This is one of the oldest images of St Philip, painted in the year of his canonisation, 1622. His reputation for sanctity had spread all over the Catholic world, and the Congregation of the Oratory had begun to grow. Here we have a lifesize fresco in the Church of San Carlo Borromeo at Forio, on the Island of Ischia, in the Bay of Naples (built in 1620). It was painted by a local artist, Cesare Calise (still a common surname on the island).

 

Ischia was used by many Neapolitans, as it still is, as a retreat from the busy city. When the Naples Oratory was founded in 1586, some of the Fathers used to go and take the mineral waters there, and enjoy some relaxation before returning to their busy ministry in the city. In particular, we have accounts of the trips of Fr Francesco Maria Tarugi, who was an early disciple of St Philip (later Cardinal and Archbishop of Avignon, and then Siena), for rest and quiet on the island. It was probably during these visits to Forio that devotion to St Philip began, and helped to inspire this beautiful image.

 

And, as you can see, Forio still provides a beautiful place for members of St Philip’s family to come for rest and relaxation amongst friends, before returning to the city… this time Manchester.

 

In preparation for the beatification of John Henry Newman by the Holy Father on 19th September, the Congregation for Divine Worship has issued the texts for the Divine Office of the feast. The reading is taken from the ‘Apologia pro Vita Sua’, which poignantly records his life up to the time of the reception into the ‘One Fold of the Redeemer’ by the Passionist, Bl Dominic of the Mother of God on 9th October 1845.

 

The ‘Apologia’ was written after Newman had been a Roman Catholic for nearly 20 years, during which time he had been ordained a priest, and brought the Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip to England. As his religious influence grew he, and Catholic clergy in general, came under slanderous attacks from Charles Kingsley (of ‘The Water Babies’ fame). He accused him of not holding truth to be a virtue for its own sake, a charge which struck at Newman’s heart. When Kingsley published an article ‘What, then, does Dr Newman Mean?’, which reiterated the charge, Newman hit back in defence of his life with the ‘Apologia’, written in a few short weeks, standing at his desk. He was often in tears as he brought to mind, with gratitude, all those who had formed his mind and heart up to this point. Around the altar in his private chapel at the Oratory in Birmingham, are the pictures of his friends who had been instrumental in forming his spirit throughout his life as an Anglican and as a Catholic.

 

This is the text given to the Church for our prayer and meditiation, so that our hearts can, like that of Newman, speak to the heart of the Lord who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

BEATI IOANNIS HENRICI NEWMAN, PRESBYTERI

Londinii natus anno 1801, officiis clerici anglicani atque Socii collegii Oxoniensis vulgo Oriel nuncupati plus quam viginti annos functus est. Ecclesiae primitivae historiam enixe perscrutatus, ad fidem catholicam pedetemptim attractus, anno demum 1845 in unicum Redemptoris ovile, ut ait, receptus est. Sacerdotio catholico auctus anno 1847, Oratorium Sancti Philippi Nerii in Anglia instituit. De variis rebus multa magno effectu scripsit. Ut humilis atque ardens pastor laudatus, qui lumine suo intellectuali Ecclesiam valde illustraverat, anno 1879 a Papa Leone XIII in Collegium Cardinalium aggregatus est. Birminghamiae mortuus est die 11 augusti anno 1890.

 

De Communi pastorum: pro presbyteris.

 

Ad officium lectionis

LECTIO ALTERA

 

E Scriptis Beati Ioannis Henrici Newman, presbyteri

(Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter V: Position of My Mind since 1845, London 1864, pp. 238-239, 250-251)

Tamquam fluctibus agitatum in portum me tandem venisse videbatur

Ex illa die qua catholicus factus sum et deinceps, nihil plane sententiarum de religione narrandum plus habeo. Mentem autem nequaquam pigram reliqui neque a ratiocinationibus theologicis abstinui, sed neve variationes in cogitatione neve sollicitudines in corde referre valeo. Omnis dubii expers, in pace perfecta atque tranquillitate hucusque vivo. De intellectu vel moribus a die conversionis meae mutatis nihil conscius sum. Etenim, nec fidem in veritates Revelationis principales firmiorem, nec mei compotiorem, nec meipsum ferventiorem sentiebam. At tamquam fluctibus agitatum in portum me tandem venisse videbatur; unde meipsum usque ad hodiernam diem beatum iugiter aestimo.

Neque articulos insuper qui de symbolo anglicano desunt difficiles receptu inveni. Nonnullos enim iamdudum acceperam; omnibus autem absque periclitatione consensi. Quos in die receptionis sine ulla disceptatione professus sum, eosdem etiam nunc ita confiteor. Sunt enim difficultates intellegendi in omnibus symboli christiani articulis sive a catholicis sive a protestantibus professis quas neque negare neque simpliciter me solvere posse assevero. Ac tametsi multi sunt qui difficultates in Religione sentiant, quorum ego unus sum, coniunctionem tamen numquam videre potui inter apprehensionem illarum difficultatum, quamvis acute et quotquot sint, et dubitationem doctrinarum cum quibus coniunctae sunt. Decem milia enim difficultates ne singulum quidem dubium gignere posse mihi videtur, eo quod difficultates nequaquam dubiis commetiuntur. Difficultates enimvero in argumentis prorsus adesse possunt; hic autem de difficultatibus in ipsis doctrinis intrinsecis vel quoad earundem doctrinarum relationes in alterutras loquor. Scilicet ut aliquis vexatur dum quaestionem mathematicam solvere non potest, etiam cum solutio illi sive praestita sive retenta est, sed non dubitat quin solutio admitti possit vel solutio quaedam vera exsistat. Ex omnibus fidei dogmatibus, mea sententia valde difficillimum est quod Deus exsistat, sed mentibus nostris quam potentissime imprimitur.

Sunt tamen qui doctrinam Transubstantiationis difficilem creditu aiunt. Ego quidem, quum illae doctrinae non credideram donec catholicus essem, nihilominus simul ac Ecclesiam Romanam Catholicam esse oraculum Dei cognoveram, atque eam docuisse istam doctrinam ab origine esse revelatam, facillime credidi. Quod hanc doctrinam mente concipere sit arduum, immo impossibile, libenter concedo; sed quomodo sit difficile huic credere, quaeso. Toto vero dogmati revelato, ab Apostolis docto et Ecclesiae tradito et ab Ecclesia mihi declarato, credo; atque ut nunc interpretatur et, implicite, sicut ab illa auctoritate cui commissum est praeterea simili modo interpretabitur usque ad consummationem saeculi, idem accipio. Insuper illis traditionibus semper et ubique in Ecclesia receptis, in quibus res continetur definitionum dogmaticarum interdum declaratarum, et quae in omnibus saeculis dogmati Catholico iam declarato textum et exemplum praebent, adhaereo. Aliis quoque Sanctae Sedis sententiis, sive theologicis sive non, per instrumenta a se statuta procedentibus, quaestione utrum infallibilitate sint praeditae praetermissa, quibus saltem parere atque obtemperare debeo, me submitto. Existimanda est porro, ut opinor, Catholicae fidei investigatio paulatim per saecula species certas et varias assumpsisse, in formam scientiae se exstruxisse, ratione et locutione sibi propriis a doctissimis sicut Athanasio, Augustino atque Thoma de Aquino evolutis, se ornasse; neque talem hereditatem intellectualem nobis his posterioribus diebus legatam ullo modo dirumpere vellem.

RESPONSORIUM                                                                                       Eph 3,7, 10: Joh 16,13

 

R. Evangelii factus sum minister secundum donum gratiae Dei, quae data est mihi secundum operationem virtutis eius, * ut innotescat per ecclesiam multiformis sapientia Dei.

V. Cum autem venerit ille, Spiritus veritatis, deducet vos in omnem veritatem.

R. Ut innotescat per ecclesiam multiformis sapientia Dei.

 

 

ORATIO

 

Deus, qui beátum Ioánnem Henrícum, presbýterum, lumen benígnum tuum sequéntem pacem in Ecclésia tua inveníre contulísti, concéde propítius, ut, eius intercessióne et exémplo, ex umbris et imagínibus in plenitúdinem veritátis tuae perducámur. Per Dominum.

 

BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, PRIEST

Born in London in 1801, he was for over twenty years an Anglican clergyman and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. His studies of the early Church led him progressively towards Catholicism, and in 1845 he embraced “the one true fold of the Redeemer”. In 1847 he was ordained priest and went on to found the Oratory of St Philip Neri in England. He was a prolific and influential writer on a variety of subjects. In 1879 he was created Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. Praised for his humility, unstinting care of souls and contributions to the intellectual life of the Church, he died in Birmingham on 11 August 1890.

