8 hours ago
The following is taken from pages 30-42 of this issue of The Recusant [slightly adapted and reformatted]:
The short answer is, no. There is enough to be wary of with Newman, enough to at least give any sensible Catholic pause for thought and in any case, Novus Ordo conciliar canonisations aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. These modern canonisations are proposed to us by men who don’t believe in real Saints, just as the miracles which confirm them are not real miracles and are proposed to us by men who don’t believe in real miracles. John Henry Newman is as much a Saint as Paul VI or John Paul II. The first part of this article will deal with the question of real Saints and conciliar “Saints”; the second part with Newman himself.
Part 1: When is a Saint not a Saint?
Remember that [the] Novus Ordo calendar removed many genuine Saints as though they no longer existed and were therefore no longer to be venerated. Take, for instance, the Fourteen Holy Helpers: few modern Catholics have even heard of them today, although they were venerated for centuries and were the object of widespread popular devotion across Christendom. Their feast was removed from the calendar and some of them lost individual feast days too and became in effect “un-canonised,” including some very popular Saints. That did not stop modernist Rome casting doubt on whether they had ever even existed to begin with, declaring that the stories about them were mere fables, not really worthy of belief in other words. Here, for instance, is what Paul VI’s Rome had to say concerning St. Barbara:
And similarly, concerning St. Catherine of Alexandria:
By the way, it is difficult to appreciate what is conveyed by those words “omnino fabulosa” which keep cropping up. A total fable. A complete fairytale. Not in any way true, in other words, not just an exaggeration, but a total, utter fabrication. And it is not just St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Barbara who are treated his way: St. Christopher is another example of a very popular Saint who was nonetheless removed completely from the calendar, as well as St. Dorothy, St. Pius I, and many more besides. Others, such as St. George and St. Valentine, were demoted to a commemoration in certain local places only, which had much the same effect as removing them altogether. In the motu proprio presenting his new calendar (Mysterii Paschalis, 1969), Paul VI cites - you’ve guessed it! - Vatican II as his justification, quoting the following passage from Sacrosanctum Concilium, §111:
Even the secular media has picked up on this from time to time. Here, for instance, is a 2014 article from ABC News:
Another remarkable victim of the modernists is St. Philomena. One of the most popular Saints of the last two centuries, the Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney, had a particularly strong devotion to her. She was not only removed from the calendar, but modern Rome since then has cast doubt on whether she even existed at all to being with! And yet, like St. Christopher, St. Barbara and the others she still has her own following and devotion to her is still alive and well today, despite her attempted assassination and un-canonisation by modernist unbelievers. One of the important proofs of Sainthood is a cultus, a following, and an enduring
one.
John Paul II had plenty of flatterers and sycophants while he was still alive, and he died adored and praised by the world. Not a good sign! Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were among those who attended his requiem. Hence there was no shortage of people who wanted him declared a Saint immediately (“Santo Subito!” - remember?). But a mere twenty years on, how often does one hear his name mentioned? Outside of Polish Novus Ordo Catholic parishes, is he not all-but forgotten already? And who has ever had a devotion to Paul VI or John XXIII..!? The very idea is absurd! Those men never had a cultus and never will! And yet we are asked to believe that they are Saints, by the very same modernists who tell us that St. Christopher, St. Catherine, St Philomena and others not only aren’t Saints, but weren’t even real people…? Does that sound reasonable to you? The men who openly admit that they don’t believe in real Saints are nonetheless going to tell us who is to be regarded as a Saint from now on! And whom do they propose for our veneration? Men such as John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II…! No thanks. You can keep your bogus, conciliar “Saints” - I’ll stick with the real ones, the ones which generations of our forefathers venerated for hundreds of years, thank you very much!
Regarding the details of the removal of Saints from the calendar and general “de-canonisation” which went on in the 1960s (some of which was already happening on the eve of Vatican II in the Tridentine calendar!) a great deal more could be said, but we shall not spend too long on it since it was not really meant to be the focus of this article, fascinating and horrifying though it is.
Suffice it to say that the usual suspects are not very hard to find. An article from late 2020 by one Peter Kwasniewski which appeared on the website of the conservative / novus “New Liturgical Movement” provides some interesting and useful insight on this question and is perhaps worth quoting from here briefly. Among other things, the article identifies more than 300 Saints who were removed or demoted and provides tables showing which changes were made on which days of the year. And just see how long it takes before you spot the name which you knew all along was going to pop up!
By the way, next time you visit continental Europe keep an eye out for St. Martin: you see his name everywhere. France is covered with hundreds, if not thousands of churches, chapels and shrines to him and there are dozens of villages and towns named after him in Southern Germany and Austria. In that part of the world at least, it is hard to imagine a Saint who is more deeply embedded within Catholic culture! But then, this is the infamous Fr. Annibale Bugnini and his friends whom we are talking about, so it probably shouldn’t surprise us that much…
The same article quotes the memoires of the well-known “liturgical reformer” Fr. Louis Bouyer, who was nonetheless horrified to see just how far some on his own side were taking things (also found in the excellent article by Dr Carol Byrne, here):
What is Canonisation?
Behind all this, underlying the question, is something which it is difficult to put one’s finger on, an attitude which itself is wrong. There is more than a whiff of the “because I say so” type of argument which reeks of voluntarism and nominalism. Let us remind ourselves: it is the Saint that makes the canonisation, not the canonisation which makes the Saint. Let that sink in for just a moment. Is a Saint a Saint because Rome says he’s a Saint? Or does Rome say he’s a Saint because he is one? Which comes first, the reality, or the word, the pronouncement, the description of the reality? In previous centuries canonisation was simply a matter of popular acclamation; then it was done more formally, at a diocesan level by the local bishop; in the middle ages it became something reserved to the Holy See.
Over time, the requirements understandably became stricter. The process which emerged in the modern era was something resembling a court case. The soul in question had to be proven a Saint beyond all doubt and was regarded almost as though guilty until proven innocent: not a Saint until proven a Saint. The prosecution, so to speak, was the famous advocatus diaboli. But that was not all. Several other criteria had to be met which were regarded as sine qua non, the first of which was a popular cultus among the faithful; another was some miracles. These things, if they exist, are facts. The canonisation itself was nothing more than a formal recognition of those already-existing facts.
Therefore, the real Saints are the ones who have a real following, who have worked real miracles, whom Divine Providence allows to become known and prayed-to all over the world and to become a central part of Catholic life and culture. The old, recently-removed Saints, in whom modern Rome appears no longer to believe, all pass the test with flying colours. Despite the machinations of the modernists, Catholics all over the world still give their children names such as Catherine, Philomena or Christopher; many people still pray to them, still wear their sacramentals and ask them for aid. Schools and parishes all over the world still bear their names, some of the finest artwork ever created depicts their lives and deaths and in some cases even whole nations, states or cities are under their patronage or have been named after them.
