OUR LADY IN THE THOUGHT AND DEVOTION
OF THE ANGLICAN NEWMAN
Ampleforth Review (vere Journal) 84:1 (1979) 20-30

It is striking to find Newman's life as it were encircled by the Rosary. The old Cardinal, growing blind and ever weaker, was often seen praying the rosary and finding strength and comfort in the great mysteries of Faith he thus meditated while he asked Our Lady's intercession for the many intentions entrusted to him during his long life. This image does not surprise us. Far more surprising is what Newman himself stated at the beginning of the Apologia, a work written when he was in his sixties, in which he traced the formation of his doctrinal opinions from his youth onwards. There we read:

When I was at Littlemore, I was looking over old copy-books of my schooldays, and I found among them my first Latin verse-book ... I have written in the first page, in my school-boy hand, 'John H. Newman', February 11th, 1811, Verse-book'; . . . Between * Verse' and 'Book' I have drawn the figure of a solid cross upright, and next to it, what may indeed be meant for a necklace, but what I cannot make out to be anything else than a set of beads suspended, with a little cross attached. At this time I was not quite ten years old. I suppose I got these ideas from some romance . . ., or some religious picture; but the strange thing is, how, among the thousand objects which meet a boy's eyes, these in particular should so have fixed themselves in my mind, that I made them thus practically my own. I am certain there was nothing in the churches I attended, or the prayer-books I read to suggest them . [1]

A few years after his reception into the Catholic Church, on 9th October 1845, Newman wrote to one of his friends about his Anglican days in Oxford and Littlemore:

I have ever been under her (the Blessed Virgin's) shadow, if I may say it. My college was St Mary's, and my church; and when I went to Littlemore, there by my own previous disposition, Our Blessed Lady was waiting for me. Nor did she do nothing for me in that low habitation, of which I always think with pleasure. [2]

Devotion to Our Lady however was not general in the Church of England. This becomes obvious from a reaction of Newman's contemporaries to a sermon on the reverence due to our Lady, which Newman preached on the feast of the Annunciation in 1832. Newman was accused of holding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. [3] The passage in Newman's sermon that roused their indignation reads as follows:

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 the transcendent purity of her, whom the Creator Spirit condescended to overshadow with his miraculous presence? 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 which is born of the flesh is flesh', and 'none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean'? . . .[4]

If this view of Our Lady was strange to the congregation, how then had Newman himself acquired it?

The answer to this question takes us back to Newman's youth, who, when he was fifteen years of age, 'fell under the influence of a definite Creed, and received . . . impressions of dogma, which, through God's mercy, have never been effaded or obscured'. [5] Newman considered this great change a true conversion of which some fifty years later he was 'still more certain than he had hands and feet'. [6]

Among the dogmas Newman then accepted were the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation.

1 Newman J. H., Apologia pro vita sua , 3.
Note: Figures refer to the 'Uniform Edition' of Newman's works. Titles without author are Newman's
2 Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (LD) XII, London 1961 ff., 153-4
3 cf Meditations and Devotions (MD), London 1964, 151
4 Parochial and Plain Sermons (PPS) II, 131-2
5, 6 Apologia 4

The source of his religious knowledge since his childhood had been Holy Scripture [7], and this scriptural principle was completed I by the doctrine of Tradition, which he gained as an undergraduate in Oxford I from Dr Hawkins, who laid down in a sermon that Holy Scripture 'was never intended to teach doctrine, but only to prove it. In order to learn doctrine we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church'. [8] At that time Tradition meant to Newman in the first place the thought of the Anglican divines, especially the Caroline divines, and through them also the Fathers of the Church, which eventually came to occupy an ever more important place in his thoughts.

Thus we find Newman defending the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation in a sermon at Christmas 1834 [9]: this means the doctrine of the Incarnation as it was held by the ancient, undivided Church — and Newman considered the Church to have been undivided and pure up to about 600. Newman put before his audience that Christ is true God, from all eternity. He liked to express Christ's divinity with the title 'the Word of God'. For our salvation Christ became man, true man, and in this respect Newman liked to call Him 'the Son of God'. Yet Christ's Godhead and His manhood are united in one person. That means that the Blessed Virgin, the mother of Christ, is the mother of this Person, Who is truly God and man, the Word of God made man.

