On Thursday 31 July, in an audience with Card. Semeraro, the current (material) occupant of the Apostolic See, Robert F. Prevost – Leo XIV decided to proclaim Cardinal John Henry Newman a ‘Doctor of the Church’ (a title originally coined for St. Thomas Aquinas alone, then extended over the centuries to other figures who have illustrated and defended the Catholic Faith). ‘The time is sure to come when people will not accept sound teaching, but their ears will be itching for anything new and they will collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes’ (2 Tim IV 3) and so (to name but a few) after Gregory of Narek (monophysite and schismatic), Sister Faustina (put on the Index in 1958), Karol Wojtila and Joseph Ratzinger (do we need to comment?) Vatican II, which abandoned sound doctrine, chose as “doctor of the faith” also the famous English prelate who converted to Catholicism in 1845. Modernism has chosen him as its doctor: is it because of Newman’s simple love for Tradition and the Papacy? Or rather for other aspects of his thought? To better understand Newman’s thought, and Modernism that venerates him, we repropose two writings taken from our magazine.
The spiritual progeny of Cardinal Newman (in Sodalitium no. 66 pp. 24-27)
‘Jean Guitton wrote that according to Paul VI, Vatican II “is all Newman”’ (quoted by R. De Mattei, Il suo non è un Antisillabo, e piacque all’antimodernista San Pio X, in Il Foglio, 17 September 2010, p. I). Here is an interesting spiritual genealogy that explains the “beatification” of Newman (1801-1890) by Joseph Ratzinger in England, fulfilling the vows of the “liberal Catholic” (ipse dixit) Francesco Cossiga, now deceased, President Emeritus of the Italian Republic.
Also the Modernists of the early 20th century claimed this ancestry. Loisy claimed it, Tyrrel claimed it, Buonaiuti claimed it, Fr Brizio Casciola claimed it. No one ignores that the modernist crisis came to light in 1902 with the book by French priest and exegete Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) L’Evangile et l’Eglise. However, not everyone remembers that Loisy’s “petit livre” was intended as a critical response to The Essence of Christianity by the Protestant Adolf Harnack. As early as 1898, Loisy polemicised with Harnack: agreeing on biblical rationalism, the ‘Catholic’ Loisy w shed to distance himself from his Protestant colleague precisely thanks to Newman’s theory of the evolution of dogmas: “Catholic theology,” Loisy observed, “has had in our time the greatest doctor it needed, and who has only lacked disciples.Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine actually dates from 1845, and after half a century it cannot be said to have found an echo. Now, in this book, Newman presents a capital discovery: Catholic development is in the real logic of Christianity; it is indispensable to its preservation and is divinely legitimate as Christianity is; indeed, it is ultimately impossible to distinguish one from the other. (…) An idea does not therefore remain more true to itself to the extent that it is better preserved from change. The internal history of Christianity shows on the contrary that error is often the product of stagnation…” (E. Poulat, Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste, Casterman, second edition 1979, pp. 74-75). Some of Loisy’s propositions, condemned by the Decree Lamentabili, were expounded – according to the French exegete – by Newman (ibid., p. 107). Loisy, Tyrrel, Blondel, Laberthonnière, all modernists, saw Newman’s development of dogma as one of the foundations of an anti-scholastic and anti-intellectualist theology (p. 303). The excommunicated Jesuit George Tyrrel (1861-1909) wrote that “the root of modernism” was to be found “in the spirit which hovers in a certain letter from a certain cardinal to a certain duke” that is, from Card. Newman to the Duke of Norfolk on conscience (G. Tyrrel, Il Papa e il modernismo, Voghera editore, Rome, 1912, p. 153). It is no coincidence that “the Umbrian modernist, fr. Brizio Casciola”, the “Saint” of Fogazzaro’s novel, published in 1908 “the little volume ‘On Conscience. Excerpt from Newman’s Letter to the Duke of Norfolk’”. He too an Anglican convert to Catholicism, Tyrrel “was convinced that he had found in Cardinal Newman’s doctrines on the ‘illative sense’ of the faith the link between Catholicism and modern thought” (De Mattei, Modernismo e antimodernismo nell’epoca di Pio X in Don Orione negli anni del modernismo, Jaca Book, Milan, 2002, pp. 35-36, also quoted in the Foglio article. The reference is to Newman’s work Grammar of Assent, 1870). The leader of Italian modernism, Buonaiuti, in his memoirs (Il pellegrino di Roma) defines Tyrrel as follows: “Genuine heir, we would almost say an eloquent and inspired reincarnation, of Newman”. More than a friend of Tyrrel (he attended his funeral, although Tyrrel was not reconciled with the Church) was also his Jesuit confrere Henri Brémond (1865-1933), who coincidentally wrote, in 1906, Newman. Essai de biographie psychologique, as well