Newman on the Sacred Liturgy, Part Two

Editor’s note: Part One of this essay was posted on November 10, 2025.

The Place of Externals in Worship

With the three pillars of reverential fear, stability and continuity, and orthodox teaching in place, we are now situated to appreciate some of Newman’s ideas on what some might deem matters of “lesser” importance, namely, the external elements of Christian worship.

To those who would accuse those advocating liturgical propriety of fastidiousness, Newman gives short shrift: “Let us … be at least as exact and as decent in the service of God, as we are in our own persons and our own homes.”¹⁸ Of course, one must admit that his argument may have carried more weight in Victorian society than it would today, where personal decorum is not so highly valued.

He goes on to declare, without fear of contradiction, the importance, indeed the necessity, of beautiful appointments in the House of God, grounding it in the very Word of God: “Every attentive reader of Scripture must be aware what stress is there laid upon the duty of costliness and magnificence in the public service of God.” He then challenges those who would take exception to his assertions to respond with scriptural evidence for their position:

… did our Saviour say that magnificence in worshipping God, magnificence in His house, in its furniture, and in its decorations, is wrong, wrong since He has come into the world? Does He discourage us from building handsome Churches, or beautifying the ceremonial of religion? Did He exhort us to niggardness? did He put a slight on architectural skill? did He imply we should please Him the more, the less study and trouble we gave to the externals of worship? In rejecting the offering of Herod, did He forbid the devotion of Christians?

Not waiting for or anticipating their response, he offers his own reply:

This is what He condemned, the show of great attention to outward things, while inward things, which were more important, were neglected. This, He says Himself, in His denunciation of the Pharisees, “These ought ye to have done,” He says, “and not to leave the other,” the inward, “undone.”

Finally, he gets to the very roots of iconoclasm by highlighting the body-soul unity of the human person:

Persons who put aside gravity and comeliness in the worship of God, that they may pray more spiritually, forget that God is a Maker of all things, visible as well as invisible; that He is the Lord of our bodies as well as of our souls; that He is to be worshipped in public as well as in secret … there are not two Gods, one of matter, one of spirit; one of the Law, and one of the Gospel. There is one God, and He is Lord of all we are, and all we have; and therefore, all we do must be stamped with His seal and signature. We must begin, indeed, with the heart; for out of the heart proceed all good and evil; but while we begin with the heart, we must not end with the heart.

At the risk of putting words into Newman’s mouth, it would be fair to say that he would maintain that it is not so much that Almighty God “needs” the beautiful and costly in our worship; rather, it is we humans who need such visible signs the better to offer God the worship in “spirit and in truth,” commanded by Our Savior (Jn 4:24). Once more, we see that Newman not only rejects dichotomous categories (either/or) but that, particularly in this instance, he sees one leading inexorably to the other (both/and).

It should be recalled that this position of his was not a later development in his thought; on the contrary, we find very early on in his preaching ministry how he tackles the underlying problem of those who would dismiss liturgical norms as superfluous and merely “man-made” creations: “The Bible then may be said to give us the spirit of religion; but the Church must provide the body in which that spirit is to be lodged. Religion must be realized in particular acts, in order to its continuing alive.”¹⁹ He extrapolates on this point with language and examples that one might be tempted to think he was addressing a congregation of the twenty-first century:

There is no such thing as abstract religion. When persons attempt to worship in this (what they call) more spiritual manner, they end, in fact, in not worshipping at all. This frequently happens… Youths, for instance (and perhaps those who should know better than they), sometimes argue with themselves, “What is the need of praying statedly morning and evening? Why use a form of words? Why kneel? Why cannot I pray in bed, or walking, or dressing?” They end in not praying at all. Again, what will the devotion of the country people be, if we strip religion of its external symbols, and bid them seek out and gaze upon the Invisible?

His argumentation is convincing not only because it reflects solid theology but also sound psychology. Both aspects ought to inform liturgical praxis.

Sundry Issues

As in Newman’s era, so too in ours, people promoting various liturgical experiments suggest that such minutiae ought not to occupy – or better, preoccupy – serious believers. Yet, Our Lord taught us quite the contrary: “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much” (Lk 16:10); and “Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:19). With these dominical injunctions in mind, we can approach some final considerations.