7 Apologia 1
8 ib. 9
9 PPS II 32

In this same sermon Newman seems to make a reservation. He says: 'He, the Son of Mary, and she (if it may be said), the mother of God'. [10] Some scholars have seen in this parenthesis a doubt on Newman's side, though at the same time they agree that this doubt does not fit in with the whole of the sermon. They think this doubt is only removed in 1838, when Newman writes almost occasionally that all but heretics have ever called the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God. [11]

When Newman says in his sermon at Christmas 1834: 'and she (if it may be said) the mother of God', he does not think of Mary's divine Motherhood in itself, he thinks of its extension, of the meaning of the words 'mother of God'. He is aware of the fact that Holy Scripture never calls Mary the Mother of God, but always the Mother of Jesus. He wants to underline that she is the mother of the second Person of the Holy Trinity made man, and that the Church does not say anything else when calling her the Mother of God. This becomes obvious from the titles that describe her relation to God the Father as daughter and child, and to the Holy Spirit as bride, temple. This same parenthesis can be found in Newman's very first sermon on Our Lady, preached on 25th March 1831, where he adds himself the answer to what may appear as a doubt: 'What must we think of her holiness who was [what Scripture (the Holy Ghost) calls] the Mother of our Lord [or, as the Church has since expressed it, the Mother of (Him who is) God]?' [12]

Newman sees in this doctrine of Our Lady as the Mother of God a safeguard for the doctrine of the Incarnation, as he preaches in 1832:

Nothing is so calculated to impress on our minds that Christ is really partaker of our nature, and in all respects man, save sin only, as to associate Him with the thought of her, by whose ministration He became our brother. [13]
10 PPS II 32
11 Discussions & Arguments, 223
12 On the honour due to her; L.Govaert, Kardinal Newmans Mariologie und sein persönlicher Werdegang, Salzburg 1975, 139
13 PPS II 136

Mary's title as Mother of God implies all her privileges, in the first place her virginity. Newman found it in the Creed that 'Christ is conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary' [14] and he has no doubt about it. It is fitting, since for our salvation Our Lord had to come 'as the Son of Man, but not as the Son of sinful Adam. He came in a new way, not as the first Adam formed out of the ground—then He should miss the participation of our nature, but He selected and purified unto Himself a tabernacle out of that which existed'. [15] And here we hear — as in Newman's two previous sermons on Our Lady of 1831 and 1832 — an allusion to the theme which becomes so important for Newman's Mariology, the theme of the second Eve: As in the beginning, woman was formed out of man by Almighty Power, so now, by a like mystery, but a reverse order, the new Adam was fashioned from the woman. [16] This image of Mary as the Second Eve will constantly develop in Newman's Mariology and become the basic theme of his Letter to Pusey, Newman's only really mariological work, published in 1866. From this image of Mary as the Second Eve he derived all her privileges, her holiness, her dignity, her being the Immaculate Conception, her divine Motherhood, the power of her intercession . . .

But both in 1832 and 1834 Newman called Mary by nature a sinner, and seems so to contradict what he preached in these same sermons about her holiness and purity. In both passages however he was concerned to bring out as clearly as possible that she belongs entirely to the human race—to assure thus that Christ took a true human nature from her. And on both occasions Newman immediately added a 'but', introducing thus the unique election for which she was set apart: though by nature a sinner, sin was never a reality in her life.

In his Anglican days Newman's doctrine on Our Lady was clear and will not change in these essential points: She is the Mother of God, the Ever Virgin, the Second Eve, the purest and holiest of all creatures, who was free from sin. These privileges enabled her to fulfil her own role in the salvation of mankind, as Newman put it so meaningfully in 1832:

And when sorrow came upon her afterwards, it was but the blessed participation of her Son's sacred sorrows, not the sorrows of those who suffer for their sins. [17]
14, 14, 15 PPS II 31
17 PPS II 137

It is a basic idea in Newman that faith should show itself in life. In his first sermon on Our Lady, in 1831, Newman complained that it was not so:

Yet, alas, in these latter times, it cannot be denied, we have in great measure forgotten to fulfil her meek anticipation of her own praise (From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed) . . . Why should we not devoutly pay that honour which is promised as the Virgin's reward? Why not honour our Lord in our respectful mention of His Mother? Why, because some Christians exceed in their devotion, become irreverent? Yet so it is. We do not think of St Mary as we ought. [18]

Newman himself thinks very highly of Our Lady, because of her election to be the Mother of God, because of the privileges and graces she received. But our reverence to Our Lady, he says, has to express itself within certain limits. In 1831 he states that we are safe if we follow Christ's own example: When we estimate the reverence which her Son showed her, then we may know how fitly to honour her memory. [19] And one year later he lays down a similar principle, based on the fact that Scripture does not say much about her:

