Chapter 10: 1825: Holy Orders in the Anglican Church
CHAPTER 10
1825: HOLY ORDERS IN THE
ANGLICAN CHURCH1
ON May 29, 1825, Newman received Holy Orders at Christ Church Cathedral from Edward Legge, the Bishop of Oxford. For most Anglican clergy, marriage was a common path. Newman, however, chose to remain celibate. Maisie Ward, a biographer of Newman, writes that Newman was “by nature a bachelor, by grace a celibate.”2 It is true that by nature he enjoyed being single and immersed in extensive reading, studying, writing, playing music, and conversations with friends. From his early youth, however, he had felt a divine call to celibacy, which he believed was both an ideal state for serving the Church as well as an ascetical means of spiritual development. Observing his austerity, his sisters jokingly called him a monk.
Newman realized that a parish needed dedicated women, like his mother and sisters, to offer services such as teaching children, setting example to parents and helping young women find employment.3 Frank complained when Newman hired a maid for his mother and sisters, suggesting that it was a matter of pride on their part. Newman replied explaining that a maid would free his mother and sisters to exercise works of charity in the parish. These works were actually like those that deacons traditionally performed in the first-century Church. Mrs. Newman jokingly told her son that she and her daughters would be his deacons.
Pusey’s opinion regarding a feminine presence in the parish rectory was that the revival of sisterhoods in the Church of England would solve the problem of the necessity of having other women help in a parish. Many of Newman’s friends believed that married clergy was the obvious and time-honored solution for providing parishes with women to carry out work to which they were more naturally suited. Newman was initially sad when his close friends, who were clergymen, Henry Wilberforce, John Keble and Thomas Mozley, married. Newman envisioned an inner circle of celibate clergymen who would be leaders in the Church in a time of dire need. For this very reason, in 1834, Henry Wilberforce was afraid to tell Newman the news of his future marriage to Mary Sargent, daughter of John Sargent, a clergymen whose four daughters all married friends of Newman. Newman became very upset at Henry for withholding this news from him, but Henry had been afraid that Newman would cut him from his circle of friends. From the human perspective, Newman also felt the loss of intimacy with his closest friends who married. Among these early friends, only Froude remained celibate. Robert Wilberforce, writing later to Newman, noted that an “old bachelor” becomes despondent when his friends marry, and old friendships seem closed.
Aside from his feelings, Newman was not objecting to married Anglican clergy, but was, instead, advocating a system of married country clergy and unmarried clergy. The unmarried clergy would live an ascetical life, like the Orthodox clergy in Greek monasteries. He once wrote to his friend George Ryder, who was anticipating marriage:
It is quite absurd to suppose that you are not at liberty both to marry and to go into the Church—indeed I think that country parsons ought as a general rule, to be married—and I am sure the generality of men ought, whether parsons or not. The celibate is a high state of life, to which the multitude of men cannot aspire. I do not say that they who adopt it are necessarily better than others, though the noblest ηθοσ (ethos) is situated in that state.4
Newman realized that the celibate state required a specific vocation, God’s assistance, and the support of intimate friendships. He relied on the human affection of his mother, sisters and a number of male friends. With these persons, he shared confidences, intellectual endeavors, and spiritual ideals. As is common with celibate persons, these very close friendships with family members and friends made it possible to forego a spouse’s love and companionship.
Meriol Trevor, another female biographer of Newman, explains that Newman had a very positive idea of Christian virginity, which consisted in a self-dedication out of love for God analogous to the dedication of spouses within marriage. In no way did Newman depreciate the dignity and goodness of marriage, nor did he disregard the pleasures of human love and the attractiveness of domestic life. He, too, felt the charm of female company and understood the power of feelings.5 He wrote that these natural feelings did not constitute sin; in themselves, they were good and innocent.6 He relinquished them for a supernatural motive—for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. In addition to the female friendship of his mother and sisters, Newman shared a lifetime spiritual friendship with Maria Giberne. Maria, sister of Walter Mayer’s wife, was an attractive young woman who initially became friends with Frank, an Evangelical like her. At first, she found Newman to be proud, distant, and too High Church. She befriended the Newman sisters and finally John Henry, whom she soon came to admire for his sincerity and intelligence. Maria eventually became Roman Catholic and a nun of the Visitation of Mary Order.
