An Excerpt from John Henry Cardinal Newman

I have been reading John Henry Cardinal Newman's auto-biography, Apologia pro Vita Sua. It's a bit dry at first and hard to wade through all of the name-dropping (especially since I recognize none of the names he drops). But the meat of the book, that is, the explanation for his transitioning theology, is well worth the wait.

John Henry Newman was an Anglican minister and teacher at Oxford in the 1820s and 30s, who would convert to Catholicism around 1840. His conversion is explored and explained in the Apologia. For more on Cardinal Newman, you can read a biography here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10794a.htm

The subject of my post today is an excerpt from the Apologia that has a fictitious Anglican debating a fictitious Catholic. Their topic of discussion is "the basis of Christianity". Is it to be found in the visible church (the Catholic position) or on the invisible Truth of ancient doctrine?

(Continue Reading...)

"You say to me that the Church of Rome is corrupt. What then? to cut off a limb is a strange way of saving it from the influence of some constitutional ailment. Indigestion may cause cramp in the extremities; yet we spare our poor feet notwithstanding. Surely there is such a religious fact as the existence of a great Catholic body, union with which is a Christian privilege and duty. Now we English are separate from it."

The other answers: "The present is an unsatisfactory, miserable state of things, yet I can grant no more. The Church is founded on a doctrine, on the gospel Truth; it is a means to an end. Perish the Church, (though, blessed be the promise! this cannot be,) yet let it perish rather than the Truth should fail. Purity of faith is more precious to the Christian than unity itself. If Rome has erred grievously in doctrine, then it is a duty to separate even from Rome."

His friend, who takes the Roman side of the argument, refers to the image of the Vine and its branches, which is found, I think, in St Cyprian, as if a branch cut from the Catholic Vine must necessarily die. Also he quotes a passage from St Augustine in controversy with the Donatists to the same effect; viz. that, as being separated from the body of the Church, they were ipso facto cut off from the heritage of Christ. And he quotes St Cyril's argument drawn from the very title Catholic, which no body or communion of men has ever dared or been able to appropriate, besides one. He adds, "Now I am only contending for the fact, that the communion of Rome constitutes the main body of the Church Catholic, and that we are split off from it, and in the condition of the Donatists."

The other replies by denying the fact that the present Roman communion is like St Augustine's Catholic Church, inasmuch as there must be taken into account the large Anglican and Greek communions. Presently he takes the offensive, naming distinctly the points in which Rome has departed from Primitive Christianity, viz. "the practical idolatry, the virtual worship of the Virgin and Saints, which are the offence of the Latin Church, and the degradation of moral truth and duty, which follows from these." And again: "We cannot join a Church, did we wish it ever so much, which does not acknowledge our orders, refuses us the Cup, demands our acquiescence in image-worship, and excommunicates us, if we do not receive it and all other decisions of the Tridentine Council."

His opponent answers these objections by referring to the doctrine of "developments of gospel truth." Besides "The Anglican system itself is not found complete in those early centuries; so that the [Anglican] principle [of Antiquity] is self-destructive." "When a man takes up this Via Media, he is a mere doctrinaire;" he is like those, "who, in some matter of business, start up to suggest their own little crotchet, and are ever measuring mountains with a pocket ruler, or improving the planetary courses." "The Via Media has slept in libraries; it is a substitue of infancy for manhood."