Newman on Conscience (part 2)

Newman's conversion to the Catholic Church necessitated his defence of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility when it came against the attacks of erstwhile critics such as the great statesman and Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone. Newman was keen at all points to stress that the doctrine did not impinge on the rights of conscience and he was as eager to counter the criticisms of Anglicans as he was the 'ultramontanism' of fellow Catholics such as Cardinal Manning.

The promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council (1870) and William Gladstone’s attack on it in 1874 gave increased impetus to the need to reconcile conscience with authority. Gladstone’s attacks claimed that the Vatican decrees had completely bound the conscience of every Catholic to the Pope and placed it under his disposal. He brought up the sensitive issue of whether Catholics could really be considered loyal British citizens since they were bound to the decrees of a foreign leader. Newman gave his reply in “A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk” (1875). Newman, who had no problem with the declaration itself but had felt it to be an inopportune moment to declare it, was keen to make clear just what it meant, in order to counter any accusations that it led to a “degrading bondage” as he himself put it in his Apologia. He therefore pointed out that it did not mean that the Pope had general authority over Catholics in all things whatsoever (though some Catholics such as the aforementioned Cardinal Manning seemed to have hoped that this would have been the case) but only spoke infallibly on matters of faith and morals. Science, for example, was outside his jurisdiction to speak infallibly on. Newman then tried to set out ‘the rights of conscience’.

He drew on the Catholic tradition that conscience is always to be obeyed – this was something Thomas Aquinas had himself stated - even if the act was morally wrong in the eyes of the Church. The authority of conscience is not diminished even when it is mistaken due to previous wilful wrongdoing or negligence (for this the person is responsible – but conscience must still be obeyed). In Newman’s conception, conscience determines the rightness or wrongness of actions in the concrete situation in which we find ourselves. That is to say, it bears on something that needs to be done or not done. Papal infallibility, however, deals with general propositions. Thus only if the Pope commands something to be done or not done could conscience come into conflict with authority, but the Pope is not infallible when commanding, and so the problem ‘disappears’. Newman ends his ‘Letter’ with the statement that he “drinks to the Pope, but to conscience first.”

Newman's attempts to allay the sorts of fears which surrounded the promulgation of the doctrine are, I think, important from an ecumenical point of view, in particular as regards the 'High Anglican' tradition which Newman himself came from.