Newman’s Position:

John Henry Newman had been born and raised an Anglican. As he grew up, he nourished his mind on the Scripture and writings of eminent Anglican divines, became a devout and religious young man and eventually took orders as a clergyman in the Church of England. He had no doubts about the Anglican Church as the true church, and was resolved to dedicate his life to her. As a matter of fact, it was his very zeal for his church that first set him on the path away from her and towards Rome. He perceived clearly the liberalistic tendencies within the Anglican Church which had smoldered for decades, and were now at the point of destroying all dogmatic foundation on which she claimed to rest.

It was an effort to combat this Liberalism that a movement grew out of Oxford in 1833 which drew Newman in to its currents and finally swept him away into the Church of Rome. Newman was a master of patristic studies, and before long, quite unintentionally, he found himself to be the leader of the Oxford Movement through his efforts to justify the Anglican Church on the strength of a positive and dogmatic foundation drawn from the writings of the Fathers. But as he read more and more deeply, he became struck with the great similarity between the position of the ancient heretics he was studying, and the position of modern Protestants and Anglicans. He became seriously alarmed and began to question the validity of the Anglican position. All the while, as the foremost representative of the Oxford Movement, he was publishing his views in the Tracts of the Times. Oxford and all England began eying him with suspicion, and since he was too important a figure to be ignored, Newman became surrounded with a great wall of opposition against his "pro-Roman" inclinations. Events followed one another swiftly. In 1841, Tract Number Ninety appeared which was all that was needed to convince the Anglicans of his sympathy for Rome. One by one the bishops laid charge against him. He was being condemned and ostracized by his own church. As though this were not enough, the same year he was confronted with the Jerusalem Bishopric affair in which the Church of England officially undertook to collaborate with heretical sects. Newman wrote:

"This was the blow which finally shattered my faith in the Anglican Church. The church was not only forbidding any sympathy or concurrence with the Church of Rome, but it was actually courting an intercommunion with Protestant Prussia and the heresy of the Orientals. The Anglican Church might have the Apostolic Succession… but such acts were in progress led me to the gravest suspicion, not that it would soon cease to be a church, but that since the sixteenth century, it had never been a church all along."

Even though externally Newman continued for several years to live as an Anglican, he was a man without a church from 1843 to 1845. He felt he could not remain an Anglican, still he could not enter the Catholic Church while she allowed worship to be paid to the Blessed Virgin and the saints, which he considered inconsistent with the supreme worship due to God. But as he pondered the question, he became aware that this difficulty was only one facet of a much larger problem barring his entrance into the Church of Rome, the problem of doctrinal development:

"The idea of the Blessed Virgin was, as it were, magnified in the Church of Rome as time went on- but so were all Christian ideas, as that of the Blessed Eucharist. The whole scene of pale distant Apostolic Christianity is seen in Rome as through a telescope or magnifier…It is unfair then to take one Roman idea, that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, out of what may be called its context…Thus I am brought to the principle of the development of doctrine in the Christian Church."

Newman’s dilemma, therefore, was this: Here was, on the one hand, the Catholic Church of the nineteenth century, whose doctrines he had studied carefully, and which he perceived were superior to other creeds both by the purity of its content and the marvelous unity of its parts. But here, on the other hand, lay before him another church, also called Catholic, in the third and fourth centuries- a church which likewise displayed an excellence and unity of dogma, but whose individual dogmas and practices seemed quite different from those of the modern Church of Rome. Newman notes just a few of these "differences": the canon of the New Testament, the doctrine of original sin, infant Baptism, worship of Mary and the Saints, papal supremacy. If the nineteenth century church held doctrines different from those of the early Church, she could certainly not claim to be guided by the Holy Ghost. The question was: Did she?

With a view to solving this problem in his own mind, Newman, at the end of 1844, "came to the resolution of writing an Essay on Doctrinal Development: and then, if, a the end of it, my convictions in favor of the Roman Church were not weaker, of taking the necessary steps for admission into her fold." The entire Essay was written to prove one proposition: "The differences and additions in doctrinal teaching observable in the history of the Church are but apparent, being the necessary phenomena incident to deep intellectual ideas."