From the Common of Pastors, with the psalms of the day.

Office of Readings

SECOND READING

From the writings of Blessed John Henry Newman, Priest

(Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter V: Position of My Mind since 1845, London 1864, pp. 238-239, 250-251)

It was like coming into port after a rough sea.

From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption.

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles, which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive of them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe? …

I believe the whole revealed dogma as taught by the Apostles, as committed by the Apostles to the Church, and as declared by the Church to me. I receive it, as it is infallibly interpreted by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and (implicitly) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted by that same authority till the end of time. I submit, moreover, to the universally received traditions of the Church, in which lies the matter of those new dogmatic definitions which are from time to time made, and which in all times are the clothing and the illustration of the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I submit myself to those other decisions of the Holy See, theological or not, through the organs which it has itself appointed, which, waiving the question of their infallibility, on the lowest ground come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed. Also, I consider that, gradually and in the course of ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method and a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great minds, such as St Athanasius, St Augustine, and St Thomas; and I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy of thought thus committed to us for these latter days.

RESPONSORY                                                                                Ephesians 3:7, 10; John 16:13

R. Of this Gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power,* that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known.

V. When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

R. That through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known.

PRAYER

O God, who bestowed on the Priest Blessed John Henry Newman the grace to follow your kindly light and find peace in your Church; graciously grant that, through his intercession and example, we may be led out of shadows and images into the fulness of your truth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

St Luigi Scrosoppi of the Oratory

John Paul II canonised St Luigi Scrosoppi on 10th June 2001, and named him patron saint of those suffering with AIDS. It was at the intercession of St Luigi that an Zambian man, now Fr Peter Changu Shitima, was miraculously cured of AIDS in 1996. He was at that time a member of the Oratory at Oudtshoorn, near Cape Town in South Africa, and it was to a member of the St Philip’s family that his friends turned for help. Here is Fr Peter:

Luigi Scrosoppi, born in Udine, was one of three boys in his family, all of whom became priests. After his ordination in 1827, he lived a very active priestly life, and showed a particular concern for the care of orphans. To this end he and his step-brother Fr Carlo established a ‘House for the Destitute’: fund-raising and building work took a number of years, but it was ready by 1837. Luigi played an important role in the foundation of the Sisters of Providence, who devoted their lives to the service of the orphans: the first professions of the sisters were made at Christmas 1845, and the community achieved formal recognition in 1848, an event which was perhaps hastened by the deep impression the Sisters made by their courageous behaviour during the fighting over Udine between the people and the Austrian imperial forces.

Luigi had been associated with the Oratorian Fathers from his earliest years, but the political situation of the time was never favourable to the Udine Oratory. His brother Carlo had become a member of it in 1806, but it was suppressed in 1810, a victim of anti-clerical laws. In 1846, it was re-established, with Carlo, Luigi and two other priests as its members.

The work of Luigi and the Sisters continued to expand: schools were opened, including one for deaf and dumb girls in 1857, the Sisters’ work reached beyond Udine into hospital ministry, a cholera epidemic in 1855 provided an opportunity for Luigi and the Sisters to alleviate suffering among the general population of Friuli. in 1858 the Sisters, now numbering more than thirty, had their Rule commended by Pius IX (although it was only definitively approved in 1891), and things seemed set fair.

But the anti-clericalism which had caused the demise of the Udine Oratory in 1806 struck again: in 1866 the army of the Kingdom of Italy conquered Udine and the surrounding regions, and nothing could prevent the suppression of the Congregation and the confiscation of the church.

But this did not prevent him from remaining a faithful disciple of St Philip. He devoted himself from that time on to the spiritual and practical welfare of the Sisters of Providence. Happily the House for the Destitute was saved, although it had to become subject to public control, and the from the mid-1860s onwards, the work of the Sisters flourished in Austrian-controlled territory, so that Luigi’s prophecy that twelve houses would be founded by the time of his death came true.

Towards the end of 1883, Luigi had to give up all his activity because of ill-health, and he died on 3rd April 1884. During his life, he lived by the motto ‘Work, suffer, and be silent.’ He was indeed a man of prayer, and was filled with spiritual wisdom. He, in the spirit of his Father and patron St Philip, could not bear vanity or hypocrisy; he could also at times be rather brisk, particularly with new candidates for the Sisters - he realised the importance of resilience and the necessity of the gift of strong faith if such people were to be successful in their religious life. And he practised what he preached - if he ever lost his temper or became angry, he was always ready to ask pardon of anyone, from any walk of life. His final exhortation to his Sisters also sums up his own life: ‘Charity! Charity!… Save souls, and save them with charity.’

Feast of St Vitus at Forio

Tuesday 15th June

The Silver and Gold Statue of the Saint (with his faithful Border Terrier at his side)

 

The procession of the relic and image around the parish (in 5 parts)

http://www.ischiareporter.it/?p=3845

Buona Festa!

St Philip Neri and St Ignatius Loyola 

At the west of the Holy Name, facing each other across the breadth of the church, are the statues of St Philip Neri and St Ignatius Loyola. These images that answer each other in the architectural space show not only great saints of the Counter Reformation, the founders of great Religious Congregations, but more importantly they show friends. The Holy Name was built and staffed for many years by the Society of Jesus, before being entrusted to the care of St Philip’s family nearly 20 years ago.

Next to the statue of Ignatius is a picture of the meeting of these friends outside the church of San Girolamo della Carita where Philip lived and ministered, near the English College in Rome. Here Ignatius saw a globe of fire sitting over the church, showing the work of the Holy Spirit of Love residing in the beginnings of the Congregation of the Oratory. Philip saw around Ignatius the bright aureole of holiness.

They were very different characters, but saw in each other the work of God; the one to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, defend Christendom from the Protestant heresy in the north and establish great centers of learning and teaching; the other to stay in Rome and there assist souls to God in gentle and attractive ways. Philip sent many of his disciples to pursue their vocations in the Society, as well as various dioceses and Orders, so that Ignatius said of him that he was like a bell calling people into the Society’s church, but not going in himself.

They were canonised on the same day, 13th March 1622, together with Ss Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Isidore the Farmer (it was said jokingly by the Romans that it was the canonisation of four Spaniards and a saint). In these saints; Francis Xavier the intrepid missionary to the Indies, Teresa the reformer of contemplative life, Isidore the faithful husband and workman, we see that God’s grace does not destroy our individual characters, personalities, likes and dislikes, but rather brings all these varied human traits to glory, in serving the people of God’s world according to the various temperaments we possess. There is no model of sanctity except that offered in the Gospels; the life of Jesus, and the infinitely adaptable Spirit can work on any material it is given to restore the likeness of the Lord in us.

Here is an episode from the Italian film San Filippo Neri, which shows in a somewhat naive and romantic way, but still rather charming, the sort of personalities which God uses to build his Kingdom; the holy soldier Ignatius and the holy fool Philip. So, there is hope for us all to do good now, as we are, not waiting until we achieve some notional form of what we consider to be holiness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8YURYMbRCI&feature=related

God isn’t proud - He’ll take anyone, even me and you, even as we are!

And when we feel that we are not doing very well at being His faithful servants, or that we are half hearted about it all, then Philip will help us. This is Philip’s genius; to see good in everything and everybody, and to allow the breath of the Holy Spirit gently to move through his personality, blowing away the dead dust and bringing into a living flame whatever is good.

It was with senitments such as these that John Henry Newman could write about his Father in 1857:

This is the Saint of gentleness and kindness,
Cheerful in penance, and in precept winning:
Patiently healing of their pride and blindness,
Souls that are sinning.

This is the Saint, who, when the world allures us,
Cries her false wares, and opes her magic coffers,
Points to a better city, and secures us
With richer offers.

Love is his bond, he knows no other fetter,
Asks not our all, but takes whate’er we spare him,
Willing to draw us on from good to better,
As we can bear him.

When he comes near to teach us and to bless us,
Prayer is so sweet, that hours are but a minute;
Mirth is so pure, though freely it possess us,
Sin is not in it.

Thus he conducts, by holy paths and pleasant,
Innocent souls, an sinful souls forgiven,
Towards the bright palace, where our God is present,
Throned in high heaven.

 

Saint Philip Neri and the Priesthood

Fr Frederick Miller

 

Since his canonization in 1622, Saint Philip Neri has been considered a model of priestly life and holiness among the clergy of Italy. One might say that Saint Philip has there the popularity enjoyed by Saint John Vianney among diocesan priests in the United States. For a variety of reasons, Saint Philip has had little notoriety among priests in North America. However, there seems to be a change. Many priests and seminarians are reading biographies of the “Apostle of Rome” and envisioning his approach to the priesthood for themselves. The foundation of new Oratories of Saint Philip throughout the USA also indicates interest in the saint.

