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Newman and Manning: the Strained Relationship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Edward Jeremy Miller
Edward Jeremy Miller
Affiliation:
Gwynedd-Mercy College
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Abstract

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801–1890) is on the eve of being beatified. His contributions to theology and philosophy of religion are of such stature that many deem him worthy to be named a Doctor of the Church. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning (1808–1892) is thought to be the most illustrious of Westminster's archbishops since the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850. Newman mistrusted Manning, and Manning thought Newman lacked orthodoxy. The strained relationship began in their Anglican days and continued life long. Its story is here recounted and concludes with an explanation of why strain set in. Their very different views on the workings of authority in the Church, the role of the laity in the Church, and the Church's relationship to the world provided a sure recipe for their continued alienation.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , Fall 2008 , pp. 228 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2008

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References

1 An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913), 23–30. All references for Newman's books are to the Longmans Uniform Edition. In addition to library collections, the Uniform Edition can be found at http://www.newmanreader.org

2 His designated biographer, Edmund Sheridan Purcell, to whom Manning entrusted his private diary not long before death, makes an interesting case that Manning was born in 1807, even though Manning himself in later years listed his birth as 1808. See his Life of Cardinal Manning, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1895), 693, Sheridan Gilley, Note A., “New Light on an Old Scandal: Purcell's Life of Cardinal Manning,” in Bellenger, D. A., ed., Opening the Scrolls (Bath: Downside Abbey, 1987), 167Google Scholar, maintains that Manning meant J. E. C. Bodley to be his biographer but gave the task to Purcell because Purcell lost much money on Manning's unsuccessful newspaper, the Westminster Gazette. Gilley and others (e.g., Wilfrid Ward at the time) judge Purcell's biography biased. In using Purcell, I have restricted myself to the reproduced letters of Manning and others, and I have avoided Purcell's evaluations for the most part.

3 Manning became a nonresident fellow of Merton by leaving Oxford to replace Henry Wilberforce as curate to the evangelical John Sargent, rector of Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Lavington in Sussex. The four Sargent daughters married Sam and Henry Wilberforce, George Dudley Ryder, and Manning. Ryder and his wife, Sophia, became Catholics in Rome in 1846, and their son Henry Ignatius eventually joined Newman's Oratory. Henry and Mary Wilberforce became Catholics in 1850. Sam Wilberforce, a foe of the Tractarian party, became bishop of Oxford, later of Winchester.

4 Manning's biographer Purcell thought that he should have been more public in his denunciation of Hampden's heretical views. “Manning's arguments … would have exercised, had they been published, no inconsiderable influence in the heat and height of the fierce controversy” (1:477).

5 For Manning's concern for the poor, see Bodley, J. E. C., Cardinal Manning: The Decay of Idealism in France: The Institute of France (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1912).Google Scholar See also McClelland, V. A., Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence 1865–1992 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

6 At this point, I wish to offer a posthumous acknowledgement of gratitude to Gerard Tracey, archivist and editor of Newman's letters and diaries. A few years ago he made available to me the Newman-Manning dossier that was utilized in crafting the Positio Super Virtutibus in Newman's cause for canonization. The strategy behind such documents is not to cover up someone's possibly unsalutary features but, quite the opposite, to expose in an unvarnished manner incidents in a person's life that appear to need explanation. For this reason the tribunal process of the Diocese of Birmingham needed to know everything about the Newman-Manning relationship because it was known to have been tense. The Positio, presented to John Paul II in 1989 by its author, the late Vincent Ferrer Blehl, SJ, incorporates the dossier's findings. Tracey, collator of the dossier, died unexpectedly on January 20, 2003. In reviewing Gerard Tracey's materials for this paper, I wish to acknowledge the indebtedness of all Newman scholars, and especially my own, to a wonderful person.

7 See The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. by Dessain, Charles Stephen et al. ,, 31 vols. (London/New York: T. Nelson, 1961—), 6: 170, 175Google Scholar (hereafter LD).

