From Newman as a Critic of Modernity
To Vatican II as Newman’s Council

 I have nothing of that high perfection, which belongs to the writings of saints,
…I trust that I may claim …[in] what I have written,  … an honest intention, absence of private ends, temper of obedience, willingness to be corrected, dread of error,
desire to serve Holy Church, and, through Divine Mercy, a fair measure of success.^[1]

Since 1969,^[2] I’ve been privileged to study John Henry Newman.^[3] Imagine my joy on Sunday morning, 19 October 2019, at St. Peter’s, Rome, when Pope Francis canonized Newman. I cannot emphasize enough why Newman was prophetic in his denunciation of modern rationalist forms of Christianity which, in his view, has capitulated to secular reason fully established in the 19th century as both the default intellectual position as well as the^[4] new social imaginary. Using Newman’s Idea of a University as a standard, I intend to hand on why Newman as prophet of lamentation and as prophet of jubilation helps to “Rebuild the Church.”
To plumb deeper into lamentation and jubilation as Newman’s critique of secular forms of Christianity he regarded as counterfeit, is to shout out Newman’s prophetic voice in defense of the picture of God as totally Other. To appropriate human response rests on religious fear and awe. It is an honest view of human beings as sinners that are capable through grace of becoming saints (jubilation) or scoundrels (lamentation). It means conviction that faith has prerogatives over instrumental or moral reason, that what matters is making judgments about behavior that pertain to one’s salvation. It means recognizing Newman’s prudent resistance to and refutation of highly processed forms of Christianity in modernity. It means recognizing how secular Christianity disguises itself as genuine and immunizes itself. A more recent and pernicious phenomenon is “weaponized incomprehensibility”^[5] that is besieging our values.
As a standard, was Newman’s Idea of a University a success or failure? A dismal failure for it never became a reality. The Idea of a University was based on the Oxford model with its roots in Aristotle’s system of broad cultural education, paideia, and linked to the origin of the modern university as founded by the Catholic Church in the 13th century at Paris, Padua, Bologna, and Oxford. A university is not a seminary, and that misunderstanding with the Irish Bishops was not bridged. Yet Newman wrote a classic, a coherent and powerful vision of the concept of university that has a signified, adequate, expressed, enormous influence as synthesis with all its details to this day. Shortly before he died, Fr. Hesburgh, C.S.C said to me: Newman’s Idea of a University was just that, a powerful synthesis whose principles helped him to lead the University of Notre Dame for thirty-five years as its president.
Newman’s quote upon acceptance of the cardinalate encapsulates his debt to the ancient classical system proximate to his Oxford classical studies. He embraces his limits as a creature and sinner with freedom and self-transcendence. His understanding and commitment to Church AND World reflect an inheritor of that line from the great saints as Francis of Assisi, and a precursor of Vatican II’s emphasis on reform, renewal, and updating. Understanding Aristotle’s paideia, the Medieval universities, the Oxford model as a youth, contributed to the university curriculum he created for Dublin. Negotiation between Church AND World is constitutive of the Roman Catholic Church.^[6] Fr. Hesburgh saw his work at Notre Dame as a progression of Newman, with philosophy as a synthetic state of mind providing integration.
Pope St. John XXIII’s call for Aggiornamento did not equate with thinking that updating for the whole Church meant only when the Church was fully egalitarian. Second, there was never a break with the past at Vatican II, for it would not be the Catholic way. The Church negotiates because it is “in” AND “for” the World, but the Church is not the World. The Church has a supernatural end. The Documents of Vatican II give expression to the balance of two lines of interpretation which are ongoing. Lumen Gentium, on the mystery of the Church, and Gaudium et Spes, on the Church AND World, are a balance between the two lines of interpretation. The dominant interpretation after Vatican II, which is the wrong interpretive strategy to Pope Benedict XVI, is the lens of social justice as the only interpretation of the purpose of the Catholic Church.^[7]
In The Idea of a University, Newman avoids being clever or appearing to win. To be clever gets old and, ironically, never grows. To be clever is to be permanently frozen. The beauty of argument is towards development of a bridge between views. Second level order of reflection on the data of Christian faith in history and interpreting the development of the Church’s institutions assists theology as a form of knowledge that is public, one that is able to draw conclusions that verify its intuitions, and enable a person to intervene in public space.
Newman’s gentleman^[8] in The Idea of a University describes a “gentleman” not of Christianity, but of civilization, a good citizen. St. Paul’s Christian character in its most graceful form and with its most beautiful hues depends on lifelong formation and cultivation of virtue that is more than ornamental. The Idea of a University lists the Church’s duties: to cure and keep its members from sin by teaching justice and chastity, the judgment to come, faith, hope, devotion and honesty, with elements of charity that puts souls on the way of salvation, aspiring to be heroic, attaining to various degrees of what is beautiful.^[9] In the 21st century information explosion we gasp for air trying to answer what constitutes a university education. I read Newman’s Idea of a University as a serene text that is more and more relevant today.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conv., Univ. of Notre Dame, Easter Reflection 4 eondrako@alumni.nd.edu

