THE
P RTAL
November 2011
Page 16
F a t h e r P e t e r ’s P a ge
“Life is short . . .
Waste it not
in vanities . . .”
The 29/30 December 1940 has been described as ‘the Second Great Fire of London’. On that night, the
whole terror of The Blitz rained on London. By supreme human effort, St Paul’s Cathedral was saved; but not
Paternoster Row, which was destroyed in its entirety.
Here, the heart of the publishing
world was engulfed in flames and
with it some five million books
were destroyed, including the main
warehouse of Longmans & Co. with
their entire stock of the works of
John Henry Newman. All the extant
copies of his works in London were
eradicated and it wasn’t till the end of
the war that attempts were made to
reprint them.
Although all of them were once
more made available to the English speaking world,
one work was surprisingly NOT reprinted in the UK:
‘Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic
Teaching Considered’.
claim to be “the successors of the
Oxford Movement” today.
I would beg them – and you – to
read carefully . . . prayerfully . .
. (again) these short chapters and
reflect how they are so apposite for
the problems and dilemmas that
Anglican Catholics face today.
Consider Newman’s themes: The
fact that the ‘Catholic Movement’ is
‘foreign’ to the real purpose of the
Church of England today; The way that the Church
of England is always responding to ‘public opinion’;
The fact that the Church of England is beholden to
Parliament and the State; The theory of a ‘branch
church’ is shown throughout history to be false and
bankrupt; That being/becoming a ‘sect’ is so alien to
being part of the Catholic Church; and, if the those
of 1833 were a Religious MOVEMENT where is the
object of that journey? And where is/should it be in
2011?
The reason for this is said to be because the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, and the
Managing Director of Longmans & Co., were personal
friends belonging to the same Masonic Lodge! The
only way, even today, for many people to read this
important and seminal work of Newman is via the
web:
In each and every one of his talks, Newman simply
www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume1/index.html
and tellingly challenges his audience that there is
ONLY ONE SOLUTION: then as now.
As so often with Newman’s writings, one finds that
he is tackling and answering the very same questions
To those who tried to pretend that it was possible to
that people are asking today and, giving allowance for establish Catholic truth within the Established Church
his historical examples, the answers he gives are the by remaining within it, was to be retained by a dream
very same ones that apply today.
that jeopardised supreme realities:
These twelve short ‘lectures’ which he delivered in
1850 – some fourteen years before his ‘Apologia Pro
Vita Sua’ – are specifically addressed to “the Anglican
Party of the Religious Movement of 1833”; just as the
creation of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham
last year can be seen as a direct challenge to those who
“Oh, my brethren! Life is short, waste it not in
vanities . . . wake from a dream in which you are
not profiting your neighbour, but imperilling your
own souls.”
Father Peter