This essay does not intend to be either a detailed biography of the saint or a treatise on priestly holiness as exemplified in the life of Saint Philip Neri. This composition emerged as random reflections on the saint for a seminarian, now a priest, who had discovered Saint Philip during his seminary years. I present it in this venue in the hope that more priests will find in Saint Philip Neri a congenial confrere in the priesthood and a model of priestly life and holiness.

Might it not be said that an attraction to a particular saint has its origin above in the Holy Spirit and the intercession of God’s holy ones? In his encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI pointed out that the saints continue to do in heaven what they had done on earth: “The lives of the saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their being and working in God after death. In the saints one thing becomes clear: those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them.”¹ One may conjecture that Saint Philip Neri, who was spiritual father to so many priest-sons while on earth, continues to exercise the ministry of priestly formation from his place in heaven. My sole intention is to point priests in the direction of an exemplary parish priest, the knowledge of whom will hopefully benefit them as well as the people they serve.

Renaissance and Reformation

Saint Philip Neri (1515 - 1595), a native of Florence, lived all of his life as a parish priest in Rome, the major center of the rebirth (Renaissance) of pagan culture in sixteenth-century Europe. He was also a contemporary of the Protestant Reformers. Renaissance and Reformation form the context of the exercise of Philip Neri’s priestly ministry.

John Henry Newman has noted that Saint Philip did not wage a frontal attack on the Renaissance, as did another native of Florence, Girolamo Savanarola. This charismatic Dominican friar saw little if anything good in the restoration of pagan culture and prophetically envisioned the so-called Enlightenment that would inevitably follow in its wake. In his desperation, the firebrand advocated destroying books, works of art, musical instruments, etc. as a necessary purgation of the Church. Linking the decadence of the clergy to the Renaissance, Savanarola ranted against the materialism and secularism of the Church’s leaders, denouncing bishops and even the pope.

On the other hand, Philip Neri, who, in fact, always venerated Savanarola as a saint, chose a different approach. While rejecting the immoral and decadent elements of his century, Philip, first as a layman and then as a priest, seized upon the good elements of the Renaissance and utilized them for the glorification of God. Historians have recognized Philip’s love of music, art, letters and history as well as his use of these arts in his catechetical ministry and, most especially, in his approach to the liturgy.

Palestrina, his spiritual directee, composed many of his polyphonic masterpieces for Saint Philip and the oratory meetings. Philip built one of the most beautiful Renaissance churches in Rome. He promoted the study of literature, patristics, the history of liturgy and ecclesiastical history, as well as catechesis for children. The Chiesa Nuova, his church, became a center of liturgical excellence in both the execution of the sacred rites and the use of sacred music.

Philip recognized the secular humanism of the Renaissance for exactly what it was: Christian charity separated from its life-giving ecclesial roots. An authentic Christian humanism, the humanism of the Gospel, was the foundation of Philip’s ministry of personal relationships. He understood that God effected conversions through the priest’s personal influence as friend, teacher, confessor, father and spiritual guide. One might speculate that Saint Philip would have been very much at home with the Christian personalism of Pope John Paul II and his theology of the body.

Philip was aware that the grace of conversion — communicated by God primarily through preaching the Gospel, the teaching of Catholic doctrine and the practice of frequent confession — has it first effects within the human heart, and then manifests itself in personal transformations that are often startling. In the recognition of how powerful the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is in the process of conversion, Saint Philip spent much of his free time as a layman promoting the Forty Hours Devotion in Rome. His zeal for this devotion continued after his priestly ordination.

As a priest, Philip never called attention to a corrupt hierarchy. There was no need to do that. Sad to say, it was all too obvious. Rather, Philip lived the priesthood so joyfully and simply that he attracted worldly clerics by his priestly way of life. His tools were simple: frequent confession, daily mental prayer, and spiritual direction.

Although the Protestant Reformation did not directly influence the Church in Italy, Philip was aware that something dark and harmful was happening in the Lord’s vineyard. Philip lived his priesthood in a Church torn apart by heresy, schism and even cruel martyrdom. He had a particular love and concern for the seminarians of the Venerable English College in Rome. He was aware that the majority of these students, once ordained priests, would return to England and ultimately shed their blood as martyrs for Christ and his Church. To this day, the seminarians of the English College sing first vespers on the Solemnity of Saint Philip Neri at the Chiesa Nuova in honor of the Roman priest who blessed their forebears on their way to martyrdom.

Historians have opined that Saint Philip played a large role in protecting Rome from the intrusion of the errors of Protestantism. He did this in at least three ways.

First, he organized a prayer group known as the Oratory for young people. The youth would gather in his presbytery each week, or several times a week, to read and discuss Sacred Scripture, to pray spontaneously, to sing hymns and to present ferverinos (short and fervent presentations on a theme assigned by Saint Philip) on Christian doctrine, the virtues and the lives of the saints.

In effect, Philip, by introducing the young to a form of lectio divina, taught them to pray with the Scriptures. Their presentations on doctrine and the lives of the saints helped the young to interpret the Scriptures within the sacred tradition of the Church. At the same time, Father Philip was preparing his spiritual children to explain the faith to their contemporaries and defend it whenever necessary, especially if Reformation thought found its way into Italy. In effect, Saint Philip’s prayer meetings formed contemplative apologists of the faith.

The French Oratorian Louis Bouyer offers this description of the Oratory meetings: “The program of their meetings took some ten years to crystallize into the following form: reading with commentary, the commentary taking the form of a conversation, followed by an exhortation by some other speaker. This would be followed in turn by a talk on Church history, with finally, another reading with a commentary, this time from the life of some saint. All this was interspersed with short prayers, hymns and music, and the service always finished with the singing of a new motet or anthem. It was taken for granted that everyone could come and go as they chose, as Philip himself did. He and the other speakers used to sit quite informally on a slightly raised bench facing the gathering.”²

Interesting to note, the centrality of Scripture in the Oratory meetings, the spontaneity of the prayer and hymnody, the instructions and exhortations presented by laymen, as well as the charismatic tone of the gatherings led some high-ranking ecclesiastics to accuse Philip of introducing his spiritual directees to a Protestant form of worship.

Second, Saint Philip assigned his most gifted disciple, Caesar Baronius, then just twenty years old, to research and present a talk each week on the history of the Church, beginning with Pentecost and ending at the present moment in the Church’s life. Baronius, a layman at the time, had no experience, and indeed little interest, in Church history; nevertheless he accepted the task in obedience to his spiritual father. Over the course of three years he completed his lectures, at which point Saint Philip told him to start again at the beginning. Over nearly thirty years, he had repeated the course of talks seven times, making many revisions and additions along the way. Around 1584, Philip finally commissioned Baronius to begin preparing a text demonstrating that the Church of the sixteenth century was the same in all essential aspects as the Church born on Pentecost. Baronius’ Annales Ecclesiastici in twelve volumes was finally completed near the end of Baronius’ rather long life. This text, which is still considered a classic of historical research, struck right at the heart of Luther’s assertion that the Roman Church had long ago broken communion with the pristine church of the apostles — the church that he imagined himself to be refounding in the sixteenth century.

Third, so resplendent was the character of Holy Orders in Philip Neri that people easily perceived the Lord Jesus preaching, sanctifying and shepherding his flock through and in him. The anemic brand of ministry proposed by Luther and Calvin paled in the glow of Philip’s witness to the apostolic succession of bishops and priests.

Precisely through this priesthood, the Church of every age has immediate contact with the authority and power Christ gave to Peter, Paul, the other apostles and the presbyters appointed by them to lead the burgeoning Christian communities after Pentecost. By rejecting the priesthood and, in so doing, breaking the apostolic succession, Luther did exactly what he accused the Roman Church of doing — breaking the Church’s life-giving connection with Christ and the apostles. Philip was a living, dramatic witness of the continuity.

Surely Saint Philip’s way of living the priesthood was as important a component of the Counter Reformation as was Ignatius Loyola’s establishment of an army of missionary priests ready to serve wherever the pope would send them, Borromeo’s witness to the teaching office of the bishop in the implementation of the Roman Catechism in the life of the local church, and Francis de Sales’ testimony to the sanctifying office of the bishop in his availability to direct the spiritual lives of the priests and laypersons in his care. Philip, it would seem, was raised up by God to exemplify how the apostolic ministry is to be exercised by priests in a stable manner precisely where God’s people live — that is, in parishes.

A secular priest: The Apostle of Rome

To this day, Saint Philip is known as the Apostle of Rome. It is said that whereas Saints Peter and Paul first converted the Romans through the preaching of the Gospel and baptism, Saint Philip reconverted them during the Renaissance through his ministry of spiritual direction and confession.