At least a brief outline of the book is necessary to appreciate the opposite positions of Newman and Brownson, when the latter burst in on the scene. Newman began by analyzing the process of assimilating any complex idea, how it is necessary to acquire knowledge of it slowly, one aspect at a time. From the nature of the human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas, and consequently the highest and most wonderful of truths(Christianity), even though taught to the world by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by their disciples, but required longer time and deeper thought for their education; in other words, dogmas became better understood as time went on.

The next step was to show not only that one should not be surprised at seeing doctrinal developments, but that they are even to be expected because of the very greatness and fullness of the Christian mysteries. There has been, moreover, all through the Church’s history, a constant need for development of doctrine to decide on certain practices and to define points of doctrine in the face of heresy. To all appearances, God himself arranged things so that the doctrines would thus develop and mature under the care of the Church, otherwise He himself would have left specific revelations to forestall the need of developments.

To complete his thesis, Newman proposed that if the early doctrines were meant by God to develop gradually, and if the Catholic Church claimed to possess the actual development of those doctrines- if, moreover, the present-day Church was, as history attests, the direct descendant of the Church of the fourth century- then we have the strongest probability that the dogmas taught now are in reality the outcome and fullness of ancient Christian doctrine, having grown from within by the guidance of the infallible authority promised by Christ.

As work on the book progressed, Newman’s probabilities became certitude. He wrote: "I had begun my Essay on the Development of Doctrine in the beginning of 1845, and I was hard at work at it all through the year till October. As I advanced, my difficulties so cleared away that I ceased to speak of ‘Roman Catholics,’ and boldly called them Catholics. Before I got to the end, I resolved to be received, and the book remains in the state in which it was then, unfinished.

The Controversy:

Newman’s "first act on his conversion was to offer his work for revision to the proper authorities; but the offer was declined on the ground that it was written and partly printed before he was a Catholic, and that it would come before the reader in a more persuasive form if he read it as the author wrote it." As a matter of fact, Bishop Wiseman had had some misgivings about publishing the Essay, and decided to look it over himself. But in the end, it was left untouched, and was published as it came from Newman’s hand, with only one small addition after his conversion.

The first English printing of 1500 copies was sold out even before the printing was completed, and a second 1500 had to be printed immediately. It was also published in New York (1845). A twenty-page review of the book appeared in the Dublin Review in December, 1845. Perhaps it was this that first brought it to Brownson’s attention. At any rate, he attained a copy several weeks after its publication, and the moment he opened it, there began an intellectual battle which was to continue intermittently for the next eighteen years. Brownson studied the book and theory carefully, and came to the conclusion that the principles of developmentism as Newman proposed them were incompatible with Catholic doctrine. He took his views to Bishop Fitzpatrick of Boston for his opinion, and after some thought, the Bishop encouraged him to refute Newman’s book in Brownson’s Quarterly Review. Archbishop Purcell had been the first in this country to denounce the Essay publicly, in the Cincinnati Telegraph. Now Purcell, with one or two other prelates seconded Bishop Fitzpatrick’s suggestion, and Brownson undertook the work with confidence, since "every Catholic bishop, priest and layman in the country, so far as Brownson could ascertain, rejected Newman’s theory of developments."

Newman this same year (1846) has taken up his residence as a seminarian in Rome. His greatest concern there was what manner of reception his book would receive by the Roman theologians. At that time, most of the Roman doctors were unable to read English and so had no first-hand knowledge of the book. But language was no barrier in America, and soon after its appearance Newman’s theory was seized upon by the Unitarians in support of their position that the doctrine of the Trinity was not of apostolic origin, but only a development of the third century. Thus while at the beginning Rome was indifferent to the Essay and England seemed to favor it, the story was quite different in America. If it was a theory which could be put to use by non-Catholic sects, it had to be silenced. It was against this background that "the narrow and vigorous Dr. Brownson" undertook to refute it in his review, and it was Brownson’s violent denunciation of it that really introduced the Essay to Rome.

