The Apostolate of Personal Influence in the Work of Cardinal Newman

by Father John McCloskey

"Cor ad cor loquitur." How often the motto chosen by Cardinal Newman for his coat of arms (a quotation from the writings of the gentleman-Saint Francis de Sales) is used as a simple explanation for the powerful impact that the life and writings of Newman continue to exert on his readers. In this paper, I will somewhat summarily trace the development, in Newman's writings, of his theory regarding the apostolate of personal influence. It is my belief that this theory, developed in his writings and lived out in his life, foreshadowed the Second Vatican Council's teaching on the laity's baptismal vocation to apostolate and evangelization.

Newman excelled in many fields; it is not necessary that I list them here. However, anyone who reads his life or writings fairly would, I believe, agree that all his work was subordinate to the closely related goals of giving glory to God and serving as an instrument in the salvation of souls. Given the growing appreciation for the importance of imbuing the whole secular order with a Christian spirit, his particular method of evangelization is of crucial importance for us as we approach the third millennium and pay heed to the unceasing call of the Roman Pontiff for the re-evangelization of Western civilization.

Newman was a keen student of the writers of antiquity (1). As such, he was familiar with the writings of Aristotle and Cicero, who placed the highest human value on friendship. Aristotle tells us in The Nicomachean Ethics that "without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods... It would seem actually impossible to be a great friend of many people; love is ideally a sort of excess of friendship, and that can be felt towards only one person; therefore great friendship too can be felt towards few people" (2). Aristotle, of course, could not imagine the added power of divine grace enabling men, such as Newman, to love with the infinite power of the heart of Christ.

Cicero in his treatise On Friendship tells us that "Friendship can exist only between good men... for there is nothing more lovable than virtue" and that "I can only advise you to prefer friendship to all other things within human attainment." These insights were certainly made real in Newman's own life.

Although not as well acquainted with Scholastic philosophers as with Patristic writers, Newman may well have read, later in life, perhaps during his studies in Rome leading up to his ordination, St. Thomas Aquinas's treatise On Charity in which Aquinas states that "Perfect friendship is not directed toward many... But inasmuch as friendship toward one becomes more perfect as regards that one, the more perfect the love we have toward one, the better able we are to love others." We immediately think of some of the dearest friends of Newman, e.g., Froude, during his Anglican period, and later in life, St. John, or on a supernatural level, St. Philip Neri, his spiritual father, or the holy humanity of Christ Himself.

Indeed, while deeply admiring the wisdom of the ancient philosophers, Newman insisted that the highest friendship, one that would be everlasting, would be based on a spiritual foundation.

Young people, indeed, readily love each other, for they are cheerful and innocent; more easily yield to each other, and are full of hope;–types, as Christ says, of his true converts. But this happiness does not last; their tastes change. Again, grown persons go on for years as friends; but these do not live together; and, if an accident throws them into familiarity for a while, they find it difficult to restrain their tempers and keep on terms, and discover that they are best friends at a distance. But what is it that can bind two friends together in intimate converse of a course of years, but the participation in something that is Unchangeable and essentially Good, and what is this but religion? Religious tastes alone are unalterable. The Saints of God continue in one way, while the fashions of the world change; and a faithful indestructible friendship may thus be a test of the parties, so loving each other, having the love of God deep seated in their hearts. Not an infallible test certainly; for they may have dispositions remarkably the same, or some engrossing object of this world, literary or other; they may be removed from the temptation to change, or they may have a natural sobriety of temper, which remains contented wherever it finds itself. However, under certain circumstances, it is a lively token of the presence of divine grace in them; and it is always a sort of symbol of it, for there is at first sight something of the nature of virtue in the very notion of constancy, dislike of change being not only the characteristic of a virtuous mind, but in some sense a virtue itself (3).

It should be pointed out here that Newman's personality, by all accounts, was very pleasant and winning. His demeanor evidently epitomized his oft-quoted definition of a gentleman. His natural sensitivity and shyness, masking the keen wit and intelligence so evident in his conversation, would have made him all the more engaging. That he grew up in a large family, not atypical of that time, contributed to his ability to mix well with people of sharply different character traits. Needless to say, the virtuousness of his character, particularly as regards chastity and temperance, would no doubt have held a certain fascination for his peers. Although he certainly had his defects, most notably his famed although somewhat exaggerated hyper-sensibility, his character grew and matured through decades under the twin tutors of grace and experience until it reached the point where his ordinary, Bishop Ullathorne, would say, "There is a Saint in that man" (4).

