Dear Friends in Christ,
Last week during the 11 am Mass, I mentioned two books as excellent sources for those seeking to prepare themselves “always to be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15) The two books I talked about are:
Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman. Despite the imposing Latin title (which can be rendered “An Explanation of His Life”), this spiritual autobiography is a masterpiece of 19th century English prose.
John Henry Newman was born in 1801 and brought up in a conventional Anglican household of his era, but during his teen years, Newman experienced a profound religious awakening that changed his life.
He studied at Oxford University and remained in the university as a professor, eventually becoming a leader in what came to be called the Tractarian Movement (from the tracts published to advance their ideas) or the Oxford Movement (from their association with the university) which led a large part of the Church of England back towards its pre-Reformation Catholic roots.
In 1843, deeply perplexed by the logical consequences of his own principles, Newman took a leave from his post at Oxford to live a quasi-monastic life with several friends in the nearby village of Littlemore, and it was there in 1845 that he was received into full communion with the Catholic Church.
This step meant the immediate loss of his job and his permanent exclusion from Oxford (“No Catholics” was the rule of the day at English universities), and so Newman went to Rome to study theology. He was ordained to the priesthood in Rome and returned to England to found a new community of priests in the industrial city of Birmingham, but from the beginning of this project, Newman was held in equal suspicion both by his former Protestant associates and his new Catholic family.
In due course, he was publicly denounced by an Anglican clergyman as a liar and a fraud, and Newman’s response (originally published as a series of essays) became the Apologia Pro Vita Sua, which together with St. Augustine’s Confessions is an indispensable account of one man’s interior journey to Christ and His Church.
Newman’s defense of his choices carried the day with Protestants in England, and when he was made a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 the cloud was finally lifted from him among his Catholic brethren. Newman died a beloved hero of the English people, and his beatification is expected sometime in the coming months.
The Apologia Pro Vita Sua is written in ornate Victorian English which can be a challenge to modern readers, but it is well worth the time and effort needed to walk with one of the finest minds ever to give a reason for the hope that comes from faith.
The second book I mentioned is Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI. As the pope explains in the introduction, this book is the fruit of his own scholarship and personal theological reflection rather than an authoritative act of the Church’s Magisterium, but for all that, it is a masterpiece of sublime thought and simple faith, meditating upon Holy Scripture and explaining to readers of the demythologized post-modern world what it means to say that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Father Scott Newman is pastor of St. Mary's Roman Catholic parish in Greenville, South Carolina. His personal website can be reached here.
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