Newman and the Rosary
The Catholic Thing
By Michael Pakaluk Many Protestants who become Catholics pass through three stages in their Marian devotion. They begin by thinking the Rosary is not something bad, as they had supposed; they next come to think it is very good; and finally, with experience and as their faith grows, they may see that it is very powerful. As today falls between the Feast of the Holy Rosary and the memorial of St. John Henry Newman, I want to write on Newman and the Rosary. I see nothing of this progression in him, but rather a recognition of the great goodness of the devotion from his earliest days as a Catholic. And yet he feels keenly the difficulties that other converts have with it, and he counsels them wisely. Writing less than three years after his own conversion, he advises the Marquise de Salvo: "You know perfectly well that devotion to the Most Blessed Mother of God is not imperatively required of all. It is a gift which God gives to those whom He will. I do not see therefore that a person ought to force himself into the use of particular manuals or exercises which do not come natural to him." But he goes on: I do not see how this remark applies to the Rosary – and to my own feelings nothing is more delightful than the contemplation of the Mysteries of the Incarnation, under the invocation, so to call it, of her who was the human instrument of it. At the same time, it is not necessary that we should feel this equally at all times – and I can quite understand a recent convert being obliged to use his reason and having to make distinct acts of faith, love, etc. when it all comes quite as a matter of course and without effort to one who has been a Catholic from birth. To George Ryder, three months later, Newman writes: I certainly think you should get into the Catholic ways of devotion by degrees. Perhaps you would feel the Rosary less trying said with others. . . .Try it thus. . .before each mystery, set before you a picture of it, and fix your mind upon that picture, (e.g., the Annunciation, the Agony, etc.) while you say the Pater and 10 Aves, not thinking of the words, only saying them correctly. Let the exercise be hardly more than a meditation. Perhaps this will overcome any sense of tedium. Ryder, of Newman's Oxford circle, had resigned his Anglican living to become a Catholic in 1846. His Rosary apparently bore fruit: his son, Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder, became a priest of the Birmingham Oratory and succeeded Newman as its superior. A decade after his conversion, Newman focused on what the Rosary accomplishes. In 1856, it had become for him a practically necessary part of the way of perfection: If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first – Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God's glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect. As rector of the new Catholic University in Dublin, he considers how a preacher should address its students. "As youth becomes the occasion of excess and sensuality, so does intellect give accidental opportunity to religious error, rash speculation, doubt, and infidelity." The preacher must choose his subjects accordingly. But he must approach them indirectly: "even when he addresses himself to some special danger or probable deficiency or need of his hearers, he should do so covertly, not showing on the surface of his discourse what he is aiming at." Commonplaces, Newman says, are "but blunt weapons," whereas it is particular topics that penetrate and reach their mark. Such subjects rather are, for instance, the improvement of time, avoiding the occasions of sin, frequenting the Sacraments, divine warnings, the inspirations of grace, the mysteries of the Rosary. . . On the Feast of the Rosary in 1866, the anniversary ...