In the words of David Newsome in his book The Parting of Friends, many Anglicans were keen to “mend the breaches made by the secession of Newman to the Roman Church.” In the act of that attempted “mending,” Newman was confronted by Anglicans who forbore to analyze Alphonsus Liguori’s recondite doctrine on mental reservation and equivocation and confront Newman with it. Among them was the Rev. Charles Kingsley, author of the classic books Westward Ho!, Hypatia and his juvenilia, The Water Babies. Kingsley sparked a literary conflagration when he wrote in the January, 1864 issue of the widely read, Macmillan’s Magazine, “Truth for its own sake had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.” Kingsley questioned Newman’s credibility: “How can I tell I shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one of the three kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed St. Alfonso Liguori and his pupils even when confirmed by an oath, because: ‘Then we do not deceive our neighbor, but allow him to deceive himself?”
Newman had enemies inside the Roman Church as well. An influential group of ultramontane Romanists had accused the convert of Protestant tendencies. Two of his early projects, the Irish university and his editorship of The Rambler, had flopped. Since 1845 his existence as a Catholic had been largely an obscure one. The Anglican challenger, Kingsley, was what would be called nowadays a “best-selling author,” and the fact that he picked a fight with the besieged Newman gave the latter a golden opportunity of putting his impressive command of the English language to use in ably defending many authentic, traditionally Catholic doctrines which Kingsley had disparaged, and which pre-dated the Renaissance.
Our concern however, is with Newman’s qualified defense of Liguorianism, which was the paramount and indeed most explosive aspect of Kingsley’s criticism, in branding all Catholic priests as equivocators (which is, of course, an unfair generalization). The debate played out in an exchange of pamphlets subsequently published in Newman’s Apologia. The original edition of his Apologia differs from editions made popular later in the twentieth century. In its first edition, the Apologia began with the debate, “Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman: A Correspondence on the Question Whether Dr. Newman teaches that Truth is No Virtue” (London, 1864), after which followed the cardinal’s autobiography, and then an appendix which replied to Kingsley and the “39 blots” (a satire on the Anglican Church’s 39 Articles).
Wilfrid Ward, 47 the editor of the authoritative 1913 Oxford edition of the Apologia, pronounced Newman the winner over Kingsley by a mile: “Newman…emerged triumphant. The Apologia carried the country by storm…” This sunny view of Newman’s “triumph” is the general verdict of the papists and the intellectual elite of the English-speaking world generally. It is true that Newman convinced the Tories and upper classes of Britain that his defense of equivocation was correct. But what was the locus of those classes in terms of their ethics? At this stage in the Victorian era, the British upper and middle classes, in what was termed the Establishment Tory wing of the Church of England 48 (e.g. “the Liberalism which today inundates the English intelligent classes,” to use Newman’s own description), were desirous of moral support for their own acts of equivocation. Hence, some significant portions of the Protestant Overlord class in Britain welcomed Newman when he provided that support. Those Anglicans who were not seduced by modernist trends and not convinced by Newman’s qualified defense of Liguori, tended to be “Evangelicals,” who at the time numbered in the millions.
Newman proposed through the medium of the elegance of his much admired prose, what would come to be applauded as a nuanced understanding of equivocation, along with a subtle dig at the Italian character, which had only just been held up to national contempt in Britain by Wilkie Collins in his popular, 1859 mystery novel, The Woman in White, in which the figure of the loathsome “Count Fosco” is rendered as the epitome of menace and treachery.
Newman presented to the liberal Protestant lords and ladies of Britain the ethical cover they were seeking for their own considerable violations of the requirement for absolute fidelity to truthful speech, and they accepted his thinking with the frisson of having obtained it from a romantic rebel who had turned the tables on what was perceived as the holier-than-thou faction of the Church of England. From then until now, Newman’s Apologia has been celebrated as the triumphal refutation of an ugly strain of pig-headed evangelical Protestantism on the part of a more reasonable and humane Catholicism. This myth is sustained by internal and external omissions: a failure to closely examine Newman’s text in terms of the ramifications of his qualified support for Liguori, and beyond the text of the Apologia itself, the fact that Newman ran away from his most formidable opponent, Prof. Frederick Meyrick of Oxford, who he did not scruple to endeavor to answer in public, or even to name, as he had done with the less theologically talented Mr. Kingsley.