For forty-five years of his long life, Saint Philip served the Church as a secular priest in Rome. Although he died as an Oratorian, Saint Philip never intended to found a new congregation for priests. Rather, the Congregation of the Oratory sprang up around him as a result of his personal influence, his witness to personal prayer, his zeal to catechize the young and bring them to the sacraments, and his ever-joyful spirit.

Other priests enjoyed living, praying and doing apostolic work with him. They found it wholesome and liberating to follow the pattern he had established in his life as a parish priest of Rome. The fact that the Oratorians rightly claim Saint Philip as their founder should not dissuade priests from seeing him as an exemplary model for the diocesan clergy.

Newman’s conference The Mission of Saint Philip Neri, Louis Bouyer’s lyrical essay The Roman Socrates and Father Paul Turks’ biography of the saint, Fire of Joy, each in its own way, help form a concept of the personality and sanctity of this unusual priest. These texts illustrate the priest’s particular path to holiness: pastoral charity as practiced by Saint Philip, a holy and attractive exemplar of priestly life and holiness.

An emblematic mosaic of the saint

Over the altar that enshrines Saint Philip’s body in the Chiesa Nuova is a striking mosaic by Guido Reni. The artist presents the saint in red Mass vestments that simultaneously reveal the centrality of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Eucharist in Saint Philip’s life. The red vestments also indicate that Philip Neri lived the priesthood with the generosity and abandonment of the Christian martyrs. He kneels before our Blessed Mother, and there are lilies symbolizing his chastity and the fatherly love that was the fruit of his purity of heart.

The mosaic is a kind of emblem of Philip’s priestly ministry: the Eucharistic sacrifice at the center of everything he did, pastoral charity practiced with the zeal of the martyrs and the strength that comes from the Spirit of God, the spiritual motherhood of the Blessed Virgin that makes everything wholesome and fruitful. Philip’s posture in relationship to our Blessed Mother bespeaks the entrustment of one’s life and work to her that would later be described so powerfully by Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort in his classic, True Devotion to Mary.

Saint Philip Neri is a model of everything that is essential and real in the Catholic priesthood. He teaches priests that it is possible to be very active in apostolic works and a contemplative at the same time.

A priest filled with the Holy Spirit

As a young layman in Rome, Philip Neri spent his days visiting the sick in the hospitals, teaching children catechism, serving men and women who had come to Rome on pilgrimage, and, as already mentioned, promoting the Forty Hours Devotion in the churches of the city. He spent his nights praying deep down in the catacombs of Saint Sebastian.

In the course of one of these prayer vigils Saint Philip experienced his personal Pentecost. He saw the Holy Spirit coming towards him as fire — a fire that found its way into his heart. This experience led Philip to discuss the possibility of a priestly vocation with his spiritual director.

Saint Philip and the evangelical counsels

As a priest, the presence of the Holy Spirit was palpable in everything Father Philip said and did. Stated simply, he became a kind of living Pentecost; a Pentecostal event always ready to happen. This divine fire led Philip to embrace the priesthood in a radical, evangelical way. He chose to live as a poor man, dependent on Divine Providence for everything. Later, he would encourage his priest sons at Christmas time to give the poor any money they may have accumulated in the course of the year.

Saint Philip’s biographers say that he practiced perfect chastity. He understood that true spiritual fatherhood is in large measure the fruit of the abnegation involved in chastity.

Hearing tales of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, the Low Countries and in England, Philip was absolutely convinced that, in spite of the corruption in the Church of his day, the truth of Christ and his grace rested in the Catholic Church. He was obedient to the Church in all matters, great and small. Perhaps it was his appreciation of obedience that drew him into friendship with a neighbor who lived down the street, Ignatius of Loyola.

Saint Philip lived the Gospel counsels so completely that one sees in him the poverty of a Franciscan, the mortification of the flesh of a Carthusian, the obedience of the first Jesuits, the zeal of Saint Dominic and his white-robed friars to propagate the faith through preaching and teaching, and the dedication to the liturgy and contemplation of a Benedictine monk. Interestingly, Saint Philip felt very much at home with these religious, admired their particular charisms, and lived them, as he was able, as a diocesan priest.

Priestly mysticism in action

Saint Philip always carried the writings of the Desert Fathers in his cassock. Having been spiritually formed by the Conferences of John Cassian, Philip lived a simple, mortified life — a kind of monastic life — while living in the world and making himself available to serve his people.

In his interior life, contemplation and priestly work were wonderfully integrated. When he prayed — and Father Philip prayed for hours every day — he held his spiritual children in his heart. When he served them directly, he was consciously loving and serving Jesus in them. Centuries later, a son of Saint Philip, John Henry Newman, followed his spiritual father’s practice. As a very old man, he would sit in chapel with a notebook containing names and prayer intentions. He would spend hours holding one person after another up in prayer to the mercy of Christ. Both men understood that humble intercession is the core of true Christian prayer and an essential component in the life of a priest.

The Holy Spirit sometimes manifested himself in extraordinary ways when Saint Philip heard confession and gave spiritual direction. The penitent would hear the beating of the saint’s heart and feel heat emanating from his body — physical revelations of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the saint revealed a hidden or forgotten sin to a careless and startled penitent. At other times, there would be a word of prophecy, bringing warning or consolation. The ordinary manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the lives of his penitents were the grace of confessing one’s sins without fear or anxiety, the peace that filled the soul of the reconciled sinner, freedom from the bondage of habitual sin, the sense of the presence of the Heavenly Father, a renewed commitment to one’s duties, and a greater power to love God and neighbor.

A Eucharistic mysticism

At the center of Saint Philip’s spiritual life was the daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist. At the beginning of his priesthood, Saint Philip lived with another priest who spent himself promoting frequent, even daily reception of the Holy Eucharist, a practice not common in those times. Saint Philip admired and supported this apostolate, but took another approach. His focus was frequent confession for the sake of the worthy and fruitful reception of the Holy Eucharist.

Philip was always surrounded by joy and laughter. People, young and old, loved to be in his company. There was always a lot of fun going on around Philip jokes, pranks, teasing and buffoonery. Philip used this lure to attract souls to Christ. He encouraged all to go to confession frequently. Since people loved to be with him, they came in large numbers and often to receive the sacrament. Philip attracted people through his personality — not to himself, but to Christ. In a sense, Philip Neri is a perfect specimen of the genius of the priesthood. He demonstrates that priests should want to be loved by their people. This love is the bridge whereby the good priest leads his people not to himself, but rather, through himself, to Christ.

It seems that Saint Philip spent as much time as Saint John Vianney hearing confessions. Why? He spent long hours in the confessional to reconcile sinners with God, to bring them inner peace, to create a culture of Christian love. Above all, though, Saint Philip Neri, like all the great priest-saints, was so devoted to confession precisely because of his love for the Holy Eucharist. He wanted everyone to love Christ as he deserves to be loved and to receive him worthily and fruitfully.

For Saint Philip, hearing confession was a kind of mystical prayer. Acting in persona Christi, Saint Philip experienced the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit in him, cleansing consciences and forming the penitents in the image of Christ. In this sense, he has a kinship with Saint John Vianney, Saint Padre Pio, and Saint Leopold Mandic. Saint Philip would likely tell priests that contemplative prayer is always accessible to them in preaching and teaching Catholic doctrine, in celebrating Mass, and in hearing confessions. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are never closer or more active than in the outpouring of their love through priestly mediation.

As an old man, Saint Philip spent hours each day on the roof of the Chiesa Nuova contemplating the mysteries of God as he looked out over the city of Rome and the mountains that surround it. His confreres often, and not always in a good mood, climbed the many flights of stairs leading to the roof to tell the father that one of his many penitents was waiting for confession. Without hesitation or any annoyance, Saint Philip would leave his prayer to hear the confession. He would interrupt his prayer on the roof saying that he was leaving Jesus to go to Jesus.

Saint Philip insisted that the church building, the altar, the linens and the vestments be immaculate and as beautiful as possible. He inspired the Renaissance musician, Palestrina, to write polyphonic music for Mass. Saint Philip’s priestly spirituality was riveted on the Holy Eucharist. Everything he did, from preaching, catechesis, and his work with youth to confession and spiritual direction, had one end — to lead people to union with Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

Saint Philip also loved the public solemnization of the Liturgy of the Hours. Sunday Vespers was an important moment in the life of Philip’s parishes. He grasped the intimate relationship that exists between the Eucharist and the Hours and wanted to bring the faithful into the mystery.