Had the Blessed Virgin Mary been more fully disclosed to us in the heavenly beauty and sweetness of the spirit within her, true, she would have been honoured, her gifts would have been clearly seen; but, at the same time, the Giver would have been somewhat less contemplated . . . She would have seemingly been introduced for her sake, not for His sake. [20]

With these last sentences we see the whole position of the Anglican Newman concerning Our Lady: positively spoken, he accepts all the great doctrines of Our Lady and he has a personal devotion to her, remembering her for Christ's sake. At the same time he is faithful to the teaching of his Church, not to give undue worship to Our Lady and the saints at the cost of the Creator, as they believe it to happen in the Roman Church. In the Apologia we read: The more I grew in devotion both to the Saints and Our Lady, the more impatient was I atthe Roman practice4s, as if those glorious creations of God must be gravely shocked, if pain could be theirs, at the undue veneration of which they were the objects. [21]

18 On the honour due to her: Govaert, op.cit., 136
19 ib.139
20 PPS II 133-34
21 Apologia 53

Newman's attitude concerning devotion was dictated by several doctrines he found in the Anglican Church, some of them allowing some form of devotion, others restricting it. Let us have a closer look at some of them. The Oxford Movement, started in 1833, aimed at the revival of doctrines maintained by the great Anglican divines of the seventeenth century. Among these doctrines one of the most important was the doctrine of the visible Church, which for Newman does not exist without a strong link to the supernatural reality of the invisible Church. This doctrine embraces the sacramental principle and the article of the 'Communion of Saints'. Preaching about this latter doctrine in 1837 Newman is convinced that there is a relation between the Church on earth and the saints in heaven, that the saints are not useless to the visible Church. His question is: What can they do for us? The Anglican divines do not give a clear answer. One of them, Pearson, in his Exposition of the Creed mentions 'desires and supplications on their side'. [22] Newman finds numerous examples of intercessory prayer in Holy Scripture. Though the legitimacy of intercession was not generally accepted in the Anglican Church, Newman feels safe.

22 Pearson J, An Exposition of the Creed, 6th edn, Oxford 1870, p.631.

Looking closer to the Thirty-Nine Articles of his Church, he discovers that only the invocation of saints is condemned as dangerous, because it may easily lead to undue worship of creatures at the cost of the Creator, but nothing is said about intercession. Thus Newman distinguishes between invocation, which he rejects, and intercession, which he accepts. He rejects invocation because the Anglican Church teaches that the practice is not primitive, but an addition, because he is told by his Church to pray to God only and because he thinks that the saints act as a body and not individually. This is Newman's view in about 1837. Gradually this view will change, and in 1841 we see that there are forms of invocation which he accepts as not interfering with the honour due to God alone. During the following year he is too perplexed to give any opinion at all when his correspondents question him in this point. But obedience to the Church of England withholds him from using invocation himself until the day he is received into the Church of Rome.

There are still other principles which cause Newman to condemn the Roman devotion to Our Lady and the Saints. His great argument against Rome is that it has added to the primitive teaching of the Church. He distinguishes between an episcopal tradition and a prophetical tradition. The episcopal tradition hands all the doctrines down to us from the Apostles through the Bishops. This tradition teaches the faithful the Creed, all the truths they really need for their salvation. The prophetical tradition is a more popular form of tradition, which may lead to corruption, if the Church is not careful and watches it continuously. Newman considers this tradition partly to be an interpretation of the creed, partly to be an innovation. And these innovations are to be condemned according to the Thirty-nine Articles, who teach that Scripture contains all what is needed for salvation. According to the Articles and the divines, especially Bishop Bull, Newman accepts at this time also a mere verbal development of the doctrine contained in Holy Scripture: the words may change, but nothing can be added to the contents and no real growth or development are possible. Thus Newman condemns the Roman praxis, saying: Surely we have more reasons for thinking that her doctrines concerning Images and Saints are false, than her decision that they are Apostolical is true. [23]

This is Newman's view until the end of 1842. Since 1839 the result of his studies and different events have strongly shaken his security in the Anglican Church as the true Church, as the Via Media between Protestantism and Rome. But still he tries to find arguments in favour of the Church of England. He cannot overlook that his younger disciples do not share his judgment. To keep them in the Church of England Newman writes in 1841 his Tract 90, showing how his views can be reconciled with the subscription of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and that, although certain Roman doctrines were reprobated in the Articles, they were mainly directed against the actual popular belief and usages of Roman Catholics, which constituted an addition to the authoritative teaching of the Church. This Tract, meant to be a remedy, was condemned, first by the University authorities, later by the Bishops. This blow, and others, breaks Newman. His view of the Anglican Church as the Via Media is not real and not possible.

