John Henry Newman
In the 19th. century the Church and the world both pulled apart, and drew together. Symptomatic was Pope Gregory XVI (+1846), a Camaldolese monk, who on the one hand sanctioned the Sisters of Mercy, the first non-monastic female order, to work with the poor, and on the other condemned railways as being “roads to Hell” [chemins d’enfer].
Sometimes the Church was fearful of the world. Secular education was advancing, and the Church withdrew its clerical students from universities and put them in separate seminaries, complete with monastic timetable and a monastic cloister, while also introducing distinctive clerical dress, which, contrary to common opinion, is not ancient at all. The black cassock, which became universal, was formerly the dress of members of orders of Canons Regular.
At the same time, some in the Church were taking stock of their historic roots in order to engage better with the modern world. A leading light among these is John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890; converted to the Catholic Church 1845, made a cardinal 1879). He had been a pillar of the so-called “Oxford Movement” in the Anglican Church, which, appalled by the way that Church had become a puppet of Parliament – the particular issue was the appointment of bishops to sees in Ireland – sought to go back to the Fathers of the Church and resource itself from this ancient wisdom in order to re-engage more vigorously with the modern world.
Newman was no individualist Christian and would have been appalled by obstinate disobedience, but he recognised the emergence of an educated Catholic laity and knew that their “assent of faith” could not just be from blind obedience – as indeed it was not in the early Church. As editor of the religious journal The Rambler he made it clear that the Church could not consist simply of the “teachers” and the “taught”. What was important was the sensus fidelium – the awareness of the lay faithful – guided by the hierarchy. At best this would create a “conspiracy” (literally, a “breathing together”) of clergy and laity. It was not as if the hierarchy never consulted the laity; they had done, albeit in a limited way, prior to the definition of the Immaculate Conception (1854), and there was no reason why this should not be universally applied.
The faith Newman promoted was highly mature. It allowed for popular religion while leaving no room for superstition; it supported the organisation of the Church while not condoning tyranny; it saw theologians as people of faith, but free to explore the boundaries of faith, rather than just saying “what they were told to”. At the same time, Newman is not being beatified (this year 2010) just for being an academic; on becoming a Catholic he went to work for the urban poor in Birmingham.
Newman was no great enthusiast for the definition of Papal infallibility (1870), but was able to go along with it as he saw it was so tightly drawn. At the same time, when the First Vatican Council (1868-70) ended, he saw that “a new Pope and a reassembled Council” would need to “trim the boat”. Not for nothing is he seen as the ‘father’ of the Second Vatican Council (1962-5), which has so influenced our Catholic lives today. The putting of faith, and Scripture, in a proper historical perspective – albeit temporarily retarded by the “anti-Modernism” scare (1907-10) – is Newman’s legacy, an inescapable feature of the life of the Church today.