Whether Newman was a "saint" or not is a topic of current serious examination by the Church and is yet to be determined. If he is canonized, he most certainly would fit his own description of a certain type of saint, and this may help to explain his influence on so many throughout the years.

On the other hand, there are those, and of the highest order of sanctity too, as far as our eyes can see, in whom the supernatural combines with nature, instead of superseding it–invigorating it, elevating it, ennobling it; and who are not the less men because they are saints. They do not put away their natural endowments, but use them to the glory of the Giver; they do not act beside them, but through them; they do not eclipse them by the brightness of divine grace, but only transfigure them. They are versed in human knowledge; they are busy in human society; they understand the human heart; they can throw themselves into the minds of other men; and all this in consequence of natural gifts and secular education. While they themselves stand secure in the blessedness of purity and peace, they can follow in imagination the ten thousand aberrations of pride, passion, and remorse. The world is to them a book, to which they are drawn for its own sake, which they read fluently, which interests them naturally–though, by reason of the grace which dwells within them, they study it and hold converse with it for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Thus they have the thoughts, feelings, frames of mind, attractions, sympathies, antipathies of other men, so far as these are not sinful, only they have these properties of human nature purified, sanctified, and exalted; and they are only made more eloquent, more poetical, more profound, more intellectual, by reason of their being more holy. In this latter class I may perhaps without presumption place many of the early Fathers, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Athanasius, and above all, the great Saint of this day, St. Paul the Apostle (5).

As noted above, Newman had a particular interest in the early Church, from patristic times up to the writings of the Fathers. His extensive writings on the period, during the years of his Oriel fellowship, certainly hastened his development from an Anglican with Evangelical leanings to the founder (co-) of the Oxford Movement with its dogmatic and ecclesial-based Christianity. However, in his writings about the period, one is struck by his fascination with the vibrant personalities of the apostles, martyrs, confessors and Fathers of the Church.

I spoke of St. Paul's characteristic gift as being a special apprehension of human nature as a fact, and an intimate familiarity with it as an object of continual contemplation and affection. He made it his own to the very full, instead of annihilating it; he sympathized with it, while he mortified it by penance, while he sanctified it by the grace given him. Though he had never been a heathen, though he was no longer a Jew, yet he was a heathen in capability, as I may say, and a Jew in the history of the past. His vivid imagination enabled him to throw himself into the state of heathenism, with all those tendencies which lay dormant in his nature carried out, and its infirmities developed into sin. His wakeful memory enabled him to recall those past feelings and ideas of a Jew, which in the case of others a miraculous conversion might have obliterated; and thus, while he was a Saint inferior to none, he was emphatically still a man, and to his own apprehension still a sinner....

It is the habit of this great Apostle to have such full consciousness that he is a man, and such love of others as his kinsmen, that in his own inward conception, and in the tenor of his daily thoughts, he almost loses sight of his gifts and privileges, his station and dignity, except he is called by duty to remember them, and he is to himself merely a frail man speaking to frail men, and he is tender towards the weak from a sense of his own weakness; nay, that his very office and functions in the Church of God do but suggest to him that he has the imperfections and the temptations of other men....

A man who thus divests himself of his own greatness, and puts himself on the level of his brethren, and throws himself upon the sympathies of human nature, and speaks with such simplicity and such spontaneous outpouring of heart, is forthwith in a condition both to conceive great love of them, and to inspire great love towards himself....

He who had the constant contemplation of his Lord and Savior, as if he saw Him with his bodily eyes, was nevertheless as susceptible of the affections of human nature and the influences of the external world, as if he were a stranger to that contemplation. Wonderful to say, he who had rest and peace in the love of Christ, was not satisfied without the love of man; he whose supreme reward was the approbation of God, looked out for the approval of his brethren. He who depended solely on the Creator, yet made himself dependent on the creature. Though he had That which was Infinite, he would not dispense with the finite. He loved his brethren, not only "for Jesus's sake," to use his own expression, but for their own sake also. He lived in them; he felt with them and for them; he was anxious about them; he gave them help, and in turn he looked for comfort from them. His mind was like some instrument of music, harp or violin, the strings of which vibrate, though untouched, by the notes which other instruments give forth....