Citing Christ’s declaration to Thomas the Apostle, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (Jn 20:29), Newman expands on some earlier reflections on holy fear, remarking:

. . . if we thus act, we shall, through God’s grace, be gradually endued with the spirit of His holy fear. We shall in time, in our mode of talking and acting, in our religious services and our daily conduct, manifest, not with constraint and effort, but spontaneously and naturally, that we fear Him while we love him.²⁰

The key words are “spontaneously and naturally.” Simply put, by acting from motivations of faith and love, doing the proper thing becomes connatural, which should be the goal of all efforts to worship our God.

In another sermon, Newman identifies an oft-unspoken problem in contemporary worship, which apparently plagued his generation as well. While acknowledging the many assets of the City of Corinth (“a wealthy place; it was a place where all nations met, and where men saw much of the world; and it was a place of science and philosophy”) and that the Lord had chosen many in the City of Corinth (cf. Acts 18:10), he also pinpointed a major obstacle: “… in a place of so much luxury and worldly wisdom, difficulties so great stood in the way of a simple, humble faith, as to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.”²¹

He makes a fascinating suggestion as to why the Corinthians (and their spiritual descendants down the ages) behave as they do: Such people regard themselves as “mere members of an earthly community.” In other words, they have lost (if they ever had) that transcendental horizon which fixes one’s focus on membership in the Communion of Saints. He follows that critique with yet another theological observation as he accuses them of being tainted by the Pelagian heresy, “for they make themselves their own centre, instead of depending on Almighty God and His ordinances.” These are devastating assertions, for which he provides ample evidence, and these deviations make well-nigh impossible a worthy and fruitful liturgical life. He concludes this sermon by chastising those who “deprive a Christian life of its mysteriousness.” And true worship can only occur within the context of mystery.

Yet other types of individuals “at last become the cold, indifferent, profane characters they professed themselves to be. They think contemptuously of God’s Ministers, Sacraments, and Worship.” Not only do they harm themselves (whether or not they either know or care), but they create a negative sphere of influence, thus corrupting others, so that Newman prays: “May God guide us in a dangerous world; and deliver us from evil. And may He rouse to serious thought, by the power of His Spirit, all who are living in profaneness or unconcern!”²²

We have already seen how Newman lifts up as an example of holy reverence the figure of Samuel. There is still another aspect of this to consider. The boy Samuel is, for him, a kind of corporate person or representative of all young boys who serve at God’s altar, so that even the vesture made by his mother and worn by him in his boyhood “would both express, and impress upon him, reverence.” Even more, rather than fulfilling the adage that “familiarity breeds contempt,” with the passage of time, Samuel grows in holiness and in due reverence for holy things, so that he “became an instrument of God’s supernatural power.”²³ It has always been the intuition and hope of the Church that a young boy’s proximity to the altar would be the seed for pursuing a priestly vocation or, if not that, at least a truly devout adult life.

One of the charges leveled against formal, liturgical prayer is that it is repetitive. In “Reverence in Worship,” Newman puts in clear relief the complaints of the bored:

Thus all we do in Church is done on a principle of reverence; it is done with the thought that we are in God’s presence. But irreverent persons, not understanding this, when they come into Church, and find nothing there of a striking kind, when they find every thing is read from a book, and in a calm, quiet way, and still more, when they come a second and a third time, and find every thing just the same, over and over again, they are offended and tired. “There is nothing,” they say, “to rouse or interest them.” They think God’s service dull and tiresome, if I may use such words; for they do not come to Church to honour God, but to please themselves. They want something new.

He then frames a response which few apologists for standardized liturgy have put forward, that is, those who tire of hearing the same prayers over and over again should consider the worship of the angels in Heaven who, in fact, repeat the same prayers over and over again: “They are never tired; but surely all those persons would be soon tired of hearing them, instead of taking part in their glorious chant, who are wearied of Church now, and seek for something more attractive and rousing.” His message is at once clever and convincing (or at least it should be): Anyone who gets tired of the liturgy of the Church on earth is not an apt candidate to share in the liturgy of Heaven.

Newman the pastor offers salutary advice on how the faithful should approach the divine service, preparing themselves for an encounter with the King of the Universe:

Let us firmly look at the Cross, that is the token of our salvation. Let us ever remember the sacred Name of Jesus, in which devils were cast out of old time. These are the thoughts with which we should come to Church; and if we come a little before the Service begins, and want something to think about, we may look, not at who are coming in and when, but at the building itself, which will remind us of many good things; or we may look into the Prayer Book for such passages as the 84th Psalm, which runs thus: “O how amiable are Thy dwellings, Thou Lord of hosts! my soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the Courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh rejoice in the Living God.”

