NEWMAN AND NEW EVANGELIZATION
John Henry Newman, once spoke the truth about
his entire life in few words: “from first to last, education…has been my line.”[1]. To
him – and to use the benign words of the American educationist John Dewey –
“education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” And
“Education is the most powerful weapon”, Nelson Mandela had said, “which you
can use to change the world.”[2]
Undoubtedly education is the lifeblood of human society - the crucial component
that has given the Church energy and fortified its sanctuaries with many
millions for Christ. But theological education would in the main, be Newman’s
most arresting arsenal, for, he held that university teaching without Theology
is simply unphilosophical – that is, unsound, arbitrary, truncated. When, saint
John Paul II on the 9th of June 1979, at the sanctuary of Mogila in Nowa Huta,
aired the expression “new evangelization” for the first time, little did he
know he was a stimulus that would trigger off a remarkable missionary movement.
New evangelization - the topmost business of the Church today – is education
indeed.
Post-Vatican II Popes have put the issue of
new evangelization front and center on the ecclesial stage. Pope Benedict XVI
took over from the Polish Pope and created the Pontifical Council for the
Promotion of the New Evangelization.
Pope Francis’ duty call to countries considered destitute by the world
and his voice-of-the-voiceless public position in encyclicals and exhortations,
have brought us to the consciousness of this new and revitalizing spirit
animating missionary work in our times. These Popes spell out the mission
of “new evangelization”. as unlike the
other kind of missionary work best labeled the Good News. They understand it as
pastoral attention heading not merely for the pagan or the heathen, but most
especially for the baptized and the Christian.
Cor
ad Cor loquitur
suggests the Most Holy Trinity. In the Trinity is the language of love and
dialogue. Inevitably God wills that men and women should among themselves
raise, improve and advance the exchange of feelings between hearts, cor ad cor, since it is the deficiency
of this condition that has shaken the foundations of European spiritual edifice
today.
Dear listeners, I see in the English saint,
John Henry Newman’s theological pedagogy, the solution to Europe’s faith
predicament.
Let me explain myself. Suppose a man gets in
class with the students, let us say, as a teacher and evangeliser, and becomes
an expert in his material, and teaches his students academic concepts that
enlighten, abstract and impersonal ideas that inspire. Or may be churns out
doctrinal prescriptions and invites the students to commit them to memory. In
our Christian schools you find that kind of thing today - where religious
knowledge is just another subject to be learned and passed during examinations.
But suppose this teacher never thinks to give himself a pause, to ponder and to
wonder whether this knowledge has any concrete touch in his own soul, never
pause to ponder whether to bring it down to the personal, whether to help his
students understand what the teaching material means in their own lives;
suppose this teacher gets into the rut of thoughtless routine, and does not ask
himself whether the facts acquired will lead in the long run to the development
or desolation of the community, in order to warn his students of impending
danger – would such a man be called a outstanding catechist or teacher of the
new evangelization, even if he were gifted with a tremendous teaching talent or
with an intelligence sharp and powerful and was armed with a doctorate in
theology?
My answer is: No. And saying no with me is one
of the greatest authorities in theological education the world has ever seen -
John Henry Newman.
For his part Newman decisively laid it down,
without mincing words, that since “the heart is commonly reached, not through
the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the
testimony of facts and events, by history, by description,” those destined to
be teachers of faith must credibly do so by personal influence and personal
presence, for, “persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds
inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr
for a conclusion.”[3] The
person who thumbs the pages of Newman’s writings does not fail to be charmed by
his personal presence even in his books. For all his
excellence in writing, Newman did not disdain the irreplaceable place of
personal integrity, - and not lip service – in Christian holiness. He advised
his soul in prayer: “Let me preach Thee without preaching, not by words but by
my example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the
evident fullness of the love my heart bears to Thee!”[4] Pope Paul VI caps a memorable season by
employing something similar to the just mentioned Newmanian superlative. Paul
VI said that, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers,
and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” Newman
describes this type of thing in a page of his Grammar of Assent: “I have no confidence, then in philosophers
who…sit at home, and reach forward to distances which astonish us; but they hit
without grasping, and are sometimes as confident about shadows as about
realities. They have worked out by a calculation the lie of the country which
they never saw, and mapped it by means of a gazeteer; and like blind men,
though they can put a stranger on his way, they cannot walk straight
themselves, and do not feel it quite their business to walk at all.”[5]
What then are those outstanding evangelizing
principles, guiding principles that flow from Newman’s theological pedagogy
which have an echo on the current spirit of New Evangelization? First of all,
the epitaph John Henry Newman chose for his tombstone is the central message of
all evangelizations: 'Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem' ('Out of shadows
and images into the truth'). These words are more than the expression of
Newman's entire life – they summarize the pilgrimage of each genuine Christian,
battling each day to look for, to reach out and come upon the fullness of Truth
that is Christ. To Newman, Christ was everything: “We do not hesitate to say ….
that it really does arise from practical neglect of our Saviour.”[6]
Christ to him was Truth. This Truth was contained in the dogmas and revealed
principles of the Church. So revealed truths were dynamic living thing.