23 The Via Media of the Anglican Church I, 265

But 'Tract 90' has also a happy consequence for Newman. Dr Russell, a young Maynooth Professor reads it and writes to Newman to remonstrate against the misrepresentations of Catholic doctrine, especially Transubstantiation, contained in Tract 90. Newman answers making his distinction between the Roman doctrine — which he accepts in many points — and the 'traditionary system' which he considers to be a corruption. He complains especially about the excesses in the Roman devotion to Our Lady. Dr Russell then recommends him to study Catholic devotional writings about Our Lady in order to see whether or not they forget the honour due to God, and to Him alone, and he sends Newman a volume of St Alfonso's sermons. Newman knows quotations from them, but reading the whole, he does not find in them the idolatry he had expected and he is even more astonished to find that in one of the Sermons on Our Lady there are omissions. This fact makes it clear to Newman that some devotional manifestations may be suitable for Catholics in Italy, but therefore not for Catholics in England.

After having read St Alfonso's Sermons Newman has all the elements for the distinction that will be so helpful in his Catholic days when corresponding with Anglicans and converts, the distinction which he will make the first point of his Letter to Pusey: doctrine and devotion; doctrine being always and everywhere the same, devotion is the personal expression of faith and may vary according to person, to time, to place . . . Newman now understands that devotion to the saints is not interfering with the honour due to God, as he writes in the Apologia:

The Catholic Church allows no image of anv sort, material nr immaterial, no dogmatic symbol, no rite, no sacrament, no Saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator. It is face to face, 'solus cum solo', in all matters between man and his God. He alone creates; He alone has redeemed; before His awful eyes we go in death; in the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude. [24]

Newman looks through a number of cheap books of devotion, sent by Dr Russell, hardly finding anything he could really object to.

It is at this time, from the end of 1842 to 1844, that Newman gives his mind to the principle of development of doctrine in the Christian Church. He is interested in the question, whether a true development, growth is possible, and how to discern it from an innovation or corruption: 'The idea of the Blessed Virgin was as if it were magnified in the Church of Rome as time went on—but so were all the Christian ideas.' [25]

The way in which Newman orders his thoughts in the Apologia suggests that there is an inner link between his new view of the devotion in the Roman Church and his study of the development of doctrine. He does not dare to pronounce himself clearly on this question. He introduces the paragraphs about devotion to Our Lady with expressions such as:

I recollect but indistinctly what I gained . . . but it must have been something considerable.
I am not sure that I did not also at this time feel the force of another consideration. [26]
24 Apologia 195
25, 26 ib. 196

Newman makes the development in religious doctrine the subject of his last University Sermon, preached on the feast of the Purification, 2nd February 1843. He choses St Mary as our example in both receiving Divine Truth and wondering, developing it:

[ She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to [ possess, she uses it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; I not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias . . . if yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolizes to us, not only the faith of the unlearned, but of the doctors of the Church also, who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the Gospel; to draw the line between truth and heresy; to anticipate or remedy the various aberrations of wrong reason; to combat pride and recklessness with their own arms; and thus to triumph over the sophist and the innovator.[27]

In these same years Newman translates writings from St Athanasius. He (does not find there anything about Our Lady, but he finds the theological principle of devotion to the saints, as he explains it in the Essay on Development. As Ia consequence of the Incarnation and Redemption, those who believe in Christ, pre given the power to become sons of God in Him. [28] Newman sees that those who are formally recognized as God's adopted sons in Christ, are fit objects on account of Him who is in them; a doctrine which both interprets and accounts for the invocation of Saints, the cultus of relics, and the religious veneration in which even the living have sometimes been held, who being saintly, were distinguished by miraculous gifts. Worship then is the necessary correlative of glory; and in the same sense in which created natures can share in the Creator's incommunicable glory, are they also allowed a share of that worship which is his property alone. [29]