The version of the Apologia Pro Vita Sua which is now the standard text in schools and Roman Church circles after it was re-edited by its author, is a redacted version which takes the focus off of Kingsley and Liguori, on the queer pretext, as articulated by Wilfrid Ward, that the censorship was necessary so that the volume might metamorphose into “permanent literature.” 49 Ward wrote:
“It became a classic of the language, and it had to be reedited that its form, as well as its substance, might befit its permanent character. Its form had to be no longer that appropriate to a controversy of the hour which rapier thrusts and colloquialisms were suitable weapons, but that of an earnest autobiography which could stand side by side with those of St. Augustine and Rousseau…What was justified only as a retort made in heat and on the spur of the moment, to words blurted out by Kingsley himself in a moment of anger, was withdrawn. The last chapter was no longer called, ‘General Answer to Mr. Kingsley;’ it became, ‘The position of my mind since 1845.’ Such omissions and alterations indicate the general principle on which the book was re-edited.” 50
Was the contest with Newman concerning Churchsanctioned verbal and literary deceit really just a “controversy of the hour,” or was it one for the ages? Is “a classic of the language” created by confecting a cosmetic edition of a text which has been drained of its most dangerous polemics? Or are Ward and the Newman faction he represented, guilty of censoring a narrative which is potentially damaging to the reputation of the Church of Rome and Cardinal Newman? Is the falsification any less morally troubling because it was admitted publicly by Wilfrid Ward?
Kingsley had raised a number of points. The issue of Liguorianism was only one of them, though it proved the most contentious. Cardinal Newman did not entirely endorse Alphonsus Liguori’s teaching on deceiving others, though one could say that Newman himself nearly equivocated concerning it when he wrote:
“I cannot think what it can be, in a day like this, which keeps up the prejudice of this Protestant country against us (Catholics), unless it be the vague charges which are drawn from our books of moral theology; and with a short notice of the work in particular which my accuser (Kingsley) especially throws into our teeth, I shall in a very few words bring these observations to a close.
“St. Alfonso Liguori, then, it cannot be denied, lays down that an equivocation, that is, a play upon words, in which one sense is taken by the speaker, and another sense intended by him for the hearer, is allowable, if there is a just cause, that is, in an extraordinary case, and may even be confirmed by an oath. I shall give my opinion on this point as plainly as any Protestant can wish; and therefore I avow at once that in this department of morality, much as I admire the high points of the Italian character, I like the English character better; but in saying so, I am not, as will shortly be seen, saying anything disrespectful to St. Alfonso, who was a lover of truth, and whose intercession I trust I shall not lose, though, on the matter under consideration, I follow other guidance in preference to his. 51
Newman goes on to list four distinguished Protestants (Anglican Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Anglican Archdeacon William Paley, and from the world of letters, Puritan John Milton and A
nglican Samuel Johnson). He examines the views of these four luminaries over the course of six pages, adducing evidence for his assertion that they supported either equivocation or mental reservation, or both. For example, he cites Johnson thus: ‘The general rule is, that truth should never be violated; there must, however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer should ask you which way a man is gone.”
Furthermore, Cardinal Newman states as his own preference that the “Italian character” is liked less than the English character. Is this not a gentleman’s way of framing racial defamation of Italians? How is it that Liguori has come to be identified with the Italian character as a whole? What a tragedy for Italians that by the Victorian Age they were no longer the people of Saints Anthony of Padua and Francis of Assisi, and of the poet Dante Aligheri, but of Liguori, so that even the Church of Rome’s own John Henry Newman had to parse the assessment of the national character of Italy based on the impact of Liguori, whose influence even he admitted, by a circuitous route, had rendered the Italian character second to the English.
