his due diligence, investigated the arguments of the Irish bishop, and concurred.
If someone wants to argue otherwise, the onus is upon them to provide the proof.
I would also be remiss in failing to note the irony of Newman’s CI critics being guilty of the very thing they have the temerity to accuse St. Pius X of (ie., relying on the opinions of others without having ever read Newman themselves).
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LETTER
In which Pope Pius X approves the work of the Bishop of Limerick
on the writings of Cardinal Newman.
To his Venerable Brother
Edward Thomas Bishop of Limerick
For, if in the things he had written before his profession of the Catholic faith one can justly detect something which may have a kind of similarity with certain Modernist formulas, you are correct in saying that this is not relevant to his later works.
Truly, there is something about such a large quantity of work and his long hours of labour lasting far into the night that seems foreign to the usual way of theologians: nothing can be found to bring any suspicion about his faith. You correctly state that it is entirely to be expected that where no new signs of heresy were apparent he has perhaps used an off-guard manner of speaking to some people in certain places, but that what the Modernists do is to falsely and deceitfully take those words out of the whole context of what he meant to say and twist them to suit their own meaning. =
I subtracted these two parts from the letter. Again, I object to the categories "modernist" and "anti-modernist." It resembles the fake categories today of "left" and "right".
The categories should be anti-тαℓмυdic, dupe of тαℓмυdists, and ally of тαℓмυdists.
These should be the categories.
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Case Closed... :incense:
Case isn't closed. Maybe smoke another doobie . . . .
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I subtracted these two parts from the letter. Again, I object to the categories "modernist" and "anti-modernist." It resembles the fake categories today of "left" and "right".
The categories should be anti-тαℓмυdic, dupe of тαℓмυdists, and ally of тαℓмυdists.
These should be the categories.
What’s interesting to me about the two paragraphs you excerpted from Pope St. Pius’s endorsement, is that they both seem to evince an intimate and personal knowledge of the Cardinal’s works (ie., exactly the opposite ow what some here are suggesting).
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Perhaps without realizing it, your post is tantamount to accusing St. Pius X of irresponsibility, dereliction of duty, negligence, and according to the opinions of some here, being an unwitting dupe of modernism, and working against himself by promoting modernism.
:facepalm:
No, I think there was sufficient controversy surrounding Newman for the pope to have done his due diligence, investigated the arguments of the Irish bishop, and concurred.
Thank you for admitting that Pope St Pius X (and any pope, for that matter) does not have time to read everything from a single theologian and has to "trust" (key word) the analysis of someone else (i.e. Irish Bishop). Thus, it's very possible for a pope's trust to be misplaced and to be (indirectly) wrong.
This happened a lot in the case of St Pius X, who admitted later in his papacy that he was "surrounded by wolves". His "endorsement" of +Newman, via the Irish Bishop, was made in 1908, which was only 5 years into his papacy.
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And I find it interesting that Pope Pius IX sent a personal letter to Brownson declaring him "Defender of the Faith," much to the embarrassment of the Fathers at the Second Council of Baltimore (1866) who were a little humbled that a layman would be named over them. Why did not Pius IX send this letter to Newman instead? Newman was well known at this time, and it was also a well-known fact that Brownson and Newman were opponents on the "Development of Doctrine" issue.
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And I find it interesting that Pope Pius IX sent a personal letter to Brownson declaring him "Defender of the Faith,"
Henry VIII once held the same title.
PS: Pope Pius IX was the one who awarded Cardinal Newman his Doctorate of Divinity in 1846 (i.e., after he had already written An Essay on the Development of Doctrine, which was in 1845).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Newman
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Henry VIII once held the same title.
PS: Pope Pius IX was the one who awarded Cardinal Newman his Doctorate of Divinity in 1846 (i.e., after he had already written An Essay on the Development of Doctrine, which was in 1845).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Newman
Brownson was indeed a king, but he had only one wife. And yes, Pius IX did do this, during the first year of his papacy, while the freemasons were applauding his election.
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Brownson was indeed a king, but he had only one wife. And yes, Pius IX did do this, during the first year of his papacy, while the freemasons were applauding his election.
That didn't work out too well for the Freemasons, did it?
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And yes, Pius IX did do this, during the first year of his papacy, while the freemasons were applauding his election.
Yeah, Pius IX was quasi-modernist in his first years. Then he had a 'wake up' call.
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Yeah, Pius IX was quasi-modernist in his first years. Then he had a 'wake up' call.
Complete falsehood.
He showed some liberal tendencies PRIOR to his papacy, which gave the Masons some hope, but he confounded them, and was solid as pope from the beginning.
Already in 1846 (his first year) he had condemned practically every liberal philosophy with Qui Pluribus:
“Qui pluribus (subtitled "On Faith And Religion") is an encyclical promulgated by Pope Pius IX on November 9, 1846. It was the first encyclical of his reign, and written to urge the prelates to be on guard against the dangers posed by rationalism, pantheism, socialism, communism and other popular philosophies.”
By that point, he’d barely been pope 5 months.
