Iron Hardness, Surpassing Sweetness: Newman as Preacher

Abstract

BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S importance as a Catholic thinker is beyond dispute. Since well before his canonization process was opened there were predictions that he would be not Saint John Henry but of Church. The French theologian Jean Guitton recounted that in 1957 an increasingly ill Pope Pius XII whispered in his ear, Console yourself: will one day be a Doctor of Church. (1) After his cause was opened such talk continued. Even in absence of direct influence or quotations from his works, many have referred to Second Vatican Council as Newman's Council. (2) Blessed John Paul II recognized his contributions in Fides et ratio by naming him, as well as others such as Antonio Rosmini, Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Edith Stein, and Vladimir S. Soloviev, a model for exploring relationship of faith and reason. (3) It is certainly this recognition that prompted Pope Benedict XVI to alter his own practice of sending a representative to preside over beatification ceremonies by going himself. His homily on this occasion foregrounded intellectual contributions that has to such topics as university education, faith and reason, and development of doctrine. (4) But Doctors of Church are something more than brilliant thinkers--they are saints first and foremost. As end of Benedict's homily clear, was, above all, a Christian and a priest. Both before and after he became a Catholic, was usually engaged in pastoral work at same time he was undertaking intellectual tasks. Even when was ensconced in Oxford, he was never an ivory tower intellectual in sense that his writings were somehow separated from his living faith and pastoral work. Some of his most powerful and unforgettable writings are sermons, and his name was originally during 1830s as a It was during this period that many of his greatest sermons, those known as Parochial and Plain Sermons, were written and preached. His sermons were so influential that people began to refer to Newmania and jokes were that undergraduates recited creed, Credo in Newmanum: I believe in Newman. When would preach at University Parish of St. Mary Virgin on Sunday afternoons, crowds would gather to hear him, many of them undergraduates at Oxford. Some of university authorities, in an attempt to stifle his influence, changed dinner hour at their colleges so young men would have to choose between dinner and hearing Newman. Many of them chose Newman. The Anglican was not a dramatic Fr. Ian Ker, biographer, describes his sermons as read, with hardly any change in inflexion of voice and without any gesture on part of preacher, whose eyes remained fixed on text in front of him. The only obvious rhetorical device was the long pause, which appeared to be not for effect but result of sheer intensity of thought. (While as a Catholic he more usually preached from a set of notes, he did not thereby become more theatrical.) Nevertheless, effect was powerful, even for one like Matthew Arnold, who left Christianity behind altogether but who never ceased to venerate intellect and carried for a lifetime memory of preaching in Oxford. He would recall the charm of spiritual apparition, gliding into dim afternoon light through aisles of St. Mary's, rising into pulpit, and then, in most entrancing of voices, breaking silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music,--subtle, sweet, mournful. (5) Most observers, though, remembered content of sermons. Richard Church, younger Oxford Movement colleague, recalled in his history of movement that they made men think of things which preacher spoke of, and not of sermon or preacher. (6) Owen Chadwick would later write, Newman created his effect by disappearing into reality of which he spoke, as though he must get out of its way. …