He who reveals to us the mystery of God's Sovereign Decrees manifests at the same time the tenderest interest in the souls of individuals...

Putting aside forms as far as it was right to do so, and letting influence take the place of rule, and charity stand instead of authority, they drew souls to them by their interior beauty, and held them captive by the regenerate affections of human nature (6).

It is not too much to say that given Newman's natural sympathy with the people that he describes, that their virtues and apostolic personalities are ones that he not only admires but imitates, each saintly personality being but another way to the imitation of Christ. Indeed, when we read these various panegyrics to holiness, we immediately come upon various facets of Newman's own personality and his influence on others.

In another work, Newman describes the life of St. John Chrysostom:

I consider St. Chrysostom's claim to lie in his intimate sympathy and compassionateness for the whole world, not only in its strength, but in its weakness; in the lively regard with which he views everything that comes before him, taken in the concrete, whether as made after its own kind or as gifted with a nature higher than its own... [It is] the interest which he takes in all things, not so far as God has made them alike, but as He has made them different from each other. I speak of the discriminating affectionateness with which he accepts everyone for what is personal in him and unlike others. I speak of his versatile recognition of men, one by one, for the sake of that portion of good, be it more or less, of a lower order or higher, which has severally been lodged in them; his eager contemplation of the many things they do, effect, or produce, all of their great works as nations or as state; nay, even as they are corrupted or disguised by evil, so far as that evil may in imagination be disjoined from their proper nature, or may be regarded as a mere material disorder apart from its formal character of guilt. I speak of the kindly spirit and the genial temper with which he looks round at all things which this wonderful world contains; of the graphic fidelity with which he notes them down upon the tablets of his mind, and of the promptitude and propriety with which he calls them up as arguments or illustrations in the course of his teaching as the occasion requires. Possessed though he be by the fire of divine charity, he has not lost one fibre, he does not miss one vibration, of the complicated whole of human sentiment and affection; like the miraculous bush in the desert, which for all the flame that wrapt it round, was not thereby consumed (7).

He admires the principle of discrimination that he finds in Chrysostom, the Thomistic principle of distinguishing to unite, the ability to love the essential goodness of the world, while remaining detached from it in order to win souls.

In his novel, Callista, Newman puts into the mouth of St. Cyprian the love which unites all the early saints that Newman admired so much:

"There is but one Lover of souls," cried Caecilius, "and he loves each one of us, as though there was no one else to love. He died for each one of us, as if there were no one else to die for. He died on the shameful cross...The love which he inspires lasts, for it is the love of the unchangeable. It satisfies, for his is inexhaustible. The nearer we draw to him, the more triumphantly does he enter into us; the longer he dwells in us, the more intimately have we possession of him. It is an espousal for eternity (8).

I think I have clearly established Newman's fascination and admiration for the early saints. That he was much more interested in the virtue of their various personalities, inflamed with the love of Christ, than their writings or teachings is also evident. Their actions and writings are simply the reflection of their holiness wedded to their own particular genius, i.e., their personal influence. It should be added that Newman had the same regard for his more modern spiritual fathers whose writings were few:

St. Philip...lived in an age as traitorous to the interests of Catholicism as any that preceded it, or can follow it...He saw the great and gifted, dazzled by the Enchantress...he saw heathen forms mounting...all this he saw, and he perceived that the mischief was to be met, not with argument, not with science, not with protests and warnings, not by the recluse or the preacher, but by means of the great counterfascination of purity and truth (9).

Of St. Philip and of Newman's other great models, it can be said:

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 (10).

The principal dogmas, of course, being the Creation, Incarnation, and Redemption flowing into the whole ecclesial and sacramental system.

Now I would like to move on to an examination of the two sermons, both written in the Anglican period, which best lay down the theoretical underpinnings of Newman's thinking on friendship. I would like first to highlight several passages from his Love of Relations and Friends.

Commenting on Christ's intimate relationship with St. John, he point out that:

We find our Savior had a private friend; and this shows us, first, how entirely he was a man, as much as any of us, in his wants and feelings; and next, that there is nothing contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, nothing inconsistent with the fulness of Christian love, in having our affections directed in an especial way towards certain objects, towards those whom the circumstances of our past life, or some peculiarities of character, have endeared to us.