And there is no shortage of modern-day miracles either: as mentioned above, the Curé of Ars alone procured many miracles through the intercession of St. Philomena. More than eleven years ago, these pages (“On Recent Canonisations” - Recusant 16, May 2014) cast doubt on the supposed canonisations of the late popes John XXIII and John Paul II.
It was pointed out that the lives of these men were very far from being that of a Saint and that they were each a very bad example to follow. It was further pointed out that several ominous “coincidences” (if such they be) had accompanied the “canonisation” of John Paul II. The ugly bent-forwards crucifix which stood atop a hill as a memorial of his visit had suddenly collapsed, killing a man who was praying to him beneath it; that when his relics visited Lourdes, the sanctuary was soon underwater following the worst flooding in its history.
The same article suggested good reasons why one cannot simply say, “Canonisations are infallible!” and leave it at that - far from it. The object of infallibility is doctrine, that is, things to be believed by us, and necessary for our salvation. A canonisation on the other hand, is not a matter of doctrine necessary for our salvation: it is a saying that someone is a Saint, which means not only that the person in question is in heaven, but that he or she is an example which you or I can follow and learn from as a means of achieving heaven ourselves. That is why not one single baptised infant has ever been canonised, despite there being presumably tens– or even hundreds-of-thousands of candidates (newly baptised babies die all the time, there is even one in our family). They are certainly in heaven, you can pray to them, but they are never canonised, no statues of them will ever be seen in churches, no feast days in the calendar. Why? Because there is no life to follow: they died too young to give an example for anyone to follow. That is also why it is such a scandal for even the conciliar church to claim that Paul VI or John Paul II are Saints.
If that were true, then we can get to heaven is by kissing the koran, inviting pagans and devilworshippers into a Catholic church to pray to their false gods, putting statues of Buddha on top of tabernacles; punishing good men such as Marcel Lefebvre while simultaneously promoting sexual predators like Marcial Maciel or MarieDominique Philippe; suppressing the true Mass which nourished countless true Saints, and giving everyone a Masonic, Protestant communion service with a Jewish offertory prayer… we could go on. The very thought is monstrous.
So on the question of a cultus, a genuine following and devotion among the faithful, the real, old-fashioned Saints win hands down, despite the disadvantage of their having been removed from calendars, their demotion and all the rest. The conciliar Vatican II “Saints” usually have little or no cultus, despite the fact that it always used to be regarded as a sine qua non, an essential prerequisite to becoming a Saint.
Likewise, on the question of leading a life of heroic virtue, a life which is such a good example that if followed by you and I it will lead us to heaven too, we see the same thing. Many of these the conciliar “Saints” (the conciliar Popes, Faustina, Escriva, et al.) fail spectacularly. Their lives were such that they would never, could never have been canonised before Vatican II. The real Saints, by contrast, led such exemplary lives that many today find it hard to believe and doubt is cast not only on their lives and deaths, but even on their very existence.
The soundness of their teaching is something which will no doubt be at the forefront of the minds of many readers, and so it should be. Unsound teaching, let alone actual heresy, is something which in saner times meant that an investigation into the candidate’s life could not go ahead, never mind the beatification or canonisation itself, as the John Vennari article makes clear elsewhere in these pages. Strictly speaking, the false teaching of these bogus “Saints” is itself enough to say with certainty that they are not Saints. But since many of our acquaintance will not accept that, and since many of us will at some point experience doubt or scruples, let us continue to spell it out in detail. Miracles are the last thing to consider.
A real canonisation in the old days used to require two miracles, after all the other criteria had been met. Two genuine miracles. The new, bogus “canonisations” require only one, and often it is a “miracle” of highly dubious quality. Again, refer to the John Vennari article elsewhere in these pages to see details of the “miracle” used for Mother Theresa: it was as dodgy as a nine-bob note, the doctors involved and even the lady’s husband said it wasn’t a miracle!
In previous years, these pages have contained a close-up look into other conciliar “miracles”- long-time readers might recall our examination of the Buenos Aires “eucharistic miracle” from the 1990s (in Recusant 34, p.26) and that it most certainly did not stand up to close scrutiny! We have neither the time, nor the resources, nor even the patience to examine each and every so-called “miracle” approved by the conciliar authorities, but should it be necessary? How many definitely bogus “miracles” do we need to see until we decide to treat them all with extreme caution? Finally let us consider this. The men approving these “miracles” don’t believe in actual real miracles, even when they are contained in Sacred Scripture! The feeding of the five-thousand? No, you see, what the gospel-writer wished to emphasise in telling this story was that the real miracle was when everyone learned to share. The crossing of the Red Sea? No, you see it was really called the “Reed Sea” because it was like a marsh… Those are things I have heard from conciliar priests with my own ears (as have many of you too, no doubt). We could go on. The point to bear in mind here is this. Just as we are being asked to accept new “Saints” from men who don’t believe in real Saints, we also are being asked to believe in bogus “miracles” by men who cast doubt on real miracles.
In case all of that is all a bit much to remember, below is a handy table for ease of reference! It is of course worth remembering that the other scandal regarding conciliar “canonisations” is the sheer number. John Paul II earned a reputation as a veritable “Saint factory,” canonising hundreds in one go. His successors are no better. Not only does this practice severely damage the prestige and credibility of the Church in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, it also defeats the very point of a canonisation: how can you possibly have a devotion to these new “Saints” when it would take forever just to read their names, never mind learn a bit about
them? The whole point of Saints is that they are held out to us as an example to follow; you can’t hold out a couple of hundred examples in one go and expect to be taken seriously.
But beyond that, it has yet another unfortunate side-effect, in that it means that many genuine Saints may well be mixed in with the conciliar “Saints.” The first canonisation done by Pope Francis, for instance, was of more than 800 people in one go. They were the inhabitants of Otranto who were killed by the Turks in 1480 for refusing to convert to Islam: martyrs. At a cursory glance, it may well be that some or all of them really are martyrs, and therefore Saints.
But can we be certain? And which ones? Does anyone have the time or patience to try to find out? To take one more example, in 2001 John Paul II canonised a group of 233 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Again, there were many Catholics who died for the Faith at the hands of the communists at that time, so it is not inconceivable that at least some of them, many of them even, are genuine Saints and martyrs. But again, doesn’t it just leave one frustrated and demoralised? How certain can anyone be that there wasn’t the odd semi-degenerate “rightwinger” whom the reds rounded up with a load of Catholics into the same firing-squad and buried in the same pit? So the answer is it is probably a mixture, but very difficult to say.
And then there are men such as Padre Pio. Well, they couldn’t very well not canonise him, could they? They know full well that his presence in amongst all those other conciliar “Saints” will lend them credibility. And what about the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales? Well, they were of course martyrs at the hands of the English Protestant regime, they were beatified in 1929 and most of the work for their canonisations was surely done before the Council, so despite the fact that the actual canonisation wasn’t done until 1970, surely one can take them as being genuine Saints who were always going to be canonised, even had Vatican II and the crisis in the Church never happened.