Saint Philip received many mystical graces when he celebrated Mass, graces that he tried to hide from the view of the people. When he started having these mystical experiences during Mass, he had someone read jokes to him on the way from the sacristy into the church. He hoped that this would distract him enough to be able to get through Mass without an ecstasy. Late in his life, he was unable to preach and celebrate Mass in public because of the physical effects of these mystical graces.

Preaching, he would go into ecstasy at the mention of the name of Jesus. He would spend two to three hours in ecstatic thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion. There are records that he sometimes levitated during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the parish church.

There is a strange attitudinal phenomenon among some Catholics today that has persisted in the Church for centuries. It is the unfortunate dichotomy that exists in some people’s minds between liturgy and prayer. The Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours are looked upon as public worship. Real prayer, it is presumed, begins when one makes his or her Holy Hour or enters into a period of meditation or imaginative contemplation.

This attitude would be, I think, incomprehensible and abhorrent to Saint Philip Neri. For him, the prayer of prayers was the Mass (and the Hours). He held as an article of faith that the Eucharist is nothing less than the real presence of Christ and the re-presentation of his life-giving sacrifice. He also understood that Christ is truly present, but in different ways, in the other sacraments. The fact that the risen Christ lives and acts in the sacraments that he instituted was the foundation of the mystical life that Philip Neri experienced as a priest.

Philip sought to follow Jesus’ command: Pray always! However, there would be no question in his mind that all personal prayer flows directly from the Eucharist and the other sacraments and leads back to the most mystic of all experiences, the consecration of the bread and wine at Mass. Likewise, Saint Philip knew and taught that charity in all its manifestations flows directly from the Eucharist and leads the Christian back to a more perfect offering of the sacrifice.

In other words, for Philip the Eucharist, in a sense, was perpetuated in time and manifested its fruitfulness whenever he heard confessions or directed souls, visited and anointed the sick, prepared young couples to receive the sacrament of matrimony, taught children the catechism, helped the poor, or washed the feet of pilgrims. Saint Philip teaches us that the spiritual life is one and that the Eucharist is the integrating center of everything the priest does.

There are many other things that might be highlighted from the life of Saint Philip: his sense of humor, his ability to help people not take themselves too seriously, his many charismatic gifts at the service of forming men and women in the Christian life, his knack of forming humble and zealous priests, his understanding of the place of Sacred Scripture in preaching and in personal prayer, his appreciation of the history of the Church and the role of the cult of the saints in everyday life, and his disdain for clericalism and clerical ambition. The biographies tell the stories and illustrate the wisdom of this holy priest who lived in the splendor of the Italian Renaissance as if he was a first generation Christian in Jerusalem or pagan Rome.

The apostolate of personal influence

Philip chose to exercise his priesthood primarily by influencing people one by one. He made friends with people, loved them, and drew them into the heart of Christ precisely through love. Philip Neri is not remembered as a great preacher, a renowned theologian, or a brilliant administrator. His genius lay in his ability to enter into authentic and appropriate human relationships with men and women so as to unite them to Christ in the church’s sacraments. His brilliance was in the realm of personal influence though relationships. Only the Lord knows how many peoples’ lives he influenced in the confessional, in spiritual direction, and through the counsel offered in so many different situations.

John Henry Newman has admirably described Philip’s charismatic gift — the facility of drawing men and women to Christ, particularly in the sacrament of penance: “He allured men to the service of God so dexterously, and with such a holy, winning art, that those who saw it cried out, astonished: ‘Father Philip draws souls as the magnet draws iron.’ He so accommodated himself to the temper of each, as, in the words of the Apostle, to become ‘all things to all men, that he might gain all.’ And his love of them individually was so tender and ardent, that, even in extreme old age, he was anxious to suffer for their sins; and for this end he inflicted on himself severe disciplines, and he reckoned their misdeeds as his own, and wept for them as such.”³

At a time in the life of the Church in North America when, as a result of the terrible sexual crimes that have scarred the face of the priesthood, priests fear or at least are apprehensive about entering into appropriate priestly relationships, especially with the young, Saint Philip Neri is a model par excellence of the priest who loves all of his people for the sake of uniting them to Christ. Saint Philip understood that his celibacy freed him to love Christ with an undivided heart and to give himself chastely to all of God’s people.

A profound love for the mother of God

One may not describe the life and ministry of Saint Philip Neri without at least one word on his profound and childlike love for the mother of God. Philip, it seems, was often indecisive. When he was building the Chiesa Nuova he frequently changed the plans. On several occasions he indicated that the main aisle was not long enough. Through his regular vacillations, Philip drove the construction workers to despair. One morning, Philip walked into the unfinished church. Our Blessed Mother appeared to him holding up the central beam of the ceiling. He sent the workers up the scaffolding to learn that Our Lady was indeed the only reason the roof had not collapsed. Saint Philip teaches priests that this is the kind of confidence the true priest should have in Mary’s heavenly intercession.

John Henry Cardinal Newman, a disciple of Saint Philip Neri through all the years of his priesthood, describes Saint Philip’s way of priestly holiness and the kind of priests who sought out his company and his spiritual direction. Perhaps Saint Philip through his personal influence will today inspire many contemporary priests to be priests after his heart:

I would beg for you this privilege, that the public world might never know you for praise or for blame, that you should do a good deal of hard work in your generation, and prosecute many useful labors, and effect a number of religious purposes, and send many souls to heaven, and take men by surprise, how much you were really doing, when they happened to come near enough to see it; but that by the world you should be overlooked, that you should not be known out of your place, that you should work for God alone with a pure heart and single eye, without the distractions of human applause, and should make him your sole hope, and his eternal heaven your sole aim, and have your reward, not partly here, but fully and entirely hereafter.⁴

End Notes

1. Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 42.
2. Louis Bouyer of the Oratory, The Roman Socrates — A Portrait of Saint Philip. Trans. by Michael Day. Westminster, Maryland, the Newman Press, 1958.
3. John Henry Newman, The Mission of Saint Philip II, 7.
4. John Henry Newman, The Mission of Saint Philip Neri

Bl. Sebastian Valfrè (1629-1710)

Priest of the Turin Oratory

 

Saturday 30th January

Third Centenary of his Entrance into Heaven

 

In the year that we look forward to the beatification of John Henry Newman, we celebrate the third centenary of the first of St Philip’s sons to be raised to the altars, Bl. Sebastian Valfrè of the Turin Congregation. This city produced many other saints, many of whom drew their inspiration from Bl Sebastian and the Oratory; St John Bosco, St Joseph Benedict Cottolengo, St Joseph Cafasso, St Leonard Murialdo and Bl Frederic Albert.

The early history of the Congregation of the Oratory in Turin is one of turmoil and difficulty. It was founded in 1649 by Fr Pietro Antonio Defera, who was joined by Fr Ottavio Cambiani. They spent their time visiting the poor, those in hospital and prison, preaching simply and directly, and looking after their church with generous hearts and fervent spirits. A group of six young men were about to join this tiny community when Fr Defera died at the age of 34, leaving Fr Cambiani alone to shore up the delicate foundation, without the promised new recruits. He spent his solitary days at the altar, in the confessional and the pulpit, offering the Mass solemnly with beautiful music, and just being around for the convenience of the people of Turin. This was the Congregation that the young subdeacon Bl Sebastian joined in 1651, and in time others joined this small group. For several years the Congregation numbered only three or four, yet these few dedicated men helped large numbers of people to live humble and devout lives in the midst of the world following the inspiration of St Philip.

Bl Sebastian was born on 9th March 1629 to a humble and poor family, and he remained poor throughout his life in the poor Congregation at Turin. At the Oratory he wished simply to serve the people of God in whatever capacity he was given; whether in pastoral work, house administration, scholarly pursuits (he was awarded a doctorate in 1656), or sweeping the stairs. He would as happily go the death beds of the poor or the Royal family of Savoy, often taking with him a volume of philosophy or theology to read if the death agony was long.

Most of life was spent wandering around the streets and squares simply being available, speaking of God’s love for all men and our the love that we should have for each other. It is no coincidence that the Feast of the Sacred Heart was first celebrated for the first time at Turin by Bl Sebastian in 1694. The holy Shroud of Turin had special place in his devotions, so much so that he spent some time repairing the precious relic, stitching whilst shedding abundant tears. He said of it,

     The Cross received the living Jesus and gave Him back to us dead;                           the Shroud received the dead Jesus and restored Him to us alive.

Bl Sebastian repairing the Shroud the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Savoy

He died at the age of 80 on the morning of 30th January 1710. His little room was filled with scholarly papers and packages of clothes for the poor. A few days before he had directed a retreat for the monks of Sancta Croce and then gone straight to the prisons to visit those condemned to death. From this duty he rushed back to the Oratory church for Benediction, remaining on his knees through the time of adoration, and then straight to the pious exercises of the Oratorian community in their cold house. The next morning, although he was running a fever, he celebrated Mass and heard a number of confessions, and then at last exhausted he took to his bed.  Even here he continued his work of administering the tenderness of God by receiving the many friends and penitents who wished his blessing. He was beatified on 15th July 1834 by Gregory XVI.

