Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Newman’s Devotion to Mary

This week our Church celebrates a beautiful feast for our Lady under one of her most ancient, beloved and mysterious titles: Our Lady of Mount Carmel. On this occasion we consider St. John Henry Newman’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and its surprising confluence with the charism of the Carmelite Order, both of which portray authentic prayer and discipleship, and caution against their false forms. 

This connection might be surprising, because Newman declared himself to be more practical than mystical, more Martha than Mary, more active than contemplative. In an 1859 essay on St. John Chrysostom he stated preference for piety of his “five senses” and “warm imagination” than the austerities or extraordinary phenomena associated with mysticism in the popular imagination. Newman was drawn more to the human characters and deeds of saints. This is why he loved the Church Fathers, like Sts. Basil, Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus, whose personal writings bear witness to a holiness forged in the busy whirl of controversy and crisis. He was attracted to “St. Paul more than those first Carmelites, his contemporaries, whose names and acts no one has heard of.”[1]

This reference to the “first Carmelites” belies his awareness of the legendary connection between later Carmelites and those of the ancient observance, whose presence on Mt. Carmel bears strict historical documentation only as early as the Rule of St. Albert written around 1209.[2] Yet Carmelites have traditionally claimed at least affinity, if not direct descent, from the Jewish school of prophets, especially that of Elijah. Newman also admired cloistered orders like the “Carmelites of the Reform of St. Theresa,” that is, Discalced Carmelites, for their “[s]eclusion, silence, watching, [and] meditation,” and saw in them an emblem of “heaven [realized] upon earth.”[3] Newman’s frequent correspondent Miss Holmes, who converted to Catholicism a year ahead of him by his influence, wrote to him in 1844 of her investment in the “Scapular,” a devotion with a special Carmelite flavor that was revealed by Our Lady to St. Simon Stock, an English Carmelite, on July 16, 1251 (hence the feast day).[4] Newman was familiar with the history of the Carmelites among other orders in European Christendom, and evidently had friendly connections with the steadily growing Third Order Carmelite community in Birmingham, including his close colleague Rev. Dr. Henry Weedall, priest, president of Oscott College, first provost of the Birmingham cathedral advisory chapter, and secular or third order Carmelite. [5] Further, his best friend and close collaborator at the Birmingham Oratory, Ambrose St. John, did have a more mystical bent, and at the end of his life had been planning translations of St. John of the Cross and Mary Ágreda. It is hard to imagine that Newman would not have been aware of wider Carmelite trends in England, like the foundation of a new Carmelite friary in London in 1862 by Blessed Augustine Mary of the Blessed Sacrament (Hermann Cohen). [6]

Newman was not ignorant nor dismissive of Carmelite tradition and spirituality, but he had gifts and inclinations that tended away from mysticism and more toward active service, education, apologetics, and philosophical defense of the faith. Even so, the depth of his prayer and contemplation of the mystery of the Incarnation was the real source of his thought, evident especially in his meditations on the titles of Our Lady in the Litany of Loreto.

In his Anglican years, his writings frequently express a suspicion of false spiritualism which might tempt one toward preoccupation with personal experience or emotion to the exclusion of religious reverence, obedience, and submission to church authority. Newman was concerned that enthusiasm not be mistaken for religious experience, especially among evangelicals, focused on the doctrine of “Uncreated Grace” or the “Indwelling of the Holy Spirit” in believers, suggesting that all Christians are called to an active unity and intimacy with God through, not in spite of, ecclesial and sacramental participation. [7] The 16th century Discalced Carmelite reformers shared this concern. St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross wished to teach and exemplify a path for personal spirituality that included active participation in the visible life of the Church, in contrast to the individualism of Protestantism and the spiritualism of the Spanish alumbrados, the latter of whom held that those truly unified with God could leave behind vocal prayer, ecclesial participation and the sacraments.