Newman’s adoration of dogmas can hardly be regarded exaggerated. The striking
delineations, remarkable modeling and classification of revealed truths are the
garlands “set up in record of the victories of the Faith”.[7] He calls the Athanasian
creed “the war-song of faith”, “a hymn of praise to the Eternal Trinity.”[8]
These revealed truths are ever “springing into life with inexhaustible
fecundity”.[9] They
are ever gushing forth from the wounded side of Christ’s Sacred Heart. And so
dogma to him was truth. The challenge of the Church of today is to turn the
heart of the modern faithful to the love again of Truth, of revealed truths, in
this dispensation of new evangelization.
But to get to this truth there is need for
another more important component. For us to reach the truth of things, Newman
believed that we must search for it in all corners of the room, we must dig
down to the beginnings and we must hunt higher up the heights. He would call it
‘the enlargement of the mind’ which involves,
not
merely in the passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas unknown to
it, but in the mind's energetic and simultaneous action upon and towards and
among those new ideas, which are rushing in upon it…And therefore a truly great
intellect, … such as the intellect of Aristotle, or of St. Thomas, or of
Newton, or of Goethe, … is one which takes a connected view of old and new,
past and present, far and near, and which has an insight into the influence of
all these one on another; without which there is no whole, and no centre.[10]
One of the ways today’s Europe can fairly face
itself, in enlarging its mind as Newman prescribes, is to do so by looking at
its connection with other continents. The African angle is worth a thought.
The celebrated African novelist, Chinua
Achebe, made some significant remarks about Africa and Europe. He named the
geographical positioning of these two continents “joined together at a navel”;
and he continues that “It is a great
irony of history and geography that Africa, whose landmass is closer than any
other to the mainland of Europe, should come to occupy in the European
psychological disposition the farthest point of otherness, should indeed become
Europe’s very antithesis”.[11]
‘Joined together at a navel’ Achebe christens the African-European location.
Few European theologians (if only there is any other) had so intimately seen
Africa and Europe as joined together in a navel and had honored and spoken in
high spirits about that persecuted continent as did John Henry Newman. Even as
a European theologian, Newman’s two most appealing theological stars –
Augustine of Hippo and Athanasius of Alessandria - are all Africans. Callista is Newman’s novel whose plot is
in Africa ( Africa). The novel’s protagonist Callista is from the West(Greece).
Peter and Paul the famed apostles, from the East, have carried the fresh faith
from homeland and crossed to Rome. In the novel, they are already spoken of as
examples and martyrs. The African saint, Bishop Cyprian evangelizes and
baptizes Europe’s Callista. More than a fictional work therefore, the novel Callista is a sermon illustration. It
demonstrates the contribution of Africa to the evangelization of other parts of
the world during the early period of the Church. So in one novel Newman
connects the continents into one brotherhood. In that novel, the author touches
on the African world, the Western world and the Eastern world – three
inviolable historic continental positions. Newman has, whether we like it or
not, come to stand for something much more than England or Europe. He is a
symbol for the catholic side of the Church, a more intercontinental Catholic
Church, which is best captured in the wise words of Pope Francis, that “the
People of God is incarnate in the peoples of the earth, each of which has its
own culture”[12]..
This is the spirit which the New Evangelization encourages among its faithful
around the globe – a looking at things from loftier perspectives, a broadening
of our horizons because we are living,
as never before, in intercultural times .
We come now to the most significant aspect of
Newman’s evangelizing process. It is that which is called Holiness.
