Pope Benedict Recalls Visit to the UK

The UK Catholic Herald has some interesting stories about Pope Benedict XVI's speech to the Roman Curia recalling his trip to the United Kingdom in September this year: here and here.

The Holy Father dedicates a great paragraph to explaining what Blessed John Henry Newman meant when his mentioned offering a toast to Conscience first then the Pope:

The driving force that impelled Newman along the path of conversion was conscience. But what does this mean? In modern thinking, the word “conscience” signifies that for moral and religious questions, it is the subjective dimension, the individual, that constitutes the final authority for decision. The world is divided into the realms of the objective and the subjective. To the objective realm belong things that can be calculated and verified by experiment. Religion and morals fall outside the scope of these methods and are therefore considered to lie within the subjective realm. Here, it is said, there are in the final analysis no objective criteria. The ultimate instance that can decide here is therefore the subject alone, and precisely this is what the word “conscience” expresses: in this realm only the individual, with his intuitions and experiences, can decide. Newman’s understanding of conscience is diametrically opposed to this. For him, “conscience” means man’s capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize precisely in the decision-making areas of his life – religion and morals – a truth, the truth. At the same time, conscience – man’s capacity to recognize truth – thereby imposes on him the obligation to set out along the path towards truth, to seek it and to submit to it wherever he finds it. Conscience is both capacity for truth and obedience to the truth which manifests itself to anyone who seeks it with an open heart. The path of Newman’s conversions is a path of conscience – not a path of self-asserting subjectivity but, on the contrary, a path of obedience to the truth that was gradually opening up to him. His third conversion, to Catholicism, required him to give up almost everything that was dear and precious to him: possessions, profession, academic rank, family ties and many friends. The sacrifice demanded of him by obedience to the truth, by his conscience, went further still. Newman had always been aware of having a mission for England. But in the Catholic theology of his time, his voice could hardly make itself heard. It was too foreign in the context of the prevailing form of theological thought and devotion. In January 1863 he wrote in his diary these distressing words: “As a Protestant, I felt my religion dreary, but not my life – but, as a Catholic, my life dreary, not my religion”. He had not yet arrived at the hour when he would be an influential figure. In the humility and darkness of obedience, he had to wait until his message was taken up and understood. In support of the claim that Newman’s concept of conscience matched the modern subjective understanding, people often quote a letter in which he said – should he have to propose a toast – that he would drink first to conscience and then to the Pope. But in this statement, “conscience” does not signify the ultimately binding quality of subjective intuition. It is an expression of the accessibility and the binding force of truth: on this its primacy is based. The second toast can be dedicated to the Pope because it is his task to demand obedience to the truth.

Pope Benedict packs a great deal of understanding of Newman and his times in that paragraph:

--"The path of Newman’s conversions is a path of conscience – not a path of self-asserting subjectivity but, on the contrary, a path of obedience to the truth that was gradually opening up to him. "

As Blessed John Henry progressed from belief in Jesus Christ and an invisible church of believers, to belief in Jesus Christ and loyalty to the Church Jesus founded, located in the via media of the Church of England, to belief in Jesus Christ and the one, true, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, he was always focused on the Divine Person of Jesus and His truth, way, and life. Newman was always devoted to Jesus and to the truths He revealed. The Pope's words about the 'truth that was gradually opening up to him' contain an indirect reference to Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine!

--"Newman had always been aware of having a mission for England. But in the Catholic theology of his time, his voice could hardly make itself heard. It was too foreign in the context of the prevailing form of theological thought and devotion. In the humility and darkness of obedience, he had to wait until his message was taken up and understood. "

Here Benedict subtly but effectively notes that the hierarchy did not really know what to do with the great convert once they had him. Blessed John Henry Newman endured rejection, failure, and disappointment, responding with obedience. Newman's message was heard only after the attack of Charles Kingsley on the one hand and the honor of the Cardinalate from Pope Leo XIII on the other!

Lest we think that we understand Newman and appreciate him so more than his contemporaries did, the Pope reminds us that Newman's toast comment is often misinterpreted and used to support dissent:

--"In support of the claim that Newman’s concept of conscience matched the modern subjective understanding, people often quote a letter in which he said – should he have to propose a toast – that he would drink first to conscience and then to the Pope. But in this statement, “conscience” does not signify the ultimately binding quality of subjective intuition. It is an expression of the accessibility and the binding force of truth: on this its primacy is based. The second toast can be dedicated to the Pope because it is his task to demand obedience to the truth."

I think that with proper attention and study, we will benefit for years from the addresses, homilies and speeches Pope Benedict XVI made during and after his official visit to the United Kingdom in September, 2010.