Blogging about books obviously includes blogging – occasionally – about booklets. These can be very useful sources of information, as any scanning of CTS stands in church porches will testify. I have just read Fr Ian Ker’s CTS booklet, Newman, His Life and Legacy. At £2.50 it is well worth the price and covers so many of the important landmarks in Newman’s life and thought that it makes it easy for me to pretend to an expertise about him that I do not possess. Among other things, I learnt that Newman’s Tamworth Reading Room was a riposte to a speech by Sir Robert Peel suggesting the replacement of religion by education and knowledge as the moral basis of a new pluralist society. How modern Peel sounds: today we have education, knowledge, pluralism – and very little morality.
However, what I wanted to single out in Fr Ker’s little essay was the common sense and clarity he brings to bear on the question of Newman and his male friends. He writes that since it became current knowledge that Newman’s wish was to be buried with his fellow Oratorian, Ambrose St John, “there was widespread speculation in the international media that there might have been some kind of homosexual relationship between the two friends. In an age that has almost lost the concept of affectionate friendship untouched by sexual attraction, such speculation was no doubt inevitable.” Fr Ker briefly discusses the Victorians, friendship, joint burials and Newman’s recognition of the sacrifice celibacy would entail. It is well worth reading.
It is also a necessary rebuttal. Last week I chanced to listen to a play about Newman on BBC Radio 4 called Gerontius in which the role of Newman was played by Derek Jacobi. It had nothing to do with the soul’s progress towards Purgatory (not a subject to set modern listeners alight) and much to do with his burial plans and his “particular friendship”. Halfway through this breathless, melodramatic dialogue between Newman and his guardian angel, a young male voice declares: “The Roman Catholic Church is homophobic!” It is further inferred that Newman’s motto, “From shadows into the truth”, could be a disguised code for his wanting to come out of the closet. Jacobi himself, brilliant actor though he is, tends to convey a slightly fey quality in the timbre of his voice. Inevitably Newman came across as highly emotional, self-absorbed, querulous and remorseful. He expostulates: “I am an Englishman. I buried my feelings!” All the more reason to read Ker.
In this context, I’ll briefly mention C S Lewis. Not the fact that he was buried in the same grave as his brother, Warnie, but his chapter on friendship in The Four Loves. Although published in 1960 it sounds prophetic. Lewis writes: “It has actually become necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.” I won’t quote more as it would take too long, but as always Lewis brings great insight and intelligence to bear. The whole book is a classic and I understand was a favourite of the late John Paul II.
I’ll conclude with a remark made by a member of the Birmingham Oratory, Fr Dermot Fenlon, to a young chap I know who is thinking of becoming a Catholic: “When we truly love Christ, we become alike, in our opinions, our pursuits and our behaviour.” This, I think, was the bond between Newman and his friends.
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