There have been men before now, who have supposed Christian love was so diffusive as not to admit of concentration upon individuals; so that we ought to love all men equally. And many there are, who, without bringing forward any theory, yet consider practically that the love of many is superior to the love of one or two; and neglect the charities of private life, while busy in the schemes of an expansive benevolence, or of effecting a general union and conciliation among Christians. Now I shall here maintain, in opposition to such notions of Christian love, and with our Savior's pattern before me, that the best preparation for loving the world at large, and loving it duly and wisely, is to cultivate an intimate friendship and affection towards those who are immediately about us (11).

In the same way that Christ, although having died for all, has a different degree of love for different people, Newman too would say that we are called to be concerned with the salvation of all while at the same time enjoying various degrees of intimate friendship.

We are to begin with loving our friends about us, and gradually to enlarge the circle of our affections, till it reaches all Christians, and then all men... We see then how absurd it is, when writers...talk magnificently about loving the whole human race with a comprehensive affection, of being friends of all mankind...this is not to love men, it is but to talk of love. The real love of man must depend on practice (12).

In referring to St. John, he mentions how his friendship with Christ would naturally lead to a relationship with His mother and then on to the other apostles:

Thus he was taught to love others; first his affection was concentrated, then it was expanded. Next he had the solemn and comfortable charge of tending to our Lord's Mother, the Blessed Virgin, after His departure. Do we not here discern the secret sources of his especial love of the brethren? Could he, who first was favored with his savior's affection, then trusted with a son's office towards His Mother, could he be other than a memorial and pattern (as far as man can be,) of love, deep, contemplative, fervent, unruffled, unbounded? (13).

He closes by noting that the supernatural character of true Christian friendship is of necessity rooted in the Eucharist.

Well may I so exhort you at this season, when we have so lately partaken together the Blessed Sacrament which binds us to mutual love, and gives us strength to practice it (14).

We can begin to close our survey of Newman's writings on friendship by examining the early University Sermon entitled Personal influence, the means of propagating the truth. It is the synthesis of his thought on friendship and, although preached early in his career, 1821, it works in rather well with his apologetic for belief which is developed more fully in the later University Sermons and much later in his Grammar of Assent, i.e., how faith, accompanied by grace, is handed down from generation to generation. I will attempt to synthesize his argument although there is no real substitute for reading the whole text.

Newman inquires into how it is possible that through the centuries the Church has continued in fidelity to its own principles, and indeed grown and prospered, often under the most adverse circumstances. He discounts as unsatisfactory the explanation that the gift of miracles or simply the visible existence of the Church brought this about. He then delves into

what I conceive to be the real method by which the influence of spiritual principles is maintained in this carnal world...This being the state of the question, it is proposed to consider, whether the influence of Truth in the world at large does not arise from the personal influence, direct and indirect, of those who are commissioned to teach it (15).

After detailing the power of the enemies of the truth, he claims

that it has been upheld in the world not as a system, not by books, not by argument, nor by temporal power, but by the personal influence of such men as...are at once the teachers and patterns of it...(16).

But, after all, say they are few, such Christians; and what follows? They are enough to carry on God's noiseless work. These communicate their light to a number of lesser luminaries, by whom, in its turn, it is distributed...A few highly-endowed men will rescue the world for centuries to come (17).

He then listed some of the attributes of personal holiness that are so strongly influential. He mentions "simple-minded devotion to God, the conduct of the religious man...the sight of a superior altogether independent of themselves...and finally: the consistency of virtue."

He then explains the power of one single saint, which we are called to be.

We shall find it difficult to estimate the moral power which a single individual, trained to practice what he teaches, may acquire in his own circle, in the course of years. While the Scriptures are thrown upon the world, as if the common property of any who choose to appropriate them, he is, in fact, the legitimate interpreter of them, and none other; the Inspired Word being but a dead letter, (ordinarily considered), except as transmitted from one mind to another. While he is unknown to the world, yet, within the range of those who see him, he will become the object of feelings different in kind from those which mere intellectual excellence excites. The men commonly held in popular estimation are greatest at a distance; they become small as they are approached; but 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 affection and loyalty of all who are in a measure like-minded; and over the thoughtless or perverse multitude it exercises a sovereign compulsory sway, bidding them fear and keep silence, on the ground of its own right Divine to rule them; its hereditary claim on their obedience, though they understand not the principle or counsels of that spirit, which is "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (18).

