Edward Caswall: Newman’s Brother and Friend by Nancy Marie de Flon (review)

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 90 context of the French Revolution and of political struggles in Italy affecting the papacy. Such a context is essential for understanding issues in the Church; yet there were other concerns besides the infallibility controversy on which Cummings focuses so much of his attention. Newman scholars will find nothing new. Cummings places Newman in the line of nineteenth-century Catholics whose ideas contributed to the reforms of Vatican II—as reflected in Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the Church, and the emphasis on the laity and on preaching. Scholars such as Ian Ker have more ably and thoroughly chronicled this influence. Cummings’ work does suggest a potentially rich topic for further research. One wishes he had gone beyond Trevor’s book, published nearly forty years ago, to discuss current problems in the church and how the prophets would address them and to what extent their ideas have truly been implemented in the post-Vatican II world. Frances C. Brown Brescia University Edward Caswall: Newman’s Brother and Friend. By Nancy Marie de Flon. Leominster,UK:Gracewing,2005. Pages xii + 221. Paper £14.99,ISBN 0–85244–607–1. Turn to the index of any modern-day,English-language hymnal and you likely will find at least one text penned or translated by Edward Caswall (1814–1878), John Henry Newman’s confrère in the Birmingham Oratory. Like Newman,Caswall was an Anglican clergyman who, about mid-way through his life, entered the Church of Rome and continued in the ordained ministry as a Catholic priest. But unlike Newman, Caswall came from a well-credentialed and clerically well-connected Established Church family. And most interestingly,he was married,and when his dear wife Louisa died of cholera in 1849 he entered Newman’s Oratorian community. Caswall’s name may be familiar to a handful of church musicians and to those interested in the details of community life in Newman’s Oratory. But until now little material has been available to scholars of the Oxford Movement who might very well be interested in him as one of the lesser known figures of the nineteenth-century Catholic revival in England. While Caswall—the translator behind beloved hymn texts such as “Come, Holy Ghost” and “When Morning Gilds the Sky”—continues to provide words which many Christian assemblies sing on a regular basis, he is also notable for his arduous struggle into communion with the Catholic Church and his intense zeal for the pastoral education of youth. Nancy Marie de Flon’s Edward Caswall: Newman’s Brother and Friend will help to bring the life of this remarkable man to a wider audience. De Flon treats Caswall’s life both chronologically and thematically. For example, she carefully traces his personal and theological development from his youth to his life as an undergraduate at Oxford. Simultaneously she introduces her reader to the increasing number of questions he began to have about the Established Church. Sometimes Caswall’s life reads very much like Newman’s. In fact,one only need look at the book’s table of contents to be struck by how easily it could organize Newman’s 91 own development, conversion and work as a priest in the Oratory. Yet, there is a distinctive theme throughout Caswall’s life particularly appreciated by de Flon: it is not so much Caswall’s academic theological contribution to Tractarianism or to English Victorian Catholicism which makes him important to the history of the English church,but rather his work as humorist,hymn translator,and poet in his own right. It is not that Caswall was un-theological. In fact, the issues which disturbed him so much and led to his conversion in 1847, were very similar to the theological concerns of the other Tractarians: the validity (or lack thereof) of the apostolic succession in the Established Church, the efficacy of praying to the saints, and the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist—to mention only three. But all in all, de Flon locates the impetus for Caswall’s conversion within his life of devotion. Though, to be sure, it was a devotion that always sought to be reasonable and articulate. And...