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Moving Cardinal Newman's body runs into controversy
Aug. 22, 2008
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Cardinal John Henry NewmanThe Catholic church’s attempt to exhume and quietly move the body of Cardinal John Henry Newman has run into controversy, with some saying Newman’s dying wishes are being ignored.
Church officials plan to move Newman’s remains from a grave in a small cemetery in the English town of Rednal to the Oratory church in the city of Birmingham where it will be transferred to a marble sarcophagus and can be venerated by pilgrims.
Newman wrote in his will that he wanted to be buried in the same grave as his longtime friend and spiritual companion, Fr. Ambrose St. John, whom Newman describes as the one great love of his life.
Newman was an Anglican priest who led the Oxford movement in the 1830s to draw Anglicans to their Catholic roots. He converted to Catholicism at the age of 44 after a succession of clashes with Anglican bishops made him a virtual outcast from the Church of England. He died in 1890.
Church officials say the Vatican Congregation for Saints’ Causes wants Newman’s body to be moved into a setting that befits his status as a potential saint. His beatification is expected to be announced later this year.
But British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell has described the removal “an act of religious desecration and moral vandalism.”
In an interview with Ecumenical News International, Tatchell said, “Newman repeatedly made it clear that he wanted to be buried next to his life-long partner, Ambrose St John. No one gave the pope permission to defy Newman’s wishes.
“The re-burial has only one aim in mind: to cover up Newman’s homosexuality and to disavow his love for another man. It is an act of shameless dishonesty and personal betrayal by the gay-hating Catholic Church,” Tatchell said.
Ambrose St. JohnWhether Newman and St. John’s relationship was an actively sexual one has never been clear, but it was indisputably intimate.
After St John’s death in 1875, Newman wrote: “I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or wife’s, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or anyone’s sorrow greater than mine.”
St. John was also an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism and joined Newman at the Oratory in Birmingham. (The Oratory of Saint Philip Neri is a congregation of Catholic priests and lay-brothers who live together in a community bound together by no formal vows but only with the bond of charity. Newman founded the Oratory in Birmingham in 1848.)
Their burial in the same grave was Newman’s emphatic wish, expressed in a note he wrote July 23, 1876, to Fr. William Neville, his literary executor. The note reads: “I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Fr. Ambrose St. John’s grave – and I give this my last, my imperative will.”
It is the same note in which he dictates what would become his motto: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (from shadows and images into truth).
The depth of Newman’s and St. John’s relationship is detailed in scholarly work on “loving coupledom,” titled The Friend by Allen Bray (University of Chicago Press, 2003). The Friend was named book of the year in 2004 by History Today, and received an Award for Excellence from the American Academy of Religion.
One chapter of The Friend focuses on Newman and St. John. In it, Bray, a gay rights activist and respected British historian, explores the published works as well as memoirs, sermon notes and journals of Newman and his contemporaries. With this he reveals the intensity of Newman’s feelings for St. John.
Newman was overwhelmed with grief at St. John’s death. He wrote: “This is the greatest affliction I have had in my life” and later: “a day does not pass without my having violent bursts of crying and they weaken me, I dread them.”
Newman dedicated his Apologia to St. John:
Bray concludes of Newman and St. John: “Their bond was spiritual. … Their love was not the less intense for being spiritual. Perhaps it was the more so.”
Burial with St. John was not Newman’s only wish, according to Bray. He found in one of Newman’s manuscripts a sketch of a grave site that shows “a-s-j” buried below him and “e” and “jospeh” on either side. At the actual site in Rednal, Newman’s casket rests on St. John’s and between Edward Caswall and Joseph Gordon, two men who joined Newman’s Oratory in its earliest days. All preceded him in death.
Bray then tells this story:
“Newman’s room in the Oratory at Brimingham [is] exactly as Newman left it when he died in 1890. At the far side of the room is the altar where Newman (as a cardinal) said Mass, with the pictures of friends that he would remember at his Mass on the wall beside the altar. There one can see the pictures of Joseph Gordon, Ambrose St. John and Edward Caswall. These were as he put it, ‘The three who from the first threw in their lot with me, from the moment they could do so.’ “
Church Times, a London-based Anglican newspaper, is conducting an online poll, asking the question: “Should Cardinal Newman’s remains be moved?” As this story was being posted the Church Times‘ poll was running 22 percent in favor of moving the body and 78 percent against.
