Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

From almost the very beginning of his public life, Dr. Newman, as well as Dr. Pusey, appeared to many of us as cowards and traitors in the Protestant camp, whose object was to betray the church which was feeding them, and which they were sworn to defend. They both seemed to us to be skillful but dishonest conspirators.

Dr. Newman, caught in the very act of that conspiracy, has boldly denied it. Brought before the tribunal of public opinion as a traitor who, though enrolled under the banners of the Church of England, was giving help and comfort to its foe, the Church of Rome, he has published a remarkable book under the title of “Apologia pro vita sua,” to exculpate himself. I hold in my hands the New York edition of 1865. Few men will read that book from beginning to end; and still fewer will understand it at its first reading. The art of throwing dust in the eyes of the public is brought to perfection in that work. I have read many books in my long life, but I have never met with anything like the Jesuit ability shown by Dr. Newman in giving a color of truth to the most palpable errors and falsehoods. I have had to read it at least four times, with the utmost attention, before being sure of having unlocked all its dark corners and sophistries.

That we may be perfectly fair towards Dr. Newman, let us forget what his adversaries have written against him, and let us hear only what he says in his own defence. Here it is. I dare say that his most bitter enemies could never have been able to write a book so damaging against him as this one which he has given us for his apology.

Let me tell the reader at once that I, with many other priests of Rome, felt at first an unspeakable joy at the reading of many of the “Tracts for the Times.” It is true that we keenly felt the blows Dr. Newman was giving us now and then; but we were soon consoled by the more deadly blows which he was striking at his own Church—the Church of England. Besides that, it soon became evident that the more he was advancing in his controversial work, the nearer he was coming to us. We were not long without saying to each other: “Dr. Newman is evidently, though secretly, for us; he is a Roman Catholic at heart, and will soon join us. It is only from want of moral courage and honesty that he remains a Protestant.”

But from the very beginning there was a cloud in my mind, and in the minds of many other of my co-priests, about him. His contradictions were so numerous, his sudden transitions from one side to the other extreme, when speaking of Romanism and Anglicanism; his eulogiums of our Church to-day, and his abuses of it the very next day; his expressions of love and respect for his own Church in one tract, so suddenly followed by the condemnation of her dearest doctrines and practices in the next, caused many others as well as myself to suspect that he had no settled principles, or faith in any religion.

What was my surprise, when reading this strange book, I found that my suspicions were too well founded; that Dr. Newman was nothing else than one of those free-thinkers who had no real faith in any of the sacred dogmas he was preaching, and on which he was writing so eloquently! What was my astonishment when, in 1865, I read in his own book, the confession made by that unfortunate man that he was nothing else but a giant weathercock, when the whole people of England were looking upon him as one of the most sincere and learned ministers of the Gospel! Here is his own confession, pages 111, 112. Speaking of the years he had spent in the Episcopal Church as a minister, he says: “Alas! It was my portion, for whole years, to remain without any satisfactory basis for my religious profession; in a state of moral sickness, neither able to acquiesce in Anglicanism, nor able to go to Rome!” This is Cardinal Newman, painted by himself! He tells us how miserable he was when an Episcopalian minister, by feeling that his religion had no basis, no foundation!

What is a preacher of religion who feels that he has no basis, no foundation, no reason to believe in that religion? Is he not that blind man of whom Christ speaks, “who leads other blind men into the ditch?”

Note it is not Rev. Charles Kingsley; it is not any of the able Protestant controversialists: it is not even the old Chiniquy, who says that Dr. Newman was nothing else but an unbeliever, when the Protestant people were looking upon him as one of their most pious and sincere Christian theologians. It is Dr. Newman himself who, without suspecting it, is forced by the marvellous Providence of God, to reveal that deplorable fact in his “Apologia pro vita sua.”

Now what was the opinion entertained by him of the high and low sections of his church? Here are his very words, page 91: “As to the High Church and the Low Church, I thought that the one had not much more of a logical basis than the other; while I had a thorough contempt for the Evangelical!” But please observe that when this minister of the Church of England had found, with the help of Dr. Pusey, that this church had no logical basis, and that he had a “thorough contempt for the Evangelical,” he kept a firm and continuous hold upon the living which he was enjoying from day to day. Nay, it is when paid by his church to preach her doctrines and fight her battles that he set at work to raise another church! Of course the new church was to have a firm basis on logic, history and the Gospel; the new church was to be worthy of the British people, it was to be the modern ark to save the perishing world!

The reader will perhaps think I am joking, and that I am caricaturing Dr. Newman. No! the hour in which we live is too solemn to be spent in jokes—it is rather with tears and sobs that we must approach the subject. Here are the very words of Dr. Newman about the new church he wished to build after demolishing the Church of England as established by law. He says (page 116): “I have said enough on what I consider to have been the general objects of the various works which I wrote, edited, or prompted in the years which I am reviewing. I wanted to bring out in a substantive form a living Church of England, in a position proper to herself, and founded on distinct principles; as far as paper could do it, and as earnestly preaching it and influencing others toward it, could tend to make it in fact;—a living church, made of flesh and blood, with voice, complexion, motion and action, and a will of its own.” (The italics are mine.) If I had not said that these words were written by Dr. Newman, would the reader have suspected it?