We could go on, but all this really means is that the conciliar “Saints” are a bit of a mixed bag, to put it mildly. Some unmistakably genuine Saints have probably been given a conciliar “canonisation” (what an insult to them - they’ll need to be given a real canonisation when the crisis is over!). Then there are others who may well have been Saints. Then there are a lot of highly dubious “Saints” and finally there are those who are definitely not Saints. So a conciliar canonisation doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is a Saint. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t a Saint either. What a mess.
Where does Newman fit into all this?
All of which is by way of demonstrating that just because the conciliar church says that Newman is a Saint, that doesn’t really mean anything. It means is that he is somewhere on the spectrum of conciliar Saints, somewhere between Padre Pio at one end and Paul VI at the other. Newman may not be a Paul VI, but he may not necessarily be a Padre Pio either. So what are we to make of him? It doesn’t help that he has long been someone whom all sides seem to be trying to claim. The liberals and modernists claim that he is one of them. The “conservatives” of various sorts say that the liberals are twisting things and that really, Newman is on their side. Readers of a certain age who made their way out of the Novus Ordo to Tradition may well be reminded of similar debates which used to surround John Paul II and Benedict XVI while they were alive and on the papal throne. In the 1980s, 90s and early-2000s, John Paul II’s encyclicals would have the more orthodox soundbites quoted by people who were still trying to remain faithful inside the Novus Ordo (a shrinking constituency which has now all-but disappeared in this country); whereas out-and-out modernists and politically correct semiMarxists could quote other passages from the very same encyclical. Many conservative Novus Ordo people became Traditionalists after realising that the liberals and modernists actually had a point: John Paul II really was a modernist and a liberal, and not the conservative they had always thought him to be. Well, is it possible that something similar is going on with John Henry Newman? With that in mind, let us briefly look at some of the criteria mentioned above.
1. An Exemplary Life of Heroic Virtue
Compared to many of the worst conciliar “Saints” Newman comes out looking pretty good here. He certainly didn’t have the love of luxury, or outbursts of bad temper of a Josemaria Escriva, for instance. But then, he was a Victorian, who lived (1801-1890) a good three generations before the latter, so that is as one might expect: people back then knew far better how to behave. Nor does one find in his writing the shameless self-praise of a “Saint” Faustina, whose fake apparition made her sound more exulted than even the Blessed Virgin Mary. That is as it should be, too; but then, we are setting the bar rather low, aren’t we?
One thing which does need mentioning here is the accusations of some kind of latent homosexuality. A not very flattering picture of him was painted by Geoffrey Faber, the nephew of Newman’s colleague Fr. Frederick Faber. Since then, all sorts of “gay rights” people (Peter Tatchell, for instance) have tried to claim Newman as one of their own. Critics point to his friendship with Fr. Ambrose St. John, one of his disciples who together with him left the Anglican religion, entered the Catholic Church and became an Oratorian priest. They often point to the fact that Newman asked to be buried in his friend’s grave. His defenders say that it was a passionate friendship and nothing more. Well, it is true that there can be such a thing as a passionate friendship and it is also true that we shouldn’t always go to the lowest common denominator and assume something sexual which might have been nothing of the sort. The Victorian era, an age not that long past and yet unimaginably more innocent than our own, understood this far better than we do today: only a degenerate age such as our own will automatically equate love with lust. And it is true that the endorsement of “gay rights” activists such as Tatchell means very little. And Geoffrey Faber, by the way, was a non-Catholic who seems to have been a disciple of Sigmund Freud; furthermore, one of the things he seems to have a problem with, in common with many Anglicans of Newman’s day (Charles Kinglsley, for instance), is the very idea itself of clerical celibacy. So we can probably take what he says with a pinch of salt.
All of which is to say that Newman is almost certainly not guilty of this particular charge, but in passing we should perhaps add that it would have been nice to known for certain, and that had there been a proper, thorough investigation of his life and morals, with a Devil’s Advocate and all the rest, greater certainty might have been possible. As things stand, however, since the modern Vatican changed the entire process, the matter won’t have been looked-into as it once would have been, effectively robbing the man himself of a proper defence.
Other than that, the main points of Newman’s life seem to be what one would expect. He sacrificed his position in the establishment of his day, and undoubtedly lost friends and family connections when he converted. This is what one would expect and is what happened to all English converts in those days, but it is still something which counts in his favour. There are others who point to the fact that he had already got himself into trouble within the (so-called) Church of England due to his position within the Oxford Movement and Tract 90 in particular, and that therefore he didn’t give up as much as, say, Henry (later Cardinal) Manning who had been at the height of his popularity when he left the Anglican religion and became a Catholic. There is doubtless some truth in that, too.
Finally, it is perhaps worth mentioning that for the life of a Saint, although one expects to find controversy, one does not expect to find quite so much and with all the wrong people. It has been said of Newman that during the latter (Catholic) part of his life, his friends and admirers were all liberals and his enemies anti-liberals. There is some truth to that. And having read some of his correspondence with Fr. Faber (more about whom later), the tone and content of many of his letters is not edifying and betrays a petulance bordering on selfpity which somehow one cannot imagine witnessing from the pen of a genuine Saint. That is, however, only my opinion - the reader may take it or leave it as he wishes.
2. A Popular [u]Cultus[/u]
Even Newman’s promoters have admitted that it is alarming how little devotion to him there is or has ever been in his own country. I have heard it said that he has more of a following in the USA, which is interesting: perhaps a case of a prophet never being accepted in his own home? But it still ought to be a concern to anyone interested, and ought to have been of great interest and great concern to anyone involved in his cause for canonisation. It is not merely that he didn’t have much of a following in England: he had none at all! Nobody was praying to him, nobody had a devotion to him. In this aspect at least, he appears to be more in the Paul VI camp and all the other definitely bogus conciliar “Saints”. And since, as mentioned above, this one really is (or used to be and ought still to be) the first pre-requisite, that ought to concern us all the more. (Perhaps we ought to have made this number 1, instead of 2..?)
What popularity or respect Newman does have today, as in his own day, seems to some degree to arise from the prestige which he brought with him into the Church. Imagine: at a time when Catholics were still a vanishingly small minority in England (maybe two percent, and most of those were Irish immigrant labourers, unskilled and largely un-educated, who had come over for work), and before the steady flow of converts which would follow his own conversion, he was one of the first “big catches” for a Catholic Church which was only just being re-established in England. One can understand and sympathise with an English Catholic in those days who might be pleased and proud of such a well-known, high-profile academic leaving it all behind to enter the Catholic Church. But that doesn’t really help us. In the late-19th and early 20th Centuries, there was no suggestion that Newman had been a Saint and no devotion to him anywhere, from what we can see. What very little exists in recent years appears to have been drummed up by conciliar liberals in the wake of Vatican II.
