Apologia Pro Vita Sua

Christian Alexander

I am trying to understand this passage. 

Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so.

John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1865), 4.

Any suggestions? 

MJ. Smith

Any suggestions? 

Yes, give me a bit of context so the text doesn't look nonsensical.

CORRESPONDENCE

ON THE QUESTION WHETHER DR. NEWMAN TEACHES THAT TRUTH IS NO VIRTUE?

ADVERTISEMENT.

To prevent misconception, I think it necessary to observe, that, in my Letters here published, I am far indeed from implying any admission of the truth of Mr. Kingsley’s accusations against the Catholic Church, although I have abstained from making any formal protest against them. The object which led to my writing at all, has also led me, in writing, to turn my thoughts in a different direction.

J. H. N.
January 31, 1864.

I

Extract from a Review of Froude’s History of England, vols. vii. and viii., in Macmillan’s Magazine for January, 1864, signed “C. K.”

PAGES 216, 217.

“THE Roman religion had, for some time past, been making men not better men, but worse. We must face, we must conceive honestly for ourselves, the deep demoralization which had been brought on in Europe by the dogma that the Pope of Rome had the power of creating right and wrong; that not only truth and falsehood, but morality and immorality, depended on his setting his seal to a bit of parchment. From the time that indulgences were hawked about in his name, which would insure pardon for any man, ‘esti matrem Dei violarisset,’ the world in general began to be of that opinion. But the mischief was older and deeper than those indulgences. It lay in the very notion of the dispensing power. A deed might be a crime, or no crime at all—like Henry the Eighth’s marriage of his brother’s widow—according to the will of the Pope. If it suited the interest or caprice of the old man of Rome not to say the word, the doer of a certain deed would be burned alive in hell for ever. If it suited him, on the other hand, to say it, the doer of the same deed would go, sacramentis munitus, to endless bliss. What rule of morality, what eternal law of right and wrong, could remain in the hearts of men born and bred under the shadow of so hideous a deception?
“And the shadow did not pass at once, when the Pope’s authority was thrown off. Henry VIII. evidently thought that if the Pope could make right and wrong, perhaps he could do so likewise. Elizabeth seems to have fancied, at one weak moment, that the Pope had the power of making her marriage with Leicester right, instead of wrong.
“Moreover, when the moral canon of the Pope’s will was gone, there was for a while no canon of morality left. The average morality of Elizabeth’s reign was not so much low, as capricious, self-willed, fortuitous; magnificent one day in virtue, terrible the next in vice. It was not till more than one generation had grown up and died with the Bible in their hands, that Englishmen and Germans began to understand (what Frenchmen and Italians did not understand) that they were to be judged by the everlasting laws of a God who was no respecter of persons.
“So, again, of the virtue of truth. Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so.
“Ever since Pope Stephen forged an epistle from St. Peter to Pepin, King of the Franks, and sent it with some filings of the saint’s holy chains, that he might bribe him to invade Italy, destroy the Lombards, and confirm to him the ‘Patrimony of St. Peter;’ ever since the first monk forged the first charter of his monastery, or dug the first heathen Anglo-Saxon out of his barrow, to make him a martyr and a worker of miracles, because his own minister did not ‘draw’ as well as the rival minister ten miles off;—ever since this had the heap of lies been accumulating, spawning, breeding fresh lies, till men began to ask themselves whether truth was a thing worth troubling a practical man’s head about, and to suspect that tongues were given to men, as claws to cats and horns to bulls, simply for purposes of offence and defence.”

II

DR. NEWMAN to MESSRS. MACMILLAN and CO.

The Oratory, December 30, 1863.
GENTLEMEN:
I do not write to you with any controversial purpose, which would be preposterous; but I address you simply because of your special interest in a Magazine which bears your name.
That highly respected name you have associated with a Magazine, of which the January number has been sent to me by this morning’s post, with a pencil mark calling my attention to page 217.
There, apropos of Queen Elizabeth, I read as follows:—
“Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so.”
There is no reference at the foot of the page to any words of mine, much less any quotation from my writings, in justification of this statement.
I should not dream of expostulating with the writer of such a passage, nor with the editor who could insert it without appending evidence in proof of its allegations. Nor do I want any reparation from either of them. I neither complain of them for their act, nor should I thank them if they reversed it. Nor do I even write to you with any desire of troubling you to send me an answer. I do but wish to draw the attention of yourselves, as gentlemen, to a grave and gratuitous slander, with which I feel confident you will be sorry to find associated a name so eminent as yours.
I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) JOHN H. NEWMAN.

In short, I wouldn't waste my time trying to understand C.K.'s interpretation clearly not based on anything Newman did or would have said. However, if you are doing a study on the anti-Catholic prejudice in England ...