Word On Fire

In your average Catholic parish, you may have been introduced to the Word On Fire videos. I recommend them to prospective converts, to observe what the bishops of the Vatican II era are asking Catholics to believe.

The "secrets" of Our Lady purportedly delivered at Fatima are a case in point. The reception of Fatima may even involve a revolution in the Faith. I don't, personally, believe a word of it; neither do secular critics. The Russian Orthodox have outright laughed it out the room:

So all these Latin dreams about “dedicating Russian [sic] to the Virgin Mary” and all the other ways to subjugating Russia to the Pope (which is, of course, the real objective here) have absolutely zero chance to succeed, at least long as a sufficient part of the Russian Orthodox people (not just clergy!) keep their traditional “collective/corporate” memory about the true history of the Church of Christ and the roots of Russian Orthodoxy.

Catholicism does not (yet) demand belief in Fatima in order to be Catholic. But many lay Catholics do believe in Fatima. Also, the Church has canonised many Fatima believers as saints (before Paul VI I'd have beatified Nestorius, but hey).

Today we watched WoF's video about John Cardinal Newman. This one started out in Oxford as an Anglican preacher and professor. He sincerely hoped Anglicanism could form a middle ground between Protestant and Roman excesses. He was, at home, a depressive who never got around to getting married.

At some point Newman published "Tract 90", about the Anglican Thirty Nine Articles. The Anglican establishment interpreted this tract as Catholic-curious and subversive. Newman got hounded out of Oxford; although the C of E did not formally excommunicate the man. Instead Newman excommunicated himself, and re-enrolled as a Catholic priest. The Catholic establishment didn't trust him either, up to Pius IX; but his successor Leo XIII loved him and made him a Cardinal.

Unlike the WoF Fatima series, which was - whatever you think of the event - very well done; the WoF piece on Newman didn't organise its topic as well as I would have liked. WoF also implies Pius IX was presiding over a decadent Church. I had to go elsewhere to read that he was the Pope during the Mortara scandal and the reinstitution of the Ghetto system. "Decadent" is not the word I would have used. "Reactionary reformer", is closer to it.

I haven't read Newman's thought myself. WoF presents Newman's philosophy as a necessary underpinning of Vatican II. Newman, in his way of thinking, does strike me as residing on the oecumenical side of Latin thought. On the other hand, WoF lets slip that Newman disapproved "liberalism", another emotive word I beware of using myself. I also wonder if Newman ever would have approved Fatima or similar Mary-centric movements of the twentieth-century Church.

Next week we're to watch a WoF on GK Chesterton - another convert. Chesterton had some real effect on Oxford Christian thought - famously on that "Ulster Protestant" CS Lewis. I am less sure about what fellow Catholic Tolkien made of Chesterton. If WoF has done anything on the French-born half-Anglo Hilaire Belloc, we're not watching that. NOTE 10/19 - both were dangerously naïve and, in fact, out of step with Leo XIII.

I'd already found Word On Fire to be tendentious where it dealt with Fatima. For John Newman, I suspect WoF is reading Vatican II whiggery into his thought. WoF also doesn't explain how Newman's thought advanced Catholic thought, nor on to what extent Newman influenced English thought; although it does well at Newman's theory of rhetoric.

I suggest that prospective Catholics and new Catholics watch Word On Fire videos with a notepad in hand, with a VERY skeptical approach.