You can vote in the poll here: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/question.asp?id=61972.
(Dennis Coday is an NCR staff writer. His e-mail address is dcoday@ncronline.org.)
I appreciate this
I appreciate this well-researched and balanced account of the controversy, as well as the link to the poll.
I'm intrigued by the group Catholic Action UK, which has attacked Peter Tatchell and which characterizes his critique of the removal of Newman's body as a typical homosexual trick.
I wonder if anyone knows where the funding of this group comes from? I notice that they have a website, which has condemned Amnesty International. Catholic Action UK also produce a Catholic voters' guide that sounds very much like the one produced in the U.S. last election cycle, whose source of funding was mysterious.
Besides the older ones,
Besides the older ones, newer oratories have sprung up, now being joined by diocesan priests. I asked a priest acquaintance about them because I had learned that a pastor of a church I once attended had joined an oratory. The priest I spoke with merely shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject. Have these associations become a gathering place for clerics who have an alternate life-style? I'm not sure what purpose the oratories serve except to provide an opportunity for priests who share the same culture to associate without outside interference. This seems rather divisive since it excludes priests with other views. While in college, I had an opportunity to join a fraternity, but didn't because I found them to be clannish. These oratories strike me as being the same. Has anyone any further information or ideas about oratories, old and new?
Typical gay beat up.
Typical gay beat up. Tatchell says that "Newman repeatedly made it clear that he wanted to be buried next to his life-long partner ... No one gave the pope permission to defy Newman’s wishes." As a cardinal Newman, pledged his obedience to the Pope. The Pope is defying Tatchell's political gay agenda rather than Newman's wishes.
The Oratories are generally
The Oratories are generally centers of traditionalism, take for instance the Brompton Oratory. They are great beacons of hope for liturigical sanity, not bath houses.
As to Cardinal Newman and his friend, can't two men be intimate without any homosexuality or sodomy being involved? How dare someone insinuate that the great Cardinal was living in sin with another priest. Friendship can be very deep indeed, with no alterior goings on.
You seem to have missed a
You seem to have missed a point that the author actually not only admitted but stressed: “Their bond was spiritual. … Their love was not the less intense for being spiritual. Perhaps it was the more so.”
If Cardinal Newman's remains
If Cardinal Newman's remains are moved to Birmingham so that more pilgrims can come and pray at his tomb, it still is possible to keep his last wishes: by moving the remains of the two friends and keeping them together in the new gravesite.
The ostensible reason church
The ostensible reason church authorities are given for violating Newman's explicit burial wishes is to make his body more accessible for veneration.
I remember last year reading a moving NCR article by John Dear about a pilgrimage he'd made to the grave of Blessed Franz Jaeggerstaetter (www.fatherjohndear.org/NCR_Articles/Feb6_07.html).
Dear notes that he had difficulty finding the grave and the Jaeggerstaetter house, because there are no signposts or markers.
I take it that Franz Jaeggerstaetter is buried in a simple parish cemetery with other members of his family around him, and that his widow will be buried there, too.
Will Jaeggerstaetter's body be exhumed and removed from its place beside his wife, one day, so that we may venerate him more easily?
Regardless of whether or not
Regardless of whether or not Cardinal Newman was gay his body should remain where it was originally buried. It seems a kind of sacriledge to go against his wishes and move it to Birmingham.
My own sentiments are the
My own sentiments are the same as those of Jeremy Taylor
regarding this issue. However I do wonder how Cardinal Newman
himself would have thought about this matter in the current circumstances?
Would he have subscribed to the authority of the Pope despite his
deep spiritual love for his friends?
If Cardinal Newman's remains
If Cardinal Newman's remains are moved to Birmingham so that more pilgrims can make a pilgrimage at his tomb, then the Catholic Church can make more money for its coffers. How egregiously wicked!