Note too that concerning Liguori, Newman describes him as a “lover of truth.” If that false statement is not a case of mental reservation, what is? How can Newman’s Apologia be celebrated as a triumph over Kingsley when Newman resorted to such demonstrably false statements? If Liguori is such a “lover of truth” why does Newman confess that “in the matter under consideration, I follow other guidance in preference to his”? This is classic equivocation—whereby Newman permits us to deceive ourselves. Equivocation and mental reservation in just one paragraph. How then did Newman supposedly win the debate with Kingsley?
The consensus in Britain was that Newman had exonerated himself of Kingsley’s accusation that Newman had been infected with Liguori’s morality; though it was less clear as to whether he had managed to rescue the reputation of Liguori and the Church of Rome from the charge of institutionalizing lying and deception. Among those who were not persuaded was Newman’s renowned Catholic friend and correspondent, Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1834-1902), who stated, “Newman wrote a book to deny Liguori, but ended by invoking his intercession. Therefore I differ from N. (Newman) exactly as I do from Lig. (Liguori). Clearly he does not think it sinful to lie. It is not enough to disapprove lies if we say they are not sins.”
As noted, Newman lists several of England’s most distinguished Protestant literary figures who he says were in favor of untruthful speech in certain circumstances: “…great English authors, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Paley, Johnson, men of very distinct schools of thought, distinctly say, that under certain special circumstances it is allowable to tell a lie. Taylor says: ‘To tell a lie for charity, to save a man’s life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of a prince, of a useful and a public person, hath not only been done at all times, but commended by great and wise and good men. Who would not save his father’s life, at the charge of a harmless lie, from persecutors or tyrants?’ Again, Milton says: ‘What man in his senses would deny, that there are those whom we have the best grounds for considering that we ought to deceive—as boys, madmen, the sick, the intoxicated, enemies, men in error, thieves? I would ask, by which of the commandments is a lie forbidden? You will say, by the ninth. If then my lie does not injure my neighbor, certainly it is not forbidden by this commandment.’ Paley says: ‘There are falsehoods, which are not lies, that is, which are not criminal.”
Newman added, “…in truth, a Catholic theologian has objects in view which men in general little compass; he is not thinking of himself, but of a multitude of souls, sick souls, sinful souls, carried away by sin, full of evil, and he is trying with all his might to rescue them from their miserable state; and in order to save them from more heinous sins, he tries, to the full extent that his conscience will allow him to go, to shut his eyes to such sins, as are, though sins, yet lighter in character or degree. He knows perfectly well that, if he is as strict as he would wish to be, he shall be able to do nothing at all with the run of men; so he is as indulgent with them as ever he can be. Let it not be for an instant supposed, that I allow of the maxim of doing evil that good may come; but, keeping clear of this, there is a way of winning men from greater sins by winking for the time at the less, or at mere improprieties or faults; and this is the key to the difficulty which Catholic books of moral theology so often cause to the Protestant. They are intended for the Confessor and Protestants view them as intended for the Preacher…
“This is pretty much the answer I make, when I am considered in this matter a disciple of St. Alfonso. I plainly and positively state, and without any reserve, that I do not at all follow this holy and charitable man in this portion of his teaching. There are various schools of opinion allowed in the Church; and on this point I follow others. I follow Cardinal Gerdil, and Natalis Alexander, and St. Augustine….Augustine is the doctor of the great and common view that all untruths are lies, and that there can be no just cause of untruth.
“I will quote one passage from Natalis Alexander:—’They certainly lie, who utter the words of an oath, without the will to swear or bind themselves: or who make use of mental reservations and equivocations in swearing, since they signify by words what they have not in mind, contrary to the end for which language was instituted, viz. as signs of ideas. Or they mean something else than the words signify in themselves and the common custom of speech.’
