I
conclude this notice of Liberalism in Oxford, and the party which was
antagonistic to it, with some propositions in detail, which, as a member of the
latter, and together with the High Church, I earnestly denounced and abjured.
1.
No religious tenet is important, unless reason shows it to be so.
Therefore, e.g. the doctrine of the
Athanasian Creed is not to be insisted on, unless it tends to convert the soul;
and the doctrine of the Atonement is to be insisted on, if it does convert the
soul.
[Contra Bruce Charlton, who
claims that heresy is obviously unimportant since, for instance, the
Monophysites and Nestorian churches have persisted for sixteen hundred years
and are plainly real Christians. Not that Charlton would be troubled at Newman
repudiating him; he said that he tried reading Newman but couldn’t help
disliking him.]
2.
No one can believe what he does not understand.
Therefore, e.g. there are no
mysteries in true religion.
[Perhaps contra
Lewis on transubstantiation, which he says he simply (almost physically) cannot
bring himself to believe.]
3.
No theological doctrine is any thing more than an opinion which happens to be
held by bodies of men.
Therefore, e.g. no creed, as
such, is necessary for salvation.
[Again contra Charlton, who in
rejecting the need for the Christological definitions of the early Ecumenical
councils would seem also to reject the need for the creeds those councils defined.
However, since Charlton does make a distinction between Christian and
non-Christian perhaps he would allow some basic creed is necessary.]
4.
It is dishonest in a man to make an act of faith in what he has not had brought
home to him by actual proof.
Therefore, e.g. the mass of men ought not
absolutely to believe in the divine authority of the Bible.
[Which explains why when a convert is received into the Catholic Church
he can honestly declare that he believes and professes all that the Catholic
Church teaches, without actually knowing every instance of Her teaching.]
5.
It is immoral in a man to believe more than he can spontaneously receive as
being congenial to his moral and mental nature.
Therefore, e.g. a given
individual is not bound to believe in eternal punishment.
[Contra one
of the defining features of some ‘conversions’ I’ve known: so-and-so becomes a
Buddhist, or a Jew, or a Catholic, because he finds that religion spontaneously
congenial to his moral and mental nature—normally an Bowdlerized and modernized
parody of the religion, mind you. In fact this seems to be the common idea of
what ‘conversion’ is: hence people saying, “Catholicism is right for you,” as if he converts to
Catholicism because he spontaneously agrees with all its precepts. This cannot
in truth be called a ‘conversion’ since it involves no change in him as a man;
it would be called better ‘association.’]
6.
No revealed doctrines or precepts may reasonably stand in the way of scientific
conclusions.
Therefore, e.g. Political Economy may
reverse our Lord's declarations about poverty and riches, or a system of Ethics
may teach that the highest condition of body is ordinarily essential to the
highest state of mind.
[Note that Newman here does not use ‘scientific’ narrowly, but means any
discipline of knowledge: not only physics but also politics and ethics. I doubt
not that he would include philosophy also here. And since elsewhere he says
that the Church has authority not only to define the deposit of faith but also
to define philosophical and moral matters that ‘touch’ the faith, Newman might
also object, contra Charlton, to e.g.
Classical philosophical Theism is extraneous to the faith and ought to be
rejected.]
7.
Christianity is necessarily modified by the growth of civilization, and the
exigencies of times.
Therefore, e.g. the Catholic priesthood,
though necessary in the Middle Ages, may be superseded now.
[This proposition ought to be taken in a narrow sense and not in a wide—i.e.
Christianity is not modified by the exigencies of times—but of course the
cultural ‘medium’ of Christianity is: so in different times and places
preachers should preach in Latin, Greek, French, English, etc. But the narrow
sense is still wide enough to outrage moderns.]
8.
There is a system of religion more simply true than Christianity as it has ever
been received.
Therefore, e.g. we may advance that
Christianity is the "corn of wheat " which has been dead for 1800
years, but at length will bear fruit; and that Mahometanism is the manly
religion, and existing Christianity the womanish.
[Ironic how times have changed: I don’t imagine many ‘liberal’
Christians admire Mahometanism as more true than Christianity, and certainly
not because it is the manly religion. Liberals today would prefer a womanish religion, and so they have one.]
9.
There is a right of Private Judgment: that is, there is no existing authority
on earth competent to interfere with the liberty of individuals in reasoning
and judging for themselves about the Bible and its contents, as they severally
please.
Therefore, e.g. religious
establishments requiring subscription are Anti-christian.
[A common Protestant proposition, but increasingly
evident among Catholic theologians in the past century.]
10.
There are rights of conscience such, that every one may lawfully advance a
claim to profess and teach what is false and wrong in matters, religious,
social, and moral, provided that to his private conscience it seems absolutely
true and right.
Therefore, e.g. individuals
have a right to preach and practise fornication and polygamy.