8 Purcell, 1:116.

9 Manning claimed he had very little to recant on becoming a Catholic, unlike Newman who published retractions of his anti-Roman writings. Gladstone told Purcell that Manning conveniently forgot this anti-papal sermon, given from the same pulpit associated in Oxford minds with Newman and his Catholic leanings. Some of Manning's friends refused to speak with him, and “on his paying a visit to Littlemore shortly afterwards Newman himself refused to see him” (Purcell, 1:245). Peter Erb, in the 1995 Aquinas Lecture at Emory University, “A Question of Sovereignty: The Politics of Manning's Conversion,” argues that the Guy Fawkes sermon was driven by an anti-Erastian principle that made Manning's 1851 conversion its logical upshot (http://web.archive.org:80/web/20030116044219/http://www.pitts.emory.edu/Publications/erb.html, accessed 10 September 2008).

10 LD 12:357.

11 In a memoir from many years later, Manning assessed the history of his religious thinking during those years. He was not an Oxford “literary” type but a man of the “parish [and] archdeaconry.” He knew the Tractarians, thought like them, but it was from his own reading and “working out the sum by myself,” and not from their influence that he converted. His religious ideas had a “constant advance, without deviations,” such that his becoming a Catholic was the “leading of the Holy Ghost” (Purcell, 1:259–60). Purcell does not see the evidence of such early consistency.

12 Letter of 14 October 1843 to H. E. Manning (LD 9:573).

13 LD 11:8 and Purcell, 1:309. The first editor of LD, Charles Stephen Dessain, characterized Manning's reply as “affectionate but guarded” in his footnote to Newman's letter of 8 October 1845.

14 Purcell, 1:311. Gladstone urged Manning to publish a refutation to Newman's essay on development, which Manning seems to have started but never completed. After Manning's death, Gladstone told Purcell that Manning was “not strong enough to grapple with Newman. Manning was an ecclesiastical statesman; very ascetic, but not a theologian, nor deeply read” (ibid., 318).

15 Relatively unprepared, that is. Manning wrote Gladstone on 6 December 1850 of his pro-Roman thinking (Pitts Library, Emory University MS501206mg). Manning's diary records his reception on Passion Sunday (6 April) by Fr. Brownbill. One week later, on Palm Sunday, he was confirmed, received first communion, was tonsured, and received all the minor orders from Cardinal Wiseman. On Trinity Sunday (15 June) Wiseman ordained him a priest (Purcell, 1:628). F. W. Faber of the London Oratory, Newman's future nemesis, taught Manning the rubrics for celebrating the Roman Catholic Mass.

16 LD 14:247.

17 LD 14:265. Wilberforce and Manning had married Sargent sisters and were brothers-in-law.

18 LD 14:301. Newman's weekly talks were published as Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England. One wonders what Manning would have thought of the final lecture on the duties of the laity in advancing Catholicism, because their views of the laity became so divergent later on.

19 LD 14:482. In a note written in 1872 and attached to his 4 July 1852 letter to Archbishop Cullen of Dublin, Newman records that in October, 1851 he tried without success to get Manning to become his Vice-Rector at the proposed Catholic University of Ireland. There are no other overtures between them during 1851.

20 Newman wrote of a “memorial of the friendship which there has been between us for nearly thirty years.” Manning spoke of their friendship and “to you I owe a debt of gratitude for intellectual help and light, greater than to any one man of our time; and it gives me a sincere gratification now publicly to acknowledge, though I can in no way repay it.”

21 LD 20:253–54.

22 LD 21:348.

23 LD 24:33–34. Newman gave similar advice to Thomas Wetherell, a former Oxford man who co-edited the Rambler and the Home and Foreign Review with Sir John Acton: “Be on your guard against Manning getting any thing out of you. He is a desperate hand at pumping. And avoid all confidential and candid talks with him. And have no confidants, except such as Manning cannot pump” (LD 21:413).