In terms of both the life of prayer and of doctrine, Newman found in the Blessed Virgin Mary a model for individual believers and for the whole Church. As one “full of grace,” Mary sought deeper understanding while always remaining open to a faith-filled encounter with the mystery of God in prayer. This became an important image for Newman’s theory of doctrinal development. Just as Mary stored up her memories of Christ and “pondered them in her heart,” the Church over the centuries, in her many members, has pondered the mysteries of Christ and attained greater and greater perception and articulation of them in both implicit belief and in explicit, authoritative teachings and formulas (O.U.S. 15; quoted in Development Ch. 7). In the sense which Newman developed in his later writings, this makes the Blessed Virgin Mary both the model disciple and the model theologian—embracing the Holy Mysteries by an act of faith, she also is exemplary for her ever-increasing growth in virtue and understanding, loving the Lord her God with all of her mind, heart and soul (Matt. 22:37). Thus, Newman did not only discover historical dogmas about Mary; from early on, even as an Anglican, Newman took Mary herself as a model for discipleship and theology.

As founding rector of the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin, Newman named the university chapel in honor of the Virgin Mary under her title Sedes Sapientae, the Seat of Wisdom, looking to her for inspiration as Mother of the Divine Logos in bringing together faith and intellect. Both Newman and the Carmelite Doctors affirm that there is a kind of knowing proper to our intellects, but there is also a higher way of knowing God that can only happen by really encountering Him and His grace in prayer, not unlike Newman’s famous distinction between “notional” and “real” assent, moving from propositional ideas to encountering realities. Newman would certainly have agreed with St. Teresa of Ávila’s famous advice for entering into deeper prayer: while reciting your prayers, like the Our Father, remember to whom you are speaking.

Importantly, neither Newman nor the Carmelite tradition speak of progress in prayer as about extraordinary mystical phenomena reserved for religious elites. Rather, they are describing the ordinary dynamics involved in any believer’s relationship with God—the holiness and union with God to which we are all called. Newman’s famous epitaph for his gravestone reflects this: ex umbris et imaginibus in veritate, out of shadows and imaginings unto truth. God’s grace alone leads us through the “shadows” and “imaginings” of human life and human thoughts unto God’s eternal, supernatural truth. May St. John Henry Newman, together with all holy Carmelite saints under the banner of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us as we endeavor to love God with our whole selves, heart mind and soul.

Further Reading on the Blessed Virgin Mary

“The Reverence Due to the Blessed Virgin Mary” (March 25 1831)

“The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son” (1849-1850)

“On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary” (1849-1850)

Newman’s Writing and Compendium from the Fathers on Mary as the “New Eve”

Newman’s “Letter to Rev. E.B. Pusey” (from which many extracts from the link above are taken)

Why the Early Church Thought Mary Was the New Eve, Catholic Answers

From our Blog Archives: ​​https://cardinaljohnhenrynewman.com/newman-and-mary-most-prudent/

https://cardinaljohnhenrynewman.com/christians-misunderstand-devotion-mary/

https://cardinaljohnhenrynewman.com/marys-immaculate-conception-cardinal-newman/

https://cardinaljohnhenrynewman.com/mary-sinless-mother-cardinal-newman/

https://cardinaljohnhenrynewman.com/the-faith-and-experience-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary/

https://cardinaljohnhenrynewman.com/christmas-the-new-creation/

https://cardinaljohnhenrynewman.com/christmas-the-new-creation-part-2/

[1] Newman, Historical Sketches, vol. II (Longmans, Green & Co., 1906), 218.

[2] Silvano Giordano, “Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem,” Carmel in the Holy Land (Il Messaggero di Gesu Bambino, 1995).

[3] Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, vol. I (Longmans, Green & Co., 1901), 288.

[4] John Henry Newman to Miss Mary Holmes, 4 December 1844, The Letters & Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Francis J. McGrath, vol. X (Oxford University, 2006), 447-48.

[5] Newman, Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, 259.

[6] Timothy Tierney, A Life of Hermann Cohen (Balboa Press, 2017), 64.

[7] Charles Dessain, “Cardinal Newman and the Doctrine of Uncreated Grace,” in The Clergy Review 47 (1962), 225, 270.