Posted on 09/13/2010 7:09:07 AM PDT by marshmallow
In converting to Catholicism Cardinal Newman lost friends and courted controversy, but the strength of his conscience has roused the passion of the Pope, says, Christopher Howse.
The Pope, though invited by the Queen, is coming to Britain with the keen purpose of beatifying John Henry Newman. It will be a treat for him. He has been a fan for 65 years, since his days at seminary. “Newman was not a topic like any other,” the 95-year-old Alfred Läpple, Joseph Ratzinger’s former prefect of studies, remembers of those years. “He was our passion.”
Newman much resembles the Pope’s big hero, St Augustine, the fourth-century theologian. Both had a fascination with God’s place in their own life stories, which from Augustine brought the autobiographical Confessions, and from Newman the Apologia.
Twenty five years ago, Cardinal Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict was then, gave a learned paper in America on Newman. He put him in a trio of champions of conscience with another Englishman, St Thomas More, and Socrates. For them, he argued, conscience was no mere justification for doing what they liked, but an intuition of truth. Sticking to the truth led More and Socrates to death; for Newman it meant losing friends when he became Victorian England’s most famous convert to Catholicism.
The book in which Newman made the celebrated remark about preferring to “drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first”, also contains the rule that for any pope, “the championship of the Moral Law and of conscience is his raison d’être”.
His commitment to following truth, wherever it led him, made Newman a saint; and his stature as the leading English theologian of the 19th century attracts Pope Benedict, one of the leading theologians of the past century.
To us in Britain, Newman is most widely known........
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Converts come to the Catholic Church “not so much to lose what they have, but to gain what they have not, by means of what they have, more may be given to them....” [Grammar of Assent]
A church whose poster children are top-heavy intellectuals (especially with such low views of the Bible) is simply not everyone's natural home. Let me know when Catholics start bragging about their bumpkins.
mark
Except for that Adam and Eve stuff, but then that doesn't seem to be very important.
Like Mother Theresa? Brother Andre? I know they are not mentioned in the Bible so you probably missed them.
Mother Theresa was a liberal syncretist.
If the only examples the Catholic Church can come up with are liberal syncretists and highfalutin intellectuals, then no wonder it's in such a mess.
Well . . . we "neocons" are fond of our Bibles!
As I said in that earlier deleted post, here are some articles by Catholics who don't think the super-intellectual, "the Bible is full of obiter dicta" Cardinal Newman was such hot stuff.
You wrote:
“Let me know when Catholics start bragging about their bumpkins.”
We always have: St. Francis of Assisi, the Cure of Ars, Solanus Casey, St. Bernadette, Ceferino Giménez Malla, and others. Bumpkins all.
St. Therese?
Perhaps they were. Perhaps the Cajuns and the illiterate Honduran peasants are bumpkins. But this is not the image the Catholic Church presents in the United States.
What little Catholic evangelical literature exists extols and stresses the "two thousand years of intellectual tradition" (which was invoked by none other than Newt Gingrich). When I joined the RCIA way back when I was told to aspire to be like Aquinas. Everywhere it is Aquinas, Newman, Duns Scotus, and the life of the mind. Brain power conquers all.
As a historical "minority" faith in the United States the Catholic Church in this country defines itself against the ethos of the majority. The majority are those rustic, simple-minded rubes out in "J*susland." Against this the Catholic Church waves the flag of the Mind. Whereas in the nineteenth century the Catholic Church was the "poor man's church" it is now the "thinking man's church." Only intellectuals need apply. Membership is voluntary (and most Americans aren't smart enough to handle it), and for those masses of folks whose brains don't dance like skipping chestnuts G-d has mercifully allowed Fundamentalist Protestantism to develop so the vast majority can go second class. As I said, not everyone has what it takes.
Look at your own publications. Can you deny this? Everything is scholarship, everything is intellect, everything is hip, everything is modern. It's disgusting. The American counterparts of those "charming" Meso-American peasants are laughed at. I don't think the Catholic Church even knows how to address unlearned non-Catholics; the only unlearned it has dealt with for seventeen hundred years are in deeply inculturated Catholic ethnic groups to whom nothing has to be explained. While the Polish peasant and the university intellectual co-exist happily together the Catholic Church simply does not know how to speak to non-Catholic peasants. So instead it writes them off and dialogues with the intellectuals who are the only non-Catholics it can communicate with.
I saw a series of articles on the Net once about chr*stian intellectualism from the perspective of Charedi Judaism. The author noted that since the chr*stian religion itself has no Torah and nothing corresponding to Torah study it has no intellectual tradition of its own but instead can only import the intellectualism of Greco-Roman paganism. Interesting.
At any rate, I was given to understand I didn't have the option of being a pious bumpkin.
