by Edward Short
If the skepticism of his scientific colleagues disposed William to agnosticism, the goodness of individual Catholics disposed Catherine to Catholicism. In April 1854, William wrote to Newman: “I must say something in reply to your kind letter about Kate … I fully believe that as far as reasonable or reasoning conviction goes, her judgment is against Catholicism – as far as feeling goes it is in its favour – the feeling being partly what might be called fascination occasioned by the magnitude and endurance of the system, and what appears to her the adaptations of its ceremonial to her own peculiar turn of mind – and partly her entire love and admiration for the few Catholics she has known – a love and admiration which goes entirely beyond that which she feels for any other persons whatever.” This might seem a predictable response on the part of a husband who thought the Catholic Church founded on unverifiable assertion: his wife was being swayed by personal affection, not conviction. And yet William was honest enough to acknowledge that this affection could not be discounted. “My conversations with her, have led me to see that I had if anything underrated the force of this fascination, and it would not surprise me if it were some day or other wholly to outweigh all opposing influences of whatever kind.” Indeed, William recognized that he might not be able to meet this fascination with any counter arguments, “at least of a nature commensurable with the force of those springs which push her forward.” This doubtless encouraged Newman to believe that William might yet see the cogency of the Catholic faith, though in another passage of the same letter he could only have been reminded of how his own conversion estranged him from friends and family. “You will readily understand I am sure,” Froude told Newman, “that it is with no very cheerful feelings that I contemplate as almost a probable result a change which though it could not impair affection, would in its very nature make an end of that full community of thought and judgment in which affection has had such scope. I cannot trust myself to think or speak of it.”23
Froude had cause to be concerned: Catherine was changing, even though the change was gradual. In November 1843, she wrote to Newman: “Mr. Roger’s suspicion that you might be approximating towards Rome, were the first hint I had had—and I will own it was a great blow and shake altogether.” Here, Catherine was no different from most of his Tractarian friends, who were bewildered by his abandonment of the Anglo-Catholic via media. And yet, unlike many in the Tractarian camp, what Catherine saw in his turn to Rome was not inconsistency or betrayal but vocation. Despite the fact that Newman’s case for the catholicity of the English Church “had,” as she said, “rooted itself in my mind,” she also confessed that his abandonment of that case prompted her to ask fundamental questions about herself and indeed about Newman. “When I had this shake, what was I to do?—being as I said before, quite unable to guide myself …” Earlier in the letter, she gratefully acknowledged that “Private judgment was never a besetting sin of mine …” On the contrary, she was “most thankful” that she had found in Newman “a Guide on whom I might lean … most truly, a ‘light to my paths,’” ever since she began reading his wonderful sermons in 1834. “So,” she confided in her friend, “I thought over the matter again and again in my own head—and it came upon me, that even if you did in the end leave the Church I might be quite sure you would not do so without a call so to do, and surely after the life you have led, you are not likely to mistake a call,—and then I thought over what would be my objections to Romanism, in the event of the necessity of a change—and they appeared to me to have unaccountably dwindled away during the last four or five years,—though I had not been conscious of it …” Newman’s call had sown the seeds of her own call, though, having shared with Newman these insights into the slow, surprising progress of her faith, Catherine hastened to admit that, when it came to her own vocation, “I could not contemplate the possibility of such a change without extreme pain,—and I know, I have no call, no inclination for it yet, though, how far I might be affected by such a movement on the part of others I do not know …”24 Newman doubtless saw a most promising sympathy in that electric yet.
