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Newman, Conscience and Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Charlotte Hansen
Charlotte Hansen*
Affiliation:
Chichester Cathedral, 141 St Pancras, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 7LH
*
Email: library@chichestercathedral.org.uk
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Abstract

This paper addresses Newman's understanding of conscience and authority, with the main emphasis on conscience. It asks how central a place conscience holds in his theological understanding? Is the general high esteem in which Newman's perception of conscience is held – and by some even regarded as one of the integral elements of his thinking, providing it with an inner consistency – justified? Finally the relationship between conscience and authority is explored. John Henry Newman's teaching on conscience and authority is a complex but highly pertinent question which continues to enthral many, not least Pope Benedict XVI who has hailed Newman's understanding of conscience as ‘an important foundation for theological personalism’. Newman denounced the modern secularized and purely subjective understanding of conscience as he perceived it to be ‘the voice of God’. He focused his writings on conscience within the contexts of morality and theology and considered the role that conscience may play in moral decision-making and in establishing a person's belief in God. In Newman's legendary dispute with W. E. Gladstone in the 1870s the Cardinal maintained that there is no contradiction between the conscience of the individual and the authority of the Pope or of the church, as they occupy two different spheres.

Keywords

NewmanconscienceauthorityGladstone
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 92 , Issue 1038 , March 2011 , pp. 209 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2011 The Dominican Society.

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References

1 J. Ratzinger, ‘Newman gehört zu den grossen Lehrern der Kirche’, in Maria Katharina Strolz and Margarete Binder (eds.), John Henry Newman. Lover of Truth. Academic Symposium and Celebration of the first Centenary of the Death of John Henry Newman (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Urbaniana, 1991), p.142. Translated from the German by the author.

2 J. Ratzinger, Op.cit., p. 143.

3 Fischer, Anthony, ‘Conscience in Ethics and the Contemporary Crisis of Authority’, in Sgreccia, E. and Laffitte, J. (eds.), Christian Conscience in Support of the Right to Life (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2008), pp. 37–70Google Scholar.

4 Potts, Timothy C., ’Conscience’, in Kretzmann, N., Kenny, A. & Pinborg, J. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100–1600 (Cambridge: CUP, 1982), pp. 687–704CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Aquinas’ use of conscientia is to be understood within the general concept of synderesis and prudentia.

6 Newman, J. H., A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation (London: B. M. Pickering 1875), p. 58Google Scholar.

7 http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG022/P4.HTM; § 32.

8 Newman, J. H., Autobiographical Writings, ed. Tristram, Henry (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1957), p. 272Google Scholar.

9 The Via Media of the Anglican Church was originally published in 1837.

10 Newman, J. H., Fifteen Sermons Preached Before The University of Oxford (London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, 1909) p. 183Google Scholar.

11 Ibid.

12 J. H. Newman, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 57.

13 Newman, J. H., An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London: Burns, Oates, and Co., 1870), p. 103Google Scholar.

14 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 63.

15 Thomas Aquinas, Summae Theologiae, 1a IIae, Q 19, a. 5. Quoted in Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 62.

16 Grammar of Assent, p. 102.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., p. 103.

20 Ibid.

21 Fifteen Sermons, p. 55, n. 3.

22 Grammar of Assent, p. 106.

23 Newman, J. H., Callista: A Tale of the Third Century (Longmans, Green, and Co, 1890), pp. 314–315Google Scholar.

24 Grammar of Assent, p. 105.

25 Ibid., p. 107.

26 Ibid., pp. 9–12.

27 Ibid., pp. 114–115.

28 Hughes, G. J., ‘Conscience’, in Ker, I. & Merrigan, T. (eds), The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman (Cambridge: CUP 2009), pp. 189–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; here p. 194.

29 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 63.

30 Hughes, p. 190.

31 Grave, S. A., Conscience in Newman's Thought (Oxford: OUP, 1989), pp. 179–189Google Scholar.

32 Hughes, p. 207.

33 W. E. Gladstone, ‘Ritualism and Ritual’, in Contemporary Review (October 1874), pp. 663–81, here p. 674.

34 Ford, John T., ‘Country, Church and Conscience: John Henry Newman versus William Ewart Gladstone’, in Ford, John T., Destro, Robert A., Dechert, Charles R. (eds.), Religion in Public Life, vol. II. Religion and Political Structures. From Fundamentalism to Public Service (Washington D. C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2005), pp. 85–100Google Scholar, here, p. 86.

35 The correspondence between Gladstone and the by then ex-communicated German church historian Ignaz von Döllinger at the beginning of the 1870s is testimony to their common frustration with Newman's argumentation in matters of intellectual freedom and ecclesiastical authority.

36 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 6.

37 Ibid., p. 39.

38 Ibid., p. 41.

39 Ibid., p. 38.

40 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 53.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., p. 57.

43 Norris, T. J., Cardinal Newman for Today (Dublin: The Columba Press, 2010), p. 151Google Scholar.

44 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 62.

45 Ibid., p. 66.

46 Avery Dulles, ‘Authority & Conscience’, in Church, Fall 1986, pp. 8–15.

47 Fischer, Op.cit., p. 6.

48 I acknowledge the fact that Pope Benedict has contributed to a ‘rediscovery of’ the ontological level of conscience and has painstakingly attempted to pull it away from a mere Scholastic reading that had largely ignored this aspect of conscience. The ontological level is to be distinguished from the level of practical reason and, more specifically, from the exercise of the virtue of prudence. Although both levels of conscience interrelate, the more significant level is the ontological one which Pope Benedict refers to as Ur-Gewissen (according to Josef Pieper). The Pope also prefers to use the Platonic term anamnesis rather than synderesis as this has sacramental connotations; being a memory of the good that enables us to recognize the good.

49 Holmes, J. Derek, ‘Personal Influence and Religious Conviction - Newman and Controversy’ in Newman Studien, Fries, H. & Becker, W. (eds), (Nuremberg: Glock und Lutz, 1948ff), vol. X (1978), pp. 26–46Google Scholar.

50 Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love. Edited and translated with introduction and notes by H. V. Hong & E. Hong (Princeton, N. J: Princeton University Press, 1995), III B: Love is a Matter of Conscience, pp. 135–153; here at p. 143. I have translated the quotation from the original Danish and this translation differs slightly from the Hong version. I am grateful to Dr John McDade for referring me to George Eliot's Middlemarch as another nineteenth-century representation of the understanding of conscience as ’the voice of God’.