Newman discovered how the image of Our Lady became ever clearer in the first centuries of the Church. After the condemnation of the Arians it was shown that to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity. [30]

because, as Newman says, Arius or Asterius did all but confess that Christ was the Almighty; they said much more than St Bernard or St Alphonso have since said of the Blessed Mary; yet they left Him a creature and were found wanting. [31] When Arianism was condemned, the high place they had ascribed to Christ— the place of the most exalted creature—was left open. This is the place of Mary, the Mother of God. [32]. The formal ecclesiastical decision about her dignity was only given in the fifth century, when the Council of Ephesus defined her to be the Theotokos, the God-bearer or Mother of God; as thus she had always been present in the spontaneous or traditional feeling of the Christians. The definition of her title served a purpose:

27 University Sermons, 313-14
28 John 1:12
29, 30, 31, 32 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 142 & 143

In order to honour Christ, in order to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation, in order to secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son. [33] Thus Newman has overcome all difficulties he once had with regard to the Roman devotion to Our Lady and he recognizes her in the role in which he will like her so much, as the 'Seat of Wisdom': as the safeguard of true faith in Christ, our model for the reception of faith and for its development in the soul. [34] The Catholic Newman will keep Our Lady before the eyes of the faithful as an example, as a guide on their way to Christ:

Her glories are not only for the sake of her Son, they are for our sakes also. Let us copy her faith, who received God's message by the angel without a doubt; her patience, who endured St Joseph's surprise without a word; her obedience, who went up to Bethlehem in the winter and bore our Lord in a stable; her meditative spirit, who pondered in her heart what she saw and heard about Him: her fortitude, whose heart the sword went through; her self-surrender, who gave Him up during His ministry and consented to His death. [35]

The scriptural foundation of this view is the consideration of Mary in the Gospel, but not only there. Newman finds her in the first and the last book of Holy Scripture, and there she is presented to us as the Second Eve, a title repeated and explained by the Fathers, especially in the first centuries. There too Mary's dignity is a prerogative given her for Christ's sake. This fundamental principle, which Newman has maintained since his first Anglican sermon on Our Lady, is proved to be true by history as well. In his Essay on Development Newman states:

And if we take a survey at least of Europe, we shall find that it is not those religious communions which are characterized by devotion towards the Blessed Virgin that have ceased to adore her Eternal Son, but those very bodies, which have renounced devotion to her . . . they who were accused of worshiping a creature in His stead, still worship Him; their accusers who hoped to worship Him so purely, they . . . have ceased to worship Him altogether. [36]
33 Development 145
34 Murray P., OSB, Newman the Oratorian, Dublin 1969, p79 n23
35 Discourses to Mixed Congregations 374-75
36 Development 426

This historical investigation brought it home to him how Mary has promoted faith in Christ and secured it against heresies. Her mission in the history of the Church and the development of the doctrine consists in enlightening and defending the great mysteries of the faith, thus continuing the commitment she accepted with her 'fiat': to bring Christ to men, that they may be redeemed. As a Catholic Newman is still more explicit than in the Essay on Development when he preaches:

If Mary is the Mother of God, Christ must be literally Emmanuel, God with us. And hence it was, that, when time went on, and the bad spirits and false prophets grew stronger and bolder, and found a way into the Catholic body itself, then the Church, guided by God, could find no more effectual and sure way of expelling them than that of using this word Deipara against them; and, on the other hand, when they came up again from the realms of darkness, and plotted the utter overthrow of Christian faith in the sixteenth century, then they could find no more certain expedient for their hateful purpose than that of reviling and blaspheming the prerogatives of Mary, for they knew full well that, if they could once get the world to dishonour the Mother, the dishonour of the Son would follow close. The Church and Satan agreed together in this, that Son and Mother went together; and the experience of three centuries has confirmed their testimony, for Catholics who have honoured the Mother, still worship the Son, while Protestants, who now have ceased to confess the Son, began by scoffing at the Mother. [37]

This truth has been reasserted for our days by Pope Pius XII, who quoted Newman when he said on 4th May 1952:

That is why one dare not separate the Mother from the Son. His death on Golgotha was her martyrdom; His triumph is her exaltation. The witness of three centuries confirms the fact, as the learned Cardinal Newman pointedly observes, that 'Catholics who have honoured the Mother, still worship the Son; while those who now have ceased to confess the Son, began by scoffing at the Mother' With all the ardour of your faith, then, be quick at all times to offer to the Virgin Mother the homage of your gratitude, your love and loyalty. [38]
37 Discourses to Mixed Congregations 348
38 ib. XVII; Pius XII, Discorsi e radiomessagi..., XIV, Vatican 1953, p.130