In December 1843, two months after he had resigned his living at St. Mary’s, Newman replied to Catherine’s letter with moving candor. “I keep saying to myself continually, ‘I did not make my circumstances.’ Not that I can doubt that much that is wrong and earthly mixes up in every thing I do, or that my present state of perplexity is a punishment on me for sins committed; yet after all surely on the supposition that people are born under a defective religious system … what can their course be, if they act religiously but first to defend it, and, as time goes on, to mistrust it? Surely I cannot blame myself, whatever my present opinion may be, in having done all I could first to maintain myself and others where we are providentially placed,—yet this is the circumstance which, I suppose, has given you the most distress … to have given yourself to a view of theology such as is drawn out in my Lectures on Romanism, and then to begin to suspect, or at least to be told by the person who wrote them that it is not trustworthy.”25 Recognizing that he had been “born under a defective religious system” helped Newman give Catherine the steadying counsel she needed. “So far at least results from what has passed,” Newman wrote to her, “that it is a duty to be very slow in taking up and acting upon any new belief. Granting that there is this great distinction in the two judgments, that the former was biased (properly so) by a deference to a system in which one found oneself, and the latter is unwillingly forced upon the mind, still there is the greatest reason for dreading lest one should be the sport of mere argumentative demonstration.”26 Here Newman was doing for Catherine what he had done for Keble: sharing with her his doubts so she could learn from them and, in the process, resolve her own doubts. And that last insight would inform a good deal of what Newman would say to William about the limits of reason in ascertaining dogmatic truth. Still, what was perhaps most persuasive about this letter was its honesty. Newman made no bones about the fact that in pursuing the Anglo-Catholic via media he had pursued what he wished to be the truth, not the truth itself. Indeed, his own nagging misgivings would not let him confuse the two. “From beginning to end … I was under the great apprehension lest the view should prove a mere paper view, a fine theory, which would not work, which would not move. I felt strongly the objection that it has never been carried into effect, and in the opening sentences of the last Lecture I speak in the language of despondency.”27 In that passage of the Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church (1837), Newman described the exhaustion he felt after putting Anglicanism to the test. “When the excitement of the inquiry has subsided, and weariness has succeeded,” he wondered whether “what has been said is but a dream, the wanton exercise, rather than the practical conclusion of the intellect.” And he followed this revelatory use of the passive with a kind of Johnsonian gravity. “Such is the feeling of minds unversed in the disappointments of the world, incredulous how much it has of promise, how little of substance; what intricacy and confusion beset the most certain truths; how much must be taken on trust, in order to be possessed; how little can be realized except by an effort of the will; how great a part of enjoyment lies in resignation.”28 Newman often resorted to rhetoric as to a tonic and here was no exception: “Religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of Truth dim, its adherents scattered. The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony, as though it were but a question of time whether it fails finally this day or another.”29 For Newman, as for St. Augustine and Chesterton, both of whom shared Newman’s genius for autobiography, rhetoric was also proof of conviction.30 “St. Augustine,” Henry Chadwick recognized, “is a man who describes important events in his life by using a high style; that is his way of saying that they are important.”31 If Newman’s letter was a sincere apology, it was also a summons to courage, which is always useful in a crisis. “I feel I owe you some amends …,” Newman wrote to Catherine, “for having led you to take up what now you find I question myself.” No matter, he assured his
friend: “to overcome impediments is a token of power.”32
On the night before he decided to convert, after he had overcome his own impediments, Newman wrote to Catherine from Littlemore, “Father Dominic the Passionist … sleeps here tonight as a guest of my friend Dalgairns whom he received ten days ago. He does not know of my intention, but I shall ask him to do the same charitable work for me … He was at Littlemore for half an hour on St. John Baptist’s day last year, when I saw him. As I had all but finished my book … and friends objected to my driving my change into the Advent or Christmas seasons, when they did not wish to be unsettled, I made up my mind to be received at once. And since I had all along been forced to act by my own judgement, I was not sorry for what seemed an external call to which I could show obedience.”33 Newman shared with his friends his sense of the primacy of vocation four months later when, looking back on his Anglican career, he observed, “Nay even my responsibilities at St. Mary’s, as one who had the cure of souls, have always all along weighed most oppressively on me and do still. Alas, I will not speak against my circumstances, when my own personal fault is so great—Yet how dreadful is a cure of souls in the English Church, an engagement, with no means to carry it into effect …”34
Such pastoral futility did not afflict the Catholic Newman. He was always ready to share what he recognized as the prize of vocation. “Oh that I were near to you,” he wrote to the Froudes in June 1848, “and could have a talk with you!—but then I should need great grace to know what to say to you—This is one thing that keeps me silent—it is, dear friends, because I don’t know what to say to you. If I had more faith, I should doubtless know well enough; I should then say, ‘Come to the Church, and you will find all you seek.’ I have myself found all I seek—’I have all and abound’—my every want has been supplied—and so it has in all persons, whom I know at all well, who have become Catholics …” But Newman wished to impress upon them “two propositions”: “that [it] is the duty of those who feel themselves called towards the Church to obey it” and “that they must expect trial, when in it, and think it only so much gain when they have it not …”35 Of course, for Newman, “this world is a world of trouble,” but his friends should not let that sway them. “You must come to the Church not to avoid [the world], but to save your soul.” Having said this, Newman was at pains to make clear that “Catholicism is a different religion from Anglicanism—You must come to learn that religion which the Apostles introduced and which was in the world long before the Reformation was dreamed of—but a religion not so easy and natural to you, or congenial, because you have been bred up in another from your youth.” Speaking of that “different religion,” Samuel Johnson once told Boswell that “A good man, of a timorous disposition, in great doubt of his acceptance with God, and pretty credulous, might be glad to be of a church where there are so many helps to get to Heaven …”36 Newman, with his eminently practical approach to Catholicism, could not resist itemizing for the Froudes these “many helps to get to Heaven.” “You will then have the blessedness of seeing God face to face. You will have the blessedness of finding, when you enter a Church, a Treasure Unutterable – the Presence of the Eternal Word Incarnate – the Wisdom of the Father who, even when He had done His work, would not leave us, but rejoices still to humble Himself by abiding in mean places on earth for our sakes, while He reigns not the less on the right hand of God. To know too that you are in the Communion of Saints – to know that you have cast your lot among all those Blessed Servants of God who are the choice fruit of His Passion – that you have their intercessions on high … and above all the Glorious Mother of God … And to feel yourself surrounded by all holy arms and defences – with the sacraments week by week, with the Priest’s benediction, with crucifixes and rosaries which have been blessed, with holy water, with places or with acts to which Indulgences have been attached, and the ‘whole armour of God’ – and to know that, when you die, you will not be forgotten, that you will be sent out of the world with the holy unction upon you, and will be followed with masses and prayers; – to know in short that the Atonement of Christ is not a thing at a distance, or like the sun standing over against us and separated off from us, but that we are surrounded by an atmosphere and are in a medium, through which his warmth and light flow in upon us on every side, what can one ask, what can one desire, more than this?”37 At the same time, Newman understood that the Catholic Church could never be incorruptible. “Rome,” he wrote to Mrs. Froude on St. Stephen’s Day, 1854, “ever shows a recollection of its pagan greatness … The Roman population seems to me like the ruins of the old city and the malaria which lives among them, and I never should be surprised at an outburst of Paganism. The church has ever been seated upon those ruins, and thus upon the cinders of a volcano.”38 In this, Newman followed Chesterton, who once observed, “When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward—in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built his Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.”39
Anglicans considering converting to Rome will find in Newman’s letters to Mrs. Froude useful counsel. In March 1854, when Newman was in Dublin, he wrote to ask his friend, “My dear Mrs. Froude, do you pray for ‘effectual grace?’ Suppose I come to a high wall – I cannot jump it – such are the moral obstacles which keep us from the Church. We see the Heavenly City before us, we go on and on along the road, till a wall simply crosses it. Human effort cannot clear it – there is no scaling, no vaulting over. Grace enables us to cross it – and that grace is called effectual grace. Our first grace is sufficient to enable us to pray for that second effectual grace – and God gives grace for grace.”40 In a long letter delving into the question of certainty, Newman advised Mrs. Froude, apropos her husband and his resolute skepticism, “I do not see that I am bound to believe W.F.’s statement of the unsatisfactoriness of religious inquiry, and the necessity of an everlasting suspense, until I am sure that he contemplates the probability of that being true, which is not improbable in itself, and which all those who have attained certainty say is true …” Then, to make his apostolate to the Froudes as real and as practical as possible, Newman wrote them a prayer:
O my God, I confess that Thou canst enlighten my darkness—I confess that Thou only canst. I wish my darkness to be enlightened. I do not know whether Thou wilt; but Thou canst, and that I wish, are sufficient reasons for me to ask, what Thou at least has not forbidden my asking. I hereby promise Thee, that, by Thy grace which I am seeking, I will embrace whatever I at length feel certain is the truth, if ever I come to be certain. And by Thy grace I will guard against all self deceit which may lead to take what nature would have, rather than what reason approves.41
When Catherine finally converted on 19 February 1857, she wrote to Newman: “I cannot say how grateful I feel to God, for having helped me and supported me so wonderfully.” Nevertheless, speaking of William, she admitted: “my heart aches for him; for he is miserable at the idea of our virtual separation—and he has nothing to fall back on, whereas I could not be unhappy if I tried, even with all my sorrow for him. I can only regret that I delayed so long,—for in spite of all my perplexities and difficulties, I feel that I might have done this before, had it not been for my own fault;—and what years of life I should have gained. However, it is no use to regret the past.” She was particularly grateful to Newman for his tact. “I must tell you again how from my heart I thank you for what you have done to help me. – Other Catholics always seemed ‘making a case’ when they said things to me,—you always contrived to say exactly what suited my mind.”42 This was not only a handsome but an acc
urate compliment, for Newman never did “make a case.” In his correspondence with Catherine, as in his Grammar of Assent, he proceeded from the conviction that, in matters of faith, there was no case to make. As he told Catherine as early as 1844, “The great remedy of all uneasiness is to feel that we are in God’s hands, and to entertain an earnest desire to do His will.”43 In 1848, he landed on the definition of faith to which he would adhere ever after: “Faith then is not a conclusion from premises, but the result of an act of the will, following upon a conviction that to believe is a duty.”44 Then, again, in a letter of 1851, he told Catherine, “I disapprove the plan of thinking that everything must be level to reason when you are called to a system of faith. The single question is, ‘have I reason enough to resolve to place faith?’”45
In concluding her letter to Newman, Catherine wrote: “I know you will not now leave off your kind thoughts for me,—but will pray that I may have prudence and courage to go through all that is before me.” In his response, Newman was careful not to make light of the difficulties that lay ahead for a wife who had decided to convert without her husband. “You may fancy what joy your letter gave me. You will be sustained by the blessings and the graces which will surround you in the great trials which you may undergo. But every thing will be made light to you—and you must gain your husband by your prayers.”46