“And, to take an instance: I do not believe any priest in England would dream of saying, ‘My friend is not here;’ meaning, ‘He is not in my pocket or under my shoe. Nor should any consideration make me say so myself. I do not think St. Alfonso would in his own case have said so…
“And now, if Protestants wish to know what our real teaching is, as on other subjects, so on that of lying, let them look, not at our books of casuistry, but at our catechisms. Works on pathology do not give the best insight into the form and the harmony of the human frame; and, as it is with the body, so it is with the mind. The Catechism of the Council of Trent was drawn up for the express purpose of providing preachers with subjects for their sermons; and as my whole work has been a defense of myself, I may say here that I rarely preach a Sermon, but I go to this beautiful and complete catechism to get both matter and doctrine. There we find…notices about the duty of veracity…” 52
And there too we find notices about the duty of not charging interest on loans which is just as studiously ignored as “the duty of veracity.” Newman’s postulation of two sets of books is as bankrupt in religion as it is in accounting. The books of casuistry direct the conscience of the papist. What is performed in the Sacrament of Confession is supposed to enforce the laws of God. Newman would have us look to the declarations of Trent as indicative of the faith of the Church of Rome. The trumpeting of the mere fact of the existence of Trent’s decrees has been misleading generations of Catholics, many of whom remain convinced that the Church of Rome continues to ban profit on loans and strictly forbids lying, deceit and theft. The situation ethics of the Liguorian and other papist systems demonstrates that the reverse is true, and now that we have some inkling of the extent of the plague of child molestation inside the Church, we can better understand how the Liguorian and other casuist systems have served as a bulwark against the exposure and prosecution of child-molesting priests.
In light of the fact that in print Newman debated Rev. Kingsley, who was not a theologian, while evading Meyrick, who was a formidable Protestant theologian, and whose documentation and arguments it may be that Newman could not answer, the histrionic assessment of Newman’s alleged complete victory over his lesser opponent Kingsley is wearying in its bombast:
“The rough handling of Kingsley by his opponent was a marked feature in the original Apologia…It succeeded so completely and issued in such an acknowledged and crushing defeat for Kingsley that Newman’s warmest friends found themselves feeling sorry for the man… A fine literary critic among Newman’s Oratorian entourage—Father Ignatius Dudley Ryder—wrote at the time…th
e following note of his own impressions on reading Newman’s scathing denunciation of his assailant…this polemical annihilation…In reading the tremendous handling of his opponent in the introduction and conclusion of the Apologia, it is impossible, I think, whatever may be one’s sympathies, to avoid a sense of honest pity for the victim as for one condemned though by his own rashness to fight with gods or with the elements.” 53
Mr. Ward’s belief that Newman was nearly universally recognized as the victor in the exchange with Kingsley does not bear up under scrutiny. Church of England Bishop Samuel Wilberforce viewed Newman’s response to Kingsley as “special pleading” of a type which had not succeeded in freeing the Church of Rome from complicity in the errors of Liguori: “In truth there is against him here that consensus of living authority to which in matters ecclesiastical Dr. Newman attributes so indisputable a power.” 54 The Spectator was not persuaded that Newman had carried the day, writing that Kingsley had not been proved wrong in his main point, that “truth for its own sake” was not a high point in the Roman priesthood.
The bragging of the Newmanites repels the revisionist reader who has witnessed similar boasts and congratulatory back-slapping predicated on a hoax that maintains credibility from the fact that the favored party commands the attention of the press and the masses, while opponents languish in obscurity. The advantage is solely in terms of public relations, not the truthfulness of the “winning” side. Because Newman refused to face Frederick Meyrick, a first class opponent, his followers were able to crown him with the laurel wreath of unconditional victory over a second rate, “annihilated” opponent, and this has become the judgment of consensus history.
Here we glimpse more of the deceit of which the august Cardinal Newman may be guilty. In the face of his glorification, a scrupulous Newman would have interrupted to say, Gentleman, you do overpraise me, for if I have triumphed it is because I have been too exhausted and perhaps too timid to deign to answer the charges made by the Oxford theologian Rev. Meyrick, whose special knowledge of these matters is far above that of the children’s book author, Mr. Kingsley.
The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome Page 49