The Procurator General of the Oratory Confederation at the Shrine of Bl Sebastian

The Congregation of the Oratory exists to promote the holiness and sanctification of laypeople, as well as its own members. Historically at Turin this has been done through the usual variety of pious parish associations; SVP, Apostleship of Prayer, Youth Groups, etc. Since 1986 the Oratory at Turin has no longer had parish status owing to shifts in population, and there is some dispute as to property ownership, but still the Congregation is able to provide ways of sanctification for the people of the city who are attracted by the spirit of St Philip, showing the many ways in which hearts can be won for God. The community continues in the spirit of Bl Sebastian and St Philip to live humbly and without the notice of the world to make the things of God attractive.

Please pray that, at the intercession of Bl Sebastian, the Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip will be established at the Holy Name in Manchester.

 

The website of the Turin Oratory, with several interesting video presentations,  can be found here  http://www.sanfilippotorino.it/

and one dedcated to the Beatus here  www.studibeatovalfre.org

 

Some Help in Assenting to Mysteries of Faith

from John Henry Newman’s  

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870)

 

 

Sunday by Sunday Christians solemnly declare, “I believe in one God”, and a whole set of dogmatic statements which follow from that. The grounds for this statement of faith seems radically inconsistent with the grounds we have for other statements of what is the case, based on observation of the patterns and probablities in the natural world, as observed and recorded by the mathematician and scientist. These alone seem to give proof, or at least sure grounds for making reasonable assumptions about what is the state of things, whereas statements of religious faith are based upon no such secure ground.

This is no new phenomenon, and today it is the natural scientist rather than the mathematician or physicist who is challenging Christian claims to truth. Indeed, given the focus upon quantum theory, which admits of the massive complexity of sub-atomic reality rather than posturing in grand theory, there is now a huge fertile interface between physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and theologians. It is also helpful in this if the theologian admits of massive compexity in his science too, and allows himself more modest horizons and claims instead of posturing in grand theory. This is another theme taken up by Newman as he wrote cautiously and carefully on theological subjects and Catholic claims, when many of his fellow Catholics were pushing a triumphalistic agenda against the world. His cautious approach in the field of doctrine won him the empithet “the most dangerous man in England” in a letter from the Pope’s English secretary to the Archbishop of Westminster.

In the mid 19th century John Henry Newman faced similiar questions to those of today, with the claims of Christianity relegated to superstition by those who postulated stricter scientific criteria for truth claims. His reply to this challenge was a philosophical work published in 1870, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, which summed up thirty years of thought on the subject of Christian belief. It was his contention that it is possible to be certain of things of faith, and that the credal statements made by Christians of all classes and levels of education were true.

Many Christians when faced with the rigourous challenges of scientific method tend to revert to ‘fideism’, that is the assent to dogmatic propositions without any rational assent involved. There is just ’simple’ faith in God and the things of God, and a strong personal relationship is established between the believer and the person of Jesus. This can be the case for conservative Catholics just as well as Evangelical Protestants, who are fearful of reason, and its potential to wreck their carefully nurtured faith and devotionally constructed orthodoxies. It is often the case, at least from my experience as a priest working throughout my ministry in higher education, that such Christians experience great crises of doubt when they eventually allow reason to invade their religious territory, and what was once held onto as dear is now seen as an embarrassing residue of childish superstition. The mysteries of faith are rejected with equal fervour as they were once held.

So what is to be done? It seems to the rational scientist that the Christian believer is being dishonest, and conversely to the believer that the rationalist is being unfaithful. This was Newman’s project in 1870; to show how the believer comes to assent to the dogmas of faith rationally, and that this assent to open to all people, not simply the intellectual elite.

There is the story about the man driving round in circles, completely lost, and when he asks for directions (usually from an Irishman, so the joke goes) he gets the reply, “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.” This may sound trite, but it is what both believer and doubt will say to each other in a polemical argument concern faith in the Christian msteries. Each wants to establish the foundation according to his perception of how things are, how therefore they will go, and what the outcome ought to be. But Newman insists, it is important to recognise that each person begins from where they are, and not where someone else is, or where they think they ought to be, but where they are with all the complexity that that brings. The believer has to allow for his believing to be complex, because whereas one holds to scientific reason as the sole criterion for getting to the truth of things, the believer has more material and more processes in play when he comes to analyse a proposition. This should not leave the believer any position of smug superiority over the unbeliever, rather it should allow him to have some humility when regarding the act of faith, seeing that it is a complex act involving the whole person.

This is really Newman’s point; the whole man assents, not merely his mere reason or “paper logic” as he calls it, as if it were some isolated higher part of a human being. This was Newman’s point throughout his life, and what he was fighting was the idea of Reason that had established itself since the Enlightenment as the only place where truth was to be found. By the mid 19th century the application to Universal Reason as the sole means of finding the truth was held by many in the Established Church of England, in the Universities, public and social life, as well as in politics. It sought to establish things according to the secular, purely rational order, from the design of gardens to sermons on the miracles of Jesus. This universal Reason was not a personal mind, not a way of thinking; rather it was the impersonal, formalised pattern of argumentation, universally the same, infallible, autonymous demonstration. This logical reason could alone be trusted by everyone at every time and place bring forth truth, and anything else (especially religion) was simply dangerous, illogical, enthusiasm and intellectually dishonest.

Newman rejected this account of thinking, and the liberal doctrine of universal Reason. He did so as a Christian thinker and philosopher because this system denies ’super rational’ truths and the authority of God’s Word. However, the answer he gives in the Grammar is as a philosopher and psychologist, rather  than simply a Christian preacher and teacher. He maintains that there is genuine knowledge which is unattainable by simple logical reasoning, of which we can have certitude. Faith gives the ’simple peasant’ who does not know this universal reason, real knowledge and certitude. He can have faith in dogma without damaging his mind, and that this certitude is normal, healthy, reasonable and resonsible. Theology deals with genuine knowledge without coming to terms with the totalitarian liberal force of universal reason.

Newman’s argument in the Grammar can be reduced to these points:

1. People do not think in the same uniform way in anything.

2. People do not follow the same lines of demonstration in the sciences, say, to find the same conclusion.

3. There is no universal Reason that thinks in us in an impersonal way that we simply accept.

4. Individual people do not think exactly the same way about something.

5. Individual people do not reach certitude in exactly the same way in the same manner.

Newman maintains that the living person is sure of things that he cannot prove, otherwise what he is sure of can be reduce to a very few points reached by impersonal ‘paper logic’. Thinking is a subtle and highly complex operation, which varies from person to person. It will have some logical guiding lines, but then each living person will have his individual twists and turns in the process. Individuals have different outlooks, habits and peculiarities; different movements, agilities and grips on subjects; different starting points and goals. So, with subjects such as metaphysics, theology and ethics there is no justification for presuming the instrinsic probabilty of formalised demonstrations, which infallibly convince all clear-minded people of their conclusions. The totalitarian, ultramontanism of some of his fellow Catholics on the theological far-right was citicised here, just as much as the totalitarian liberal rationalists of the far-left. Both right and left present the human knower and believer as a simple vessel to be filled from outside, or a machine programmed to accept data and produce the given conclusion, whereas Newman recognised the complexity of human life and faith.

Different arguments will convince different kinds of people, depending upon the difficulties met, the degree of goodwill in enquiry, the length of time spent puzzling on the subject, upon their teachers and the influence of friends. Throughout his life Newman had been convinced that one personality effects another, and so in his academic work at Oxford he was determined to retain the tutorial system, where the student’s mind and personality was shaped and developed by the tutor, according to his lights. And in his choice of vocation as a member of the Congregation of the Oratory, as well as in his personal correspondence, he would gain a subtle influence over individuals rather than offer a blanket scheme for all comers.

So, an argument is demonstrative only for those whom it convinces of certitude, and therefore, arguments qua arguments are not demonstrative. It does not matter how clear your thinking and presentation are, if someone does not want to be convinced he will not be convinced.  For example, a member of the Conservative party may stand on your doorstep all day and explain his party’s macro-economic policy to you in clear and lucid terms, but if you are a retired miner living in Scargill Close in Barnsley, it is unlikely that you are going to vote for the Tory candidate even after such a clear and well-intentioned presentation.

It is man’s first principle which commands all his thinking, his starting point which is created through a miriad of different influences. This will shape his mind and outlook, and will decide how he will estimate the probability or the probative force of a particualr argument.