[Contra all
political common sense today, Right and Left. All political arguments now
assume the truth of this and the following three propositions; most political
arguments are about how to apply them. If Newman is right to repudiate these then
it is not enough to become a Conservative or a Libertarian, as many
traditionally religious people do. One must become an advocate of the ancien régime and an enemy of ‘liberty’
as we now use the word.]
11.
There is no such thing as a national or state conscience.
Therefore, e.g. no judgments
can fall upon a sinful or infidel nation.
[When I first read this I said that I tend to disagree
with Newman on this proposition. I had no problem with the second part (I
believe judgments can and do fall upon sinful and infidel nations); my problem
was with the first and more precisely with the word ‘conscience.’ I do not see
how a nation or a state can have a conscience literally since only rational
spirits have conscience; but I can accept it as a metaphor and in that sense
agree with Newman.]
12.
The civil power has no positive duty, in a normal state of things, to maintain
religious truth.
Therefore, e.g. blasphemy and
sabbath-breaking are not rightly punishable by law.
[Here is a statement to shock most Christian political
conservatives. It is one of the common charges against Muslim countries that
they punish blasphemy as a crime. Here is Newman saying that they are in
principle right.]
13.
Utility and expedience are the measure of political duty.
Therefore, e.g. no punishment may be
enacted, on the ground that God commands it: e.g. on the text, "Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
[Similar to above.]
14.
The Civil Power may dispose of Church property without sacrilege.
Therefore, e.g. Henry VIII.
committed no sin in his spoliations.
[The medieval version of separation of Church and
State. Not separation of religion and
State, as in the modern sense, but separation of the institution of the Church from the State.]
15.
The Civil Power has the right of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and
administration.
Therefore, e.g. Parliament may impose
articles of faith on the Church or suppress Dioceses.
[As above.]
16.
It is lawful to rise in arms against legitimate princes.
Therefore, e.g. the Puritans in the 17th
century, and the French in the 18th, were justifiable in their Rebellion and
Revolution respectively.
[Once more, if Newman is right, faithful Catholics ought to be advocates
of the ancien régime, as they were until this
century. I wonder what he would have said about the American Revolution—certainly
many of the founding principles of the United States are among these rejected
propositions; but was the Revolution unlawful because against the legitimate
prince?]
17.
The people are the legitimate source of power.
Therefore, e.g. Universal
Suffrage is among the natural rights of man.
[Another fundamental tenet of modern politics, Left
and Right. This does not necessarily commit the follow of Newman to oppose
democracy as such, e.g. the Greek and Roman, or the Italian city-states; but
certainly to oppose modern democracy. But it singles out perhaps more starkly
than any other proposition how very hateful a Catholic holding to the tradition
of Newman would be in the modern world. For what else is more common sense to
moderns than that women’s suffrage and black suffrage were great triumphs? and
the principal evidence of the superiority of modern civilization to all others?
Imagine eating Christmas dinner with your family and casually discussing
politics or history, while believing that women’s suffrage was no good and an
injustice.]
18.
Virtue is the child of knowledge, and vice of ignorance.
Therefore, e.g. education, periodical
literature, railroad travelling, ventilation, drainage, and the arts of life,
when fully carried out, serve to make a population moral and happy.
[This is commonly construed as the Buddhist view of virtue and vice: one
reason why Buddhism is congenial to moderns, who hold this tenet of Liberalism.]
All
of these propositions, and many others too, were familiar to me thirty years
ago, as in the number of the tenets of Liberalism, and, while I gave into none
of them except No. 12, and perhaps No. 11, and partly No. 1, before I begun to
publish, so afterwards I wrote against most of them in some part or other of my
Anglican works.
[Note that at the time Newman wrote (1866) he regarded these Liberal
propositions as infecting the Church of England but not the Catholic Church, at
least not in a serious way. That has changed in the last 150 years as many of
these have become common assumptions for Catholics as much as anyone else—uneducated
laymen to professors of theology to bishops. When one looks back at how
different the Church was before Vatican II (and Vatican II is not the only
factor, but it is a good watershed) some of the sharpest differences come out
here, in Her rejection of these propositions which we now are so comfortable
with. What changed? In essence, Catholics became more like the non-Catholics around
them. Perhaps there is some truth in something G. S. said: the gravest
disruption to Catholic identity was not the vernacular Mass or anything else
from Vatican II, but the lifting of the obligatory Friday Fast. That at least
separated Catholics visibly from all others, as circumcision for the Jews, and
told them that they ought not to be conformed to the world. Removing that, and
with such justifications as, “it could make mixed social situations difficult,”
tells Catholics that they are just like everybody else. What relief! And now,
the problems of the Church of England in the nineteenth century have become the
problems of the Catholic Church in the twentieth.]
