NEWMAN AS GUIDE

Newman as Guide

                                                                            

Blessed Cardinal Newman was a great thinker, a prolific writer and the gifted speaker. One would discern in his spoken and written word distinct elements of a profound spirituality that invited his hearers and readers to pass merely from thinking about God to actively seeking him – from “notional to real”. And Newman, the truth seeker and verbal athlete, practiced what he preached. He linked theology, spiritual and morality in an organic whole. Holiness (wholeness) is what the Vatican Councils calls all men and women to, and it would be tragic to shatter the triad of theology, spirituality and morals. Any disruption would shatter the actual experience of God in a very personal encounter with Jesus Christ through the active and serene presence of the Holy Spirit who is the personalized venue of the love of Father and Son. This is what Blessed Newman, well versed in St. John, St. Paul and the Church Fathers, understood and preached. To the question, “Who is a true Christian?”, Newman would answer, “One who has a ruling sense of God’s presence within him.”

Consciousness of the Spirit’s indwelling should be the fount of the conscience decisions of a Christian. The Vatican Council has taught that the Holy Spirit can be found residing in the deepest core of a man’s being. Pilgrimage to the interior (St. Augustine) makes a person a “Pilgrim of the Absolute” (Leon Bloy). Here is therefore the Bible working out into theology into spirituality into morality. This, as per Newman, is not merely a combat against sin and sadness, but a self-transformative trajectory of a widening openness to God’s presence – a reinforcing purchase of man and God on each other. Blessed Newman was, so to say, a fellow pilgrim to thousands of men and women who listened to his sermons and read his books and personal correspondence. They profited richly by his unobtrusive but real spiritual guidance. He respected each one’s uniqueness and extraordinary complexity in the belief that God did so too, and who therefore deals with each individual differently. At the same time he stressed the need of self-knowledge and self-denial as a means of training the will. “We rise by self-abasement.” His patron saint, Philip Neri, was his example of humility. Humility will see our mistakes and failures as vehicles of our advancement towards God, thereby clarifying a realism that is shorn of illusory pretensions.

Newman once said that one little deed, whether by someone who helps “to relieve the sick and needy” or someone who “forgives an enemy” evinces much more true faith than could be shown by “the most fluent religious conversation” or “the most intimate knowledge of Scripture.” During a cholera outbreak in Birmingham city, he worked tirelessly among the poor and sick. And when he himself died, the poor of the city turned out in their thousands to line the streets. Inscribed on the pall of his coffin was his motto, “Heart speaks to heart.” Not surprisingly, it was the theme of Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain for Newman’s beatification.

“Conscience first” From what has been said above it is now easier to understand Newman’s line in his famous letter to the Duke of Norfolk: “I shall drink to the Pope, - still to conscience first, and to the Pope afterward.” This aphorism is continuous with his awareness of God’s mysterious presence within. As the Vatican Council explains, “Conscience is a person’s most secret sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”

The law of conscience is more than a complex of an individual’s thoughts and desires. It is rather a voice calling for greater attentiveness to the Spirit and receptivity to the real world. This normally implies receptivity to the wisdom of the Church (even by a non-Christian) and mature consultation and dialogue, though without necessarily having to repeat a particular sentence of ecclesiastical authority. Newman insisted on a certain residual space that is kept free under God for one’s sincere moral conclusions.

Published in THE HERALD, November 5 – 11, 2010.

“SENSUS FIDELIUM”

Agreeing with the Italian theologian Giovanni Perrone, SJ, Newman argued “the voice of tradition may in certain cases express itself, not by Councils, nor Fathers, nor Bishops, but the ‘the communis fidelium sensus’, that is, the shared sense of the faithful.”

Newman backed his position with 22 thumbnail sketches of defection on the part of the hierarchy and 20 instances of faithful witness by the laity. In a later summary (in 1871), Newman concluded, “taking a wide view of history, we are obliged to say that the governing body of the church came up short and the governed pre pre-eminent in faith, zeal, courage and constancy.”

-         Drew Christiansen, SJ

(JIVAN, November-December 2010, pg. 18)