His first attack appeared in Brownson’s Quarterly Review in July, 1846, and with his usual vehemence, he blasts his adversary with both barrels:

"…So little suspicion has he[Newman] of the unsoundness of his work, so orthodox does he hold it, that he does not scruple, even after his conversion, to publish it to the world…Yet, he was still in the bonds of Protestantism when he was writing this book…All, to his vision, is dim and confused. He stumbles at every step, and stammers at every word. He puts forth a giant’s strength, but only to wrestle with phantoms; and gives us learned and elaborate theories to explain facts which he himself shows are no facts- ingenious and subtle speculations, where all that is needed, or is admissible, is a plain yes or no. From first to last, he labors with a genius, a talent, a learning, a sincerity, an earnestness, which no one can refuse to admire, to develop Protestantism into Catholicity… His peculiar theory is essentially anti-Catholic and Protestant. It not only is not necessary to the defense of the Church, but is utterly repugnant to her claims to be the authoritative and infallible Church of God."

Let it be clearly borne in mind that Newman and Brownson approach the problem from opposite points of view. Brownson is a stern logician who accepts without hesitation that the Church, being the infallible Spouse of Christ, teaches explicitly today what she always taught, even in the second and third centuries. He reasons a priori, without any thought that history might contradict him. Newman, on the contrary, who had steeped his mind in the writings of the Fathers, was very well acquainted with early Church history, and clearly perceived that whatever was to be held a priori must be viewed alongside the a posteriori facts which no amount of logic would ever succeed in disproving. The existence of dogmatic development over the ages was as obvious fact which required explanation- it was a real "problem" to a historian; to a non-historian like Brownson, the problem was only a "phantom."

Dr. Thomas Glover sent Brownson’s article to Newman in Rome by the hands of Father Shaw. The only comment from Newman was that "he had heard of the article, but he had no time nor wish to read it. He had no hard feelings against the writer personally for having written it, but he was sorry that he had done so, for he had reason to believe that the Essay was doing great good in England."

A year and a half after this first article, Brownson again found pretext for condemning the Essay in a fifty-page review of J. Spencer Northcote’s book, The Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism. In it he picks out several passages from the Anglican convert which propose the development of doctrine, and uses them as a springboard to denounce Newman’s Essay once more. To Brownson, the whole issue seems quite clear: "the Church, in declaring [that] the law, which she applies to the point litigated, has been promulgated from the first, is either fallible, or infallible. If fallible, Mr. Newman has no infallible Church. If infallible, he cannot assert developments." Newman’s theory, he says, "degrades Christianity to the level of human and heretical doctrines." It denies Christian doctrine, the teaching authority of the Church, an infallible revelation. His "whole theory of developments… rests on the assumption that our holy religion…is divine matter under human form."

In the same issue of his Review, Brownson again made an underhanded remark about Newman. In reviewing a work by Henry Major, he writes: "we are pleased to find that Mr. Major is a simple-minded convert, who comes to the Church to be taught, not to teach, and is willing to take the Church as she is, and on the grounds on which she has hitherto been taken. He brings her no theory or hypothesis of his own…" To those who were acquainted with the issue, as were W.G. Ward and later on Brownson’s son Henry, the implication was pointed enough. Newman was a Catholic because of a pet theory of his own. He came to the Church not with an open mind, but with a preconceived notion that her doctrines must correspond to his theory because he had carefully reasoned them out before joining her. This at least was Brownson’s accusation. It must have caused some laughter to Brownson’s intimates, since the accusation applied to himself probably even more than to Newman. Newman had not entered the Church on the strength of his theory. The theory of developments merely demolished his last objection to the truth of the Church’s claims, and his faith was in no way grounded on it so as to stand or fall with his theory.On the other hand, at least insofar as we can consider the natural reasonings which dispose a man for faith, Brownson himself did enter the Church mainly on the strength of a theory, viz., the "Doctrine of Communion," which became the basis for his system of apologetics, and which he retained till the end of his life. The lion was roaring at his own shadow.

During all this time, Newman accepted Brwonson’s assaults with silence, even though they must have cut him deeply, being but a recent convert and expecting a more congenial welcome from Catholics. But while Newman bore all patiently, others did rush to his aid. The first to defend him against Brownson was his friend and fellow convert, William George Ward, who answered Brownson with two lengthy articles in the Dublin Review, at the same time writing to him privately to reveal his identity. With Ward’s letter, the issue ceased to be a one-sided attack and became public controversy.