But what about God?

Newman was not interested in the 18th and 19th century arguments for the existence of God; the rationalism of Leibniz, Locke, Paley, etc. He was suspicious of any kind of a priori metaphysics or system of philosophy foisted onto experience. It was not that he was unfavourable to metaphysical systems, he just disliked committing himself any ‘ready made’ self, which removed his mind, personality and temperament. Factory line philosophy and theology were of no use him as his work was as an apologist, who had to address the problems and questions of various individuals on the ground, not by getting them to submit to a certain system before he could engage with them. There was no set system, but each individual was treated precisely as an individual, and in this Newman shows us his Oratorian charism; again not offering a blanket solution, or a bold programme, but rather dealing case by case in the unique manner presented to him.

This way of proceeding can be seen in Newman’s own intellectual formation. Whereas most of his clerical counterparts had been formed in the system of Pontifical universities and seminaries, where a careful foundation of philosophy was laid before theology was undertaken in the same system, Newman was a product of the British University system, where a broad liberal education was offered as the foundation, and theology developed out of this. This lead to a clash of understandings as well as of personalities throughout Newman’s life, but it has its counterpart in more recent theological debate between those formed in the Schools and those in the academies of the liberal arts (e.g. the contrasting theological styles of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, or for that matter John Paul II and Benedict XVI).

For Newman, metaphysics is best grounded in personal experience if it is to be convincing. The simple process of dialectics may well be exciting and stimulating, but it will not bring someone to the living God. Indeed, it may well turn them off. And so his way is not one of metaphysical argumentation of the rationalist philosopher, but neither is it a substitute for rational metaphysics. Rather, it is to impress on the person who believes in God but does not know how to think about God, who is utterly transcendent and inescapably real. It is not an argument to prove the existence of “what everyone calls God” (which is St Thomas’ project), nor a way to discover God, but to allow a vivid personal realisation of the living God in whom the Christian already believes. He examines the reasons which precede metaphysical argumentation and study, which bring us to assent; “what the mind does [when it assents], what it contemplates, when it makes an act of faith” (p.99).

To know God is to know God personally, and we cannot discover and know a person by metaphysical speculation and reasoning. We first discover God as a person and then we are in a position to appraoch the metaphysical problems of Infinite Being, and such like. So, as we know God in this personal way the proper object of our thinking and knowing is always real and existent. God is neither an abstract proposition, nor a mere cohesion of reason, nor an idea viewed solely in the mind. Again, this is because reasoning is not solely the rationcination of deductive logic, but the complex activity of the whole person. People think concretely (about things), from one thing to another thing, and then abstractly with universal propositions.

Influence comes from all sorts of impressions made upon us, as well as the laws of logic, and these influences have a profound effect on our thinking imbuing us with moral character, habitual conduct, a way of living, and so forming our ways of thinking. There can be a blinding effect of pleasure of the senses and imagination  through various passionate influences, neuroses, ideologies and bias, and these too will shape the mind and the way in which we think. As we are not pure minds these forces should not be taken too importantly, as they will find their own place in the greater scheme of our thinking if their presence is accepted, noted and controlled. Still, they help make us what we are. “Everyone who reasons is his own centre; and no expedient of attaining a commom measure of mins can reverse that truth.” (p.345)

Newman realised that the search for God, for truth in philosophy and for the act of thinking about God, is part of an individual’s concrete existence, the living setting for his own life. And as such it is not just a theoretical question for academic metaphysics and pure logic, instead it is integrally liked with man’s struggle for happines, with his struggle to live as perfectly as possible according to his moral nature as found in his conscience.

God is not an abstraction, not a philosophical First Principle, and so metaphysics gives no knowledge of the living God, only knowledge of what can be said in a secondary fashion about “what everyone calls God”. This is in contrast with the living, personal God written of in sacred Scripture, who created man in his own image, and who has providential care for each person. This is the primary subject of faith, and to which the Christian gives the assent of faith; the prior dogma, of which secondary developing doctrine will come to be formualted.

It is certain assent that is given to the living God through the complexities of human experience in implicit reasoning. This implicit reasoning differs from explicit reasoning, which is formal, verbal and limited. Indeed this explicit form gives a way of argumentation with others through a series of symbols and algebraic equations, and avoids the mind running riot. It produces necessary logical formulae, but this ratiocination does not produce any proof for the living God, but is restricted by the modes of necessary inference demanded by Reason. Implicit reason, on the other hand, moves by informal logic, and is more delicate and elastic than verbal or mathematical argumentation;

“…the processes of reasoning which legitimately lead to assent, to action, to certitude, are in fact too multiform, subtle, omnigenous, too implicit, to allow of being measured by rule… they are after all personal, - verbal argumentation being useful only in subordination to a higher logic.”

So, reasoning is not a simple process, series or act of formal deduction from given premises, but is subtle and complex. But because it is implicit this does not make it irrational, rather it is simply in the naure of things to be like that. There are so many little hints and signs which influence and shape our starting position, our reasoning and its outcome.  In themselves they may not amount to much, or may not be conclusive, but when placed together the collective weight of these influences allow to us say with certainty, “I believe…”.

 

 

Fr Christopher Hilton

(This Article was first given as a paper to the North West Catholic Writers Guild, September 2009.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Come si vadia al cielo, e non come vadia il cielo

How to go to Heaven: not how the heavens go

It seems a fight that has been going on for centuries; science in the blue corner of the ring and religion in the red corner, and the crowd cheering for their man and booing the opponent. For the Christian scientist or mathematician it seems as though you are in a fix; you have got to choose one or the other team, drawing out proofs to support your man and trump or out-narrate the other guy. It can be tough when your head tells you one thing and your heart tells you something else, when what you do at your desk or in the lab and what you do on your knees in church seems like two irreconcilable worlds. Mathematics and science become the place of integrity and truth, whereas faith becomes a sentimental, inarticualte experience of whatever, constantly in need of being proped up by feel-good sound bites about love, family or other such nebulous nostrums.

The popular presentation of science and religion can often enforce this either/or scheme, and sometimes the presentations by Christains of the faith can do the same. This choice is a false choice for the Catholic, and the famous Oratorian and historian, the Venerable Cesare, Cardinal Baronio (1538-1607) was instrumental in deliniating the rights and limits of each discipline. He was a disciple of St Philip, succeeding him as Superior of the Roman Oratory, and found himself in the centre of an interesting circle of intellectuals, including Galileo (1564-1642), at the time of major scientific and mathematical developments.

2009 marks the fourth centenary of the first telescopic observations made by Galileo, and has been designated the ‘Year of Astronomy’ (cf, Edoardo Cerato, of the Rome Oratory, Baronio, Galileo e l’anno dell’Astronomia, which serves as the basis for this article). The Holy Father, Benedict XVI, recalled this during his homily on the Solemnity of the Epiphany, when he commented that it was a star that guided the Magi to the Christ Child. This year then, can serve to further our understanding of the relationship between science and religion.

The Holy Father said that, “There is a distinctive cosmological concept in Christianity that has found its highest expression in philosophy and mediaeval theology. In our times too, this gives interesting signs of a new flowering thanks to the passion and faith of not a few scientists who, following in the footsteps of Galileo, renounce neither reason nor faith. On the contrary, in the end they find value in both, in their reciprocal inventiveness. Christian thought compares to a ‘book’ - Galileo also said the same, and considered it to be the work of an Author who is expressing Himself by means of the symphony of creation.”

The other book in which God reveals Himself is Sacred Scripture. Galileo, alluding to his opponents who maintained that the Copernican theory was erroneous precisely because it conflicted with these Sacred books, wrote in his letter of 1615 to Madame Christine of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, that it was first necessary to know how to interpret a sacred text. To clarify his point he uses a quotation from St Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram concerning the Holy Spirit’s intention in inspiring the Sacred Scriptures, culminating in the statement, “The Spirit of God did not want to teach people things that would be of no help to their salvation”.  Galileo writes, “It is clear from a churchman who has been elevated to a very eminent position that the Holy Spirit’s intention is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go”. The churchman to whom he was referring was the Venerable Cardinal Baronio, whom Galileo had met several times, and in their conversations helped Galileo to see how his work as a mathematician and scientist squared with his life as a Christian.

Galileo came to Rome in 1587 to meet with the professors of the Roman College, an important Catholic University founded by the Society of Jesus in 1551, now called the Gregorian University (after its founder Pope Gregory XIII). Following the established pattern of university teaching reaching back to the thirteenth century, Sacred sciences were taught alongside the natural sciences, but now they had to accommodate themselves to the new world view, where it had been established that the earth revolved around the sun. And so contemporary scientific questions were dealt with, as the lectures and text books of the professors show, with mathematics as an integral part of the course of studies. The Jesuit responsible for the programme of mathematics at the College was the eminant German Christopher Clavius, who was so impressed by Galileo’s work on the centre of gravity of solids that he sought to find him a university teaching position. Galileo was dedicated to continuing Clavius’ programme in applying mathematics to the study of nature and producing a mathematical physics that could provide valid explanations for the causes of phenomena, whether astronomical or physical.