In summary then: in the old days, before the Vatican II revolution, the lack of a cultus would have meant that Newman would not even have been considered for beatification or canonisation in the first place. And in the days before Vatican II, he had no cultus at all. Therefore, he ought never to have been considered to begin with and on these grounds alone there is good cause to doubt whether he is a real Saint, even if he is a conciliar “Saint.”
3. Genuine Miracles
Oh dear. Have you ever noticed how all the bogus conciliar “Saints” always seem to work medical “miracles”? Both miracles allegedly worked by Paul VI, for instance, involved an unborn child: the doctors predicted it would have a defect but in the end it was born healthy.
Anyone with any experience of these things will tell you that doctors continually make dire predictions about unborn babies which turn out not to be true, especially when they are using it to push the mother into getting an abortion (as was the case here). I have even known it within my own immediate family circle, as I am sure many of you will have too. That the baby is then born perfectly fine and healthy does not in any way mean that a miracle has taken place: it means you can’t trust modern doctors! In a similar vein there is the medical “miracle” allegedly worked by Mother Theresa, details of which are given in the John Vennari article found elsewhere in these pages.
Regrettably, Newman’s “miracles” do appear to be of a similar kind: more of these medical miracles which seem to take place whenever a conciliar “Saint” is made. His beatification miracle was curing a Novus Ordo married deacon of a spinal condition. But details of this supposed “miracle” are surprisingly hard to find in both Catholic and secular press and even the official Oratorian website (https://www.newmancanonisation.com/newmans-miracle) which gives a detailed account of his canonisation “miracle” is silent regarding the prior “miracle” used to beatify him. Why might that be? Well, our suspicions, it seems, are wellfounded and we can be grateful to SSPX priest Fr. Paul Kimball for including them in the introduction to his 2019 book on Newman:
This alone was used by the enemies of the Church to pour scorn and ridicule. John Cornwell, author of “Hitler’s Pope,” wrote an article for The Times spelling out in great detail how this miracle did not abide by the Vatican’s own rules and making it look totally ridiculous. Though far too long to quote here, it is well worth a read and we encourage the reader to take a look. The author is a well-known antiCatholic but the worst thing is, he isn’t being dishonest and has clearly done his homework. As to Michael Powell, the London consultant neurosurgeon mentioned above, in 2010 he appeared in a brief segment during a BBC documentary. About 7 minutes in, he can be seen telling Ann Widdecombe:
Newman’s canonisation miracle appears to be not much better and, like that of Paul VI, it involves a pregnant lady and her unborn child. In this case the mother suffered bleeding during the pregnancy. She stopped bleeding after she prayed to him, and although the doctors said there was a chance that the baby would be born premature, in the end it was born at the right time and was healthy. As Fr. Kimball points out, this too violates the old rules for canonisation miracles, namely the sixth rule, that: “The cure must not come at a time when some natural cause could make the patient think he is cured or which stimulates a cure.”
There is also the fact that at least one of the doctors who lent his name to this “miracle” is a Novus Ordo Catholic who gave a gushing interview to the Novus Ordo press in which he described his deposition in favour of the miracle as a “spiritual experience”:
Yuck. Now, it might be objected that all this still doesn’t mean that it definitely wasn’t a miracle, that despite all those less-than-encouraging circumstances, it might still have been a miracle anyway. But that would be missing the point: what is required is not a “might-havebeen-a” miracle but an absolutely bullet-proof miracle, one which cannot be explained any other way, since the credibility of the entire process and with it the credibility of the Church (or in this case, the conciliar church) is at stake. And besides which, given all that we have already seen from the conciliar church, do we not have, at the very least, the right, or even the duty, to be a little sceptical? Let us just say that it is a very great shame that these miracle couldn’t have been a little more… unimpeachable. Ah well.
4. Sound doctrine
Newman’s canonisation is almost certainly due to the fact that the modernists recognise in him a man whose thinking paved the way for Vatican II. As mentioned above, “conservative” Novus Ordo Catholics and even some Traditionalists say that he is being misrepresented and “claimed,” in much the same way as the “gay rights” lobby claim him for themselves. On the other hand, that is not the whole story. Despite what his supporters say, there undoubtedly is something not quite right with his teaching, but this is so important that it is worth examining at some length.
Is John Henry Newman a Saint?
Is He a Doctor of the Church?
Is He a Doctor of the Church?
The short answer is, no. There is enough to be wary of with Newman, enough to at least give any sensible Catholic pause for thought and in any case, Novus Ordo conciliar canonisations aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. These modern canonisations are proposed to us by men who don’t believe in real Saints, just as the miracles which confirm them are not real miracles and are proposed to us by men who don’t believe in real miracles. John Henry Newman is as much a Saint as Paul VI or John Paul II. The first part of this article will deal with the question of real Saints and conciliar “Saints”; the second part with Newman himself.
Part 1: When is a Saint not a Saint?
Remember that [the] Novus Ordo calendar removed many genuine Saints as though they no longer existed and were therefore no longer to be venerated. Take, for instance, the Fourteen Holy Helpers: few modern Catholics have even heard of them today, although they were venerated for centuries and were the object of widespread popular devotion across Christendom. Their feast was removed from the calendar and some of them lost individual feast days too and became in effect “un-canonised,” including some very popular Saints. That did not stop modernist Rome casting doubt on whether they had ever even existed to begin with, declaring that the stories about them were mere fables, not really worthy of belief in other words. Here, for instance, is what Paul VI’s Rome had to say concerning St. Barbara:
Quote:“Memoria S. Barbarae, Saeculo XII in Calendario romano ascripta, deletur: acta S. Barbarae sunt omnino fabulosa et etiam de loco ubi passa sit summa inter peritos est dissentio.”
[“The feast of St. Barbara, added to the Roman Calendar in the Twelfth Century, is to be removed. The life of St. Barbara is totally legendary and even the place of her martyrdom is not agreed-upon by experts.”] (Calendarium Romanum, 1969, p.147).
And similarly, concerning St. Catherine of Alexandria:
Quote:“Memoria S. Catharinae, saeculo XII in Calendario romano ascripta, deletur: non solum Passio S. Catharinae est omnino fabulosa, sed de ipsa persona Catharinae nihil certum affirmari potest.”
[“The feast of St. Catherine, added to the Roman Calendar in the Twelfth Century, is to be removed. Not only is the martyrdom of St. Catherine entirely legendary, but nothing certain can be asserted about the person of Catherine herself.”] (Ibid.)