In his private letter to Brownson Ward deprecates Brownson’s treatment of Newman, inasmuch as his development theory was the solid historical foundation for proving to him the Church’s claims. Newman had first derived the notion of it from a Catholic, and is in accord with Catholic theologians, and "should you (to argue per impossibile) succeed ever so fully in showing to him that his view is irreconcilable with the teachings of the Church, you would only throw him back on his original perplexity and shake his whole faith to the foundation."

Ward’s first article in the Dublin Review is a historical summary of great theologians, and in no way a personal defense of Newman as his letter had been. He cites at length Petavius, Suarez, Vasquez, and Melchior Cano, all of whom

"with one voice deny the proposition, which Mr. Brownson maintains as undeniable. They deny the proposition, that all doctrine formally decreed by the Church, must of necessity have been explicitly handed down from the Apostles; and maintain on the contrary that it suffices if they are implicitly, or potentially, or seminally, contained in what was so handed down: of which latter fact they regard the Church as an infallible judge."

Ward had written to Brownson in April, 1847. It was not until September that Brownson answered him, expressing a high personal regard for Newman and an understanding that the Essay was an explanation of his views while still an Anglican. The whole tenor of the letter is that Newman and his friends have interpreted the Fathers not according to Catholic, but according to Anglican tradition, which latter incorrectly maintains a divergence of doctrine between the early and the present-day Church. "Do you not see, my brother," concludes Brownson, "that in the principle you adopt, you set up private interpretation of the Fathers above the teachings of the Church?"

Immediately after this appeared Brownson’s public reply to Ward’s "singularly deficient" article. Although Brownson labors throughout to disarm his opponent with a great erudition, the article is cast in such an acid form and with such a confidence that, far from conceding, Ward could not resist replying once more. Brownson had remarked:

"…We regret that the task of replying to us had not been committed to the hands of some learned Catholic doctor, instead of one who, however able and well disposed, can speak of the general subject with no more authority than ourselves, and, from the defect of professional training, is not less likely perhaps to mistake the sense of the authorities which must be cited than we are."

To this Ward retorted:

"When some "learned Catholic doctor" comes forward on one side, then will be the time for someone equally dignified to appear on the other. In the meantime, surely what a layman and recent convert is at liberty to write, a layman and recent convert is at liberty to answer."

By this time, the issue at stake was becoming submerged in the art of controversy by both parties, and neither was disposed to be convinced that he was wrong. Brownson answered once more in April, 1848, and waited to see Ward’s reaction. When two issues of the Dublin Review passed with no rejoinder, Brownson issued a final summary of his feelings in the whole question, and was content to consider the matter ended.

Interesting studies have been made on the similarities and differences between Newman and Brownson; perhaps a comparison between Brownson and Ward would be very revealing also. At this time both were converts of only a few years standing. Each was absolutely convinced of the truth of his position. Brownson was of a habitual frame of mind that anyone who disagreed with him was an utter fool, and if Ward hadn’t developed this attitude yet, he would before long. For Brownson, arguing with an Englishman and a Puseyite was bad enough, but arguing with Ward took every bit of patience he possessed, which at all events wasn’t very much. "We can hardly read a page of his [Ward’s] writings, no matter on what subject, without having our patience tried, or our irascibility excited…and we want to fight him." Brownson pursued the controversy urged on by the hierarchy; Ward was impelled by a zeal for his ideal, Newman, whom he was soon to cast aside, however, as too conservative for his liking. Even though in the present controversy posterity might credit Ward with being on the side of truth, and even though we must admire him for defending a friend who declined to defend himself, still, what with his impetuosity and tendency to exaggerate, one is left with the feeling that Newman would have prospered just as well, perhaps better, if Ward hadn’t espoused his cause at all.

Still Newman himself had declined to enter the debate publicly. Nevertheless, we see from his letters that he was not unaffected by Brownson’s attacks. In 1846, he conceded that Brownson had a "very fair objection" in considering the theory dangerous. After the first storm had subsided, however, Newman was still considering the importance of the theory, especially in relation to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception which was just being proposed for definition, and which fulfilled perfectly the role of a "development." Others too were observing the debate with a greater sympathy for Newman than Brownson showed, among them James McMaster in America, and Father Thomas Glover, S.J., in Rome.