If he gives counsel on how to ready oneself for worship, he also speaks about what should be the effects of true worship. He asks his congregation to think of Moses: After his forty days and forty nights in the company of God, “his face quite shone and dazzled the people, so that he was obliged to put a veil over it.” There should be a demonstrable change in all who have contact with the living God: “Such is the effect of God’s grace on those who come to Church in faith and love; their mode of acting and talking, their very manner and behaviour, show they have been in God’s presence. They are ever sober, cheerful, modest, serious, and earnest.”

Likewise, does he take up the example of Moses in still another sermon, “Reverence, A Belief in God’s Presence.” In very moving language, he seeks to rouse his congregation to an awareness of what should be their experience every time they engage in communal worship:

We too, though as yet we are not admitted to heavenly glory, yet are given to see much, in preparation for seeing more. Christ dwells among us in His Church really though invisibly, and through its Ordinances fulfils towards us, in a true and sufficient sense, the promise of the text. We are even now permitted to “see the King in His beauty,” to “behold the land that is very far off.”

. . . We do not see God face to face under the Gospel, but still, for all that, it is true that “we know in part”; we see, though it be “through a glass darkly”; which is far more than any but Christians are enabled to do. Baptism, by which we become Christians, is an illumination; and Christ, who is the Object of our worship, is withal a Light to worship by.²⁴

We who worship today are being prepared for a face-to-face encounter, he maintains, and should rejoice in the graces given us in the Sacred Liturgy. Indeed, his reminder of the unique gift of Christian worship sounds like an echo of the admonition of Pope St. Leo the Great, “Recognize, O Christian, your great dignity!”

In the same place, Newman also takes aim at those supposedly within the fold who make two fundamental mistakes, the first leading to the second:

The one class of persons consists of those who think the Catholic Creed too strict,—who hold that no certain doctrines need be believed in order to salvation, or at least question the necessity; who say that it matters not what a man believes, so that his conduct is respectable and orderly, —who think that all rites and ceremonies are mere niceties (as they speak) and trifles, and that a man pleases God equally by observing them or not. . . .

The first are those who subscribe to what Newman, in his Biglietto speech, labeled as “liberalism,” against which he had fought his whole life long.²⁵ Their nonchalant attitude toward doctrine has no logical exit, except through a laissez-faire attitude toward liturgy, for no other reason than simply the conviction that man is the measure of all things, not God or His Revelation in Christ and in Christ’s Church.

Again, in that very same sermon, he draws out the implications of that cavalier approach to life in the Church, again, as nothing more or less than the “liberalism” against which he would rail his entire life:

Many other instances might be mentioned of very various kinds. For instance, the freedom with which men propose to alter God’s ordinances, to suit their own convenience, or to meet the age; their reliance on their private and antecedent notions about sacred subjects; their want of interest and caution in inquiring what God’s probable will is; their contempt for any view of the Sacraments which exceeds the evidence of their senses; and their confidence in settling the order of importance in which the distinct articles of Christian faith stand;—all which shows that it is no question of words whether men have fear or not, but that there is a something they really have not, whatever name we give it.

It is instructive that so many of the so-called “liturgy wars” of the post-Vatican II era are not, at base, really about liturgy but about diametrically opposed understandings of God, Revelation, and the Church.

Such an attitudinal difficulty is also manifest in those who go so far as to censor the uncomfortable words of Sacred Scripture:

Nay, do we not know, though I dare say it may surprise many a sober Christian to hear that it is so, that there are men at this moment who (I hardly like to mention it) wish parts of the Psalms left out of the Service as ungentle and harsh? Alas! that men of this day should rashly put their own judgment in competition with that of all the Saints of every age hitherto since Christ came—should virtually say, “Either they have been wrong or we are,” thus forcing us to decide between the two. Alas! that they should dare to criticise the words of inspiration!²⁶

Once more, we see how topics addressed by Newman in the nineteenth century have a contemporary ring about them, proving perennially valid the mantra, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Would that Newman’s warning had been heeded by those who expurgated the “cursing psalms” from the Liturgy of the Hours and lectionary in the post-conciliar liturgical reforms universally and, on the American scene, with passages of St. Paul deemed offensive to some modern branches of feminism in the United States.²⁷