Obviously this explanation is not simply theoretical but has been evidenced throughout history in the lives of all the saints, and indeed, in Newman himself.

It was originally my objective to trace Newman's own personal influence as it was exerted on his friends throughout his long life. However, that would take too long. I think it will suffice to mention the names of Mayers, Whateley, Bowden, Hawkins, Pusey, Froude, Wilberforce, Rogers, Ward, Mozeley, St. John, Wood, Faber, Ullathorne, Neville, and Dalgairns as just a sample of a greater multitude who both influenced and were influenced by Newman. Many of these relationships would merit at least an article of their own. The reader can trace for himself the development of these friendships through the study of a biography of Newman, the most recent of which is Fr. Ian Ker's.

Newman has often been mentioned as the theologian who influenced the documents of the Second Vatican Council most profoundly. In many areas–the development of doctrine, ecumenism, religious liberty, and the basis of belief–one can find his influence in conciliar teaching. One example of his influence that may have been neglected may be the Council's emphasis on the responsibility of the individual layperson in the apostolate and evangelization. The theoretical foundation for these teachings has just been laid out in this paper.

Looking only at the Decree on the Laity, one can see the challenge put forth by the Church for an apostolate of personal influence.

Laymen have countless opportunities for exercising the apostolate of evangelization and sanctification. The very witness of a Christian life, and good works done in a supernatural spirit, are effective in drawing men to the faith and to God...the true apostle is on the lookout for occasions of announcing Christ by word, either to unbelievers to draw them towards the faith, or to the faithful to instruct them, strengthen them, incite them to a more fervent life (19).

Their apostolic witness is to take place amidst their normal surroundings in everyday life, through their behavior and conversation.

A special form of the individual apostolate is the witness of a whole lay life issuing from faith, hope, and charity; it is a sign very much in keeping with our times, and a manifestation of Christ living in his faithful. Then, by the apostolate of the word, which in certain circumstances is absolutely necessary, the laity proclaim Christ, explain and spread his teachings, each one according to his condition and competence, and profess those teachings with fidelity...The laity accomplish the Church's mission in the world principally by that blending of conduct and faith which makes them the light of the world; by that uprightness in all their dealings which is for every man such an incentive to love the true and the good and which is capable of inducing him at last to go to Christ and the Church; by that fraternal charity that makes them share the living conditions and labors, the sufferings and yearnings of their brothers, and thereby prepare all hearts, gently, imperceptibly, for the action of saving grace; by that full awareness of their personal responsibility in the development of society, which drives them to perform their family, social and professional duties with Christian generosity. In this way their conduct makes itself gradually felt in the surroundings where they live and work (20).

To conclude, Newman's apostolate of personal influence was well developed theoretically in his writings, exemplified in his own life, and ratified by the Church in the Second Vatican Council. This theory and practice take on an increasing significance as we approach the third millennium listening to the repeated call of John Paul II for re-evangelization.

REFERENCES

(1) Ian Ker, John Henry Newman, A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 24, 31.

(2) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.

(3) John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (PS) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 262.

(4) Ker, p. 744.

(5) Newman, Occasional Sermons, p. 91-93 (all Newman quotations are from the Longman, Green & Co. editions, unless otherwise noted).

(6) Ibid., 95, 102, 103, 112, 114, 116, 119.

(7) Newman, Historical Sermons ii, 284-7.

(8) Newman, Callista, p. 222.

(9) Newman, Idea of a Univeristy, 234-35.

(10) Newman, D.A., p. 293.

(11) Newman, PS, 257.

(12) Ibid, 259.

(13) Ibid, 260.

(14) Ibid, 262.

(15) Newman, University Sermons, p. 64.

(16) Ibid, p. 65.

(17) Ibid, p. 77, 82-83.

(18) Ibid, p. 80-81.

(19) "Decree on the Laity," Vatican Council, n.6.

(20) Ibid, n. 13, 16.

First appeared in Annales Theologica in the Spring, 1990 issue.