By the way, it is difficult to appreciate what is conveyed by those words “omnino fabulosa” which keep cropping up. A total fable. A complete fairytale. Not in any way true, in other words, not just an exaggeration, but a total, utter fabrication. And it is not just St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Barbara who are treated his way: St. Christopher is another example of a very popular Saint who was nonetheless removed completely from the calendar, as well as St. Dorothy, St. Pius I, and many more besides. Others, such as St. George and St. Valentine, were demoted to a commemoration in certain local places only, which had much the same effect as removing them altogether. In the motu proprio presenting his new calendar (Mysterii Paschalis, 1969), Paul VI cites - you’ve guessed it! - Vatican II as his justification, quoting the following passage from Sacrosanctum Concilium, §111:
Quote:“Lest the feasts of the saints should take precedence over the feasts which commemorate the very mysteries of salvation, many of them should be left to be celebrated by a particular Church or nation or family of religious; only those should be extended to the universal Church which commemorate saints who are truly of universal importance.”
Even the secular media has picked up on this from time to time. Here, for instance, is a 2014 article from ABC News:
Quote:“The Catholic Church removed 93 saints from the universal calendar and revoked their feast days in 1969 when Pope Paul VI revised the canon of saints and determined that some of the names had only ever been alive as legends or not enough was known about them to determine their status. […] Among Catholicism’s most popular saints, Christopher was listed as a martyr. […] But there wasn’t enough historical evidence the man ever existed, so Pope Paul VI dropped him.” (‘Once a Saint, Always a Saint? Kind Of - Unless You're Demoted’ - here)
Another remarkable victim of the modernists is St. Philomena. One of the most popular Saints of the last two centuries, the Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney, had a particularly strong devotion to her. She was not only removed from the calendar, but modern Rome since then has cast doubt on whether she even existed at all to being with! And yet, like St. Christopher, St. Barbara and the others she still has her own following and devotion to her is still alive and well today, despite her attempted assassination and un-canonisation by modernist unbelievers. One of the important proofs of Sainthood is a cultus, a following, and an enduring
one.
John Paul II had plenty of flatterers and sycophants while he was still alive, and he died adored and praised by the world. Not a good sign! Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were among those who attended his requiem. Hence there was no shortage of people who wanted him declared a Saint immediately (“Santo Subito!” - remember?). But a mere twenty years on, how often does one hear his name mentioned? Outside of Polish Novus Ordo Catholic parishes, is he not all-but forgotten already? And who has ever had a devotion to Paul VI or John XXIII..!? The very idea is absurd! Those men never had a cultus and never will! And yet we are asked to believe that they are Saints, by the very same modernists who tell us that St. Christopher, St. Catherine, St Philomena and others not only aren’t Saints, but weren’t even real people…? Does that sound reasonable to you? The men who openly admit that they don’t believe in real Saints are nonetheless going to tell us who is to be regarded as a Saint from now on! And whom do they propose for our veneration? Men such as John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II…! No thanks. You can keep your bogus, conciliar “Saints” - I’ll stick with the real ones, the ones which generations of our forefathers venerated for hundreds of years, thank you very much!
Regarding the details of the removal of Saints from the calendar and general “de-canonisation” which went on in the 1960s (some of which was already happening on the eve of Vatican II in the Tridentine calendar!) a great deal more could be said, but we shall not spend too long on it since it was not really meant to be the focus of this article, fascinating and horrifying though it is.
Suffice it to say that the usual suspects are not very hard to find. An article from late 2020 by one Peter Kwasniewski which appeared on the website of the conservative / novus “New Liturgical Movement” provides some interesting and useful insight on this question and is perhaps worth quoting from here briefly. Among other things, the article identifies more than 300 Saints who were removed or demoted and provides tables showing which changes were made on which days of the year. And just see how long it takes before you spot the name which you knew all along was going to pop up!
Quote:“That the thinning out of the sanctoral cycle had long been on Bugnini’s mind is evident from his 1949 article in Ephemerides Liturgicae, “Per una riforma liturgica generale” (“Towards a General Liturgical Reform”). Bugnini pressed the need for “a reduction of the Sanctoral . . . which requires not only a reduction of the present calendar, but also fixed and prescriptive norms to prevent new Saints’ days from piling up again.”
Yves Chiron summarizes:
Quote:‘A list of thirteen saints or groups of saints was already drawn up for elimination from the universal calendar, with no justification for any of them (Saint Martin for example), whereas the calendar was supposed to abbinare (“pair together”) fourteen more Saints “because their life and work were alike or close to it,” for example Saint Thomas Becket and Saint Stanislaus or Saint Peter Canisius and Saint Robert Bellarmine.’ (Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy, p.34)”(https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/20...moval.html)
By the way, next time you visit continental Europe keep an eye out for St. Martin: you see his name everywhere. France is covered with hundreds, if not thousands of churches, chapels and shrines to him and there are dozens of villages and towns named after him in Southern Germany and Austria. In that part of the world at least, it is hard to imagine a Saint who is more deeply embedded within Catholic culture! But then, this is the infamous Fr. Annibale Bugnini and his friends whom we are talking about, so it probably shouldn’t surprise us that much…
The same article quotes the memoires of the well-known “liturgical reformer” Fr. Louis Bouyer, who was nonetheless horrified to see just how far some on his own side were taking things (also found in the excellent article by Dr Carol Byrne, here):
Quote:“I prefer to say nothing, or little, about the new calendar, the handiwork of a trio of maniacs who suppressed, with no good reason, Septuagesima and the Octave of Pentecost and who scattered three quarters of the Saints higgledypiggledy, all based on notions of their own devising! Because these three hotheads obstinately refused to change anything in their work and because the pope wanted to finish up quickly to avoid letting the chaos get out of hand, their project, however insane, was accepted!” (Ibid.)
What is Canonisation?
Behind all this, underlying the question, is something which it is difficult to put one’s finger on, an attitude which itself is wrong. There is more than a whiff of the “because I say so” type of argument which reeks of voluntarism and nominalism. Let us remind ourselves: it is the Saint that makes the canonisation, not the canonisation which makes the Saint. Let that sink in for just a moment. Is a Saint a Saint because Rome says he’s a Saint? Or does Rome say he’s a Saint because he is one? Which comes first, the reality, or the word, the pronouncement, the description of the reality? In previous centuries canonisation was simply a matter of popular acclamation; then it was done more formally, at a diocesan level by the local bishop; in the middle ages it became something reserved to the Holy See.
Over time, the requirements understandably became stricter. The process which emerged in the modern era was something resembling a court case. The soul in question had to be proven a Saint beyond all doubt and was regarded almost as though guilty until proven innocent: not a Saint until proven a Saint. The prosecution, so to speak, was the famous advocatus diaboli. But that was not all. Several other criteria had to be met which were regarded as sine qua non, the first of which was a popular cultus among the faithful; another was some miracles. These things, if they exist, are facts. The canonisation itself was nothing more than a formal recognition of those already-existing facts.
