In 1860 came the emancipation of the States of the Church by Cavour and
Victor Emmanuel. Newman referred to the Piedmontese as 'sacrilegious
robbers,' but his advocacy of the temporal power was not strong enough
to please the Vatican, while the strength of Manning's language left
nothing to be desired. Newman became more unpopular than ever. His
reputation suffered by his former connection with the _Rambler_ and his
supposed connection with the _Home and Foreign Review_, which Acton
intended to represent the views of progressive Catholics, till it also
was snuffed out by the hierarchy. The five years from 1859 to 1864 are
considered by Mr. Ward to have been the saddest in Newman's life. He
felt, truly enough, that the dominant party had no sympathy with his
aims, and that he was treated as 'some wild incomprehensible beast, a
spectacle for Dr. Wiseman to exhibit to strangers, as himself being the
hunter who captured it.' 'All through my life I have been plucked,' he
writes to an old Oxford friend. There was even in his mind at this time
a wistful yearning after the friends and the Church that he had left--a
feeling, doubtless transient, but significant, which his biographer has
allowed to show itself in a few pages of his book. After reminding
himself, in his diary, of the warning against those who, after putting
their hand to the plough, 'look back,' he proceeds to look back, because
he cannot help it.
'I live more and more in the past, and in hopes that the
past may revive in the future.... I think, as death comes
on, his cold breath is felt on soul as on body, and that,
viewed naturally, my soul is half dead now, whereas then [in
his Protestant days] it was in the freshness and fervour of
youth.... I say the same of my state of mind from 1834 to
1845, when I became a Catholic. It is a time past and
gone--it relates to a work done and over. "Quis mihi
tribuat, ut sim iuxta menses pristinos, secundum dies,
quibus Deus custodiebat me? Quando splendebat lucerna eius
super caput meum, et ad lumen eius ambulabam in tenebris?"
... I have no friend at Rome; I have laboured in England, to
be misrepresented, backbitten and scorned. I have laboured
in Ireland, with a door ever shut in my face....
Contemporaneously with this neglect on the part of those for
whom I laboured, there has been a drawing towards me on the
part of Protestants. Those very books and labours which
Catholics did not understand, Protestants did. I am under
the temptation of looking out for, if not courting,
Protestant praise.... What I wrote as a Protestant has had
far greater power, force, meaning, success, than my Catholic
works.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account