The Virtual Oratory

A Meditation

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission---I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the nexdt. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it---if I but keep His Commandments. Therefore i will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends; He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, may my spirits sink, hide my future from me---still He knows what he is about.

Cardinal Newman

This page will bring you resources from John Henry Newman. Pope Benedict XVI said that we can understand the true spirit of Vatican II if we read Newman.

Newman lived and died in England from 1801-1890. He spent half his life in the Church of England and half in the Roman Catholic Church. As a lover of the early Church he is a prophet to those seeking renewal in the Church as it existed before it split in half. As a prophet he saw the renewal of the Church in the laity. He founded the Oratory of St Philip Neri in Birmingham and in London. Today a third community exists in his beloved Oxford.

Newman's thoughts on the Holy Spirit...a preparation for Pentecost...

He said that He was going away, and yet was coming again; for the Holy Ghost came, and His coming was really the coming of Christ. Christ said that it was to be but a short interval between His departure and His return; and such it was, ten days. He went on Holy Thursday; He returns on the day of Pentecost. {138}

But, though our Lord and Saviour sent His Holy Spirit to be with us on His going away, still there was a difference between the Spirit's office, and that which He Himself graciously fulfilled towards His disciples in the days of His flesh; for their wants were not the same as before. Christ, while He was with them, had no occasion to console them under affliction, to stand by them in trial as their Paraclete; for trial and affliction did not visit them while He was with them; but, on the other hand, the Holy Spirit especially came to give them joy in tribulation. Again, He came to teach them fully, what our Lord had but in part revealed; and hence too it followed, that the consolation which the Spirit vouchsafed differed from that which they had received from Christ, just as the encouragements and rewards bestowed upon children, are far other than those which soothe and stimulate grown men in arduous duties. And there were, moreover, other circumstances, much to be dwelt upon, which altered the state of the Apostles' feelings and ideas, after their Lord had died and risen again, and which made them need a consolation different from that which His bodily presence gave them. There is no reason for supposing that, while He was with them, they apprehended the awful truth, that He is very God in our nature. "I am among you," He said, "as He that serveth." But on His resurrection He revealed the mystery. St. Thomas adored Him in the words, "My Lord and my God;" and He forthwith withdrew Himself from them, not living in their sight as heretofore, and soon ascending into heaven. It is {139} plain, that, after such a revelation, the Apostles could not have returned to their easy converse with Him, even had He offered it. What had been, could not be again; their state of childhood, ere "their eyes were opened and they knew Him." Of necessity then, since they could not endure to see God and live, did He "vanish out of their sight." And if, according to His promise, He was to come to them again, it must be after a new manner, and with a higher consolation.

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Fr Hal Weidner's Oxford dissertation and later his edition and introduction to Newman's Via Media (Oxford University Press, 1990) were about Newman's theology of church and even, Newman's theology of abuses in the Church. He became a Catholic by writing the Essay on Development of Doctrine where he found his way to accepting the changes from the early Church to the current one as matters of development and not corruption which had been his Anglican position. Before he wrote a preface to the republished Anglican work the Via Media he had not answered his charge of pastoral corruption in the Roman Church. 

In fact, he did not deny the corruption but said that it was a fulfillment of Matthew 13. The Church was not a sect and weeds and wheat were sure to grow together in it. In his preface he says about the current Roman Church of his time: 

"It is so ordered on high that in our day Holy Church should present just that aspect to my countrymen which is most consonant with their ingrained prejudices against her, most unpromising for their conversion; and what can one writer do to counteract this misfortune? But enough of this; whatever comes of it, I must be content to have done what I feel it an obligation to do."

 He said that the three offices of the Church were the teaching of truth, the priestly ministries, and governance. He believed the Holy Spirit protected the Church from ultimately teaching error, but only impeccability, the lack of sin would protect the Church from abuses in the other two offices. No such impeccability was granted.