 The course of studies at the Roman College was wide ranging, and Baronio was particularly active there through the influence of the General of the Jesuits, his friend, Claudio Acquaviva (1543-1615). The Jesuits and the Oratorians collaborated greatly during this period, the latter often pursuing historical studies using the skills gained from the scientific rigour and clarity of the former. Baronio had been librarian of the Roman Oratory since 1584, an important postion in Rome given the extent of the scholarly works collected there. He published the revised ‘Martyrologium Romanum’ in 1586 and the first volume of the ‘Annales Ecclesiastici’ in 1588. Both these great works combined rigourous study and evaluation of anceint documents, as well as a clear presentation of material for contemporary needs. With them Baronio’s fame spread, and he was sought as an authority in universities all over Europe.

 It was during this time that Galileo met Baronio on several occasions, and from the quotation from Galileo’s letter it is clear that Baronio’s intellectual integrity made a strong impression on the mathematician’s mind. It was the Oratorian’s “bare-bones, down to earth consistency” that was worthy of mention (Corrado Dollo, 2003, Galileo Galilei e la cultura della tradizione, Rubbettino, ed., p.232).

Another occasion when they would have met would have been during the state visit of the now Cardinal Baronio, together with Cardinal Robert Bellermine, to Ferrara in 1598, as members of the court of Pope Clement VIII. The cardinals disappeared from the suite in order to take an incognito vacation in Venice and Padua. They introduced themselves to Vincenzo Pinelli, a man of letters and correspondent of Baronio, who pretended not to know the these famous cardinals without their costume, and showed Baronio Bellarmine’s portrait and Bellamine that of Baronio, extolling both of them. It was during this visit to Padua that Galileo and Baronio met again, through their mutual friend Pinelli, in which they discussed important matters of science and faith.

 Some years before these meetings, Martin Luther had condemned the Copernican theory that the earth travelled around the sun as contrary to the Scriptures. Luther called him “that madman [who] wants to throw the art of astronomy into confusion”, while going on to say, “as Sacred Scripture proves, Joshua told the sun and not the earth to stand still [Joshua 10.12-13].” On the Catholic side the question of the compatibility of Sacred Scripture with the Copernican system emgered more clearly, at least for most scholars, although some in the Dominican Order viewed the theory of Copernicus and Galileo with suspicion, standing as it did against the received idea of the universe as presented by Aristotle and taken up by St Thomas, the significant authorities for the Order.

Other writers, less bound to the Aristotelian cosmos and scriptural literalism, and having authorites other than St Thomas, were able to use older and more sophisticated ways of the interpretation of Sacred Scripture to reconcile the seemingly rival claims of science and religion. Those earlier ways of interpreting the Sacred Scriptures had been developed by the Fathers in a pre-modern or classical age. They taught that as well as a literal sense, the Scriptures also have an allegorical sense, which shows how various things and people point towards the Paschal Mystery of Christ; a moral sense, which shows how the events help us to live virtuous lives; and an analogical sense, which points towards heaven and the last things.

Among the writers who were influenced by these earlier modes of interpretation were Baronio and some of the Jesuits at the Roman College, who were interested in working with Galileo’s theories. With them some Dominicans, like the Spaniard Melichor Cano, took the scriptures used by the Protestants who argued against Galileo, and showed that they had to be understood in their historio-scientific context and should not used as scientific proof texts centuries later (De locis theologicis, 7.3).

In this they returned to the teaching of St Augustine who affirmed in his Commentary on the Book of Genesis, the importance of keeping distinct religious truths that are guaranteed by divine revelation as the object of faith and are thus for salvation, from those which are of other distinct categories. He taught that when dealing with particularly difficult questions, and above all astronomical questions, one should never cause confusion by invoking the authority of Scripture on a purely mathematical matter. Sacred Scripture is not intended as a substitute for scientific theses, “We do not read in the Gospel that the Lord said, ‘I will send the Paraclete to teach you the course of the sun and the moon’, in fact He wanted to create Christians not mathematicians” (De actis contra Felicem manichaeum, 1.10). St Thomas too was to rule out the invocation of the authority of Sacred Scripture when dealing with questions related purely to the natural sciences (De caelo et mundo, 2.17).

The place of Baronio in the middle of this controversial world of the end of the end of the sixteenth century, and the strong impression he made on the mind of Galileo, demonstrates the necessity of solid scholarship and its clear expression. Often the world of scientific scholarship seems at odds with the claims of faith, Sacred Scripture and revealed dogma. In fact this is not the case, but it is essential to know the limits of each discipline, and the modest contribution which each may make to the other.

 The Oratorian Cardinal Baronio in his day, like the Oratorian Cardinal Newman in his, found themselves dealing with similar questions around the relationship between science, reason and faith. In this 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the similarites of the problems and misunderstandings facing the Christian engaged in the scientific world are striking. Baronio and Newman maintained the rights, duties and limits of each discipline, and both helped Christians to understand and articulate their life of faith clearly in the modern or post-classical world. Here faith and reason, religious belief and the natural sciences, have been split into distinct operations and disciplines, and as we noted, are often set aginst each other. They spoke to the world on these matters as Oratorians, living and working in the centre of important cities, in daily contact with minds and hearts. Their churches were not built away from the centres as a challenge against the world, arrogant signs of a ‘higher’ counter-culture, or as ghettos of the frightened faithful, but in the centre of the city where grace can influence minds and hearts, always seeking what is good, true and beautiful in the world around them in an unobtrusive and gentle way.

This picture was taken recently, opposite the Holy Name by the Manchester University museum, and it indicates the proper relationship that ought to exist between the claims of science and those of religion. Both coexist in the same locality in their proper spheres, speaking truthful language that is proper to them. What is important is that they should not be viewed as an either/or controversy; The Autobiography of St Therese should not be used as a text book in the Natural Science department, and the the works of Darwin should not replace the Sacred Scriptures. However, both can norm the other: the saint gestures to the ’sacrifice of self’ which is needed for supernatural flourishing; and the the scientist maintains that it is here and now in our biological nature that God gives his grace, warning of flights of fancy in the language of religious experience which is often simply self-indulgence, and so avoiding the usual temptation of the religiously inclined to dis-incarnate the ‘higher’ soul from the ‘lower’ body.

It is in the Christian scientist and mathematician, in the context we have been discussing, that these two forces should operate. She will possess the grammar of the Word, the Author of all things true, spiritually and temporally, in faith and in science, in such a way as to move freely and harmoniously in both spheres. This can be said of the Christian thinker in most branches of the academy; the one who holds together in a sophisticated, logical way, what would be placed conflictually by less nuanced thinkers.

So, both the Venerable Cardinal Baronio and the Venerable Cardinal Newman through their example, writings and prayers can help us in our day, loaded with similar concerns and pitfalls. They can help us to be faithful both to the rights of faith and the rights of scientific study, which should not fight each other by misapplying categories from one to the other, but should be modest in their claims, showing in their own fields the Author of all things.

 

Fr Christopher Hilton

 

 

In a later article we will look how Cardinal Newman showed that the Christian can have certitude in matters of faith, against the seeming monopoly of scientific reasoning. Here we will use his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), which he wrote to help the Christian scholar, and all believers, to understand how we hold the claims of faith.

 

 

Statue of St Philip Neri

 

We have been extremely fortunate to have received a beautiful statue of St Philip. It is from the old church of our Lady St Mary and St Philip, Radcliffe in north Manchester. Fr Manock, the parish priest, has built a new church, with a new shrine to St Philip, and he has generously given the old statue to the Holy Name.

The statue was made by Mr Alberti in 1911, who also carved the marble statues in the church. It shows him in his habit, which is slightly opened at the chest. St Philip kept his habit open from the tremendous heat he felt around his heart after the Holy Spirit entered into him during a night of prayer in the catacombs around the Feast of Pentecost. Often St Philip would hold penitents to his breast, allowing them to feel sensibly the heat of God’s love from them. The extremely forceful beating of his heart sometimes shook the bench where he knelt, such was his fervour for heavenly things.

Now in the church we have statues of four saints who were canonised together; St Philip, St Ignatius, St Francis Xavier and St Teresa of Avila. All we need now is one of St Isidore Agricola, who was declared to be a saint in the same ceremony in 1622, to complete the quintet.