Newman’s brand of liberalism

I was reading the review of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s new biography, Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint by John Cornwell, in the London Book Review. The reviewer, Professor Terry Eagleton, one of my favourite contemporary thinkers, says: “Newman was aware that he was regarded in some circles as a saint, but thought he was quite unworthy of the honour.”

We know that the Catholic Church has throughout the ages regarded humility as one of the signs of sainthood, which is why it is not surprising that Pope Benedict is taking the process of Cardinal Newman’s canonisation to its penultimate step by beatifying him. The other requirement of a posthumous miracle has also been reported in the US. Among the things Newman thought would count against his saintliness was the fact that he was a “literary man”.

Cardinal Newman’s writings had tremendous influence on unlikely characters, such as James Joyce, who thought Newman had one of the most polished writing styles in English. I concur. I find Newman’s arguments eloquently put, in a clean classical style which is as attractive as it is persuasive. Eagleton seems amused by the biographer’s tendency to force the virtues of secularism on Cardinal Newman, at the expense of his religious convictions – making much more of how he wrote than what he wrote about. Still Eagleton finds the new biography refreshing because of the fact that it is not preoccupied with the cardinal’s supposed sexual orientation, casting its interests wider than other contemporary analysts have managed.

Eagleton says the cardinal was “first and foremost a writer” whose genius lay in “creating new ways of imagining and writing about religion”. Additionally, Newman was a writer of internalised morals, but I suppose that was left out for the sake of appeasing a readership that takes interest only in works with no religious overtones. Newman doubtless believed literature – great literature – refines our sensibilities, deepens our understanding of human nature and sharpens our moral acuity.

I’ve observed many biographers flounder when it comes to explaining Cardinal Newman’s political and religious beliefs. The closest they get is labelling him a conservative, which illuminates nothing. This seems to me because they start at the wrong end of the analysis, and do not attempt to define the meaning of the terms they talk about. There are basically three major liberal strands of thought over the past several hundred years: utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill), contractual or “procedural” liberalism, and liberalism grounded more deeply in Aristotelian theories of virtue. The last is a distinctly minority viewpoint close to Newman’s beliefs. It stresses the importance of group solidarity without falling prey to igniting ethnic and religious tensions.

Virtuous liberalism puts into a balancing mixture what is good about liberal ideals, like religious tolerance, equality before the law, and representative democracy. Further still, it assumes and seeks to affirm a dense network of social relations we in Africa know as ubuntu. What I think confounds many people about the likes of Newman is that he’s also what is referred to as a “soft anti-liberal”. Soft, because they verbally malign liberalism yet, when faced with practical choices, reveal a surprising fondness for its protection of individual freedoms.

Because virtuous liberals are also almost always against the erosion of social memory (injustice through the back door), you are likely to find them standing with the poor and oppressed, advocating major assaults on economic inequality, for example. This explains why, though Newman was not a socialist, he did not encourage the elite privilege of his birthright, which led to him founding the Literary and Historical Society while he was rector of the newly established Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin, that opened up tertiary education for the under-privileged.

Since I found the last biography of Newman a little too heavy on elaboration and light on evidence for my taste, I look forward to reading Cornwell’s, especially since Cardinal Newman was a tremendous influence in my conversion to Catholicism.