In assessing what special message Blessed John Henry has for us today we need to ask three questions:

- What do we mean by ‘liberalism’, and what did he mean by it?

- How much did he support the status quo
vis-a-vis the official structure of the Church
and its teaching?

- In considering what might be done to give
the Church a more comfortable image
while remaining true to its roots, what concessions did he think could be made in the cause of winning souls and of Christian unity.

It doesnt seem to me that in our current discussions about Blessed John Henry these questions are
being adequately addressed.

Thank you for your note.

You comment: “Of course, Newman was a ‘conservative’ Catholic if one means holding to the Rule of Faith.”

Exactly! Thats all I have been saying; thank you for affirming that–perhaps we share a measure of agreement after all.

Newman was “Roman School” enough to receive a Cardinal’s hat from a nineteenth-century Roman pontiff; and his own “thunderous” sermons against liberalism speak for themselves. They read even more powerfully today.

My point has been that modern-day liberals who reject authoritative Catholic teachings, wrongly invoke Newman as an ally, when he would have been the first to defend orthodoxy-and the legitimate papal enforcement of it– and correct their errors.

Reginald-Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964) wrote many outstanding works, but also had a tendency toward a rigid “integralism”, rather than the healthy conservatism I’ve described above. Had he, or any other self-styled traditionalist, attacked the conservative Newman, Pope Pius XII, another great conservative (and himself properly critical of certain “new,” wayward theologies), would have overruled them.

In his 1945 letter to the Archbishop of Westminster, “The Service of Truth,” Pius XII celebrated the Newman Centenary, praising the theologian for his “full adherence to the truth he had now mastered. He held it ever afterwards with unshaken consistency, made it the guiding principle of his whole life, found in it, as in nothing else, full contentment of mind.

“Beyond question, Worshipful Brother, among the many important gifts which will make a later posterity honour the greatness of John Henry Newman, this is his chief title to fame.” (Published in The Tablet, October 13 1945)

You write:”Newman did blaze a new path in theology,” but I never said he didn’t.

OF COURSE Newman advanced Catholic theology, as have all the Church’s great theologians; but there is nothing inconsistent with making that statement and maintaining that John Henry Newman was essentially a conservative, as is orthodox Catholicism itself.

Two modern examples of Catholics who have advanced Catholic thinking, but who are also unquestionably conservative, are Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Joseph Ratzinger, whom we are now blessed to have as Pope. Both are disciples and champions of Newman.

Authentic conservatism, in the Catholic sense of that term, is not static– and thus quite open to development– but it IS rigorously faithful to Catholic doctrine and Tradition (never attacking or dishonoring it), and thus strongly anti-liberal, as was Newman.

When great orthodox thinkers “blaze new paths” in Catholic theology, they are not inventing “new” truths–but simply shedding light on ancient ones; truths that have always been present in the Church’s Sacred Deposit of Faith.

It is one of the great errors of liberal Catholicism to act as if revelation is ongoing, to believe that this or that theologian can invent new teachings, change essential truths, or “revolutionize” Catholic theology.

Newman’s insights were drawn from the Church’s Sacred Deposit of Faith. They were magnificently communicated THROUGH him; but they did not come directly FROM him. He is not, therefore, the independent, free-floating– much less anti-conservative– “innovator” of liberal imagination.

The path he “blazed” was always orthodox, connected to the established one before it, not a radical departure.

Cardinal Newman was, as Avery Dulles points out, in his A History of Apologetics, the foremost Catholic apologist of his time, a great defender of Catholic Dogma and Tradition. I thus find your comment about the brilliant and acclaimed Father Jaki being “too apologetic” both amusing and contradictory. Newman, too, was accused of being “too apologetic,” and by some, still is.

Komonchak’s “progressive” reading of Cardinal Newman is highly selective, and exactly the type of misleading interpretation I cautioned against in my initial commentary. Instead, one should read Newman himself; and a good place to begin are the sermons gathered in Newman Against the Liberals, which ELC has very helpfuly linked to above.

“What is the world’s religion now?” asked Newman prophetically in “The Religion of the Day,” continuing:

“It has taken the brighter side of the Gospel,–its tidings of comfort, its precepts of love; all darker, deeper views of man’s condition and prospects being comparatively forgotten. This is the religion natural to a civilized age, and well has Satan dressed and completed it into an idol of the Truth.”

What liberal Catholic speaks that way today? None that I know of (though many conservatives do); instead, they are embarassed by the very mention of Satan–and much else in Catholic orthodoxy.

http://weblog.theviewfromthecore.com/2004_08/ind_003918.html

Thank you for you input, despite our differing views.

I believe Newman was “adventuresome” only within the boundaries of orthodoxy; he took painstaking care to distinguish between authentic developments, and erroneous ones.

Pointing to suspicions or excesses against Newman, from this or that isolated traditional figure, does not, in my opinion, undermine my position that he was essentially conservative.

I’m sure Cardnal Newman would have been a champion of Vatican II, as well as Pope John Paul II’s opposition to its amorphous “spirit;” and applaud Pope Benedict’s defense of the Council as something continuous with Catholic tradition, rather than a revolutionary break with it.

One can remain a conservative and disagree with Ottaviani (conservatives/traditionalists in communion with Rome have many good-faith, in-house debates); I know conservatives who did and do, including some who actually participated in the Council.

As I said in my piece, if Pope Benedict read out some of Cardinal Newman’s searing sermons today, particularly those which touch upon judgment and damnation, applying them to wayward souls, he would be denounced as a “rigid conservative,” and likely much worse. Indeed, he already is described as such by many self-proclaimed religious liberals, even though his sermons are more gentle than many of Newman’s.

Regarding Newman and the much-misunderstood doctrine of papal infallibility, which he certainly believed in, even if he disagreed with the exact timing of its definition, I think the best treatment is in Ian Ker’s biography (John Henry Newman, Oxford Univ Press, chapter 17); and also in Father Jaki, who wrote: “His (Newman’s) opposition to the advisability of the definition of papal infallibility always contained emphatic statements of his belief that the popes are infallible and therefore deserve an unreserved assent on our part to what they teach and not, to use some recent phrases of subtle evasiveness, ‘critical obedience,’ or ‘a measure of conservatism.’” In other words, Newman was committed to Catholic orthodoxy– and thus papal authority– with both feet, not one.

I don’t think that anyone who comes into even minor conflict with Rome is somewhow a daring innovator. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre felt the stern hand of Rome (justifiably, in my view), but he was hardly an innovator.

I agree with you that Cardinal Newman was a great saint. On that, we quite agree.