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Oh, the pope was strong on some points, but he was not immune from liberalism. The following conversation is between Pius IX and Odo Russell, the Protestant English representative:
"'There is no salvation outside the Roman Church, yet I, the pope, do think that some Protestants may by the special grace of God be saved.' He told the Protestant English representative Odo Russell. But he quickly added, 'I mean those Protestants who by peculiar circuмstances have never been in a position to know Truth. For those who, like yourself, have lived at the very fountain of Truth, and have not recognized and accepted it, there can be no salvation'."
(Pio Nono and the Jєωs: From "Reform" to "Reaction," 1846-1878, Frank Coppa)
While I applaud the pope for telling Odo that not recognizing the "fountain of truth" is the equivalent of damnation, he should have specified that the "special grace" whereby Protestants are saved is the grace to come into the Catholic Church. Claiming that a person was "never in a position to know the Truth" smacks of being a liberal statement on its face.
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Oh, the pope was strong on some points, but he was not immune from liberalism. The following conversation is between Pius IX and Odo Russell, the Protestant English representative:
"'There is no salvation outside the Roman Church, yet I, the pope, do think that some Protestants may by the special grace of God be saved.' He told the Protestant English representative Odo Russell. But he quickly added, 'I mean those Protestants who by peculiar circuмstances have never been in a position to know Truth. For those who, like yourself, have lived at the very fountain of Truth, and have not recognized and accepted it, there can be no salvation'."
(Pio Nono and the Jєωs: From "Reform" to "Reaction," 1846-1878, Frank Coppa)
While I applaud the pope for telling Odo that not recognizing the "fountain of truth" is the equivalent of damnation, he should have specified that the "special grace" whereby Protestants are saved is the grace to come into the Catholic Church. Claiming that a person was "never in a position to know the Truth" smacks of being a liberal statement on its face.
This is as obvious a fabrication as it gets. Pius IX condemned the "most grave error" that those who are separated from Catholic unity can achieve salavtion many times.
If you believe books like these you'll be right at home with Fr. Peregrino's book which claims padre Pio gave him absolution even though he knew he wasn't against abortion.
Or how about that one time St. Pius X said God has his own theology and prayed for dead jews? Found in his most popular biography.
Give me a break. You should be ashamed of accusing Pius IX of such disgusting heresy.
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Pius IX, On Promotion of False Doctrines, 1863
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm)
7. Here, too, our beloved sons and venerable brothers, it is again necessary to mention and censure a very grave error entrapping some Catholics who believe that it is possible to arrive at eternal salvation although living in error and alienated from the true faith and Catholic unity. Such belief is certainly opposed to Catholic teaching. There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace. Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments.
19.
(. . .)
Let us pray that the errant be flooded with the light of his divine grace, may turn back from the path of error into the way of truth and justice and, experiencing the worthy fruit of repentance, may possess perpetual love and fear of his holy name.
Leo XIII, On Mission Societies, 1880
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo13/l13mis.htm (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo13/l13mis.htm)
6.
(. . .)
Do men like these pour forth their prayers to God that in His mercy he may bring to the Divine light of the Gospel by His victorious grace the people sitting in the darkness?
Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 1832
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/greg16/g16mirar.htm (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/greg16/g16mirar.htm)
13. Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that “there is one God, one faith, one baptism”[16] may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that “those who are not with Christ are against Him,”[17] and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore “without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate.”[18] Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: “He who is for the See of Peter is for me.”[19] A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: “The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?”
The life of Pope Pius IX and the great events in the history of the Church during his pontificate
By John Gilmary Shea, published 1877
pgs. 97 - 103
https://archive.org/details/TheLifeOfPopePiusIX1877 (https://archive.org/details/TheLifeOfPopePiusIX1877)
In an allocution to the cardinals on the Consistory of the 17th of December, 1847, Pius IX. congratulated the sacred college on the renewal of a cordial understanding with Spain, by means of which he had been enabled to appoint a number of bishops in that country once so devoted to the Church. He alluded too to the favorable appearance of the Catholic cause in Russia, and repudiated certain theories ascribed to him. Against religious indifferentism so zealously advocated in our days, and made as it were a state creed, he said : "It is assuredly not unknown to you, venerable brethren, that in our times many of the enemies of the Catholic faith especially direct their efforts toward placing every monstrous opinion on the same level with the doctrine of Christ, or of confounding it therewith, and so they try more and more to propagate that impious system of the indifference of religions.
But quite recently, we shudder to say it, men have appeared who have thrown such reproaches upon our name and apostolic dignity, that they do not hesitate to slander us, as if we shared in their folly and favored the aforesaid most wicked system. From the measures, in no' wise incompatible with the sanctity of the Catholic religion, which, in certain affairs relating to the civil government of the Pontifical States, we thought fit in kindness to adopt, as tending to the public advantage and prosperity, and from the amnesty graciously bestowed upon some of the subjects of the same States at the beginning of our pontificate, it appears that these men have desired to infer that we think so benevolently concerning every, class of mankind, as to suppose that not only the sons of the Church, but that the rest also, however alienated from Catholic unity they may remain, are alike in the way of salvation, and may arrive at everlasting life."
