TIA,

I am passing on to you this e-mail/video I received. I believe you and your readers will be interested in watching this chilling movie that should make us be concerned about the future of France, Europe and our own future here in the United States.

     God bless,

     A.S.



France Becomes Islamic

The French in Paris have become so alarmed and fed up with what they see as a concerted effort by Muslims to eventually take over government and abolish the French way of life that they have regularly taken to the streets en masse to protest by having pork and wine aperitif demonstrations. Things are getting tense in Europe.

To watch the video click here

Dear TIA,

I read a letter posted by another reader about a month or so back. In the letter the person was saddened by the fact that the Neumann Center growing up was named for a progressivist. I then came across an article about St. John Neumann in a traditional newspaper. I was quite surprised to see that they would highlight a progressivist.

On further investigation, I realized that there are two distinct persons that this commenter was probably confusing. First, there is St. John Neumann (please notice the spelling.) He was the Bishop of Philadelphia, and he lived from 1811 to 1860. I believe that this is the man that the Neumann Centers across the country have been named for.

Then we have Cardinal John Henry Newman. He lived from 1801 to 1890 and I believe that he was never a bishop. He was made a Cardinal-Deacon in 1879. These two men are not the same, and it is well to point this out.

     Thank you and God bless!

     M.F.



TIA responds:

Dear M.F.,

Thank you for your e-mail.

You are correct when you say that they were two different persons. One was the Redemptorist priest John Nepomucene Neumann, who became Bishop of Philadelphia in 1852. This Bohemian, who came to America to be ordained a priest and serve immigrant Catholics, was renowned for his zeal, piety and fidelity to the traditional Catholic Magisterium. His unflinching orthodoxy earned him not only a reputation for holiness, but also many enemies in the New World. They resented him for not making concessions to Protestantism and to Americanism as later defined by Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical Testem benevolentiae.

Cardinal John Henry Newman, left, not to be confused with Bishop John Nepomucene Neumann, right

Another was Cardinal John Henry Newman, a convert from Anglicanism, who was famed even in his day for concessions to Protestantism and to the very Liberalism Bishop Neumann fought.

So far you are correct. However, you are not accurate when you think that the Newman Centers in the United States - unfortunately admired by many traditionalists - were dedicated to Bishop John Nepomucene Neumann.

The Newman Centers are residence and Catholic ministry centers at non-Catholic universities throughout the world. They were named in honor of Cardinal John Henry Newman. They were inspired by Newman’s stand that Catholics should attend Protestant or secular universities and have their own societies and centers at them.

The oldest such groups, the Oxford University Newman Society, was established in 1879 as the Oxford University Catholic Club and renamed in 1888. The first American Newman Society was established in 1893, and today there are innumerable of these centers at American universities.

The only American institution of a conservative bent that we know named after John Neumann, Bishop of Philadelphia, is Neumann Press, which sells Catholic classics and pre-Vatican II books.

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk

Dear TIA,

Your series of texts on Newman are very detailed and complete and include all the elements to convince the Catholics of good faith about his dangerous teachings

But you can observe in the behavior in many Traditional Catholic sites that they are giving up the fight, in the sense that they perform a wishful reading by searching just for the orthodox phrases in his writings.

With the intent to add to your struggle to defend the Catholic Tradition from the modernist heresy, I would like to make some comments on the English zeitgeist [the spirit of the age] in Cardinal Newman’s times.

Newman’s time in England was deep in the anti-Catholic activities in the intellectual and political environment.

You have the romantic poets in which you have the Oxford’s star Shelley.

Oxford XIX Century includes moral corrupt writers such as Oscar Wilde and Sir Richard Burton, just to give the most notorious examples.

On the intellectual realm you read about Omar Khayyam society’s activities dedicated in cultivating the carpe diem ideology, trying to extract suffistic sentiments from his poems as the purpose of their gatherings. They started to learn Persian to be able to read them in the original.

This is the time of Garibaldi’s big reception to receive financial support to destroy the Papal States and where the crowd was calling for the Pope’s assassination.

The lack of this more general view of the historic moment of Newman’s life, I believe, is one of the reasons that many true Catholics are misled.

Unfortunately ,I have not the intellectual capacity to see through these entire social political details in a proper form, but I am certain that if a right picture of this period can be drawn, many fooled traditionalist will awake.

     Thank you.

     H.A., Brazil

Dear Dr. Horvat,

I am writing to counter-act the incredibly rude remarks made to you about your review of the movie Nativity. It is one thing to disagree, but to disagree disagreeably is beyond the pale of not only Catholic charity but of social rules as well.

The two most telling and succinct sentences in your article are:

1. The historical facts as known by Catholic tradition were skewed and altered at every turn.
   
   
2. The movie is a Protestant rendition of the birth of Christ.

Most would find the movie depressing, but those who are happily educated about the true events would find it both depressing and blasphemous. This movie is designed to deprive the true Christian of the glory that is theirs in the wondrous and sublime events surrounding the birth of the Christ.

Lastly, I would advise B.S. to avoid the temptation to play with acronyms. Commentaries like B.S.’s remind us that no matter how one tries to aid others, some will simply not be appreciated.

You are to be commended for your courageous efforts to defend the sacred memory of Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph.

     In Maria,

     C.C.

Follow us

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  Catholic Dogmas Come from ‘Intense Feelings’

  ‘Newman Is the Most Dangerous Man in England’

  Newman's Resentment of Authority

  Newman Regrets the Syllabus

  Newman's Admiration for Anglicanism Never Ceased

  Newman's Reservations on Marial Devotion

  Newman Attacks Pius IX

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