24 LD 22:327–29. Mrs. Wood (1789–1873) was the widow of a canon of Canterbury Cathedral. She and her daughter, also Charlotte, became Catholics a month after Newman. Her son Granville became a Catholic in 1849 and then a Jesuit. This letter is to the daughter. Regarding Manning's pamphlet, the common friend was Fr. John Walker (1800–73), canon of the diocese of Beverley. Newman, , in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864; London; Longmans, Green, and Co. 1908), 342)Google Scholar, termed the Anglican Church a serviceable breakwater against doctrinal errors more fundamental than its own. Using the idea, Pusey's Eirenicon called Anglicanism a bulwark against infidelity. Manning attributed no value at all to the national church. In attacking Pusey's valuation of the church, he was obliquely attacking Newman. After Newman published his Letter to Pusey, Manning wrote an anonymous criticism of it for the Dublin Review and showed the draft to Bishops Ullathorne and Clifford. Clifford told Manning he agreed fully with Newman. Ullathorne told Manning he would not be so co-opted against his own priest, and if the Dublin ran the critique, he would advise Newman to seek an ecclesiastical censure against its lay editor, W. G. Ward, for publishing an attack on a cleric.

25 Oakeley (1802–1880) was such a staunch advocate of Tract Ninety—he and Ward thought Newman's Catholic readings of the Articles to be the natural and only readings of them—that his bishop suspended him. He converted just after Newman and was confirmed with him at Oscott. He was first a canon of Westminster and later a pastor in a parish in Islington. He remained friendly to Newman life long.

26 Since I paraphrase, footnoting is omitted; further, referencing each letter invites overwhelming clutter. The interested reader will find the letter material in Purcell, 2: 327–42. A more recent rendering, with critical annotations, is provided in LD 23:276–330.

27 At this midpoint, Newman wrote to James Hope-Scott on 13 August 1867: “Manning has written me wishing that we should meet and give him an opportunity of explanation. Of course I seem to put myself in the wrong by declining—but I seriously think it would do more harm than good. I do not trust him, and his new words would be the cause of fresh distrust. … I have said that the whole world thinks him difficult to understand … that friendly acts would be the best preparation for a friendly meeting—and that I should hail that day, when the past had been so far reversed, that explanations would be natural and effectual” (LD 23:296–97). It is a remarkable letter because (a) Hope-Scott is a dear friend to both men, (b) in refusing to meet, Newman realizes he could be blamed for prolonging the alienation, and (c) of the common sense psychology that distrust is obliterated only by opposite actions over a long period, not by explanations.

28 Newman faced this conundrum when Manning published his interpretation of Vatican I's dogma on infallibility immediately upon returning from the Council. Newman disagreed with the interpretation but could not publish his view without seeming to attack the archbishop, who participated in the Council. So he waited for a providential opening. In 1875, William Gladstone published an “Expostulation” questioning whether a British Catholic could be both loyal to the Pope and to the Crown. Newman had his opening. His Letter to the Duke of Norfolk gave a moderate interpretation of infallibility, ostensibly to rebut Gladstone but covertly to correct Manning's public view. In the Letter, Newman makes a veiled reference to those [i.e., Manning, Ward, Herbert Vaughan] who have “done their best to set the house on fire [and] leave to others the task of putting out the flame” See Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1900), 2:177.]

29 Purcell, 2:342. George Talbot (1816–1886) became a Catholic in 1842. Wiseman ordained him in 1846, and he was later appointed a canon of St. Peter's Basilica. He became the agent in Rome, first for Wiseman and then for Manning. His hostility to Newman is documented. He had applied to join Newman's Oratory in 1847 but was refused. Was his hostility a case of post hoc, propter hoc? He was removed to a French asylum in 1868. In 1887, Manning wrote a “summary of his variance” with Newman (see Purcell, 2:346–351). The last sentence reads, “If I have been opposed to him, it has only been that I must oppose either him or the Holy See.” Manning had an ultramontane view of the papacy; he actively opposed Catholics, such as Newman, who did not. Purcell points out memory lapses in Manning's memoir about when he first knew Newman in Oxford. Some recollections appear self-serving.