We are at a loss from horror to find words to express our detestation of this new and atrocious injustice that is done us. We do indeed love all mankind with the inmost affection of our heart, yet not otherwise than in the love of God, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save that which had perished, who died for all, who wills all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth ; who therefore sent his disciples into the whole world to preach the gospel to every creature, proclaiming that they who should believe and be baptized should be saved, but they who should believe not should be condemned ; who therefore will be saved let them come to the pillar and ground of faith, which is the Church; let them come to the true Church of Christ, which in its bishops and in the Roman Pontiff, the chief head of all, has the succession of apostolical authority, never at any time interrupted; which has never counted aught of greater moment than to preach and by all means to keep and defend the doctrine proclaim ed by the apostles, by Christ's command; which, from the apostles' time downward, has increased in the midst of difficulties of every kind ; and being illustrious through out the whole world by the splendor of miracles, multiplied by the blood of martyrs, exalted by the virtues of confessors and virgins, strengthened by the most wise testimonies of the fathers, hath flourished and doth flourish in all the regions of the earth, and shines refulgent in the perfect unity of the faith, of sacraments, and of holy discipline."
Let me paraphrase the above excerpt:
Pius IX: Allocution to the cardinals on the Consistory of the 17th of December, 1847
It is assuredly not unknown to you, venerable brethren, that in our times many of the enemies of the Catholic faith especially direct their efforts toward placing every monstrous opinion on the same level with the doctrine of Christ, or of confounding it therewith, and so they try more and more to propagate that impious system of the indifference of religions.
But quite recently, we shudder to say it, men have appeared who have thrown such reproaches upon our name and apostolic dignity, that they do not hesitate to slander us, as if we shared in their folly and favored the aforesaid most wicked system.
(. . .) as to suppose that not only the sons of the Church, but that the rest also, however alienated from Catholic unity they may remain, are alike in the way of salvation, and may arrive at everlasting life."
We are at a loss from horror to find words to express our detestation of this new and atrocious injustice that is done us.
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Here's Pius IX rejecting the notorious heresy that Protestants can be saved.
Pope Pius IX, Quanto Conficiamur Moerore (# 7), To Bishops of Italy, 1863: "Here, too, our beloved sons and venerable brothers, it is again necessary to mention and censure a very grave error entrapping some Catholics who believe that it is possible to arrive at eternal salvation although living in error and alienated from the true faith and Catholic unity. Such belief is certainly opposed to Catholic teaching."
Pope Pius IX, Singulari Quidem, To Bishops of the Austrian Empire, March 17th, 1856: "[...] The Church clearly declares that the only hope of salvation for mankind is placed in the Christian faith, which teaches the truth, scatters the darkness of ignorance by the splendor of its light, and works through love. This hope of salvation is placed in the Catholic Church which, in preserving the true worship, is the solid home of this faith and the temple of God."
Pope Pius IX, Nostis et Nobiscuм (# 10), To Bishops of Italy, Dec. 8, 1849: “In particular, ensure that the faithful are deeply and thoroughly convinced of the truth of the doctrine that the Catholic faith is necessary for attaining salvation. (This doctrine, received from Christ and emphasized by the Fathers and Councils, is also contained in the formulae of the profession of faith used by Latin, Greek and Oriental Catholics).”
Pope Pius IX, Singulari Quadem, 9 December 1854: "...let us hold most firmly that, in accordance with Catholic teaching, there is 'one God, one faith, one baptism' [Eph. 4:5]; it is unlawful to proceed further in inquiry."
Pope Pius IX, quoted by Fr. Michael Müller: "In his Encyclical Letters, dated Dec. 8, 1849; Dec.. 8, 1864; and Aug. 10, 1863, and in his Allocution on Dec. 9, 1854: Pope Pius IX. says: "It is not without sorrow that we have learned another not less pernicious error, which has been spread in several parts of Catholic countries, and has been imbibed by many Catholics, who are of opinion that all those who are not at all members of the true Church of Christ, can be saved: Hence they often discuss the question concerning the future fate and condition of those who die without having professed the Catholic faith, and give the most frivolous reasons in support of their wicked opinion . . . . .""
In line with the constant teaching of the Church:
Vatican Council I, Session II, Profession of Faith, January 6th, 1870: "This true Catholic faith, outside of which none can be saved, which I now freely profess and truly hold..."
Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, Profession of Faith, 1215: "There is indeed one Universal Church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice."
Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, 1302: "Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the Spouse in the Canticles [Sgs 6:8] proclaims: ‘One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one, the chosen of her who bore her,‘ and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God [1 Cor 11:3]. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Eph 4:5]. There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed.... Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
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Pius IX, On Promotion of False Doctrines, 1863
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm)
Leo XIII, On Mission Societies, 1880
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo13/l13mis.htm (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo13/l13mis.htm)
Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 1832
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/greg16/g16mirar.htm (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/greg16/g16mirar.htm)
The life of Pope Pius IX and the great events in the history of the Church during his pontificate
By John Gilmary Shea, published 1877
pgs. 97 - 103
https://archive.org/details/TheLifeOfPopePiusIX1877 (https://archive.org/details/TheLifeOfPopePiusIX1877)
Thank you very much! Added to my collection on Quanto conficiamur.