Evangelization, in the truest interpretation of the word, is holiness. Of
course, one of Pope Francis’s renown writings is dedicated to holiness with a
modern face. In that work, he resonates so well with John Henry Newman’s
down-to-earth idea of holiness. Newman saw holiness as ordinary life lived
perfectly: “If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say,
first – Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first
thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus
devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected;
keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself
daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.”[13] It
means we are next door to eternity, that we are close to the dead, and that our
ancestors are around, for according to Pope Francis “the saints now in God’s
presence preserve their bonds of love and communion with us”.[14]
John Henry Newman venerated values; he esteemed books; he admired the best in
good and inspiring men and women. But he put holiness of life as the measure of
all things. It was not just holiness, but holiness not fabricated. It was to be
unconscious holiness, - what Newman calls holiness embodied in personal form,
presence, the silent conduct of a holy man[15] Undoubtedly holiness is the
lifeblood of Christian life but there shouldn’t be any doubt if a saint is
taken the wrong way because “the holier
a man is, the less he is understood by men of the world.”[16] Of course, God “wants us to
be saints and not to settle for a bland and mediocre existence.”[17] The
surest way to persuade people to God is through unconscious holiness: “The
attraction, exerted by unconscious holiness, is of an urgent and irresistible
nature; it persuades the weak, the timid the wavering and the inquiring; it
draws forth the affections and loyalty of all who are in a measure likeminded.”[18] By
this example, the disciple of Christ, the saint, the Christian of the new
evangelization can help transform his faith-hostile and unchristian community
into that spiritual public, the creation of which spiritual public should
constitute the primary drive of his undertakings.
In Newman one hardly exhausts the discovery of
hot-button realities presented with accomplished accuracy. His theme tunes are
so hypnotic that their freshness, their enthralling magical spell holds minds
and hearts always captive. Take for instance the subject matter of conscience
which I feel is one garden-fresh area for new evangelization. New
Evangelization is education to maturity. Because it is that type of
evangelization where its emphasis is the baptized and not the pagan, it
concerns itself with making Christians complete Christians. This means
especially that lay people can make decisions for themselves, can use their
consciences and decide what to them is God’s will in their lives. That is how
Newman saw things and that is why he fought tooth and nail for the education
and liberation of the laity in the Church. To
him, conscience is “a consciousness of innocence and integrity.”[19]
The Church of the new evangelization especially that of Pope Francis’
magisterium preaches the gospel of conscience in wonderful ways. He has opted
for ripeness in faith. Newman once remarked:
If either the Pope or the Queen
demanded of me an ‘Absolute Obedience’, he or she would be transgressing the
laws of human nature and human society. I give an absolute obedience to
neither. Further, if ever this double allegiance pulled me in contrary ways
(…), then I should decide according to the particular case, which is beyond all
rule, and must be decided on its own merits.[20]
Francis
has done this most especially in his Amoris
Laetitia: “We also find it hard to make room for the consciences of the
faithful, who very often respond as best they can to the Gospel amid their limitations,
and are capable of carrying out their own discernment in complex situations”.[21] He challenges priests and encourages marriage
couples into Christian maturity. Newman and Francis teaches us that conscience
is a moral and authoritative critical sense; but they also firmly hold that
conscience is a cerebral sentiment, an emotion, for it is “… something more
than a moral sense; it is always, what the sense of the beautiful is only in
certain cases; it is always emotional. No wonder then that it always implies
what that sense only sometimes implies; that it always involves the recognition
of a living object, towards which it is directed.”[22] Because he is so universal on all-inclusive subjects like conscience,
Newman gives meaning to the Church of the new evangelization and even today,
the title of great is one that few will deny him.
One
key area of interest in evangelization today is the role of the theologian. Newman was of the conviction that “religion
cannot maintain its ground at all without theology. Sentiments, whether
imaginative or emotional, falls back upon the intellect for its stay…and it is
in this way that devotion falls back upon dogma.”[23] It is individual theologians and not the
Institutional Church, that have pioneered the inventiveness of faith, and been
forerunners of the Catholic mind in the theological enterprise.[24] The
individual genius of Augustine of Hippo, of Thomas Aquinas and today, of Newman
of Birmingham, are the lights that have shone the way for the Church of their
times and beyond.
Those
who know him best know that it was in his personal letters – especially those
to friends – that Newman’s profound wisdom sparkled. He defined theology - in
the finest words that define the subject of theology – as “ like dancing on the
tight rope some hundred feet above the ground. It is hard to keep from falling,
and the fall is great. The questions are so subtle, the distinctions so fine,
and critical jealous eyes so many.”[25] To Newman
the theological position of loyal opposition defines the true theologian. Of
course, “Newman’s theology is that of steadiness, dynamism and grace”[26] Theological inquiry is a minority body whose
critical look at the body of Church content is responsible, useful and
obliging. For this to be active, thinkers must mount the tight-rope to dare
dangers and take risks, though endowed with intellectual humility and honesty.
He held magisterium-incumbents for derision concerning theologizing because
there was no theology if the theologian kept on repeating what popes had said
and had no critical challenging nerve in the theological enterprise.