Newman also shared a chaste friendship with other women: Elizabeth Bowden, her daughter Marianne Bowden, and Anne Mozley. Marianne, whom Newman had baptized, was the daughter of his dear friend John William Bowden. After her father’s death, Marianne became Roman Catholic and a contemplative nun with the Visitation Order. In 1854, Newman gave the homily at the ceremony in which, dressed as a bride, she received the habit that signified her complete dedication to Christ. In notes for his homily, Newman wrote that the idea of Matrimony is possession. In marriage, the husband is the wife’s and no other’s and vice versa. Likewise, virginity for a Christian is the soul’s marriage with Christ.7
In 1829, when Tom Mozley, Newman’s student, was elected Fellow and his brother James was an undergraduate, the Mozley family visited the Newmans at Oxford. The Mozley sisters made friends with the Newman girls. The Mozley sisters had heard a lot about Tom’s Tutor. Anne remembered the striking impression that Newman and Froude made when the two walked into breakfast one Saturday morning. She remembered their “marked individuality” and “unconscious dignity of aspect.”8 Newman liked Anne Mozley the day they met, and they became friends. Toward the end of his life, Newman asked Anne to edit his letters for publication. She outhved Newman and prepared the first publication of his letters in two volumes.
Celibacy was a high ideal that Newman embraced for love of God and His Church. He lived by this ideal and yet, at times, admitted his attraction to the intimate friendship of marriage. Trevor points out that in our age the attraction of marriage has been confused with the need to satisfy physical pleasure and that since Newman did not confess to the latter, his confession about the need for marriage has been regarded as meaningless.9 She correctly argues that we have no right to assume what he felt on a physical plane. What we can say is that Newman knew how to love and that his capacity to love increased as he grew older. Moreover, because this was true, at times he found the sacrifice of celibacy hard.
Newman thus began the life of an Anglican clergyman with a serious commitment to a celibate life and a clear sense of his spiritual mission. At St. Clement’s, he officiated Sunday services and delivered two sermons weekly. In August of the same year—1825, he celebrated his first Communion Service and administered Holy Communion to Jemima and Mary, who had been confirmed shortly before.10 He continued as a Fellow at Oriel College, but also became Vice-Principal of St. Alban’s Hall, attached to Merton College, that same year.
In January 1826, Newman was asked to be Tutor at Oriel beginning with the Easter Term. This step would mark the start of his public life at the university. He was obliged to interact with students and his peers, and he began to exert his moral and intellectual influence on many. In 1828, when Hawkins was elected Provost of Oriel, he vacated St. Mary’s Church, and Newman was appointed vicar. As a Tutor at Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary’s, Newman came out of his shell and rose to new heights at Oxford. It would be a period of his life that he described as springtime following winter. The seeds that had germinated in the rich soil of Oriel and Trinity were now ready to sprout up from the earth.
The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, where Newman was appointed vicar, had begun as the parish church around which the university was built. Its tower dates back to the middle of the thirteenth century. Since students lived nearby and classes were conducted in the vicinity, the church became the seat of the university government, academic disputations, and conferral of degrees until the seventeenth century, but formal university worship continued. Over the centuries, the architecture and interior decoration of the church were enriched.
St. Mary’s association with the university and its use as the place of worship gained for it the name of University Church. Every Sunday of the term, a formal University Sermon was delivered there before the Vice-Chancellor and other university authorities. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury in the seventeenth century, and later on John Wesley, founder of Methodism, were other noteworthy men tied to the history of the church. Wesley, a Fellow from Lincoln College, preached a famous sermon titled “Almost Christian” at St. Mary’s in 1741. After an equally controversial sermon in 1744, he was forbidden to preach there again. Almost a century later, Newman preached at St. Mary’s and, thereafter, became part of the history of this Oxford church. And one day he too would be censured at Oxford for his religious views.
Men like Cardinal Manning and Prime Minister Gladstone, who had heard Newman’s sermons in their youth, could not forget them. As was the custom, Newman read his sermons. His delivery was poor, yet his choice of words, the arguments, and the figure of the man himself combined as a whole to form a lasting impression. According to James Anthony Froude, Newman’s sermons described real persons, with their experiences and temptations, their mix of good and evil, and their strengths and weaknesses. Other notable men who counted themselves fortunate to have heard these remarkable sermons were Lord John Taylor Coleridge and Principal J. C. Shairp.
Newman’s Sunday sermons, preached at four in the afternoon, had a noticeable intellectual and spiritual influence at the University of Oxford. They served as a catalyst for the beginning of the Oxford Movement that formally began in 1833, and later as an inspiration for its members. Newman spoke in a simple and direct manner with perfect command of the English language, a keen knowledge of human character, and a lively faith. He constantly referred to God’s greatness, goodness, and eternal glory and exhorted his listeners to full submission to God’s designs.11 The sermons had abundant references to Sacred Scripture, and the first published edition contained some references to the Church Fathers.