30 LD 23:330.

31 LD 21:477.

32 LD 16:75.

33 LD 26:65–66. Newman's assessment was true, as the Manning-Talbot correspondence shows. Oscott was founded in 1794 as St. Mary's Seminary. It became known as Maryvale when Bishop Walsh built “New Oscott” in 1835. Wiseman was an earlier president of Oscott. The first Westminster Synod, at which Newman preached his famous “Second Spring” sermon, was held there after the Catholic hierarchy was restored in 1850. Northcote, a former Corpus Christi Oxford man, reshaped its educational structure. For Newman's own vision of the laity, see my article, “Newman on the Voice of the Laity: Lessons for Today's Church,” Newman Studies Journal 3/2 (Fall 2006):16–31.

34 LD 21:84. For a fuller account of Newman's views on the laity, journalism, and freedom of expression, see Miller, Edward Jeremy, John Henry Newman on the Idea of Church (Shepherdstown: Patmos Press, 1987), 75–98.Google Scholar

35 Newman's canonization cause document, the Positio Super Virtutibus (obtainable from The Oratory, Hagley Road, Birmingham B16 8UE), describes Newman's attitude to Manning as “motivated by prudence and not resentment.” See the Positio Super Virtutibus 2:27 and the references made in its footnote 21 on the same page.

36 Manning's 1887 memoir claims he fostered Newman's preferment in the church, as when he urged in Rome in 1859 Newman's consecration as a bishop. The memoir also records that Newman made Manning promise not to push his preferment if Newman agreed to come to Manning's installation as archbishop. Newman did exact this promise (see the 31 May 1865 letter to Manning in LD 21:478–70). But Newman's wager is understandable. In today's argot, Newman did not want to be “kicked upstairs” and lose his independent voice if made an English bishop under Manning's metropolitanship. Also, in the letter to Charlotte Wood quoted above is this sentence: “He has views and is determined to carry them out—and I must either go with him or be annihilated. I say this, because he long wished to get me made a Bishop (in partibus)—I believe because he knew it would be (as it were) putting me ‘in the House of Lords’” (LD 22:329). Finally, regarding whether Manning was really Newman's padrone in Vatican circles is the incident of Newman's being sounded out if he would accept a red hat. The Gerard Tracey dossier, “Documents Relating to Newman and Manning,” summarizes thusly: “Manning intercepted Newman's letter to the Pope regarding the cardinalate, omitting Ullathorne's letter, putting his own interpretation on Newman's letter, and publishing widely this interpretation (or allowing it to be published)” (Private Papers of G. Tracey, Archives of the Birmingham Oratory). Manning made Newman appear to refuse the red hat. See details in Ker, Ian, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 714 ff.Google Scholar

37 Purcell, 2:322–24. To anyone familiar with Newman's sermons and his writings on Mary, Manning's view must seem astounding. But Manning's view does describe ultramontanism then and now.

38 Purcell, 2: 313.

39 The Manning-Talbot letter exchange is in Purcell, 2:315–18.

40 Ibid., 2:319.

41 For the French translation of his Apologia, Newman wrote an appendix on how Oxford University “works” and how it is so different from universities elsewhere. Laura, David De's critical edition of the Apologia (New York: Norton, 1968)Google Scholar reprints it from W. Ward's 1913 edition on pp. 367–69.

42 Purcell, 2: 291.

43 In a confidential letter to Thomas Gaisford, on 16 December, Newman remarks of the questionnaire: “Such a paper of questions is deplorable—deplorable because they are not questions, but arguments—worse than ‘leading questions’—They might as well have been summed up in one, viz. ‘Are you or are you not one of those wicked men who advocate Oxford Education?’ for they imply a condemnation of the respondent, if he does not reply in one way” (LD 21:343). Newman's memo on the bishops' meeting is given in ibid., 346 ff.

