THE P RTAL
October 2014
UK Pages - page 14
Thoughts on Newman
Newman on cultural identity
Stephen Morgan meditates on Newman’s thought that
Christianity needs to appeal as much to the heart as to the head
A
lthough this
article is appearing in the middle of October, the month of the Holy Rosary, it
was written in a small village called Murzasichle, in the beautiful Tatra Mountains, south of Krakow in
Poland. I’ve been on pilgrimage with a parish group from Hampshire. Pilgrimage is always the occasion for
reflection and a change of perspective.
Murzasichle, in particular, and the Polish pilgrimage, ecclesial and doctrinal unity is not only no threat
in general, has certainly been that and I want to share to Catholicism but is an integral part of its unity,
with you some of my reflections arising out of what we goodness, truth and beauty.
encountered there.
appeal to the imagination
What we encountered in Southern Poland was a
vibrant, local, religious culture but one as different
from what happens in our local parish and from what
happens in our Ordinariate neighbours as you might
imagine: yet palpably part of the same Catholic faith.
The image of the Catholic Church from outside, the
image that many of those you have left behind in the
Anglican communities, is of a vast, uniform Behemoth.
cultural expressions of faith
Fear of the loss of distinctive and much beloved
cultural expressions of faith - patrimony, if you will
- deters some of those still Anglican and deterred
many Ordinariate members for many years from
seeking a place in the Roman Communion. A visit to
Poland or to any number of other parts of the world
is an effective and affective alternative to such a view.
Indeed, such has been the scale of immigration to the
UK from predominantly Catholic regions of the world
over recent years that this alternative can now be had
without the need for a passport.
Next weekend, within half-an-hour’s drive of my
home, Mass can be experienced in Polish, both
forms of Roman Rite in Latin, with a community of
West Africans, in Tagalog, in the Syro-Malabar and
Ruthenian Rites, and at two Ordinariate Communities,
not to mention in the Anglo-Hibernian cultural
expression of Catholicism that still predominates in
our “normal” parishes.
At the very beginning of the Oxford Movement,
Newman recognised the necessity for a renewal of the
affective aspects of the faith: Christianity had to appeal
to the imagination as well as to the intellect. John Keble’s
The Christian Year was an early expression of the need
Newman later recognised. Published in 1827 (six years
before the conventional dating of the beginning of the
Oxford Movement), it was a collection of poems for
the Sundays and major liturgical feasts of the Church’s
calendar designed expressly to awaken a heart-felt
response to the rhythm of the liturgy.
The Lyra Apostolica, spearheaded by Newman
himself - amongst whose poems is to be found his own
“Lead, kindly light” - was a key part of the Tractarian
enterprise, containing poems not only by Newman and
Keble but by Bowden and Froude, Robert Wilberforce
and Isaac Williams. Although not so celebrated,
Newman saw it as a necessary complement to the
Tracts, “. . . to bring out certain truths and facts, moral,
ecclesiastical, and religious, simply and forcibly” (letter
to Hugh James Rose, 26/11/1832).
Anglican patrimony
Doctrinal argument is one thing but religious culture
has the capacity for “catching people when unguarded”
(letter to John William Bowden, 17/11/1833) and
inducing a change of heart.
It is here, perhaps, that the distinctive Anglican
patrimony of which Benedict XVI wrote in
Part of his not inconsiderable genius in establishing Anglicanorum Coetibus has a part to play in the
the Ordinariates (and, incidentally, in freeing-up New Evangelisation: in presenting an expression of
access to the older form of the Roman Rite) was to be Catholic Christianity within the communion of the
fou