NOTE
DR. NEWMAN ON THE SYLLABUS
It was eight years after the Syllabus had been formally confirmed by the Pope, and after its ratification by the collective hierarchy had been officially communicated to the Papal clergy in England by Archbishop Manning, that Dr. Newman treated of it in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk, in reply to the "Expostulation" of Mr. Gladstone. The assertions in that reply are among the most unaccountable known to the history of our literature. Still, such as they are, they have been made in a pamphlet bearing the name of an English duke on its title-page, and that of an English gentleman at its end. Moreover, they were received by our Press—and the fact is known throughout Europe—with perfect gravity.
Dr. Newman (p. 78) asks and answers an important question as follows—
"Who gathered the propositions out of these Papal documents, and put them together in one? We do not know." After no more than three sentences he adds: "The Pope has had the errors, which at one time or other he therein condemned, brought together into one, and that for the use of the bishops." On the next page he asks: "Who is its author? Some select theologian or high official, doubtless; can it be Cardinal Antonelli himself? No, surely; anyhow, it is not the Pope." First he tells us that we do not know who put it together, then that the Pope has done it, or has had it done. Again, in the same manner, he first tells us that it is not Cardinal Antonelli's, and then more than once calls it Cardinal Antonelli's (p. 91), as if his authorship of the document was an established point on which arguments might be grounded. Dr. Newman in this manner procures for himself a double set of premises, which he employs throughout, with frequent shifting. His argument now assumes the affirmative, namely, that the Syllabus is the work of the Pope; and now it assumes the negative, that the Syllabus is not the work of the Pope; and this is what the English Press with, so far as we know, unanimity agrees to call logical.
"But," asserts Dr. Newman, "the Syllabus makes no claim to be acknowledged as the word of the Pope" (p. 80). The very heading of the Syllabus sets up the claim to be accounted the word of the Pope; ay, and his word in official, public, and teaching acts. The heading is, "The Syllabus of the Principal Errors of our Time set forth in Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclicals, and other Letters Apostolic, by our most holy lord, Pope Pius IX." This claim is not incidental, but formal and capital, incapable of being either overlooked or put aside. No man's judgments are here introduced but those of Pope Pius IX, and of his judgments not one here recited is less official than are Letters Apostolic.
"The Syllabus, then," further asserts Dr. Newman, "has no dogmatic force. It addresses us not in its separate portions, but as a whole" (p. 81). The affirmative is true, the Syllabus addresses us as a whole. The negative is not true, namely, that the Syllabus does not address us in its separate portions.
Does Dr. Newman mean that there is a single one of the eighty propositions which does not bear the Papal brand, "error"? It is very wide of the mark—no man in England better knows how wide of it—to talk about different brands, some more and some less damnatory, such as "heretical," "false," "impious," or the like.
"There is not a single word in the Encyclical to show that the Pope in it is alluding to the Syllabus" (p. 82). This is said to refute an allegation of Mr. Gladstone, which Dr. Newman calls "marvellously unfair." That allegation is, that the Encyclical virtually, though not expressly, includes the whole of the errors condemned. It will be seen by any one who refers to our own remarks upon the Encyclical (pp. 5-7), that had Mr. Gladstone read it as we do, he would not have written what he did. He would have written instead of it something to this effect, that the Encyclical includes the whole of these condemnations, not by reciting them, but by clearly expressed reference. What he did say, instead of being unfair, comes short of what is required by the evidence contained in the documents. The reference in the one to the other is formal. "In pursuance of our apostolic ministry, and walking in the illustrious footsteps of our predecessor, we have lifted up our voice, and in several published Encyclical Consistorial Allocutions, and other Letters Apostolic, we have condemned the errors of our sad times." This language proves that Mr. Gladstone in saying that the whole of the Pope's condemnations were virtually though not expressly included in the Encyclical, was within the limits of the evidence. They are expressly referred to, and those additional ones contained in the Encyclical itself are linked on to the previous ones as a complement, making them a whole. In itself the point is of no consequence whatever, but Dr. Newman has chosen to make it important, and for his theory it may have some importance.
"All we know," says Dr. Newman, "is that by the Pope's command this collection of errors is sent by his Foreign Minister to the bishops" (p. 78). That is not all we know. We also know that the Foreign Minister did not, by the Pope's command, send it as the work of Cardinal Antonelli. We know that he did send it as the work of Pope Pius IX. We know that he recited in one and the same note, once for all, the language common to the two documents. 1. As regards what is condemned—"the principal errors of our times." 2. As to who it was that condemned them—the Pope. 3. As to the official acts in which he did condemn them, namely, Allocutions, and so on.
The next assertion we have to note is made in a strong interrogative form. "How can a list of errors be a series of pontifical declarations?" (p. 84). We reply, how can it be otherwise? What does an error mean in the language of such a document? It means errors declared to be such by the Pontiff; a list of such "errors," therefore, is simply a list of pontifical declarations. Dr. Newman knows as well as he knows his own name, that every clause of the Syllabus is a pontifical declaration that the words there written express an error.