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.”
,br>
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.’”
Are you out of Windex again?
If Mary was not a sinner she was not descended from Adam and therefore Jesus could not be born as a man, not a man descended from Adam -because his Father is God not a descendant of Adam- so your reasoning is 'failed'.
All alive humans in any generation are descendants of Adam, through their father. Jesus was not desceded from Adam through His Father but was a member of the human race through His Mother, because she was descended from Adam. As a descendant of Adam she had a soul possessing a dead spirit. When she believed in Jesus as Messiah, she was born again and her once dead spirit came alive in Christ.
Now argue with THAT reasoning and stop using magic thinking just so you can defend the man-made dogma of Catholicism.
It is too bad. But I for one took the article to be a beautiful gift for us Catholics. It is, after all, a day devoted to her. Perhaps it should have been directed to the Catholic Forum.
But i see a lot of anti-Catholic snark around here, and more of that than I do Protestand baiting.. Maybe, as a former Protestant, that’s just me.
I think maybe we would all to well to focus our energies on bigger differences than those between Catholics and Protestants.
Are you off the wagon again?
Your imagination seems unaware that you are incapable of sensing the spirit of anyone, unless the spirit is alive in Christ and evidencing His Presence within their human spirit. Are yo really that possessed of magic thinking?
The article couldn’t be “catholic caucused” because St. Newman mentioned “Protestant”.
Try reading it before putting you foot in your mouth.
Why does Jesus Christ’s Mother provoke you so much?
A clear non sequitur.
Don’t mind-read and your comparison is silly.
Again, you do not speak for the majority of Catholics; however you may speak for the majority of modernists. They are very ignorant of the Catholic faith.
And 100 percent of traditional Catholics who receive Holy Communion on the tongue, while kneeling, believe in the Real Presence. And these are the Catholics Bergoglio and Barron, and their fellow modernists, despise.
You revealed you knew this thread would be an agitation, so stop tryign to hide your motives: "... when I have tried to caucus something to avoid expected unpleasantness."
Your effort to deny your motives so clearly exposed is a characteristic of fundamental dishonesty.
Your screen name is apparently spelled incorrectly.
(Troll harder.)
Where does the bolded part (I assume you’d meant to bold it) say that Mary is the equal of the word of God?
How so?
Think about it for a minute: everyone until Jesus had a father decended from Adam; everyone until Jesus inherited a sin nature from their father; God is the NOT Father of the fleshly decendants of Adam, Adam being the Source of their fleshly sin nature, except for Jesus; Jesus inherited His human flesh from Eve thus His flesh (Body and behavior mechanism is human in origin thus human from the fallen Adam, EXCEPT that The Spirit of God was abiding in Him from the start thus the righteousness of God was directing the flesh of Jesus since His spirit was never dead in tresspasses and simns which is a nature -to sin- inherited from the father of humans. IF Jesus did not have human flesh He could not redeem humans ergo He inherited human flesh through Mary who inherited human flesh from Adam regardless of the state of Eve.
“everyone until Jesus inherited a sin nature from their father;”
__________
Eve didn’t.
THAT IS WHY your question is a non sequitur ... there are no humans since Cane and Abel who have not inherited a sin nature through being a descendant from Adam, even the blessed Mary. Eve’s status is not relevant, though the Word of God records that BOTH Adam and Eve lost their sinless nature in the Garden.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.