Chapter 38: Apologia Pro Vita Sua
CHAPTER 38
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
IN 1864, Newman broke his long public silence to respond to false accusations and the ridicule of Roman Catholic priests by Charles Kingsley, a novelist, Chaplain to the Queen, and professor of Modern History at Cambridge. In the January 1864 issue of Macmillan’s Magazine, which Newman received in late December 1863, Kingsley accused Newman of having stated as an Anglican that the Roman clergy did not consider truthfulness a virtue. Kingsley wrote, “Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be …”1
After an unsatisfactory apology by Kingsley in the following issue of Macmillan’s Magazine, Newman began to write a pamphlet which eventually evolved into his famous autobiography. For some time, Newman had been seeking an opportunity to explain and defend his religious opinions and certain steps in his life. In this attack, he had found the occasion. He gathered old correspondence from Anglican friends and worked with remarkable intensity to relate the history of his religious beliefs. From late April to early June, he worked an average of over fifteen hours each day, writing in standing position at his desk at the library of the Birmingham Oratory. The result was a powerful autobiography that reflected Newman’s passion for the truth and the evolution of his religious beliefs. Newman wrote his friend Richard Church about Kingsley’s accusation: “Thus, publicly challenged, I must speak—and, unless I speak strongly, men won’t believe me in earnest.”2 He asked his friend, a witness of Newman’s last years as an Anglican, to “correct any fault of fact” in his statement. The Apologia Pro Vita Sua was read throughout the country by people of every religious creed. It was a vindication of Newman’s intellectual honesty and of the validity of the Catholic Creed. It remains today one of his most recognized and often cited works, the content of which is recounted in this biography.
The Apologia signaled a new beginning in Newman’s public life. His name and reputation were restored in England, in particular among Protestants. He gained the respect not only of many of his opponents but also gained respect for Roman Catholic theologians from Anglicans and others. Newman thanked God that after twenty years, his conduct had been cleared in the sight of Protestants.3 He had unsuccessfully tried to clear his name in Rome, but had little further desire or hope of doing so in his lifetime. A large number of English Catholics wrote Newman to thank him and to congratulate him. Newman paid tribute in this book to his brother priests at the Birmingham Oratory and dedicated it to Ambrose St. John, who was the link between Newman’s old and new life. For the span of twenty-two years, St. John had been very generous and loyal to Newman.
The publication of the Apologia helped to revive Newman’s former friendships. During the decade of the sixties, he renewed his contact with old Anglican friends. In 1861, Newman reestablished correspondence with Isaac Williams, one of the early members of the Oxford Movement. Newman wrote to Williams: “There is no pleasure of this world which to me would be so great in itself, as to see you and other of my old friends. Before I became what I am, the loss of them was the great trouble which lay before me; and it has not ceased to be, up to this hour, the special sacrifice which I offer up to my Lord …”4 That same year Newman met in London with William Copeland, who had been his curate at St. Mary’s, and would later edit his Anglican sermons in 1868.
Frederic Rogers, Newman’s pupil and a Fellow at Oriel in 1833, visited Newman at Birmingham, and from then on they remained in close contact the rest of their lives. In July 1865, Rogers and William Church, who later wrote a very favorable history of the Oxford Movement, gave Newman the gift of a fine violin. Newman still loved to play the violin, and even feared he indulged when playing it, but he claimed that he wrote more and slept better after playing music.5 Once when Jemima visited her brother at Birmingham, she played Beethoven’s sonatas on a piano while he accompanied her on the violin. Classical music delighted Newman, and Beethoven’s Sonata in A minor in particular filled him with emotion.6 It was also in 1865 that Newman made the memorable visit to his old friend John Keble, and met with his other close friend, Edward Pusey, at Keble’s home.
One of Newman’s friends, Henry Manning, a convert to Catholicism and secretary to Cardinal Wiseman, became successor to the See of Westminster when Wiseman died in 1865. In the letter congratulating Manning for his appointment Newman asked him not to do anything to have him made bishop. Manning admitted: “I have for more than two years done my part to accomplish it … but your wish must be final with me.”7 Newman and Manning were men of very different temperaments. Their opinions on many ecclesiastical matters varied greatly. On a number of occasions, as had happened with Wiseman, Newman was unjustly treated by Manning.8 The latter actually maintained that he had tried to set things right with Newman but that Newman was oversensitive.9 The relationship between these two important English Catholics sadly worsened over the years, albeit remaining civil.