44 For Manning's 23 March 1867 letter to Talbot, see Purcell, 2:300–01. See also p. 298 for the lobbying occurring at the Vatican.

45 Apropos Newman's comment to Charlotte Wood above that Manning will push relentlessly till he gets his way, Manning was not above using a ploy to stop Newman from getting to Oxford. He began an ultramontane newspaper in 1866, the Westminster Gazette, with Purcell as editor. Manning inserted a fabricated rumor in its first issue that Newman had abandoned his plan to go to Oxford. See Gilley, “New Light on an Old Scandal”, 169.

46 Purcell, 2:300.

47 Purcell, 2:326.

48 It would take a book to cover each man's ecclesiology and another monograph to provide the full contrasts. Two such books are Miller, John Henry Newman on the Idea of Church, and Pereiro, James, Cardinal Manning: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).Google ScholarGilley, Sheridan, Newman and His Age (London: Darton, 1990)Google Scholar and Newsome, David, The Convert Cardinals: John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning, (London: John Murray, 1993)Google Scholar are biographers who contrast the two. Still timely is Ward's, Wilfrid “Newman and Manning” in his Ten Personal Studies (1908; reprint, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 260–98.Google Scholar

49 Over thirty years ago I heard Fr. Raymond E. Brown, the renowned scripture scholar, make this comment about Catholic conservatives who criticized Catholic biblical scholars using contemporary hermeneutics. It was not that the criticism had no answer. It was that the criticism went right to the pastorally sensitive point: Was there really a star of Bethlehem or not? If not, what about everything else in the holy Bible?

50 Purcell, 2:486. Since O'Callaghan was a Manning disciple, “respectful assent” undoubtedly means begrudging assent.

51 See Pereiro, , Cardinal Manning, 227Google Scholar (for citations) and 230 (for docility to church authority being the primary characteristic of the “Catholic Spirit”).

52 Newman's treatment of the church's three offices is found in his 1877 Preface to his republished lectures of 1837 on the church's prophetical office. See volume 1 of The Via Media of the Anglican Church in the Uniform Edition (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1901).

53 The finest study continues to be Walgrave, Jan H., Unfolding Revelation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972).Google Scholar See my review in The Thomist 37 (1973): 378–83.

54 Wilfrid Ward reports being told by Manning himself that the bishop of Ratisbon and he, sitting in St. Peter's in 1866, vowed to bring about a dogmatic definition of papal infallibility (Ten Personal Studies, 274).

55 See Select Treatises of St. Athanasius in Controversy with the Arians, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1903),, 2:143, and Historical Sketches, 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1906–08), 3:192–93.

56 See 19 July 1872 letter to Plummer, Alfred, LD 26:138–39.Google Scholar

57 The descriptors are from Komonchak, Joseph A., “Modernity and the Construction of Roman Catholicism,” Cristianesimo Nella Storia 18 (1997):353–85Google Scholar, from whom the Manning citations come. He is at pains to distinguish the Catholic world Manning and Newman knew from an earlier period, post-Tridentine Catholicism. Thomas O'Meara makes the same distinction, calling the epoch after the post-Tridentine church Baroque Catholicism. See his “What Can We Learn from the Tridentine and Baroque Church?” in Himes, Michael, ed., The Catholic Church in the 21st Century: Finding Hope for Its Future in the Wisdom of the Past (Liguori, MO: Liguori Press, 2004), 56–64.Google Scholar

58 Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects (London: Burns & Oates, 1873), vol. 3, 92–93.

59 The Four Great Evils of the Day (New York: Kenedy, 1896), 89. Ward, , Ten Personal Studies, 268Google Scholar, describes Manning painting the world in “Apocalyptic colours.”

60 Purcell, 2:457–58.