Even if Newman was
Even if Newman was homosexual by orientation I think the depth of love and intimacy in the writings suggests to me something beyond the carnal drives of the conspicous prevalent gay culture in our times. If the world could only have more people - priest no priest - evincing such depth of love and intimacy the taste of the good life would be so savoring! I would support what Tatchell said, “The re-burial has only one aim in mind: to cover up Newman’s homosexuality and to disavow his love for another man. It is an act of shameless dishonesty and personal betrayal by the gay-hating Catholic Church”. I do not think Pope John Paul II's wishes for his burial would have been ignored and been different. In addition to Tatchell views, I believe the transfer of Newman's mortal remains for "pray and veneration" is just the Catholic Church pilgrimage industry for your money.
And, as about the viewpoint that Oratories "provide an opportunity for priests who share the same culture to associate without outside interference" I have known by first hand experience some truth in that viewpoint. But, I also think it is not just oratories where it happens. I am aware of priests who "party" in groups with intoxications to be happy and gay - you understand what I mean? It is not just in college dorms that there is chemically induced sex! A friend from VA sent me a blog website www.arichmondvoice.blogspot.com which has glimpses of truth about our bishops and priest.
Anyone who has read
Anyone who has read 'Apologia' and other works of Newman will realize that he was celibate whatever his orientation. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Newsome's book 'The Parting of Friends' It may surprise Gay lobbyists to find that soldiers on the battlefield in both world wars (and probably all other wars) were known to weep bitterly for their lost 'mates' or 'buddies' and who would be horrified at the thought that they may have been regarded as homosexual. Does genuine male to male friendship always have to be seen as suspicious? Women can have deep and intimate friendships with other women (and indeed have a great need for them) without them being regarded as sexual.
Some of the people posting
Some of the people posting comments are clearly missing the point by assuming gay=sex (and more specifically that gay=a specific sex act). This knee-jerk response ignores the substance of the controversy: the two men loved each other, regardless of how they expressed that, and the Church is showing a marked disrespect for the dignity of the individual by ignoring a man's dying wish to be buried with his closest and dearest companion.
This is, I suppose, the downside of beatification or sainthood: you're treated more as a symbol or a commodity and less like a person.
It saddens me that the Gay
It saddens me that the Gay movement is trying to make this a Gay issue. They keep losing creditability in my opinion. Friends, male or female, can be over-whelmed at the loss of each other. Only one comment picked up on "their bond was spiritual."
Edward wrote on 8/22, "As a
Edward wrote on 8/22, "As a cardinal, Newman pledged his obedience to the Pope."
Yes, and Newman is dead!
So what does "obedience" have to do with this issue?
Surely, the British courts can prevent this grave attempt by the Church to ignore the decedent's wishes.
Anyone in the least familiar
Anyone in the least familiar with the life and works of Cardinal Newman, will know a man of exquisite sensivity, a man often misunderstood and who for many years lived "under a cloud" of suspition both as an Anglican and a Catholic. None of Newman's forty two volumes reveals the intensity of his pain, although several of letters may do so. Most of his dreams did not see the light of day: A truly Catholic University, translation of the Bible, the Oxford Project, etc. However, Newman was blessed with the grace of a friend who loved, respected, understood and assisted him in any way he could--Ambrose St. John. For some thirty years Ambrose St. John not only supported Newman emotionally as only a friend can do, but also researched, proofread and translated for him. St.JOhn, though always a faithful disciple of Newman. never sought the lime light. I am inclined to believe that just as Newman would agree with Pope Benedict's wish to relocate his body, evem moreso would Ambrose St. John heartily agree, but would prefer remaining at Rednal.
N.B. I am not adverse to having this printed as letter "To the Editor" with my name George Auger, C.S.V.
Surely, in the situation,
Surely, in the situation, the best answer would be for the mountain to come to Mohammad.
Why not expand the little church-yard to be a shrine.
Surely this way, you bring G_d to the people, and not drag the people to G_d.
Is that not the best expression of evangelization?
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