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^[1] J. H. Newman, Biglietto Speech, 12 May 1879. Given upon acceptance of the cardinalate.
^[2] P. D. Fehlner, OFM Conv. was the first to teach Newman a Franciscan systematic approach.
^[3] A. J. Boekraad, MHM in 1973-1974; John Ford, C.S.C at CUA in 2006; Oxford Conf. with I. Ker et. al, @ Nat Inst of Newman Studies; SJHNA Conferences; C. O’Regan at Notre Dame since 2010; Dissert. at Syracuse University on Newman and Gladstone,1994; Ed., Newman Scotus Reader, 2015, rpt canoniz. issue, 2019; Dissert. at Notre Dame, Rebuild My Church, 2021.
^[4]The  Documents of Vatican II with Notes and Index (Vatican Trans: 2009, rpt. 2020).
^[5] Weaponized incomprehensibility implies: “if I do not understand something, you are the fool.”
^[6] The difficulty was compounded by the refusal of the Catholic Church to negotiate with modernity.
^[7] Responsible complaints from the faithful most often are in this register, i.e., too social justice oriented.
^[8] Idea, 208-210.
^[9] Idea, 203.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
May 20, 2022

Currently, Our Lady of the Angels Province has two men in the first formal year of formation, in the St. Bonaventure Friary – Interprovince Postulancy (Chicago, IL). Together with their Postulancy Assistant Director – Fr. Joseph Bayne, OFM Conv. (a friar of our province – pictured at center), the Postulants – Marvin Fernandez and Connor Ouly took some time to visit a bit of our province roots with a stop at picturesque Corpus Christi Church (Buffalo, NY).  Corpus Christi Church was established in 1898 by +Friar Hyacinth Fudzinski, OFM Conv. (1855-1925) to accommodate a rapidly growing Polish immigrant community in the densely populated Buffalo neighborhood. +Friar Hyacinth was a friar of the St. Anthony of Padua Province USA, which is now known as Our Lady of the Angels Province after the 2014 union with Immaculate Conception Province. (Read more about our Province History and the History of the Franciscan Friars Conventual in the USA).  This site was also the original home of our Father Justin Rosary Hour ministry (Hamburg, NY). Our friars served the faithful of Corpus Christi Church, until 2003.
Friar Joe, Marvin and Connor were in the area to help a friar of the St. Bonaventure Province move into our Father Justin Senior Friars Residence (Hamburg, NY).  Our province’s two soon-to-be Novices were thrilled to take in the rich Franciscan history present in Buffalo, NY. They even got to enjoy lunch at Anchor Bar, often considered the home of the original Buffalo Wings, as a part of the pilgrimage.

On May 14, 2022, after the fulfillment of the Philosophy requirement for Theological Studies, Our Lady of the Angels Province Solemnly Professed Student Friar Franck Lino Sokpolie, OFM Conv. received a degree in French and Francophone Studies, with a Certificate in European Studies, from the Catholic University of America. He was joined by family and friends, including several of his confreres, in continued studies. Friar Franck officially completed all the class course required for the degree in 2020. In the Fall of 2021, he returned from is Apostolic Year of Formation, serving in ministry with our friars in Columbus, GA, and finished his thesis for the French Degree, before heading to San Antonio, TX to continue his education, this past January. He came back last week to walk at CUA Commencement.

A sampling of the Student Friars of Our Lady of the Angels Province – left to right: friar Cristofer Fernández, OFM Conv., friar Raad Eshoo, OFM Conv., Friar Franck, friar Antonio Moualeu, OFM Conv. (recent Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering), Fr. Everest Valentine Nyaki Mkenda, OFM Conv. (actually a friar from the Tanzania Custody who is in continued studies at CUA, residing with our friars in our Post-Novitiate Friary), and friar Joseph Krondon, OFM Conv.

Friar Franck’s Family

On their last day, the St. Francis High School (Athol Springs, NY) Class of 2022 gathered in the quad with the rest of the student body and were given a final blessing by Fr. Michael Sajda, OFM Conv. Friar Michael has served as SFHS President for the past 16 years. After serving in province education ministries, from 1979-2001 (MD, NY & FL), he began serving at our Athol Springs, NY high school province ministry 21 years ago. Friar Michael was first assigned to St. Francis in 2001 to serve as Principal, and became President in 2006. As of June 25, 2022, the new President of SFHS will be Fr. Matthew Foley, OFM Conv., who currently serves there as an Instructor and as Campus Minister.