In 1865, Archbishop Ullathorne asked Newman to establish an Oratory in Oxford. Newman was worried about the dangers of interconfessional education, but due to Ullathorne’s insistence, he acquiesced. At this time the English bishops debated the issue of Catholic youth studying at Protestant universities. Under Manning’s pressure the bishops decided against Catholics studying at the public universities.10 The bishops feared that Catholic youth attending public universities would lose their faith, and Manning worried that by having an Oratory at Oxford, Newman’s prestige would attract Catholic youth to Oxford University. In December 1866, Propaganda Fidei gave permission for an Oratory in Oxford attached to the Birmingham Oratory, but gave a secret instruction to Bishop Ullathorne prohibiting Newman from residing in Oxford. The following year Newman found out about this. Against his better instinct that a project for an Oxford Oratory would fail, Newman raised money from wealthy Catholics and bought a property in Oxford for that purpose.11 He had an optimistic view of the Christian spirit and was inimical to being on the defensive. He argued that although Oxford was dangerous, every place was dangerous; the world was dangerous, and yet “you cannot keep young men under glass cases.”12 Only a few months earlier, while the bishops were on the defensive against Protestant errors at Oxford, Newman’s influence at Oxford was raising new giants for the Catholic Church: Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote Newman that along with three friends he had had a conversion, yet they had all been received into the Church earlier. He wished to be received by Newman, who was pleased to do so. Hopkins signed his letter to Newman, “your affectionate son in Christ.”13
At stake was not only a future Oratory at Oxford but the Oratory School already established at Birmingham. Archbishop Manning sent Herbert Vaughan, his future successor as Archbishop of Westminster, to Rome to persuade Alessandro Barnabó, Prefect of the office of Propaganda Fidei, and the Pope that the Oratory School’s real objective was to prepare students for the public English universities, and that Newman’s presence at Oxford would only encourage Catholic youth to study there.14 In March 1867, Ullathorne wrote Newman of the opposition against the Oratory by Cardinal Manning and others: “Dr. Herbert Vaughan, who is at Rome, and has considerable weight there speaks openly of you as having established a school to train youths for Oxford.”15
Ullathorne urged Newman to go to Rome to defend himself, but Newman sent Ambrose St. John and Henry Bittleson to clarify misunderstandings. St. John was able to find out that some of the misunderstandings dated back to Newman’s article on “Consulting the Lay Faithful,” and to Wiseman’s failure to notify Newman of Barnabó’s list of objections. Matters came to a head when a Roman correspondent questioning Newman’s orthodoxy in an article for the Weekly Register revealed what was common knowledge in Vatican circles, namely the secret instruction to keep Newman from going to Oxford. When Newman heard of the condition he wrote a letter to his bishop. In a draft which was not approved by the fathers of the Oratory, he wrote,
And now, on at length knowing it, I am obliged to say at once I cannot accept the mission with that condition. Nor am I likely to change my mind on this point. If I am a missioner at Oxford, I claim to be there, as much as or as little as I please … Not that I have ever intended to leave residence in Birmingham; but such a condition would be a snare to my conscience, and if I stopped at Oxford for a few days in Term time, it would easily be construed by Propaganda into residence. No compromise is possible here.16
Newman added that he could no longer trust Propaganda. Newman had an overwhelming support of the educated English laity who were very upset about the claims of the Weekly Register. In April, Newman’s friend William Monsell drew up a lay address in support of Newman which was signed by the Catholic members of the House of Commons, nearly all the Catholic peers and a great majority of prominent laymen. Newman wrote to Cardinal Barnabó that he was unjustly being singled out. In August 1867, the Holy See sent an instruction to the English bishops which categorically declared that sending a Catholic youth to study at Oxford or Cambridge constituted a proximate occasion of grave sin that would not allow exceptions. Upon hearing of this indication by Rome, Newman wrote his bishop, asking permission to withdraw from the Oxford project. Already before the rescript from Rome, Newman had decided not to go on with the Oxford mission.