Since the depths of Truth are unfathomable ,
since God’s grace is immeasurable, since the riches of beauty and goodness are
inexhaustible, it follows that the genuine theologian must be a thorough
researcher inquirer all his day. On these grounds Newman gave no quarter to
mediocrity or a pandering to bigoted dogmatism:
Our theological philosophers are like the old
nurses who wrap the unhappy infant in swaddling bands or boards – put a lot of
blankets over him – and shut the windows that not a breath of fresh air may
come to his skin – as if he were not healthy enough to bear wind and water in
due measures. They move in a groove, and will not tolerate any one who does not
move in the same.[27]
And so those uncharitable (in the name of
orthodoxy) to new theological concepts of theologians of other continents or
regions of the world, or those that put blankets here and there over
theological debate or those who move in a groove, in one furrow of thought, in
a theological single trench of mediocrity, must know they are doing untold
damage to the blossoming of Christian thought. They should listen to Pope
Francis that, “the theologian who is
satisfied with his complete and conclusive thought is mediocre. The good
theologian and philosopher has an open, that is, an incomplete, thought, always
open to the maius of God and of the truth, always in
development, according to the law that Saint Vincent of Lerins described in
these words: annis consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate”[28]
The goal of Europe’s theologian today
(and it seems to me, every theologian around the world) is to rehabilitate
Christian thought in his present Christian-hostile ambient and doing so, to
enlarge his mind with other worlds of reality hitherto unknown to him and
combine standards of scholarship before unknown in Christian theology with
attitudes critical of Church clericalism which have become likewise
uncustomary.
“I have
a work to do in England”, Newman remarked when he was about to leave Italy
(Sicily) and return home, and so he had. But the work would turn out to be for
the whole Catholic Church, a work that principally sparkles forever, a sparkle
that is leading him to the high altars of canonization come October. In the
spirit of his famous hymn ‘Lead Kindly Light’ composed in Italy, and “amid the
encircling gloom” of pedagogical and pastoral mediocrity in the Church, Newman
abidingly provided a “ kindly light” in the new evangelization with his
edifying personal presence in the
Church.
[1]
IAN KER, Newman’s Idea of a
University and its Relevance for the 21st Century, (April 2011), 1.
[4] J: H. NEWMAN, in Totus Tuus, “Blessed John Henry
Newman”http://totus2us.com/vocation/blesseds/bl-john-henry-newman/
[5] J. H. NEWMAN, Grammar of Assent.
[7] J. H. NEWMAN, Grammar of Assent, (London: Longman
Green and Co. 1909), 133.
[8] J. H. NEWMAN, Parochial and Plain Sermons, (London:
Longman Green and Co. 1908), II 270.
[10]
J. H. NEWMAN, The Idea of a University,
134.
[11] CHINUA ACHEBE, The Education of a British-Protected Child,
New York, 2009, Alfred A. Knopt, 77.
[13] J. H. NEWMAN, Meditations and Devotions, Christian
Classics, Westminster, Md. 1975, p. 286.
[14] FRANCESCO, Apostolic Exortation,
Gaudete et Exsultate, 19 March 2018,
4..
[15] J. H. NEWMAN, Fifteen Sermons Preached before the
University Of Oxford, Longman Green and Co., London 1909, 91-92.
[16] J. H. NEWMAN, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. IV, 244.
[18]
J. H. NEWMAN, Fifteen Sermons Preached before the
University Of Oxford, Longman Green and Co., London 1909, 95.
[19] J. H. Newman,
PPS V, cit., 238.
[20] J. H. NEWMAN, Diff II, cit., 243.
[21] FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, 19 March 2016, 37.
[22] J. H. Newman, AG, cit., 109-110.
[23] H. NEWMAN, Grammar of Assent, Longman Green and Co., London 1909, 121.
[24] See Newman “it is individuals
and not the Holy See, that have taken the initiative, and given the lead to the
Catholic mind, in theological inquiry.”
[25] 'The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (hereafter cited as
LD) 22:215 (Newman to Bowles, April 16, 1866); the occasion for the letter was
the appearance of his Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on his recent
Eirencon (originally published in LondonLongmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer,
1866; later published in the second volume of Certain difficulties felt by
Anglicans in Catholic teaching considered, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885
and subsequently). In an earlier letter to Miss Bowles (1818-19049 ) Newman
acknowledged the limitations of his reply to Pusey: "Don't expect much
from my Pamphlet, which is at last through the Press. Pusey's work is on too
many subjects, not to allow of a dozen answers—and since I am only giving one,
every reader will be expecting one or other of the eleven which I don't give.
Mine is only upon our belief concerning the Blessed Virgin." LD 22:128
(Newman to Bowles, January 18, 1866).
[28] FRANCESCO, Apostolic
Constitution, Veritatis Gaudium, 29
January 2018.
[29] RINO FISICHELLA, “We Need New
Evangelizers”, in Year of Faith,
09-08-2012,
http://www.annusfidei.va/content/novaevangelizatio/en/news/09-08-2012.html
