Making a saint out of Newman

I have to say, I have watched the recent scenes of the visit of Benedict the 16th to the United Kingdom, with some amazement. Besides the screams, the adulation, the mumbled apologies and exchange of pleasantries, the highlight was the beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Personally, I have not a single doubt in my mind that he should be recognised. If sainthood provides the context for that to be done – then so be it, and jolly good luck to it. At university, I read his works and they inspired me. I changed my perspective fairly fundamentally because of him. As a student, I read his “Apologia pro vita sua”. And found it both moving and profound.

But until very recently, I had missed something fairly essential about the man. He had a long term relationship with another priest, by the name of Fr Ambrose St John. They lived together for a considerable period of time and it was Newman’s express wish to be buried with him.

His desire was very clear and unambiguous. On no less than three occasions, he indicated it, in writing. The last time, a few months before his death in 1890.

“I wish with all my heart to be buried in the grave of Fr Ambrose St John. I give this as my last, my imperative will.”

On the death or Fr Ambrose, Newman wrote the following:

"I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband's or a wife's, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one's sorrow greater, than mine”.

He had waited some 15 years to be buried with his beloved. This was no will-o’-the-wisp. It was obviously something very clearly thought out. It was something he wanted very passionately.

Two years ago, in preparation for making him a saint – the Vatican gave the order for him to be disinterred and to leave any remains of Fr Ambrose in situ, and to remove Newman’s remains to the Birmingham Oratory.

On opening the grave, very little was found. Some hair, apparently, and a brass plaque with his name. The coffin was a wooden one and the ground wet.

Since discovering this, I have to say my mind has played on it a lot. I am left aghast at the sheer arrogance of it all. Newman had expressed his will in the clearest terms imaginable. Yet the Vatican decided that his body should be elsewhere. I understand that moving the bodies of saints – or people soon to be saints – is “traditional” (whatever that might mean!).

Now, obviously, I think it is at this stage impossible to prove conclusively that Cardinal (now “Blessed”) John Henry Newman and Ambrose St John were lovers. But it certainly looks likely. And one would not need to be a member of the “homosexual lobby” to come to such a likely conclusion, based on the evidence which is already at hand. Whether or not they remained celibate is another matter entirely and, from my perspective anyway, has little bearing on the substance of the enquiry.

But for the church to simply extract elements of his life which they like – and make a big hullabaloo about them and sanctify him because of them, while ignoring other equally significant elements, is sheer cynical manipulation of the facts. Indeed, the same could be said for the way that the church generally does its theology. It parades the easy bits and ignores the more difficult, as a matter of course.

But there is a problem with doing this, because eventually common sense (or science, or history) will catch up with it and expose it as fraud, as it has already, on so many other issues. The secularism of the United Kingdom, which the Pope seems to find so problematic, is in fact not only a consequence of the church’s continued fraudulent theological thinking, but represents a triumph of progress and rational thinking over idiocy and ignorance.

The only way in which this could be seen to be problematic is if one had some kind of vested interest in keeping people stupid, by denying the facts. Such as the facts about HIV/Aids; contraception; women; abortions etc etc. Oh, and did I neglect to mention the historical prevalence of gay and lesbian people within the ranks and hierarchy of the church itself?

On the tombstone where John Henry Newman and Ambrose St John lay buried for just shy of one hundred years, was written the following:

“Out of the shadows and phantasms, into the truth”.

Maybe one day, a long time from now, society will write the same on the grave of the church itself.

Jesus had AIDS

As something of an illustration of how simplistic and how literal the general level of theological understanding is, amongst people in the parishes, an article appeared in this week’s Mail and Guardian entitled: “Pastor crucified for saying Jesus had Aids” (p.16).

There is a picture of a forlorn looking pastor, the Reverend Xola Skosana of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, who is baffled by the fact that his congregants took offense when he preached a sermon suggesting that Jesus had Aids.

“When we attend to those who are sick, we are attending to him. When we ignore people who are sick, we are ignoring him”, the pastor is quoted as saying.

He went on to quote from the Bible, where Jesus says “I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me”. However, he explained, there had been extremely hostile reaction to his sermon and to he and some members of his congregation publicly taking an HIV test.

“The scathing attacks I have received from Christians are unbelievable. They are saying you can’t reconcile Jesus and Aids. They assume it means Jesus was promiscuous and had many sexual partners.”

That analysis may be true. In part, I am sure it is true. However, I think there is something else which lies in the depths of this response and it is this. It is the complete inability of the majority of Christians to consider anything in the Bible as anything other than literal. So, you have a literal figure in the Old Testament being swallowed by a big fish. He literally lives inside the creature and he is literally vomited up on a shore somewhere. While he was inside the creature, he managed to compose one or two poems.

You literally have a person walking on water, and you literally have him flying into the sky and zooming off to heaven like a rocket. The disciples literally do not recognise Jesus on the Road to Emmaus (What is wrong with them? Did they suddenly turn into complete idiots?). And all of this is not helped when it is clouded in holy and religious language. Faith starts to mean believing what you know to be untrue.

Now the fact is, if this is the case, it is because of a complete failure on the part of the church itself and institutions of higher learning to teach people about meaning and symbol, about poetry, about different kinds of literature and the way in which they function. Consequently, the bible is read in much the same way as is the newspaper and then – surprise surprise! Someone comes along and says “Hang on! That is a load of hogwash!”

On Facebook the other day, there was an article relating to Stephen Hawking’s latest book, which states, triumphantly, that God isn’t a necessary part in the scientific explanation of the origin of the universe. Now, honestly and truly, is this news? Is this a shock? Does this in any way alter the way we think about anything at all? Did I wake up this morning depressed to discover the possibility that God did not create the universe?

I did so, only if I need literal truth and only literal truth. Only if my world is so small, and so confined to one kind of reality, that it will not even venture into the realm of dream, of fantasy, of story and myth. It is a world in which I will dismiss “Alice in Wonderland” as untrue, because it is not literally true. That is the world in which some scientists and many Christians and other religious people dwell – and I pity them. Because it is a world where there is only one note, sounding over and over and over again. It is a good note. It is a true note. But it is a singular note.