Speaking of the Liturgy of the Hours puts one in mind of Newman’s very high estimation for what Anglicans of his time called “The Daily Service.” In a sermon of that name,²⁸ he offers a very thorough analysis of the Service and, interestingly, sees it as most apt “preparation for the Holy Communion.” I suspect it would gladden the heart of Newman to know that so many Catholic parishes in the post-Vatican II era have introduced the public celebration of Lauds and Vespers into their worship life, often enough precisely before the daily Mass. It is quite telling that he appends to that sermon a footnote of caution about frequent reception of Holy Communion–a monitum worth taking more seriously in our own time and place.²⁹

At a theological level, Newman distinguished clearly between doctrine and devotion. Similarly, as meticulous as Newman was with fidelity to the rubrics of the Sacred Liturgy, he made the same distinction in terms of the Christian’s life of prayer: “While the Catholic Church allows no private judgment as regards the faith, she allows… great latitude in respect to devotions.”³⁰ This distinction was important to him in allowing for what he dubbed “Italian” exuberance in some devotional books, while holding to what may be considered a more doctrinally precise theological expression as found in the Church’s formal worship.³¹

Some Concluding Observations

We have seen how Newman’s appreciation of the Sacred Liturgy forms a whole cloth: Accepting the omnipotence and ineffability of the Triune God demands reverence; reverence for God leads to reverence for time-honored forms; all of this has roots in theology.

The Early Church was very cautious about admitting the uninitiated into the Sacred Mysteries, giving birth to the disciplina arcani, based on the belief that those outside the Faith could not but misunderstand what they were witnessing at the altar. Five years after his conversion, Newman would feel compelled to explain the incomprehensibility of Catholic worship to one outside the Church’s visible communion:

A Protestant wanders into one of our chapels; he sees a priest kneeling and bowing and throwing up a thurible, and boys in cottas going in and out, and a whole choir and people singing amain all the time, and he has nothing to suggest to him what it is all about; and he calls it mummery, and he walks out again. And would it not indeed be so, my brethren, if this were all? But will he think it mummery when he learns and seriously apprehends the fact, that, according to the belief of a Catholic, the Word Incarnate, the Second Person of the Eternal Trinity, is there bodily present,—hidden, indeed, from our senses, but in no other way withheld from us? He may reject what we believe; he will not wonder at what we do. And so, again, open the Missal, read the minute directions given for the celebration of Mass,—what are the fit dispositions under which the Priest prepares for it, how he is to arrange his every action, movement, gesture, utterance, during the course of it, and what is to be done in case of a variety of supposable accidents. What a mockery would all this be, if the rite meant nothing! But if it be a fact that God the Son is there offered up in human flesh and blood by the hands of man, why, it is plain that no rite whatever, however anxious and elaborate, is equal to the depth of the overwhelming thoughts which are borne in upon the mind by such an action. Thus the usages and ordinances of the Church do not exist for their own sake; they do not stand of themselves; they are not sufficient for themselves; they do not fight against the State their own battle; they are not appointed as ultimate ends; but they are dependent on an inward substance; they protect a mystery; they defend a dogma; they represent an idea; they preach good tidings; they are the channels of grace. They are the outward shape of an inward reality or fact, which no Catholic doubts, which is assumed as a first principle, which is not an inference of reason, but the object of a spiritual sense.³²

Nearly seventy-five years earlier, on October 9, 1774, John Adams and George Washington visited a Catholic chapel in Philadelphia during the First Continental Congress. Adams reported his reaction to the visit to his wife and constant correspondent, Abigail. Although Adams utters some unattractive assessments of his Catholic liturgical experience, in the main, he was so positively impressed with the overall impact as to express the telling line: “Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear, and imagination. Everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and the ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.”³³

Whether Adams knew it or not, what really impressed him was the congruence of the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi. Shortly after Newman’s conversion, he penned what may be considered an autobiographical novel, Loss and Gain (1848), in which the protagonist – generally acknowledged to be his literary alter ego – rhapsodizes on his appreciation for Holy Mass:

. . . to me nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses forever and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words, —it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. It is, not the invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation of the Eternal. He becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the scope, and is the interpretation, of every part of the solemnity.

Endnotes:

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