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Book Review

Holiness of the intellect

Newman’s Unquiet Grave: the reluctant saint

John Cornwell is not afraid of trailing his coat. He has spoken of Pope Pius XII as Hitler’s Pope and described the shadow side of the long papacy of Pope John Paul II as winter. On closer inspection, however, even when you disagree with him, what he has to say is not always as controversial as the headlines may suggest. And the same is true of his latest book, Newman’s Unquiet Grave.

He reminds us that when Newman’s body was exhumed, nothing was found except the brass inscription plate, some wood and some cloth. He draws attention to the fact that he shared that grave with his friend Ambrose St John, which has prompted questions about his sexuality. And the book closes with a consideration of the healing of Jack Sullivan, who prayed to Newman and found that his back condition, which was cripplingly painful and threatened to paralyse him, was cured. In the first instance, the pain disappeared; then it returned; but, following an operation to deal with the underlying condition, it vanished. That cure has now been judged miraculous and makes possible Newman’s beatification. But was it really a miracle? So there is plenty of scope for controversy here, but those issues do not monopolise the book. It is not pre­occupied with the state of the grave, homosexuality and the nature of miracles.

First and foremost, it is a biography. As Newman’s beatification looms in September, it attempts to offer “a shorter, less academic account of his life, accessible not only to Catholics, but non-Catholics and non-Christians as well”. It was a long life, full of twists and turns and controversy on its own account: undergraduate, fellow of Oriel, priest of the Church of England, leader of the Oxford Movement, whose confidence in his Anglican position gave way and he was received into the Catholic Church; then, after ordination as a Catholic priest, he set up the oratories in Birmingham and London, was sued for ­criminal libel, founded a university in Dublin, and became enmeshed in a range of disputes, until in old age, contrary to all expectation, he was made a cardinal and, as he remarked, the cloud that had been over him was lifted for ever. There are many ways to approach such a life. Here the focus is more on his character and importance as a writer than on his holiness, a saintliness which is not held to be in doubt. 

One particular strength of this book is the way Cornwell has quarried material from Newman’s writings. Let me give two ­examples.

For years, politicians have been emphasising the importance of education. But what understanding of education do they have in mind? Assessment criteria, outcomes, value for money, all have their place. But is education to be reduced to the merely measurable? Newman spoke of education in the large sense as being his line. His famous work, The Idea of a University, is admired still, but often set aside, however respectfully, because it no longer speaks to our circumstances and our needs. It is praised as an ideal, but no longer regarded as practicable. Cornwell’s choice of quotation is telling. Can we really afford to ignore Newman’s view of education as preparing “the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it”? And then he highlights Newman’s likening of Catholic Christendom to “some moral factory, for the melting, refining and moulding, by an incessant, noisy process, of the raw material of human nature, so excellent, so dangerous, so capable of divine purposes”. It is instructive to be reminded of these ideas and images.

Cornwell also refers to Newman’s links with the Romantic movement in which words were not arbitrary, but could have a symbolic, sacramental quality, participating, so to speak, in the reality to which they refer. That approach was deeply congenial to Newman. But, moving the conversation on, I find myself wondering more and more whether it was attractive, not so much because Newman himself was a part of that literary tradition (which he was), but rather because it was in tune with that first experience he had of conversion when he came to believe, as he was to say, in “two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator”. Ever after, for him reality was to be found in the union of the seen and the unseen world.

I wonder, therefore, for example, whether Newman’s dismay when close friends married, a reaction sometimes expressed bitterly, was triggered less by opposition to their marriage than by disappointment that someone who was thought to share that vision of reality proved to be less committed to it after all. Sharing a common vision is the very essence of friendship.

Cornwell deals well with the suggestions of homosexuality raised about Newman and dismisses them. In our society, when so many relationships are sexualised, friendship becomes a casualty. It was not so in Newman’s time. Newman bears witness to “mature, intimate friendship within a life of priestly celibacy”. His epitaph, “Ex umbris et imagin­ibus in veritatem” (“Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth”), resonates perfectly with his conviction about reality as seen and unseen.

Within such a vision, miracles are not events explicable only by an eruption of the Creator into creation. A miracle is not a kind of deus ex machina. As Newman argued and Cornwell notes, what we call miracles might be patient of a natural explanation, but extraordinary events may still be God’s action, signs of the indestructible bond between the seen and the unseen world. Jack Sullivan’s cure corresponds to that vision. It is the perfect miracle for this beatification.

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