Therefore, the real Saints are the ones who have a real following, who have worked real miracles, whom Divine Providence allows to become known and prayed-to all over the world and to become a central part of Catholic life and culture. The old, recently-removed Saints, in whom modern Rome appears no longer to believe, all pass the test with flying colours. Despite the machinations of the modernists, Catholics all over the world still give their children names such as Catherine, Philomena or Christopher; many people still pray to them, still wear their sacramentals and ask them for aid. Schools and parishes all over the world still bear their names, some of the finest artwork ever created depicts their lives and deaths and in some cases even whole nations, states or cities are under their patronage or have been named after them.
And there is no shortage of modern-day miracles either: as mentioned above, the Curé of Ars alone procured many miracles through the intercession of St. Philomena. More than eleven years ago, these pages (“On Recent Canonisations” - Recusant 16, May 2014) cast doubt on the supposed canonisations of the late popes John XXIII and John Paul II.
It was pointed out that the lives of these men were very far from being that of a Saint and that they were each a very bad example to follow. It was further pointed out that several ominous “coincidences” (if such they be) had accompanied the “canonisation” of John Paul II. The ugly bent-forwards crucifix which stood atop a hill as a memorial of his visit had suddenly collapsed, killing a man who was praying to him beneath it; that when his relics visited Lourdes, the sanctuary was soon underwater following the worst flooding in its history.
The same article suggested good reasons why one cannot simply say, “Canonisations are infallible!” and leave it at that - far from it. The object of infallibility is doctrine, that is, things to be believed by us, and necessary for our salvation. A canonisation on the other hand, is not a matter of doctrine necessary for our salvation: it is a saying that someone is a Saint, which means not only that the person in question is in heaven, but that he or she is an example which you or I can follow and learn from as a means of achieving heaven ourselves. That is why not one single baptised infant has ever been canonised, despite there being presumably tens– or even hundreds-of-thousands of candidates (newly baptised babies die all the time, there is even one in our family). They are certainly in heaven, you can pray to them, but they are never canonised, no statues of them will ever be seen in churches, no feast days in the calendar. Why? Because there is no life to follow: they died too young to give an example for anyone to follow. That is also why it is such a scandal for even the conciliar church to claim that Paul VI or John Paul II are Saints.
If that were true, then we can get to heaven is by kissing the koran, inviting pagans and devilworshippers into a Catholic church to pray to their false gods, putting statues of Buddha on top of tabernacles; punishing good men such as Marcel Lefebvre while simultaneously promoting sexual predators like Marcial Maciel or MarieDominique Philippe; suppressing the true Mass which nourished countless true Saints, and giving everyone a Masonic, Protestant communion service with a Jewish offertory prayer… we could go on. The very thought is monstrous.
So on the question of a cultus, a genuine following and devotion among the faithful, the real, old-fashioned Saints win hands down, despite the disadvantage of their having been removed from calendars, their demotion and all the rest. The conciliar Vatican II “Saints” usually have little or no cultus, despite the fact that it always used to be regarded as a sine qua non, an essential prerequisite to becoming a Saint.
Likewise, on the question of leading a life of heroic virtue, a life which is such a good example that if followed by you and I it will lead us to heaven too, we see the same thing. Many of these the conciliar “Saints” (the conciliar Popes, Faustina, Escriva, et al.) fail spectacularly. Their lives were such that they would never, could never have been canonised before Vatican II. The real Saints, by contrast, led such exemplary lives that many today find it hard to believe and doubt is cast not only on their lives and deaths, but even on their very existence.
The soundness of their teaching is something which will no doubt be at the forefront of the minds of many readers, and so it should be. Unsound teaching, let alone actual heresy, is something which in saner times meant that an investigation into the candidate’s life could not go ahead, never mind the beatification or canonisation itself, as the John Vennari article makes clear elsewhere in these pages. Strictly speaking, the false teaching of these bogus “Saints” is itself enough to say with certainty that they are not Saints. But since many of our acquaintance will not accept that, and since many of us will at some point experience doubt or scruples, let us continue to spell it out in detail. Miracles are the last thing to consider.
A real canonisation in the old days used to require two miracles, after all the other criteria had been met. Two genuine miracles. The new, bogus “canonisations” require only one, and often it is a “miracle” of highly dubious quality. Again, refer to the John Vennari article elsewhere in these pages to see details of the “miracle” used for Mother Theresa: it was as dodgy as a nine-bob note, the doctors involved and even the lady’s husband said it wasn’t a miracle!
In previous years, these pages have contained a close-up look into other conciliar “miracles”- long-time readers might recall our examination of the Buenos Aires “eucharistic miracle” from the 1990s (in Recusant 34, p.26) and that it most certainly did not stand up to close scrutiny! We have neither the time, nor the resources, nor even the patience to examine each and every so-called “miracle” approved by the conciliar authorities, but should it be necessary? How many definitely bogus “miracles” do we need to see until we decide to treat them all with extreme caution? Finally let us consider this. The men approving these “miracles” don’t believe in actual real miracles, even when they are contained in Sacred Scripture! The feeding of the five-thousand? No, you see, what the gospel-writer wished to emphasise in telling this story was that the real miracle was when everyone learned to share. The crossing of the Red Sea? No, you see it was really called the “Reed Sea” because it was like a marsh… Those are things I have heard from conciliar priests with my own ears (as have many of you too, no doubt). We could go on. The point to bear in mind here is this. Just as we are being asked to accept new “Saints” from men who don’t believe in real Saints, we also are being asked to believe in bogus “miracles” by men who cast doubt on real miracles.
In case all of that is all a bit much to remember, below is a handy table for ease of reference! It is of course worth remembering that the other scandal regarding conciliar “canonisations” is the sheer number. John Paul II earned a reputation as a veritable “Saint factory,” canonising hundreds in one go. His successors are no better. Not only does this practice severely damage the prestige and credibility of the Church in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, it also defeats the very point of a canonisation: how can you possibly have a devotion to these new “Saints” when it would take forever just to read their names, never mind learn a bit about
them? The whole point of Saints is that they are held out to us as an example to follow; you can’t hold out a couple of hundred examples in one go and expect to be taken seriously.
The Recusant patent “How-Bogus-Is-My-Saint?” Calculator
![[Image: Capture2.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/cJQMRnkq/Capture2.png)
But beyond that, it has yet another unfortunate side-effect, in that it means that many genuine Saints may well be mixed in with the conciliar “Saints.” The first canonisation done by Pope Francis, for instance, was of more than 800 people in one go. They were the inhabitants of Otranto who were killed by the Turks in 1480 for refusing to convert to Islam: martyrs. At a cursory glance, it may well be that some or all of them really are martyrs, and therefore Saints.
But can we be certain? And which ones? Does anyone have the time or patience to try to find out? To take one more example, in 2001 John Paul II canonised a group of 233 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Again, there were many Catholics who died for the Faith at the hands of the communists at that time, so it is not inconceivable that at least some of them, many of them even, are genuine Saints and martyrs. But again, doesn’t it just leave one frustrated and demoralised? How certain can anyone be that there wasn’t the odd semi-degenerate “rightwinger” whom the reds rounded up with a load of Catholics into the same firing-squad and buried in the same pit? So the answer is it is probably a mixture, but very difficult to say.
