Mary in the Writings of John Henry Newman: A Review Essay

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 86 Mary Katherine Tillman is a Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame and an editor of Newman Studies Journal. 1 The two books featured in this essay are: MARY:TheVirgin Mary in the Life andWritings of John Henry Newman,edited with Introduction and Notes by Philip Boyce, OCD, Bishop of Raphoe, Ireland (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans; Leominster, Herefordshire, UK: Gracewing, 2001. Pages viii + 439. Cloth $28.00, ISBN 0-8028-3929-0); hereafter cited as: Boyce, Mary. “The Daughter of Eve Unfallen”: Mary in the Theology and Spirituality of John Henry Newman, by the Reverend Nicholas L.Gregoris (Mount Pocono,Pennsylvania:Newman House Press,Revised Edition 2003. Pages 652. Paper,$18.00, ISBN 0-9704022-7-9); hereafter cited as Gregoris, Daughter of Eve. 2 Joe Wrin comments on this recent phenomenon in his article, “The Growing Protestant Mary—New Grounds for Discussion,” Today’s Catholic (April 10, 2005). Reconsideration of the Catholic theology of the Blessed Virgin Mary is timely these days, for it seems that non-Catholic Christians have been reawakening to the place of Mary in their own religion and spirituality. Perhaps this is one of the signs of the times to which Pope Benedict XVI will appeal in his expressly desired dialogue with other churches. Brief perusal of even the titles of recent publications in Protestant and secular journals demonstrates this pronounced resurgence.2 Three cover stories serve as examples. Time magazine, in its March 21, 2005, cover story,“Hail, Mary,” focused on “Protestants finding their own reasons to celebrate the Mother of Jesus.” The Christian Century,a nondenominational journal,devoted a cover story in December 2005, to the question: “What About Mary: Protestants and Marian Devotion.” And Christianity Today, a Protestant evangelical magazine, entitled its cover story for winter 2003:“The Blessed Evangelical Mary;Why we [Protestant Christians] shouldn't ignore her any longer.” As recently as May 2005, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) published a 57-page document,“Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ,” the first major Protestant-Catholic accord on doctrine about and devotion to Mary. It concluded that Marian beliefs and practices need no longer be seen as divisive between Catholics and Anglicans. What may have appeared in the 1960s to be rather a pipe dream of the Second Vatican Council,namely,that Mary the Mother of all Christians could be a source of future unity among them, is beginning to seem not quite so chimerical. John Henry Newman's Letter to Pusey,dated December 7,1865,is a masterpiece and model of ecumenical dialogue. Informed by experience and knowledge, it is Newman’s reply to what is known as “Pusey’s Eirenicon” and begins thus: No one who desires the union of Christendom after its many and longstanding divisions, can have any other feeling than joy, my dear Pusey, at BOOK REVIEW ESSAY MARY IN THE WRITINGS OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: A REVIEW ESSAY1 M. KATHERINE TILLMAN 87 3 John Henry Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching,Vol. II (London: Longmans, Green, 1898) 1; hereafter cited as Difficulties. Newman’s long letter to E. B. Pusey (1-118) is followed by over fifty additional pages of notes (119-170). The full title of Pusey’s “volume” is The Church of England a Portion of Christ’s One Holy Catholic Church, and a Means of RestoringVisible Unity. An Eirenicon, in a Letter to the Author of‘The ChristianYear” which was itself a reply to then-Archbishop Manning’s 1864 pamphlet, The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England, a Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey. 4 Difficulties, 2:25. 5 Philip Boyce, O.C.D., John Henry Newman: Maria, Pagina scelte, Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1999. BOOK REVIEW ESSAY finding from your recent Volume, that you see your way to make definite proposals to us for effecting that great object, and are able to lay down the basis and conditions on which you could co-operate in advancing it. It is not necessary that we should concur in the details of your scheme, or in the principles which it involves, in order to welcome...