Please don't misunderstand me. I have in the recent past read some of the anti-Catholic posts some FReeper Protestants make and they absolutely floor me. In ridiculing and rejecting out-of-hand the concept of transubstantiation (for example) they show the exact same naturalism and inconsistency of Catholics who believe in evolution. I can only shake my head. But this does not change the fact that to an outsider your church is absolutely beyond belief. It is simply too different, too strange. It makes no sense, and not in a "ah, but the ways of G-d are far above us" way. It's simply maddening. You may not believe me, you may not respect me. But I have tried to fit into your church and could not. I almost drove myself crazy trying to adjust to the Catholic way of thinking and to me it's like . . . I don't know . . . what to you seems so simple and easy and unambiguous and clear seems to me like an LSD trip. I'm sorry; I couldn't do it. But I know, and G-d knows, that I tried. Whether you agree is of no importance.
I'm sorry. But a church that includes the latest intellectual "critical theories" and untrammeled medieval legends about the virgin, but which can't accommodate someone who simply cannot believe that the early chapters of Genesis are not historical? That's bizarro world.
Again, I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to come across so mean or so strident. Be well.
Aquinas was a great saint. He - and the Church - placed his saintly behavior far above his intellectual prowess.
Ask the Mods.
I have no clue.
Maybe, but it's his intellect that gets airplay, not his saintliness.
As I said, in the USA the Catholic Church is the "thinking man's church." By definition that excludes most people and thus forfeits the title of "catholic."
Whole article is a long read but worth it. Thanks.
You wrote:
“Maybe, but it’s his intellect that gets airplay, not his saintliness.”
I dunno, after all, he’s called SAINT Thomas Aquinas and not THE INTELLECT Thomas Aquinas.
“As I said, in the USA the Catholic Church is the “thinking man’s church.” By definition that excludes most people and thus forfeits the title of “catholic.””
Sorry, but that makes no sense. If someone calls the Catholic faith the “thinking man’s church” that doesn’t mean those who are not educated or are not thinkers are excluded. Think of how many of the poor, poorly educated and illiterate were devout Christians throughout the ages. Are they suddenly not Christian at all? Are they suddenly not Catholic Church members?
Judaism is known for its intellectualism, Talmudic studies, questioning, etc. Yet we know that not all Jews are thinkers or intellectuals.
You wrote:
“I’m sorry. But a church that includes the latest intellectual “critical theories” and untrammeled medieval legends about the virgin, but which can’t accommodate someone who simply cannot believe that the early chapters of Genesis are not historical? That’s bizarro world.”
We accommodate those people just fine - including bishops:
http://www.genesis1-11.org/GenesisForeword.html
I like Bishop Vasa’s predictions for the year 2010: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/01/bp-vasas-d-baker-2010-predictions/
“Again, I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to come across so mean or so strident. Be well.”
You didn’t come across as mean at all. Be well!
For some reason you seem to have missed a very important point I thought I had made. Genuine bumpkins exist in the Catholic Church by the thousands, but only because their ancestors were converted 1700 years ago. That is the only kind of Catholic bumpkin in existence. To be a Catholic bumpkin, one must be born one. On the other hand, to enter the Catholic Church, one must be an intellectual.
Judaism is known for its intellectualism, Talmudic studies, questioning, etc. Yet we know that not all Jews are thinkers or intellectuals.
The study of Torah is a commandment.
Chr*stianity simply has nothing complementary to Torah study. Torah is from Heaven, chr*stian intellectualism is from Greece and Rome.
Thank you, Vlad. I’m a big fan of the Kolbe Center, or course. Unfortunately, they don’t update much these days.
You wrote:
“For some reason you seem to have missed a very important point I thought I had made. Genuine bumpkins exist in the Catholic Church by the thousands, but only because their ancestors were converted 1700 years ago. That is the only kind of Catholic bumpkin in existence. To be a Catholic bumpkin, one must be born one. On the other hand, to enter the Catholic Church, one must be an intellectual.”
And that is clearly untrue. Anyone who has ever met the people in the average RCIA class knows there are few intellectuals. I have met converts who barely got through school, but felt drawn to the faith.
“The study of Torah is a commandment.”
And taht doesn’t make it any less intellectual. The study of the faith is demanded of the faithful of the Catholic faith. Does that make it less intellectual as a pursuit?
“Chr*stianity simply has nothing complementary to Torah study.”
That makes no sense. If Torah is scripture, then the study of scripture is complementary.
“Torah is from Heaven, chr*stian intellectualism is from Greece and Rome.”
Scripture is from God. So is the Church. And Christian intellectualism is rooted in Judaism as much as anything Greek. Quite frankly ancient Rome has little to do with it other than as a systematizer. The Romans like things orderly.
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