William Lockhart, one of Newman’s friends and later a curate under him, compared the sermons with those of other good preachers at St. Mary’s. He commented that many of these other preachers were impressive, but they did not reach the soul. According to Lockhart, they were good actors who played on the senses and the imagination, but they did not forget themselves in order to help those in the congregation focus on God.12 With Newman, however, people felt that he was a seer of God and of invisible realities. Lockhart wrote: “Newman had the power of so impressing the soul as to efface himself; you thought only of the majestic soul that saw God. It was God speaking to you as He speaks to you through creation; but in a deeper way, by the articulate voice of a man made to the image of God and raised to His likeness by grace …”13
Newman tried to develop a single idea in each sermon and criticized attempts to develop a complete subject in one sermon. He quoted often from the pages of Sacred Scripture and insisted particularly on two patristic themes, the Incarnation and the Redemption. Although the sermons contained much doctrine, they were primarily moral in content. Newman concluded that the basic obstacles to faith were of an ethical rather than intellectual nature; instead of objecting to faith, people often simply lacked the proper disposition. His sermons were therefore designed to move people to correspond to God’s grace in their lives.
Newman’s sermons conveyed religious truth with courage and charity. While the content was strong, he refrained from employing the sarcasm often used in his letters. He would identify the essence of the argument that he wished to refute and would expose its fallacy or erroneous consequences.
The content of an early sermon from August 1826, Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness, exemplifies the general tone of Newman’s preaching. It was a demanding invitation to Christian holiness in preparation for life after death and communion with the Only Holy One. When he began publishing his sermons, he chose this one to open the first volume. It was indicative of the whole tone and goal of his preaching.
Newman later corrected some of his sermons for publication. The first volume of sermons, which appeared in March of 1834, met with immediate success. He dedicated this volume to his friend, Edward Pusey. The collection of sermons was first published as Parochial Sermons; later, when added to another collection, Plain Sermons, it was titled Parochial and Plain Sermons. In total, they comprised eight volumes, even though Newman only published just over a third of the sermons that he wrote as an Anglican. In recent years, the notes of Newman’s unpublished Anglican sermons have appeared in five volumes.
While at St. Mary’s, since it was a smaller parish than St. Clement’s, Newman was obliged to preach only once on Sundays. He was glad about this because he thought that parish life was more than the Sunday sermon, which, according to him, should not be the focus of Sunday worship. He missed the frequent parish visitations to the sick that he had made at his former parish. Therefore, he soon began to visit the sick of St. Mary’s and of Littlemore, a part of the parish outside of Oxford. He started Confirmation classes for the parish children. He also married couples, “churched mothers” after childbirth (a liturgical blessing for mothers), baptized their children, and performed the burial rites for deceased parishioners.
Thus, although after ordination there was a short period in which Newman dedicated himself primarily to college work at Oriel, soon afterward, upon becoming rector of St. Mary’s, he returned to a demanding amount of pastoral work. His decision to live as a celibate clergyman did not originate in the absence of female friendships; it was an ascetical and spiritual vocation, part of a higher calling for the sake of the service of God in the Church. In his new condition, he managed to combine a life of intense pastoral duties with one of study and writing, and, given his new assignment as Vicar of the University Church, from its pulpit he became a powerful voice for renewal within the Anglican Church.
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1Pope Leo XIII, In Apostolicae Curae (1896) reaffirmed the judgment of the invalidity of Anglican Orders due to a defect in the intention and form of the sacrament. Since then, due to some Anglican Episcopal ordinations by bishops of the Old Catholic Churches some argue that in rare cases there is a “prudent doubt” about the invalidity of a minister ordained in this line of succession. The judgment and practice of the Catholic Church, however, remains the same: unconditional absolution of former Anglican ministers who become Roman Catholic priests.
2Ward, Young Mr. Newman, 272.
3Ward, Young Mr. Newman, 268-86.
4LD, Vol. III, JHN to George Ryder (July 22, 1832), 70.
5Trevor, Newman, The Pillar of the Cloud, “The Idea of Virginity,” 88-96.
6Ibid., 93-94.
7Trevor, Newman, The Pillar of the Cloud, 90.
8Ibid, 109.
9Ibid, 95.
10LD, Vol. I, JHN to Mrs. Newman (July 1825), 244. It was the first time Mrs. Newman saw her son perform his clerical duty.
11José Morales Marín, John Henry Newman (1801-1890) (Madrid: Rialp, 1990), 48.
12William Lockhart, Cardinal Newman (London: Burns & Oates), 1891, 5.
13Edwin A. Abbott, The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman, Vol. II (London: Macmillan and Co., 1892), 7.