This Letter has two aspects. It is a reply on behalf of the Catholics of England to Mr. Gladstone's charge. It is also a polemical pamphlet respecting a domestic controversy with other leaders of the Catholic body in England. In its first aspect it is not only masterly in style and argument, and marked with the evidence of rare learning, as anything from the author's pen is sure to be, but, to a certain point, conclusive and unanswerable. It proves that Mr. Gladstone's appeal to English Catholics to separate themselves from the doctrine and polity of their spiritual sovereign, the Pope, is an arrow shot in the air. It proves that his charge against the Catholic hierarchy of having changed in spirit and principle, in dogma and in action, in attitude and in aims, is baseless and absurd. It refutes the charge that Catholics are intellectually and morally in a state of servile bondage. Several other minor and incidental things are proved, and on the whole it makes an important point in the controversy about the relation of the Catholic religion to civil sovereignty, and the civil rights and duties of the temporal order, as distinct from the spiritual. It does not, and could not be expected to, establish the great fundamental truth opposed to Mr. Gladstone's error, viz., the positive Catholic doctrine of the relation of the church to the state, in se, and the firm, immovable basis which that doctrine places for just political sovereignty and corresponding subjection to rest on, while securing the divine rights of the church and her members, and the duties correlative to those rights.
It is Dr. Newman's misfortune that a base and dishonest act of some one of the pestilent set of detectives of the press, or the other sneak-thieves who prowled about the purlieus of the Vatican Council, filching secret information in order to make eligible paragraphs in newspapers, placed him in a position before the world embarrassing both to himself and to many of his warmest friends. The embarrassment of which we speak did not imply any falling away from the faith of a Catholic or the holiness of a religious priest. Yet it left a sentiment of disappointment, which the present pamphlet does not altogether remove, that Dr. Newman failed to add lustre to his arms, instead of merely preserving unstained what he had already acquired.
The fading impression of this disappointment would have been wholly effaced if Dr. Newman had not, in his reply to Mr. Gladstone, renewed it by a certain manner of vague and general expression of discontent with a number of his fellow-Catholics considered by him as extreme or injudicious in their doctrine, or way of expressing it, or their measures for promoting the growth of the Catholic Church. There may, very well, be individuals deserving his severe language. We have occasion in this country to lament at extravagant representations of Catholic doctrines, harsh and unjust censure of persons or opinions, and other excesses on the part of individuals professing to be specially orthodox and devoted to the Holy See. We think, however, that Dr. Newman's language will be understood to apply generally to those persons and those writers for the press in England and Europe who were active and zealous in promoting the definition of infallibility by the Vatican Council. If it is true that it has this extension, we feel bound to express our painful sense of the wrong done to a body of the best and truest advocates of the Catholic cause who are to be found among our ranks.
In respect to the infallibility and supreme authority of the Pope, we consider that Dr. Newman, whose doctrinal soundness was always really unquestionable, has given new and explicit evidence which must satisfy every careful reader of the pamphlet who is competent to judge of theological matters. We have carefully scrutinized every [pg 858] phrase and proposition, and find nothing which in our judgment is contrary to Catholic doctrine. In respect to the theological opinions and the tone of argument and expression of the venerable and illustrious author, we think he is sometimes open to criticism, as at least ambiguous, if not inaccurate; and in respect to one point, which does not occur as a direct statement of opinion, but as a record of a doubt in his mind expressed in a letter to a friend written several years ago, viz., the famous question of “moral unanimity,” that the position there taken is altogether untenable.
Dr. Newman frankly assumes the rôle of a “minimizer,” in which his confrère, Father Ryder, figured with so much ability in his controversy with Dr. Ward. We have always thought that Father Ryder proved fairly that his own positions, essentially considered, are within the limits of that liberty of opinion which the Catholic doctrine permits. To a certain extent we approve of “minimizing.” That is, we approve of not exacting as a test of orthodoxy, and as per se obligatory under pain of sin, belief in more than the law certainly requires. But we are most cordially hostile to the system of economy in teaching and practice, which inculcates and recommends only the minimum in doctrine, pious opinion, or devotion. We do not attribute the advocacy of such a system to Dr. Newman, yet we think it important to caution the readers of his pamphlet against drawing such an inference from his language.
In speaking of the Syllabus, in particular, we fear that he has spoken in such a way that some readers will infer that they may disregard it altogether. He says it has no dogmatic authority. That it has not, by itself, the quality of a complete and independent dogmatic document, we may concede. It is a supplement to a whole series of doctrinal pronouncements, of the nature of a catalogue of the errors condemned in them. Yet all the errors enumerated are really condemned by virtue of the sentence pronounced against them in the whole series of pontifical acts. It is not lawful for any Catholic to hold any one of them. Their interpretation is to be sought, by those who are competent to do so, in the original doctrinal pronouncements of the Holy Father, and by the rest of the faithful in the explanation of their pastors, and others who explain them under their sanction. So also, although a condemnation of some particular system of mixed education—e.g., in Ireland—does not involve infallibility, but only authority to which obedience is due, yet an ex cathedrâ judgment of the Pope defining as a general proposition that mixed education is dangerous, is an infallible judgment on a question of morals.
Moreover, although the condemnation of errors frequently leaves a margin for discussion respecting the full import and extent of the condemned error and the precise limits of the contradictory truth which is affirmed, there is always something positively and certainly decreed, over and above the fact that there is an error of some sort. Frequently, the meaning is obvious; and, at least generally, it is soon settled by the agreement of theologians, so far as its essence is concerned. We cannot criticise in detail every particular statement or expression in this pamphlet which, in our view, falls short of a clear and unmistakable and complete expression of correct theological doctrine. Dr. Newman's particular line has led through so many caveats, exceptions, limitations, so much subtle balancing of opposite weights, and of what he consents to call “minimizing,” with which ordinary readers are not familiar, that he leaves the impression that truth, infallible teaching, the authority of the church, even the Catholic faith, is something to be afraid of, to be guarded against, somewhat as Englishmen feel about a standing army. We would prefer that, instead of being apparently so solicitous to assure weak brethren and timid converts that they need not believe so much as they are afraid of being made to, he would speak out with a more clear, ringing, and full note of his own peculiar, unequalled melody, to persuade and encourage them to believe and confide in the church of God and in their prelates, joyously, fearlessly, enthusiastically, with the noble spirit worthy of the children of God. We do not like to hear our enemies call Dr. Newman the head of a party of liberal Catholics in England, and set him over against his archbishop, and pervert his language into a weapon against the Council of the Vatican. We do not like to have to vindicate him from the praise of anti-Catholic writers, and to qualify the approbation which we would like to give to the productions of his subtile [pg 859] and erudite genius by “minimizing” criticism. He once wrote of himself,
“Time was, I shrank from what was right,
For fear of what was wrong.”
Something of the same mood seems to have come over his sensitive heart in his seclusion from active, ecclesiastical life, during the Council of the Vatican, and to have not quite withdrawn its penumbra. We are reminded of S. Gregory Nazianzen, complaining of councils and of S. Basil, as he went away weary from Constantinople into retirement; and of S. Colman, gathering up his relics to quit Lindisfarne and escape from S. Wilfrid. These were weaknesses of saints, but still weaknesses, and it was their heroism and not their weakness which made them worthy of our veneration. We trust that Dr. Newman will remember that there are some others to be thought of besides those who are weak in the faith and his own petite clientele in England; and that he will not close his career without one more deed of prowess, which shall discomfit the enemies of the Holy See and the Catholic faith, and show that his pennon still flutters beside those of his fellow-champions.