Three Minutes with Newman
The Fellowship of the Apostles
May 10, 2024
One of the most beautiful, if perplexing, facts about the sacrament of baptism is that anyone, including an atheist, can baptize if he does so in the way the Church prescribes. In willing all men to be saved, God opens the path to Himself. To accomplish His will, He uses anyone who will say yes. And there are all sorts of people who say yes, at least in some sense, despite the fact that they don’t have the whole truth and refuse to call the Church their mother. What should we think of them, some of whom are even hostile toward Catholics? St. John Henry Newman poses and answers this question in his sermon, “The Fellowship of the Apostles.”
There are many people who claim to follow Jesus. Besides the thousands of Protestant denominations, there are heretical sects not recognized as Christian that claim to be so (Mormons, for example) and many more individuals who do not recognize any spiritual authority. All these are in varying degrees dissenting from the Church, even while upholding elements of the truth.
This is not a new problem, Newman says. It was present from the beginning of the Church, as we can see when we read the New Testament. In the Gospel of Mark, the disciples tell Jesus that they saw a man exorcizing demons in His name, but he wasn’t a disciple. In Acts, St. Paul baptizes some who were only baptized according to John’s baptism but not Jesus’. In the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (an early Church father writing around 110 A.D.), believers are told they must follow the bishop in everything: “and such is your practice that you do nothing without the bishop, and that you be subject also to the presbytery, as to the apostles of Jesus Christ.”
In each of these instances, the Church responds differently. In the first, the disciples are told to leave the man alone; in the second, St. Paul preaches and persuades men to convert; in the third, believers are compelled to follow the bishop. And this is fitting, as Newman points out, because the Church must treat even the same case differently at different times. Commenting on the man who exorcized demons apart from the disciples, Newman says, “The truth is, while a system is making way against an existing state of things, help of any kind advances it; but when it is established, the same kind of professed help tells against it. Before the Gospel was received, those who did not oppose the Apostles actually aided them; when it was received, the very same parties interfered with them.” After the Church was established, it’s entirely possible that Jesus may have commended the disciples for silencing the exorcist.
We live many centuries after Christ, after the Protestant Reformation, after the many bloody conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. If we have learned anything, it’s that Jesus’ prayer that we might all be one has yet to be answered. It will begin to be answered when we take Newman’s counsel seriously: “But in all cases, whether they preach true doctrine or not, or whether they oppose us or not, so much we may learn, viz. that we must overcome them, not so much by refuting them, as by preaching the truth [sic].” When we preach or speak the truth, we lift up the Person of Truth – Jesus Christ – who said that if He were lifted up would draw all men to Himself.
Newman says, “Let us be far more set upon alluring souls into the right way than on forbidding them the wrong.” To do this, to draw souls to Christ, the life of Christ must inhabit us. Like St. John the Baptist said, we must decrease and He must increase. It’s a lifelong project, but that’s no excuse for us not to begin today, perhaps by repeating the simplest of prayers composed by St. Teresa of Calcutta: Lord, help me to get out of your way.