Note: The first class was enrolled at St. Francis High School in 1927. SFHS was founded under the leadership of the Very Rev. Justin Figas, OFM Conv., who had long desired to establish a secondary school for young men in the Niagara Frontier area.

From Newman as a Critic of Modernity
To Vatican II as Newman’s Council

“The world is content with setting right the surface of things;
the Church aims at regenerating the very depth of the heart.”

In the 21st century, does this aphorism^[1] have traction or purchase, or attract anyone? Does it appear that the world is content at setting right the surface of things? John Locke defined how to be a good citizen and how to avoid religious wars by all religions keeping to very few beliefs. The less belief, the better for civil harmony. To some, that looks good for setting right the surface of things. Self-proclaimed referees, operating under the guise of neutrality, make the claim to set right the surface of things. The increasing breakdown of civility and overwhelming absence of nobility inundates us every time we turn on the news or look at our cellphones.
Are we convinced that what the Church is and what it does directly concerns the regeneration of the very depth of the heart? Edward Gibbon, a gifted historian, wrote that the Church was an authoritarian institution with too many rules, with the ability to be heavy handed so as to force its doctrines upon the faithful. John Henry Newman grew up with the prevailing Lockean and Gibbonesque thought in England. Newman’s aphorism from The Idea of a University tells a story. Christianity has a story to tell about what the Church’s mission is and what it has done or failed to do on the world stage for two millennia. We inherit this story.
What is the prevailing current today? Do we still live in the aspiration of the Kingdom of God? Has the real meaning of the sacramental been drained? Newman was dealing with a variety of ways to defend the reasonableness of belief in God and to allow the inclusion of the sacraments in the economy of Christianity. He drew attention to the phenomenon of Christian thought in the 19th century that was embedded in its practices and forms of life. My sketches have ranged from his teen to his golden years. A reflection upon the phenomenon of Christian thought from different periods in his life and the works he produced at those times offers a perspective to unite the ‘Anglican’ and ‘Catholic’ Newman and his writings.
Newman as Anglican and Catholic stands with a contemporary of his: Kierkegaard, a Lutheran who grasped well the all too easily changing nature of secular Christianity in modernity in Denmark between the 1830s and 1850s. A point by point comparison of the two thinkers would be very fruitful, despite Kierkegaard’s very different 19th century cultural situation. Kierkegaard is an instance of a particular ‘prophetic’ type of apologist who “is less interested in defending Christianity against the atheists than critiquing its self-preservation in modernity in which it makes its peace with reason, morality and with progress” (C. O’Regan). Kierkegaard is scathing in his criticism of the Lutheran bishops for their failure to stem the tide of adaptation to modern cultural and social norms in Denmark that have displaced authentic Christianity which, for Kierkegaard, is essentially Lutheran Christianity. Kierkegaard’s critique is ‘prophetic’ in substance and tone for its failure to bear any resemblance to the Lutheranism of the past.
Kierkegaard’s patterns present similarity and difference with Newman. For Kierkegaard, faith rather than reason, scripture rather than cultural accommodation that weakens a strong sense of sin and sinfulness, and knowledge of how the sinner has a sense of the transcendent Otherness of God and deep sense of the prerogatives of divine judgment that is not subservient to secular morality, confirms the mystery of the incarnation, passion and death of Christ. His prophetic critique of the degraded state of Christianity in modernity and his prophetic tone is unique and is as vehement as the biblical prophets, Hosea and Jeremiah. Newman believes in the power of argument and uplifts Christian believers with the skills of the scalpel of argument.^[2]
Look to Vatican II, Newman’s Council. Lumen Gentium defines the mystery of the Church, not a common garden word. The source of the Church, its energy, power, and reality as an instrument as an institution is a mystery. The Greek mysterion means power and source. The Latin term is sacramentum. The Church is a vehicle of a symbol that stands for a reality that transcends it. The Church is nothing without representing Christ. It is the vehicle whereby Christ is made present and lives in our presence. God is in and with the Church, and is the vital principle within the Church. Christ is in the sacrament, and is present in the Church. The Church as an institution, animated by the Holy Spirit, has to be representative of Christ. The Church as mystery is alive, vital and not reduced to an institution with power locked behind walls.
A second Vatican II document on the Church and what it does in the world as a gift, Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope) lyrically draws us into what the Church is doing as the Church of the poor, the outsider, with an eye on eternal life. Newman’s Council has a shift in tonality from Vatican I. Christ lives in our presence now. God is in and with and is the vital principle within the Church. As an institution, the Church Is representative of Christ and animated by the Holy Spirit. The Church’s mission includes dialogue and encounter and recognition of human dignity. Human beings are made in the image of God, gifted with reason and freedom. Every person, most of all, persons with disabilities, reflect who we are as images of God.
The defining feature of Newman’s work is what he calls liberalism in religion. His account of its basic tenets and underlying principles is a vista that invites deeper study of Newman and how he goes beyond doctrine and tradition, encouraging a perception of greatness in the human being that may have been lost from view of historical Christianity but retrieved with Vatican II. Locke and his epigones, R. Whately at Oxford, and E. Gibbon with his historicist line, attempted to remove any belief in mystery. In our own day, two lines of interpretation of Newman’s Council often appear in competition in the Church’s ongoing updating, the competing interpretations which themselves risk obscuring the mystery. Pope St. John XXIII’s call to update the Church, is not a call to leave its identity behind, nor to be invidious or condemnatory. Social justice as the only purpose of the Church is a wrong interpretive strategy, but it continues to dominate.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conv., Univ. of Notre Dame, Easter Reflection 3  eondrako@alumni.nd.edu