as other works on the English cardinal’s thought (Le développement du dogme chrétien; La psychologie de la Foi; La vie chrétienne). Already the Protestant modernist Auguste Sabatier (1839-1901) wrote about Newman in 1890, and so did the modernist Father Giovanni Semeria (1867-1931) in 1907 (Il cardinal Newman). The “Programme of the Modernists. Response to Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis” written by Ernesto Buonaiuti (1881-1946) excommunicated vitando, also invoked Newman’s authority. The ‘secular’ culture has no difficulty in recognising the spiritual link between Newman and modernism: “a daring theologian who modernism perhaps not entirely wrongly claims – for certain aspects of his teaching – as its own spiritual father” (thus the Treccani encyclopaedia). But even the Enciclopedia Cattolica, while highly praising the English theologian, admits that in his thought “something caducous, inexact, and unorthodox can be detected” (so Monsignor Piolanti). Newman’s apologists, however, always cite St. Pius X’s letter to the Bishop of Limerick, Eduard Thomas O’Dwyer, Tuum illud opusculum, dated 10 March 1908, in which the anti-modernist Pope “defended the orthodoxy of Cardinal Newman, opening with this authoritative intervention the way to his beatification” (De Mattei in Il Foglio). Indeed, St Pius X commends the Bishop of Limerick for defending the Cardinal against the Modernists’ claim that they could not be condemned without condemning Newman for the very fact. St. Pius X, however, even with the intention of wresting such a prestigious patron from the modernists, does not fail, with all due respect for the celebrated cardinal, to make reservations about him, reservations that are never remembered by those who quote this letter but not its words and content. First of all, St. Pius X recalls that one can never oppose the opinion of a private doctor, even a distinguished one, to the Magisterium of the Church. Next, he distinguishes between Newman’s works before his conversion and those afterwards (the work on the development of dogmas precedes his conversion by a little). With regard to the former, he admits that in them “one may perhaps discover something that has a certain resemblance to some of the formulas of the modernists”, but, the Pontiff continues, Newman upon converting submitted all his works to the judgement and revision of the Catholic Church so that it might correct them if necessary. As for the works written after his conversion, even in them one can find things that are alien to the common arguments of the theologians, and even, he adds, Newman “did not make use of a sufficiently prudent way of expressing himself”; one cannot, however, doubt the sincerity of his Faith, nor should one distort his thought as the modernists do; of him and his thought one must particularly follow the fact that he considered the Magisterium of the Church to be holy, that he preserved the doctrine handed down by the Fathers, and above all that he submitted to and obeyed the Pope (to whom, after his conversion, he always wanted to be faithful even though he was against the definition of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, and liked to distance himself from the ‘ultramontans’ and Cardinal Manning). In short, not everything is safe in Newman’s thinking, but he, as a good Catholic, submitted to the authority of the Church; he was not an ante-litteram modernist, Newman, but without meaning to be, some of his ideas opened the door to modernism.
Cardinal Newman (in Sodalitium n. 70-71 p. 71)
Cardinal Newman (TST pp. 5-6, 14, 30, 45, 67, 94, 101) has always been the “patron saint” of RS [RadioSpada] (and not just them). Paul VI (and Cossiga) wanted to make him a Saint. He was declared venerable by John Paul II, Blessed by Benedict XVI, and Saint by ‘pope’ Bergoglio. RS places him under the protection of Pope Leo XIII, who allegedly said of him: “My Cardinal! It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t easy. They said he was too liberal, but I had determined to honor the Church in honoring him. I have always felt a great veneration for him. I am proud that I was able to honor such a man (Leo XIII on the elevation of J. H. Newman to Cardinal)” (Facebook September 25, 2018). RS dedicated an article in praise of Newman, poet and novelist (August 9, 2018); among his merits, having inspired…Claudel: “His sun illuminated many writers – among them the Frenchman Paul Claudel – attracted to the greatness of his thinking and the good literary quality of his major works, pregnant with spirituality, and above all, Truth”. Among the English writers who owe their own conversion from reading Newman, RS mentions Muriel Spark (RS September 29, 2019), a writer of Jewish origin (née Camberg) now published in Italian by Adelphi. We wrote about what we think of Cardinal Newman in Sodalitium (n. 66, 2013 pp. 24-26). (On the homosexual question, without giving credit to the source and for pure information see: https:www.gionata.org/john-henry-newman-e-il-primo-santo-apertamente-gay/).