Together these two books point to a surprising conclusion

Recently St. I had the opportunity to read two books by John Henry Newman. One is Newman’s first novel. Loss and Gainthe other is the classic “history of my religious views” (Newman’s words), Apology Pro Vita Sua. Although the two volumes are not so different in many respects, both are quite interesting in what they tell us about the process of conversion.

Let’s start with: Loss and Gain. Published in 1848, just two years after Newman’s conversion, the book’s main character is an Oxford student named Charles Reding, whose religious journey from Anglicanism to Catholicism parallels Newman’s own. The story is by no means autobiographical – Reding is not Newman by another name – but the process of transformation is much the same in both cases.

Both transformations, in the story and in Newman’s real life, are what might be called Oxford transformations. Reding’s incident occurred during the heyday of the Oxford Movement, an Anglican renewal effort aimed at making English Anglicanism more Catholic, and ended for those like Newman who, after much prayer and study, finally took the step of “swimming in the Tiber” and became Catholic. themselves.

So the key to transformation? God’s grace above all else, of course, but paradoxically, in human terms, the key to what is not an easy decision for Reding, as it is for Newman, is often the objections voiced by others. This obstacle drives the young man to persist again and again, even though persistence means breaking away from his family, friends, and even his beloved Oxford.

On the morning of his final farewell, Reding says a deeply personal farewell to the university, told in lyrical terms:

The morning was cold and misty; leaves were flying; everything was in harmony with the state of his feelings. … There was no one to see him; he put his arms around his beloved willows and kissed them; He plucked some of its black leaves and put them in his bosom.

in case Apology Pro Vita Sua The incentive lay in the very circumstances that gave rise to the book. (“What a trial it is for me to write the following history of myself,” Newman writes at the beginning.)

The story is familiar. An Anglican clergyman and popular author named Charles Kingsley took an unprovoked cheap shot at Newman and Catholic priests in general in a magazine review, claiming something very similar to their habitual lies.

Newman demanded a public apology, Kingsley took action, and the result was a series of pamphlets from Newman chronicling the entire episode. The pamphlets formed the basis of what came next. Apology.

The book is not an easy read, as it assumes a familiarity with religious language that relatively few readers today have. But it contains haunting writings like this about the Catholic Church – a community of very different individuals, “brought together as if in a moral factory, to melt, refine and shape the raw material in an incessant, noisy process.” “Human nature is so perfect, so dangerous, it can serve such divine purposes.”

Together, these two books point to a surprising conclusion: Often, as here, despite significant opposition, someone persists in a life-changing decision because the opposition has the unexpected result of strengthening their resolve to persist. Although this seems like a banal conclusion, it sheds useful light on what might otherwise seem an incomprehensible stubbornness in the hands of a master like Newman.