After four years of silence, broken only with occasional references to the question, Brownson’s volcanic invective once more erupted. As happened before, he used one of his book reviews as a taking-off point to blast Newman and his "school" with the same sharpness he had shown previously. The book was entitled Jesus the Son of Mary by Rev. John Brande Morris, a convert from Anglicanism. Brownson apologized for having "to find fault with every work that comes to us from a converted Puseyite," and went on to denounce once more the "uncalled for, unauthorized…false and pernicious" theory of developments, together with the whole school of converts who proposed it. Little did it matter if the theory was doing good in England. He accused Newman of using it merely as an expedient, of using "falsehood in the interests of truth."

This severe article was the occasion for Newman to break his long silence. He wrote a reply in the Dublin Tablet in September, 1852, not to defend his doctrine, but to "complain that a personal attack had been made on him…and that it was only by a layman, not by a Doctor of Theology." This brought a speedy and somewhat subdued letter from Brownson to the editor of the Dublin Tablet, denying any personal attack on Father Newman, explaining the Episcopal backing which had induced his articles, and complaining that this publication had misinterpreted him to the public.

It was just at this time that the Achilli ordeal was weighing heavily on Newman’s shoulders. Needless to say, the added annoyance of Brownson’s renewed attack was just cause for agitation. Realizing this, Brownson relented somewhat and apologized for causing him this new pain. Thus, he wrote: "Our last article on Developmentism…was written and printed before Dr. Newman had had his trial; otherwise; we may say, it would have been written somewhat differently, for it is not, we hope, in our disposition even to appear to bear hard on those whom an unjust world opposes."

If Brownson had Episcopal approbation in America, Newman too, in this time of trial, received and expression of approval from Cardinal Wiseman, "deprecating the attack [of Brownson], and declaring the work[of Newman] to be entirely in keeping with traditional theology." Newman replied: "I have not allowed Dr. Brownson’s rudeness to annoy me…I prize your letter very much, and need nothing else from anyone to set against Dr. Brownson." Long before Newman had undertaken the study of developments, Wiseman had proposed the same doctrine publicly as Catholic teaching. He could rightly consider an attack on Newman’s book as an attack on his own orthodoxy.

But even Brownson’s own friends in the hierarchy were beginning to withdraw their support from him. Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati, who, it will be remembered, was the first to attack Newman’s book, made a complete turnabout. In one of Brownson’s letters to Newman we find: "I am severely censured by a distinguished prelate [Purcell], who appears before the public as your most ardent admirer, for having written against your Essay on Development, when he himself urged me through the Bishop of Boston to do so." Brownson’s tone softened still further a year later in his review of Newman’s Loss and Gain. He regretted not having the book when he first attacked the theory, for if he had, "many things in our articles relating to the theory of development…would never have been written…We are now satisfied that the theory was not fundamental with them…We have no longer any controversy with them." Brownson wrote these words at the end of 1854, shortly before the definition of the Immaculate Conception. We have already noted Newman’s interest in this dogma relative to doctrinal development, since the Immaculate Conception was a perfect instance of an implicit article of faith becoming explicit, after having been denied by many learned doctors in the past. Isaac Hecker wrote to Brownson that the original bull of definition based the definability on the notion of development of doctrine. Bishop O’Connor of Pittsburgh, who was in Rome at the time, objected to the wording. "Some of the Italian prelates wondered what B.C. [Bishop O’Connor] was driving at, when Dr. Grant of Southwark rose and said some words about Dr. Newman- and they saw then. The words of the bull were changed." Brownson later interpreted Pius IX’s act in reframing the bull as papal approval of his stand against Newman on developments.

The last article in Brownson’s Quarterly Review which had attacked developmentism ex professo was the review of Morris’s book in 1852. We have seen how Brownson apologized to Newman in 1853, and a year later, after reading Loss and Gain, wished to consider the controversy closed. In 1862, in referring to his former articles, Brownson admits that he should have recognized a "great truth" in the Essay, "which it is necessary to accept if we would not leave Catholic theology to stagnate and die," and the following year, "it is possible…that we misunderstood him, and that after all he really meant only what we ourselves held then and now." Thus we observe that Brownson gradually relented in opposing Newman until, in October, 1864, he admitted he may have been wrong after all. Sick and worn out, opposed on all sides, grieved with the death of two of his sons, overcome with financial difficulties, Brownson felt unable to continue his Review. Expecting this to be the last issue, he offers "Some Explanations to our Catholic Readers," in which we find his final statement on the whole question:

"Faith, objectively considered, is infallible, and the Church is infallible, by the assistance of the Holy Ghost, in teaching and defining it. But the faith is to us practically as if it were not, save in so far as it is actively received and appropriated by our own minds. This, we presume, is what Dr. Newman meant when he said: ‘Christianity came into the world as a naked idea, which the mind develops or realizes by its own action…’ Here is, if we understand it, the basis of Dr. Newman’s Essay, and if so, our objections to it were irrelevant, and though well founded, as against the doctrine we adduced from it, they are not as against that which the author held, and intended to set forth, and perhaps did set forth to the minds of all who admired his book. We have long suspected that we did him injustice, though we have not changed our own views of the soundness of the theology we opposed to him, or thought we were opposing to him. The fact is, the book was profounder than we supposed, and was designed to solve theological difficulties which we had not then encountered in our own intellectual life and experience. This acknowledgement, spontaneously made, we hope will be accepted by the illustrious convert and his friends, as some slight atonement for any injustice we may have done him or them, since whatever injustice we may have done was done unwittingly and unintentionally."

What was it that caused a change of opinion? Perhaps Brownson came to regard Newman more highly personally when the latter invited him to accept a professorship at the Irish University in 1853, a magnanimous gesture on the part of Newman, and perhaps the greatest honor Brownson ever received. Whatever the cause, we find Brownson referring to Newman as "a man whose greatness and worth, rich native endowments, profound and varied attainments, will be admired and esteemed the more in proportion as he is known." As to the latter’s estimation of Brownson, when Spaulding came to visit Newman, he asked his impression of Brownson. Newman replied: "I thought there was only one opinion in the matter. He is by far the greatest thinker America ever had."

Despite all his apologies and explanations, however, even in later years, Brownson could not refuse an opportunity of digging up the whole affair and retelling how "we disposed of the theory of development in a former series of the Review."

"Dr. Newman has been misled…We regret that Dr. Newman retains a lingering affection for the theory of development."

Conclusion:

If we look back at the controversy from our vantage point, the verdict of history must go against Brownson in favor of Newman. A quick glance at the theological periodicals over the last few years is enough to indicate the tremendous revival of interest in the question of doctrinal development, aroused by the definitions of the Immaculate Conception and Assumption, as well, perhaps, as by the hope for Cardinal Newman’s cause for beatification. Still, Brownson thought he smelled some strains of heresy and felt compelled to pounce on it like the leo rugiens that he was. Without doubt there were never two more solidly Catholic men than these two; and in many respects they were very much alike. Nevertheless in their character and in their approach to the problems which beset the Church a century ago the two could hardly have been farther apart. Brownson’s most formidable weapon against the Church’s enemies, and those whom his nearsightedness made appear as enemies, was his logic, cold hard and unassailable. With his logic and his Review, Brownson swept over two continents crushing skulls- whether of notorious heretics or learned bishops, it made little difference to him. What a contrast in character was Newman, always calm, reserved, whose depth of learning was always accompanied with the greatest degree of moderation. If, as is probable, Brownson never studied logic or philosophy in school, he set himself to learning it on his own and made himself a redoubtable controversialist. Newman’s first contact with philosophy was in the seminary in Rome when he was nearly fifty. Little wonder if at that age he should rely more on his ability to use common sense and argue form his personal experience of human psychology rather than from textbook logic. A clear example is his Grammar of Assent, of which Brownson declared "we can make neither head nor tail." For the logician, a conclusion is only as strong as the weaker premise. The idea of attaining certitude by amassing probabilities was to Brownson preposterous; but Newman’s thesis in the Essay is based on just such a method. Intellectually as well as physically, they were separated by an ocean. What proves the greatness of them both was their ability to look beyond the issue at stake and to see in each other a true genius, in no way seeking personal victory over the other, but only the triumph of the truth.

In 1853, Richard Simpson, another Oxford convert, had written to Hecker a prediction that we see was actually realized: "I think posterity will judge of their quarrel as it had done of that between Plato and Aristotle: that the latter, though more acute and most formally logical, has failed to see what the former intended, and has therefore misapprehended him."