Newman: A Man of Heart and Mind
University College-Private Garden of the Master' 1903 by John Fulleylove
When John Henry Newman was elected a cardinal in 1897 he chose the episcopal motto “Cor ad Cor loquitur” (heart speaks to heart). Deciphering the meaning of the motto seems at first glance an elusive task, particularly considering how the saint is remembered by many today. Far from being remembered as a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, Newman is instead remembered (at least in Catholic circles) as being an intellectual powerhouse. The joke went around before his canonisation was that the reason for its delay was that people were so busy quoting Newman they forgot to pray to him!
That Newman had a towering intellect cannot be denied. His lectures on the Idea of a University, which he delivered in Dublin, are arguably the best counterpoint to the ideology of moral relativism which prevails in many universities today. Newman’s academic rigour is also seen in Apologia Pro Vita Sua particularly in how he eviscerates Charles Kingsley’s contentions against him and in the compelling way in which he argues that the Via Media was built on sand. Newman is also cherished by many as a literary genius and his works even led James Joyce to claim that he was a literary great (albeit through the lens of his alter-ego Stephen Dedalus).
There are other reasons why Newman’s choice of motto may seem rather strange. Newman was not prone to getting carried away by sentiment. In his relationship with the English Church as a youth he notes “I felt affection for my own Church, but not tenderness.” Prior to his conversion, like many Anglicans, he was aghast at the gushing devotional practices Roman Catholics made to the Blessed Virgin: “sentiment and taste do not run with logic: they are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England” (even after his conversion he notes he is reluctant to venerate the Virgin in that particular way). Even, when he eventually made the leap of faith to the Catholic Church, he did not succumb to an ecstasy of emotions. Rather he narrates that nothing much had changed, but at the same time felt a deep interior peace:
I have had no variations to record, and have no anxiety of heart whatever. […] 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.
However, although the Apologia is dominated by his story of how he gradually saw that the Roman Church was the true Church, his ultimate decision to convert was not based purely on abstract reasoning but was something that transcended logic and that his heart dictated he must do. This is evident when Newman seems to rebut the idea his journey was determined simply by logic:
“For myself, it was not logic that carried me on; as well one might say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the weather. It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years and I find my mind in a new place; how? the whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it”.
Probably the most important points on his journey to the “Roman Church” was when God made a profound impression on his heart while he was praying. It was when he was “sola cum solo” with God during a recollection, that he learned that venerating the saints and the Blessed Virgin was not an obstacle in finding God but a way of showing one’s love for Him:
“The command practically enforced was, “My son, give Me thy heart.” The devotions then to Angels and Saints as little interfered with the incommunicable glory of the Eternal, as the love which we bear our friends and relations, our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent with the supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen…”
Newman’s description of how he was asked by God to give Him his heart is something that will resonate with many Catholics as it is the essence of the Christian vocation that we feel the call to love more in response to his command to: “Love one another. Another I have loved you” (Jn 13:34). In Newman’s case the demand was made on him not only to love God with his intellect but with his heart too. Indeed, without both it is scarcely possible to love Him at all. God’s mother says as much in the magnificat when she notes: “He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart” (Lk 1:51).
Another major factor in Newman’s conversion was his experience of friendship with Dr Charles Russell, who was the President of Maynooth College, the Catholic seminary in Ireland at the time. Newman recalls that ‘[h]e had, perhaps, more to do with my conversion than any one else.’ In the Apologia, Newman expresses his gratitude for the letters and books that Russell sent him but he was perhaps most taken by the refinement that Russell showed towards him: ‘[h]e sent me at different times several letters; he was always, gentle, mild, unobtrusive, uncontroversial. He let me alone. He also gave me one or two books.’ It is easy to imagine the manner in which Russell treated Newman was very powerful in convincing him to want to explore more about the Catholic faith. This is a universal experience among Catholics with faith, who are indebted to either friends or family members for passing it on.
Bearing in mind these points, it becomes easier to imagine why Newman might have chosen to base his cardinal motto on the phrase “Cor ad Cor loquitur”. At the end of his life, looking back on his conversion, he may have felt (apart from the seismic shocks he experienced when reading the Fathers of the Church) the most decisive influences in his conversion was when he felt God tugging on his heart during his prayer and also the persevering love of a close friend. These episodes spoke as much to Newman’s heart as to his mind and perhaps were what he most cherished at the end of his life.
Séan Hurley
December 2019