Posted on 12/08/2021 2:19:08 PM PST by MurphsLaw
s it possible for a memorandum to be a masterpiece? A few paragraphs long, dashed off ex tempore, for a friend, not polished? Various columns in TCT have appreciated masterpieces – a poem, a painting, a musical work. But could a memorandum ever be accounted a “masterpiece”?
I have in mind Newman’s “Memorandum on the Immaculate Conception” – written off by the Cardinal,” his editor says, “for Mr. R. I. Wilberforce, formerly Archdeacon Wilberforce, to aid him in meeting the objections urged by some Protestant friends against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.”
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That’s it, “written off” – a memorandum is something written off, dashed off, tossed off.
Surely a master can “dash off” a masterpiece: witness the Gettysburg Address, a Shakespeare sonnet, a Scarlatti sonata. And so we look to Newman’s “Memorandum” without worries as truly a spiritual masterpiece.
Newman begins: “It is so difficult for me to enter into the feelings of a person who understands the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and yet objects to it, that I am diffident about attempting to speak on the subject.” He adds, “I was accused of holding it, in one of the first books I wrote, twenty years ago. On the other hand, this very fact may be an argument against an objector – for why should it not have been difficult to me at that time, if there were a real difficulty in receiving it?”
Already, astonishing brilliance. He imagines someone raising difficulties, and his task would be to understand those difficulties and reply to them. But he can’t see any difficulties. Maybe he’s incompetent even to speak on the subject?
He turns this concern on its head. Many years ago, as a young Anglican minister, long before the pope’s definition, Newman had already come to hold that doctrine, naturally and easily. But he couldn’t have done if it had involved difficulties. So he has the requisite competence, which is to speak to the naturalness of the doctrine!
Here is that earlier passage, from the Parochial and Plain Sermons:
Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and divine favour go together (and this we are expressly told). . . .What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and stature? This contemplation runs to a higher subject, did we dare to follow it; for what, think you, was the sanctified state of that human nature, of which God formed His sinless Son; knowing, as we do, that “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” and that “none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”
Then come a series of devastating arguments as to why there are no difficulties in the doctrine. If there is no difficulty in saying that Eve was created without sin – if there is no risk of turning her into a deity – what is the great difficulty in saying that Mary was created without sin? If we hold that John the Baptist was cleansed of original sin in the womb, then why not Mary from an even earlier point in the womb? If there is no difficulty in saying that you and I are cleansed from original sin at some later point in our lives by baptism – if our saying so in no way detracts from the merits of the Lord – then wouldn’t Mary’s being cleansed even earlier in her life make her even more dependent on the Lord?
"We do not say that she did not owe her salvation to the death of her Son. Just the contrary, we say that she, of all mere children of Adam, is in the truest sense the fruit and the purchase of His Passion. He has done for her more than for anyone else. To others He gives grace and regeneration at a point in their earthly existence; to her, from the very beginning."
Newman then considers the antiquity of the doctrine. Why? Because “No one can add to revelation. That was given once for all; – but as time goes on, what was given once for all is understood more and more clearly.” You might wish to copy out these lines as proof of what Newman meant by “development of doctrine.” It did not allow for any new revelation. What it means, rather, is this: “The greatest Fathers and Saints in this sense have been in error, that, since the matter of which they spoke had not been sifted, and the Church had not spoken, they did not in their expressions do justice to their own real meaning.”
He focuses on the contrast between Mary and Eve in the earliest writings of the Fathers, and especially the proto-evangelion: “See the direct bearing of this upon the Immaculate Conception... There was war between the woman and the Serpent. This is most emphatically fulfilled if she had nothing to do with sin – for, so far as any one sins, he has an alliance with the Evil One.”
Newman’s masterpiece concludes: “I say it distinctly – there may be many excuses at the last day, good and bad, for not being Catholics; one I cannot conceive: ‘O Lord, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was so derogatory to Thy grace, so inconsistent with Thy Passion, so at variance with Thy word in Genesis and the Apocalypse, so unlike the teaching of Thy first Saints and Martyrs, as to give me a right to reject it at all risks, and Thy Church for teaching it. It is a doctrine as to which my private judgment is fully justified in opposing the Church’s judgment. And this is my plea for living and dying a Protestant.’”
Errata: Adam AND Eve were, for a time, also immaculate.
You seem to be careful to refrain from using the term “Original Sin”.
Why is that?
You’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time, and undoubtedly received answers far more eloquent than I can (and have given you). Yet, you still do not open your heart to the Roman Tradition (as biblically instructed).
You have read my posts before. You know Our Lady is the bride of the Holy Spirit, that alone is the beginning of understanding. To accept a woman soiled by sin as the bride of God is unthinkable. Remember the offerings of Cain and Abel. Our Lady was an offering as bride to God, thus she must be utterly spotless.
May God open your eyes and heart to see and LOVE the Truth.
“Jesus could have inherited a flesh able to be tempted only if Mary had such a flesh.”
Please see my #180.
And my #181...😏
Spouse of the Holy Ghost.
Daughter of the Father.
Mother of God.
Quite a resume!
Errata: Adam AND Eve were, for a time, also immaculate.
Man, that post is 100% blasphemy.
No. I trust the Holy Spirit. The real one. The one whose message has never changed, or formed multiple churches.
I ignore the “teachings” of the sinners and false prophets both in and out of the Catholic church. There’s plenty to go around.
Does that include believers in false doctrines?
Not a rhetorical question.
And if there’s any truth in that, you should have stayed in the Church when you did so.
The term is not found in Scripture.
Man is born with a sin nature. Period.
ALL humans who have a human father.
Mary is NOT the bride of God.
the most the Holy Spirit refers to her as in Scripture is “mother of Jesus”.
All the other fabrications invented by Catholicism are nothing more than wishful thinking in an attempt to deify Mary.
Depends which false doctrines and who is determining which doctrines.
If it’s something Catholicism decides is a false doctrine over something they invented, then it’s irrelevant.
If it concerns the deity of Christ and the plan of redemption, then wrong doctrines do not translate into believers.
If it involves what Paul refers to as disputable matters as in Romans 14, then it doesn’t matter.
Sorry, read both posrts. I’m not into Magic Thinking, which in terms of Christianity is the category of man imagined dogma. I leave you to your floundering, which you appear to believe is settling on truth ... it is not truth because the Word of God does not support the imaginings. You don’t appear to even comprehend what Adam and Eve lost in the Garden. I can’t help you. May God have mercy upon you.
Like Semiramis?
Don’t expect the deceived to begin to see the truth. Was it Twain that said it is harder to convince a deceived person that they are deceived than it is to deceive them?
I’m still confused as it’s kinda hard to read what was on your mind from here.
Repeating it doesn't make it any more true.
You guys just CANNOT spout this stuff and expect to be taken seriously.
Lots of straw grasping going on here!
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