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^[1] J. H. Newman, The Idea of a University (London, uniform edition), 203.
^[2] See my earlier entries referencing Newman’s Oxford University Sermons and A Grammar of Assent. Newman never reduces argument to logic or syllogism or a version of biblical proof texting.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
May 10, 2022

May 1, 2022: The Minister General of our Order, the Most Rev. Carlos Trovarelli, OFM Conv. (above pictured in front of the Tomb of St. Francis in Assisi) and Fr. Jude Winkler, OFM Conv. (Our Lady of the Angels Province friar serving as Assistant General for the Conventual Franciscan Federation) visited our Province’s Syracuse, NY pastoral ministry ~ Assumption Church, where our friars have been serving for over 100 years. Friar Carlos and Friar Jude toured the newly remodeled the lower level of the church; a space called the Grotto. The friars serving at Assumption Church use the space to invite local people of the area to join them for coffee, dinner, etc. The aim is to build friendships, which will hopefully lead them to deeper participation in the life of the community. It is hoped this program will lead some of them to want more, to participate in Mass which is celebrated in the upper level of the church. The program corresponds with St. Francis’ call to “heal wounds, bind what is broken, and bring home the lost.” Read More
Our newly elected Minister Provincial ~ the Very Rev. Fr. Michael Heine, OFM Conv. will be at Assumption Church, June 5, 2022, to celebrate Mass and bless the Grotto.

May 5-7, 2022: After visiting the Province Custody of St. Maximilian M. Kolbe of the Province of St. Maximilian M. Kolbe in Poland [Gdańsk] (May 2-5, 2022 Montreal, Canada) and before attending the United States for the provinces’ chapters, Friar Carlos made his first visit to Canada, including a fraternal visit to our Province’s Canadian Delegation of St. Francis of Assisi, with a stop at our St. Bonaventure Friary in Toronto, ON. The friars gathered with the general and Friar Jude to offer their opinions and hopes for the future as we work at re-founding the Order’s presence in Canada. After the meeting and following the Minister General’s encouraging words, the friars present took this picture in the friary chapel.

Statement of the Franciscan Friars Conventual
on the Decision of The Catholic University of America
to replace them as Directors of Campus Ministry

The Franciscan Friars Conventual of Our Lady of the Angels Province are saddened and disappointed in the decision of The Catholic University of America to terminate the friars’ 24-year service as University Chaplains and Directors of Campus Ministry.
When the Franciscans assumed leadership of campus ministry at the University, they were mandated by the U.S. bishops to restore a fuller sense of Catholic identity in the ethos of life on campus – orienting the undergraduate and graduate students, along with faculty, administration, and staff, to the Church’s gospel principles of truth, charity, and justice.  For 24 years the friars, in collaboration with hundreds of lay ministers, have striven to create a faith community at the Catholic University, committed to the principles of the Christian intellectual tradition, the sanctity of life, the dignity of the human person, the culture of social justice, the witness of interreligious dialogue, and the sacredness of liturgical celebration.
The friars depart with profound gratitude to God for the privilege of having accompanied the Catholic University community on its journey of faith through 24 years of unprecedented times.  We hope, in the humble spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, that we have contributed to upbuilding the faith-life of the University.  We offer our support to those whom the University has chosen to replace us.  May the Franciscan blessing of “Pax et Bonum” (“Peace and Good”) descend upon all.

Friar Nick Romeo talks about why wounded men make the best friars. Part of the hard work of formation is owning our less -than-idyllic reasons for joining, then permitting them to be chiseled away by the mercy offered by Christ