And then there are men such as Padre Pio. Well, they couldn’t very well not canonise him, could they? They know full well that his presence in amongst all those other conciliar “Saints” will lend them credibility. And what about the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales? Well, they were of course martyrs at the hands of the English Protestant regime, they were beatified in 1929 and most of the work for their canonisations was surely done before the Council, so despite the fact that the actual canonisation wasn’t done until 1970, surely one can take them as being genuine Saints who were always going to be canonised, even had Vatican II and the crisis in the Church never happened.
We could go on, but all this really means is that the conciliar “Saints” are a bit of a mixed bag, to put it mildly. Some unmistakably genuine Saints have probably been given a conciliar “canonisation” (what an insult to them - they’ll need to be given a real canonisation when the crisis is over!). Then there are others who may well have been Saints. Then there are a lot of highly dubious “Saints” and finally there are those who are definitely not Saints. So a conciliar canonisation doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is a Saint. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t a Saint either. What a mess.
Where does Newman fit into all this?
All of which is by way of demonstrating that just because the conciliar church says that Newman is a Saint, that doesn’t really mean anything. It means is that he is somewhere on the spectrum of conciliar Saints, somewhere between Padre Pio at one end and Paul VI at the other. Newman may not be a Paul VI, but he may not necessarily be a Padre Pio either. So what are we to make of him? It doesn’t help that he has long been someone whom all sides seem to be trying to claim. The liberals and modernists claim that he is one of them. The “conservatives” of various sorts say that the liberals are twisting things and that really, Newman is on their side. Readers of a certain age who made their way out of the Novus Ordo to Tradition may well be reminded of similar debates which used to surround John Paul II and Benedict XVI while they were alive and on the papal throne. In the 1980s, 90s and early-2000s, John Paul II’s encyclicals would have the more orthodox soundbites quoted by people who were still trying to remain faithful inside the Novus Ordo (a shrinking constituency which has now all-but disappeared in this country); whereas out-and-out modernists and politically correct semiMarxists could quote other passages from the very same encyclical. Many conservative Novus Ordo people became Traditionalists after realising that the liberals and modernists actually had a point: John Paul II really was a modernist and a liberal, and not the conservative they had always thought him to be. Well, is it possible that something similar is going on with John Henry Newman? With that in mind, let us briefly look at some of the criteria mentioned above.
1. An Exemplary Life of Heroic Virtue
Compared to many of the worst conciliar “Saints” Newman comes out looking pretty good here. He certainly didn’t have the love of luxury, or outbursts of bad temper of a Josemaria Escriva, for instance. But then, he was a Victorian, who lived (1801-1890) a good three generations before the latter, so that is as one might expect: people back then knew far better how to behave. Nor does one find in his writing the shameless self-praise of a “Saint” Faustina, whose fake apparition made her sound more exulted than even the Blessed Virgin Mary. That is as it should be, too; but then, we are setting the bar rather low, aren’t we?
One thing which does need mentioning here is the accusations of some kind of latent homosexuality. A not very flattering picture of him was painted by Geoffrey Faber, the nephew of Newman’s colleague Fr. Frederick Faber. Since then, all sorts of “gay rights” people (Peter Tatchell, for instance) have tried to claim Newman as one of their own. Critics point to his friendship with Fr. Ambrose St. John, one of his disciples who together with him left the Anglican religion, entered the Catholic Church and became an Oratorian priest. They often point to the fact that Newman asked to be buried in his friend’s grave. His defenders say that it was a passionate friendship and nothing more. Well, it is true that there can be such a thing as a passionate friendship and it is also true that we shouldn’t always go to the lowest common denominator and assume something sexual which might have been nothing of the sort. The Victorian era, an age not that long past and yet unimaginably more innocent than our own, understood this far better than we do today: only a degenerate age such as our own will automatically equate love with lust. And it is true that the endorsement of “gay rights” activists such as Tatchell means very little. And Geoffrey Faber, by the way, was a non-Catholic who seems to have been a disciple of Sigmund Freud; furthermore, one of the things he seems to have a problem with, in common with many Anglicans of Newman’s day (Charles Kinglsley, for instance), is the very idea itself of clerical celibacy. So we can probably take what he says with a pinch of salt.
All of which is to say that Newman is almost certainly not guilty of this particular charge, but in passing we should perhaps add that it would have been nice to known for certain, and that had there been a proper, thorough investigation of his life and morals, with a Devil’s Advocate and all the rest, greater certainty might have been possible. As things stand, however, since the modern Vatican changed the entire process, the matter won’t have been looked-into as it once would have been, effectively robbing the man himself of a proper defence.
Other than that, the main points of Newman’s life seem to be what one would expect. He sacrificed his position in the establishment of his day, and undoubtedly lost friends and family connections when he converted. This is what one would expect and is what happened to all English converts in those days, but it is still something which counts in his favour. There are others who point to the fact that he had already got himself into trouble within the (so-called) Church of England due to his position within the Oxford Movement and Tract 90 in particular, and that therefore he didn’t give up as much as, say, Henry (later Cardinal) Manning who had been at the height of his popularity when he left the Anglican religion and became a Catholic. There is doubtless some truth in that, too.
Finally, it is perhaps worth mentioning that for the life of a Saint, although one expects to find controversy, one does not expect to find quite so much and with all the wrong people. It has been said of Newman that during the latter (Catholic) part of his life, his friends and admirers were all liberals and his enemies anti-liberals. There is some truth to that. And having read some of his correspondence with Fr. Faber (more about whom later), the tone and content of many of his letters is not edifying and betrays a petulance bordering on selfpity which somehow one cannot imagine witnessing from the pen of a genuine Saint. That is, however, only my opinion - the reader may take it or leave it as he wishes.
2. A Popular [u]Cultus[/u]
Even Newman’s promoters have admitted that it is alarming how little devotion to him there is or has ever been in his own country. I have heard it said that he has more of a following in the USA, which is interesting: perhaps a case of a prophet never being accepted in his own home? But it still ought to be a concern to anyone interested, and ought to have been of great interest and great concern to anyone involved in his cause for canonisation. It is not merely that he didn’t have much of a following in England: he had none at all! Nobody was praying to him, nobody had a devotion to him. In this aspect at least, he appears to be more in the Paul VI camp and all the other definitely bogus conciliar “Saints”. And since, as mentioned above, this one really is (or used to be and ought still to be) the first pre-requisite, that ought to concern us all the more. (Perhaps we ought to have made this number 1, instead of 2..?)
