John Henry Newman On The Idea of Church by Edward Jeremy Miller (review)

760 BOOK REVIEWS This is obviously a book which addresses a large number of different themes in moral theology, many of which Curran has dealt with in other places (and in greater depth and detail). It is particularly helpful , however, for those who would like to get a representative picture of the thought and manner of writing of this important contemporary moral theologian. Whether one agrees with his various positions or not, Curran is, as always, honest and insightful as he tackles some of the most important problems of our times. Graduate Theological, Union Berkeley, California EDwARD L. KRAsEvAc, O.P. John Henry Newman On The Idea of Church. By EDWARD JEREMY MILLER, with a Foreword by Jan Walgmve. Shepherdstown, West Virginia: Patmos Press, 1987. Pp. xxii +187, with select bibliography . When, years ago, I first read Wilfred Ward's Life I was sure Newman would never be canonized. He was too human, too sensritive, too blunt. On rereading the book forty-two years 1ater I say, yes, he certainly will be canonized precisely because he was human and sensitive and blunt. He had these qualities because he was honest. He was painfully honest. His greatest virtue was his honesty. He said what he thought and, since at times he thought some very unpopular thoughts, he got into plenty of trouble. As an Anglican he saw that the great stumbling block for himself and his friends in the via media was the Thirty Nine Articles. How could he and the others subscribe to them, so Protestant were they in tone? Newman wanted to show that the articles condemning ' Roman doctrine ' were really affirming ' Catholic teaching ' of early centuries, were condemning only some of the ' Roman doctrine ' while affirming others, and were clearly condemning the dominant error of Roman devotional practices. So he wrote his famous Tract 90. The roof fell in. It was condemned by Oxford dons 1and, as Newman wrote in the Apologia, "in every part of the country and every class of society, through every organ and opportunity of opinion, in newspapers, in periodicals, at meetings, in pulpits, at dinner tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway carriages, I was denounced as a traitor." As 1a Catholic he followed the same sort of scenario when he became editor of the Rambler. He had long been meditating on the role of the BOOK REVIEWS 761 layman in the Catholic Church and published his thoughts in the Rambler. His " On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine " put him in a very bad light with the English Catholic bishops, one of whom sent the essay to Rome with the charge of heresy. So again he was denounced, and as a result lost his position of honor among the English Catholics. Only after he had written some years later that masterpiece of honesty, the Apologia, was his reputation restored in England, and only after he had been named a Cardinal by the gallant Leo XIII, was it restored in Rome. Miller's book is a fascinating account of Newman's honest thoughts about the Church. Newman was not a systematic theologian, .never wrote a systematic treatment on the Church. One has to comb through his books to piece together a coherent picture. Miller has gone further. He has combed through the recently published Letters and Diaries to catch the fuller view. In the days of a beleaguered Pius IX, a watchful Propaganda and the English ultramontanists, Newman was circumspect in his published remarks about the Church. He saw how wrong it would be to stir up trouble before a watching, largely Church of England world. So he was patient and publicly silent before decisions made by prominent ecclesiastics he did not agree with, and he trusted that the Lord would bring things right in good time. But in letters to close friends he was candid and blunt. This candor and bluntness is the heart, and also the spice, of Miller's book. The two most prominent preoccupations of Newman concerning the Church were the role ·of theology and the position of the layman. Newman longed for an atmosphere where open, theological debate could flourish. But in his day the ultramontanists had gained...