Despite Newman’s renewed prestige in England, some Catholics questioned Newman’s orthodoxy, tarnishing his reputation both in England and Rome. Herbert Vaughan, Manning’s envoy to Rome, went as far as to accuse Newman of being the greatest exponent of liberal thought.17 This was far from true; Newman understood and respected Tradition and authority in the Church. Since Newman believed that theologians should help the hierarchy to formulate dogmatic definitions, he distanced himself from Ignaz Döllinger, a German Church historian. Döllinger had opposed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception based on a fixed notion of Tradition that was the opposite of Newman’s Theory of Development. In 1858, Newman did not attend some conferences that Lord John Acton held for liberal Catholics at his country home; Döllinger, under whom Acton had studied in Germany, participated. Later, in 1864, when the Holy See issued a Syllabus of Errors, Newman defended Rome’s decision from the theological point of view.
The failure of the Oxford project and accusations of heterodoxy, even heresy, were very painful for a man as obedient to his bishop and steeped in Tradition as Newman was. Surprisingly, after Manning’s own opposition to Newman, he wrote to Newman to profess his friendship and decry the public’s views of their differences. Manning expressed a desire to clarify matters with Newman and to heal their friendship. Newman replied that the sentiments of their past friendship could not be erased but that their trust had been broken and it would be very difficult to mend: “I should rejoice indeed, if it were so easy to set matters right. It is only as time goes on, that new deeds can reverse the old. There is no short cut to a restoration of confidence, when confidence has been seriously damaged.”18
The damage done to the friendship with Manning did not keep Newman from recognizing the good intentions of Manning and the achievements of Wiseman and Faber. These good men had acted unjustly toward Newman out of human frailty. They had also surrounded themselves with advisers who were antagonistic to Newman and misrepresented him with other ecclesiastics and the Holy See. Initially, Newman defended himself, but he later accepted this suffering and decided not to worry about pleasing anyone other than God.19 He recorded the wrongs done to him only in private letters to a few friends and in his personal notes. However, to the credit of Cardinal Manning, it should be noted that on one occasion after Newman’s Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, he wrote to the Holy See to ward off any hasty judgment of Newman’s Letter.20
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1Charles Kingsley, Macmillan’s Magazine (January 1864), quoted by Ian Ker, John Henry Newman, 533.
2LD, Vol. XXI, JHN to R. W. Church (April 23, 1964), 100-101, 100.
3AW (October 30, 1867), 262.
4AID, Vol. XX, JHN to Isaac Williams (October 21, 1861), 59-61; 59-60.
5LD, Vol. XXII, JHN to R. W. Church (July 11, 1865), 9.
6LD, Vol. XXIII, JHN to Mrs. John Mozley (June 19, 1867), 255.
7LD, Vol. XXI, Archbishop Manning to JHN (June 4, 1865), 479.
8AW (February 20, 1865), 260-61.
9Leslie Shane, Henry Edward Manning, His Life and Labours (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne Limited, 1921), “The Case of Dr. Newman,” 269-87; 279, 283.
10James Pereiro, Cardinal Manning, An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon University Press, 1998), 235-45.
11Morales, Newman (1801-1890), 289-94.
12LD, Vol. XXIII, JHN to Sir Justin Sheil (March 22, 1867), 100-102; 101.
13LD, Vol. XXII, Gerard Manley Hopkins to JHN (October 18, 1866), 302.
14LD, Vol. XXIII, JHN to James Hope-Scott (March 29, 1867), 112-13; Instructions for Ambrose St. John (April 2, 1867), 120-21. Periero, Cardinal Manning, An Intellectual Biography, 244. Manning, who doubted Newman’s orthodoxy, told Vaughan that Newman did not have the right “Catholic spirit.”
15LD, Vol. XXIII, from Bishop Ullathorne to JHN, (March 28), 1867, 111.
16LD, Vol.. XXIII, JHN to Bishop Ullathorne,(April 6, 1867), 130-131; 131.
17Gray, Cardinal Manning, A Biography, 214-15.
18LD, Vol. XXIII, JHN to Archbishop Manning (August 10, 1867), 290-291, 290.
19AW (February 22), 1865, 260-261.
20Shane, Henry Edward Manning, His Life and Labours, 269-87; 281.