The Great Catholic Reformers: From Gregory the Great to Dorothy Day by C. Colt Anderson

Abstract

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 92 The Great Catholic Reformers: From Gregory the Great to Dorothy Day. By C. Colt Anderson. New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007. Pages xxi + 262. Hardcover: $29.95, ISBN: 978–0–8091–0579–3. Recent scandals in the Roman Catholic Church have emphatically highlighted the crucial need for the structural reform and spiritual renewal of the Church in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately—as this volume amply demonstrates—the Church, as a community of sinners as well as of saints, has a long history of clerical malpractice and ecclesiastical mistakes. Fortunately—or providentially—even in the most scandalous of times, reformers have emerged to remind the Church’s members and their leaders of both the obligation of the biblical commandments and the observance of the evangelical counsels. This volume presents historical sketches of ten“Great Catholic Reformers”:Pope Gregory the Great (± 540–604), Peter Damian (± 1007–1072), Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), Jean Gerson (1363–1429), Jan Hus (1369–1415), Gasparo Contarini (1483–1542), John Henry Newman (1801–1890), and Dorothy Day (1897–1980). As in the case of any list of “greats,” readers may wonder why some—such as Gerson, Hus, Contarini— made the list, while others—such as Teresa of Ávila, Charles Borromeo, Bartolomeo de las Casas, John XXIII,Teresa of Calcutta—did not. One might also wonder about chronological balance:three reformers from the eleventh and twelfth centuries,three from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, four from the other sixteen centuries. Yet, any list is inevitably discretionary and the ten reformers chosen for this volume serve well both to illustrate the continual need for reform in the Church and to provide a useful perspective on present-day scandals—though at times, the author’s legitimate concerns about recent scandals seem to have overly influenced his perspective about the past and his rhetoric about the present. In any case, the chapter of most interest to NSJ-readers is titled “The Most Dangerous Man in England:The Convert Cardinal Newman.” This dubious accolade of “most dangerous”originated with Monsignor George Talbot (1816–1886), the Roman representative of the English bishops,who was remarkably but rightly paranoid about Newman’s influence on the British public in general and Roman Catholic laity in particular. This chapter presents selections from four of Newman’s most famous works: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845, 1878),“On Consulting the Faithful” (1859), Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), and A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875). The optic through which these works are examined is their “assessment of the church’s history and its significance for reform and renewal” (197). This chapter is quite successful in presenting quotations that show Newman’s reliance on history in advancing his views about the development of doctrine, the participation of the laity in the life of the Church, freedom of conscience, and the infallibility of the Church. Although not accustomed to calling Newman a“reformer,” NSJ-readers will undoubtedly agree that “Newman’s contribution to the cause of reform cannot be ignored” (197). A chapter of merely twenty pages must inevitably paint Newman’s thought in broad strokes and Newmanists will note some shortcomings in this portrait. First,the works cited cover three decades of Newman’s life and more attention might well 93 have been given to the circumstances that prompted each of these four works—since they were responses to particular events, not systematic elaborations of a reformagenda . One might also have paid more attention to the development in Newman’s thought;as a case in point,the treatment of his Essay on Development mentions“tests and notes” without adverting to the fact that “tests” was the term used in the 1845 edition and“notes”was used in the 1878 edition. This change in vocabulary was not merely an editorial nicety, but reflected an ecclesiological shift when Newman extensively revised his Essay for republication.1 In addition, there is potential confusion in the statement that Newman’s “defense of conscience was certainly generated as a response to the Duke of Norfolk, the former prime minister William Gladstone, but it...