What popularity or respect Newman does have today, as in his own day, seems to some degree to arise from the prestige which he brought with him into the Church. Imagine: at a time when Catholics were still a vanishingly small minority in England (maybe two percent, and most of those were Irish immigrant labourers, unskilled and largely un-educated, who had come over for work), and before the steady flow of converts which would follow his own conversion, he was one of the first “big catches” for a Catholic Church which was only just being re-established in England. One can understand and sympathise with an English Catholic in those days who might be pleased and proud of such a well-known, high-profile academic leaving it all behind to enter the Catholic Church. But that doesn’t really help us. In the late-19th and early 20th Centuries, there was no suggestion that Newman had been a Saint and no devotion to him anywhere, from what we can see. What very little exists in recent years appears to have been drummed up by conciliar liberals in the wake of Vatican II.
In summary then: in the old days, before the Vatican II revolution, the lack of a cultus would have meant that Newman would not even have been considered for beatification or canonisation in the first place. And in the days before Vatican II, he had no cultus at all. Therefore, he ought never to have been considered to begin with and on these grounds alone there is good cause to doubt whether he is a real Saint, even if he is a conciliar “Saint.”
3. Genuine Miracles
Oh dear. Have you ever noticed how all the bogus conciliar “Saints” always seem to work medical “miracles”? Both miracles allegedly worked by Paul VI, for instance, involved an unborn child: the doctors predicted it would have a defect but in the end it was born healthy.
Anyone with any experience of these things will tell you that doctors continually make dire predictions about unborn babies which turn out not to be true, especially when they are using it to push the mother into getting an abortion (as was the case here). I have even known it within my own immediate family circle, as I am sure many of you will have too. That the baby is then born perfectly fine and healthy does not in any way mean that a miracle has taken place: it means you can’t trust modern doctors! In a similar vein there is the medical “miracle” allegedly worked by Mother Theresa, details of which are given in the John Vennari article found elsewhere in these pages.
Regrettably, Newman’s “miracles” do appear to be of a similar kind: more of these medical miracles which seem to take place whenever a conciliar “Saint” is made. His beatification miracle was curing a Novus Ordo married deacon of a spinal condition. But details of this supposed “miracle” are surprisingly hard to find in both Catholic and secular press and even the official Oratorian website (https://www.newmancanonisation.com/newmans-miracle) which gives a detailed account of his canonisation “miracle” is silent regarding the prior “miracle” used to beatify him. Why might that be? Well, our suspicions, it seems, are wellfounded and we can be grateful to SSPX priest Fr. Paul Kimball for including them in the introduction to his 2019 book on Newman:
Quote:“On July 3, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI recognised the healing of Deacon Jack Sullivan in 2001 as a miracle for Newman’s beatification, which occurred on September 19, 2010. Now, Mr. Sullivan underwent the operation of ‘...a laminectomy to remove part of the spinal bones that was causing the problem… Although successfully performed in August 2001, this operation left Jack Sullivan in immense pain and he was warned a full recovery might take months. With the new term approaching, Mr. Sullivan was becoming increasingly anxious about returning to class, and just a few days after his operation he tried to get out of bed. Having taken an excruciating few minutes, with a nurse’s help, to get his feet on the floor, he said he leant on his forearms and recited his prayer to Newman. Michael Powell, a consultant neurosurgeon at London’s University College Hospital, said a typical laminectomy took ‘about 40 minutes, and most patients … walk out happy at two days.’ ’ ” (Michael Hirst, Papal Visit: Cardinal Newman’s ‘miracle cure,’ BBC News, September 13, 2010)
Furthermore, the directive de Canonizatione of Prospero Cardinal Lambertini, who was later crowned Benedict XIV, spelt out the rules for working out if a healing was really a miracle from heaven. It is astounding that this miracle has been approved, for it directly violates the third rule of Benedict XIV for the verification of miracles during the process of canonization of Saints, namely, ‘The patient should not be getting medical treatment around the time of the cure.’ (Doctrina de servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, lib. 4, p.1, c.7, n.1-2.).”
(Cardinal Newman: Trojan Horse in the Church, Fr. Paul Kimball)
This alone was used by the enemies of the Church to pour scorn and ridicule. John Cornwell, author of “Hitler’s Pope,” wrote an article for The Times spelling out in great detail how this miracle did not abide by the Vatican’s own rules and making it look totally ridiculous. Though far too long to quote here, it is well worth a read and we encourage the reader to take a look. The author is a well-known antiCatholic but the worst thing is, he isn’t being dishonest and has clearly done his homework. As to Michael Powell, the London consultant neurosurgeon mentioned above, in 2010 he appeared in a brief segment during a BBC documentary. About 7 minutes in, he can be seen telling Ann Widdecombe:
Quote:“The events that occurred in Jack Sullivan’s case are all explicable, perhaps not so frequently that it would be commonplace, but certainly all of them perfectly reasonable. … To us British neurosurgeons, these are events that don’t at all sound [so] surprising or un-commonplace that it should be considered miraculous.”
Newman’s canonisation miracle appears to be not much better and, like that of Paul VI, it involves a pregnant lady and her unborn child. In this case the mother suffered bleeding during the pregnancy. She stopped bleeding after she prayed to him, and although the doctors said there was a chance that the baby would be born premature, in the end it was born at the right time and was healthy. As Fr. Kimball points out, this too violates the old rules for canonisation miracles, namely the sixth rule, that: “The cure must not come at a time when some natural cause could make the patient think he is cured or which stimulates a cure.”
There is also the fact that at least one of the doctors who lent his name to this “miracle” is a Novus Ordo Catholic who gave a gushing interview to the Novus Ordo press in which he described his deposition in favour of the miracle as a “spiritual experience”:
Quote:“The true spiritual experience was in the stages of the depositions. I literally cried when we were deposing her. It struck to my very heart…”
(https://www.archbalt.org/illinois-doctor...periences/)
Yuck. Now, it might be objected that all this still doesn’t mean that it definitely wasn’t a miracle, that despite all those less-than-encouraging circumstances, it might still have been a miracle anyway. But that would be missing the point: what is required is not a “might-havebeen-a” miracle but an absolutely bullet-proof miracle, one which cannot be explained any other way, since the credibility of the entire process and with it the credibility of the Church (or in this case, the conciliar church) is at stake. And besides which, given all that we have already seen from the conciliar church, do we not have, at the very least, the right, or even the duty, to be a little sceptical? Let us just say that it is a very great shame that these miracle couldn’t have been a little more… unimpeachable. Ah well.
4. Sound doctrine
Newman’s canonisation is almost certainly due to the fact that the modernists recognise in him a man whose thinking paved the way for Vatican II. As mentioned above, “conservative” Novus Ordo Catholics and even some Traditionalists say that he is being misrepresented and “claimed,” in much the same way as the “gay rights” lobby claim him for themselves. On the other hand, that is not the whole story. Despite what his supporters say, there undoubtedly is something not quite right with his teaching, but this is so important that it is worth examining at some length.
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre