Henry VIII's Psalter: Himself as King David

Earlier this year there was an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England. One of the featured exhibits was the Psalter King Henry VIII commissioned from Jean Mallard in 1540, on loan from the British Library. Both the British Library and the Smithsonian Magazine comment on how Henry VIII designed the Psalter to reflect his piety--including comparisons of himself to King David--and how he annotated certain psalms to identify himself in the psalms as one who had done the Lord's Will and was being rewarded for it (i.e., the birth of his son Edward).

From the British Library's Medieval manuscripts blog:

The Psalter was commissioned by the King himself in 1540 and written and illustrated for him by Jean Mallard, a French scribe and illuminator. It is a lavish production and is still in its original binding, which although quite threadbare, retains traces of deep red velvet. The Psalms are written in an elegant, humanist script and accompanied by exquisitely decorated initials showing birds, insects, fruit, flowers and foliage.

But the Psalter’s true significance lies in its main illustrations, four of which depict Henry, and its annotations written by the King. Taken together, they demonstrate that by the 1540s Henry perceived himself as King David of the Old Testament who, according to tradition, composed the Psalms and whose story was used to justify Henry’s declaration of independence from Rome and to define the Royal Supremacy. . . .

The Smithsonian Magazine article includes some analysis of Henry VIII's annotations in the margins of his Psalter:

Henry appears to have found the self-justification he’d been seeking. Handwritten annotations in the psalter reveal what the king thought of the text and its implications for his own power. On one page, Henry scrawled “nota de peccatore quid ait,” Latin for “note: what he says about the sinner,” next to a passage declaring that sinners’ hereditary lines will be cut off as punishment for their evil deeds. By 1540, after years of waiting and seizing power to enable his multiple marriages, he had at last been rewarded with a son who would continue the Tudor line. Based on his interpretation of the psalm, Henry saw himself as being in God’s good graces—perhaps unthinkable when modern readers consider that he had already executed one of his wives, Anne Boleyn, and would soon execute another, the young Katherine Howard.

In 1540, Henry married again--twice!--to Anne of Cleves and then to Katherine Howard, who followed, as stated above, his second wife to the block.

The article goes on to state:

If these markings tell scholars anything, it’s that Henry wasn’t suffering from a twinging conscience. On the contrary, he viewed unfolding events as vindicating the very choices that later led to his reputation as a callous tyrant. Henry’s notes implicitly justify his self-empowerment; his marriages; and the executions of those who opposed him or fell out of favor, including chief adviser Thomas Cromwell and his old tutor and lord chamberlain, Thomas More. These individuals and many others were, in one way or another, casualties of Henry’s attempt to break from Rome and marry Anne Boleyn.

Following one's conscience is an important theme in Henry VIII's religious and marital matters. He complained of his conscience bothering him after years of marriage to Catherine of Aragon that he had done wrong in marrying his brother's widow. St. Thomas More writes extensively about how he had formed his conscience to answer Henry VIII's questions about the validity of that marriage. His Dialogue on Conscience also explains his position and he explained the traditional Catholic view of conscience to Cromwell and those questioning him on why he would not take the Oath as his monarch required when Cromwell tried to compare More's conscience to the consciences of the heretics which More had investigated as Chancellor (as he described the conversation to his daughter Meg in a letter dated June 3, 1535):

To this Master Secretary said that I had before this when I was Chan­cellor examined heretics and thieves and other malefactors and gave me a great praise above my deserving in that behalf. And he said that I then, as he thought and at the leastwise Bishops did use to examine heretics, whether they believed the Pope to be the head of the Church and used to compel them to make a precise answer thereto. And why should not then the King, since it is a law made here that his Grace is Head of the Church, here compel men to answer precisely to the law here as they did then concerning the Pope.

I answered and said that I protested that I intended not to defend any part or stand in contention; but I said there was a difference between those two cases because at that time, as well here as elsewhere through the corps of Christendom, the Pope's power was recognized for an undoubted thing which seems not like a thing agreed in this realm and the contrary taken for truth in other realms. Whereunto Master Secretary answered that they were as well burned for the denying of that as they be beheaded for deny­ing of this, and therefore as good reason to compel them to make precise answer to the one as to the other.

Whereto I answered that since in this case a man is not by a law of one realm so bound in his conscience, where there is a law of the whole corps of Christendom to the contrary in matter touching belief, as he is by a law of the whole corps though there hap to be made in some place a local law to the contrary, the reasonableness or the unreasonableness in binding a man to precise answer, standeth not in the respect or difference between beheading and burning, but because of the difference in charge of con­science, the difference standeth between beheading and hell.

What the Smithsonian Magazine article highlights is that by 1540 Henry VIII was not suffering from any troubled conscience about what he had done to achieve his desire to sire a legitimate son to succeed him. Henry VIII died in 1547, leaving that son, Edward VI a young boy who would never reach the age of majority, marry, or sire a son to succeed him. 

The commentator in the article, James Clarke, notes that Henry might have thought himself in God's good graces, but was concerned that that youth had passed him by and that he was getting old: he was beginning to face his mortality, if not his morality! 

Image Credit (Public Domain): Henry VIII reading Psalm 1: Beatus Vir (Blessed the man).

Saint John Henry Newman's Political Thought

Earlier this summer I taught a Graduate level course on "Saint John Henry Newman and the New Evangelization" at Newman University. It's not a class on Newman's life and works exclusively, but a class applying some of Newman's ideas for reviving the Church of England when he was an Anglican minister at the University of Oxford, and his efforts to teach and defend the teachings of the Catholic Church as an Oratorian after his conversion in 1845.

We read many of Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons, The Dream of Gerontius, excerpts from other works, like the Grammar of Assent, his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, etc., and various articles and chapters analyzing his life and works.

Several times the students asked me about some aspect of Newman's life and works that didn't immediately touch on the topic of the New Evangelization, focused on the revival of Catholic life and practice among Catholics or those falling or fallen away from the Church in previously Christian or Catholic cultures. I had to tell them that Newman did not write a comprehensive fundamental theological work on Catholic doctrine, moral, sacramental, or spiritual, etc. 

Although we rightly often speak of Newman as a theologian, he was not a systematic theologian--he was consistent, but not systematic. He addressed certain themes and topics when he thought they need defending, on certain occasions, like Gladstone's contention that Catholics couldn't follow their (English) consciences after the doctrine of Papal Infallibility was proclaimed, or Pusey's not-so-peaceful discussion of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, or the position of the Catholic laity in the Church, particularly regarding practical matters but also regarding the sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful), etc.

And, as this article by Austin Walker shows, Newman was not a systematic writer about political philosophy, either: 

Newman was an occasional and unsystematic writer who never authored a formal treatise on political philosophy. Nor did he often weigh in on the political issues of the day—in fact, the only time he addressed a contemporary issue was when he wrote a series of pseudonymous letters on the Crimean War to chastise an intemperate British public for expecting too much from political life. [Sic: one might argue that Newman's Tamworth Reading Room letters should be included, as they chastised Sir Robert Peel for dictating a “fundamental rule, that no works of controversial divinity shall enter into the library” Peel was establishing for those who could not benefit from a university education at Oxford with the goal of improving their intellects and morals.]  However, one can find the key to Newman’s political insights in his treatment of the political status of the church.

Newman’s real political concern was the independence and vitality of the church, as viewed through the eyes of the Alexandrian Fathers. As an Anglican, Newman saw the independence of the church most immediately in its relation to the English state. As a Catholic, the same fundamental concerns remained, but they were inflected in a new valence. If Anglican Newman worried about the oppression of the church by the state, Catholic Newman was concerned about the oppression of the church by the predominating philosophy of the day. Liberalism promised an illusory liberty by positing a new mode of human organization, anthropology, and history. Newman’s political project, as both an Anglican and a Catholic, was to reassert a biblical and ecclesial reality that the age was forgetting how to see: the church itself as “an object of veneration and loyalty.”

Walker then unpacks Newman's concerns for the Church of England during his Anglican years, especially as a leader of the Tractarian Movement, and as a Catholic after 1845. 

With all the links to the various works throughout the article, it demonstrates one of the great advantages we do have in this technological age: the reader can both appreciate Professor Walker's analysis and read the entire work he cites without reaching for a book on the shelf, thanks to the newmanreader.org website!

Image: bust of Saint John Henry Newman in the garden of the College in Littlemore (c) Stephanie A. Mann (2023)

Book Review, Part II: John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits

As I noted in my first post, I'm continuing my review of Professor Reinhard Hutter's new book from the Catholic University of America Press, John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits: A Guide for Our Times. I thought it would be just too long a post otherwise, especially since I am including a detailed table of contents, including the subheads from each chapter. In my post on Saturday, April 18, I offered my comments on the Prologue, Chapter 1 on Conscience and Its Counterfeits, and Chapter 2 on Faith and Its Counterfeits, so now I'll pick up with comments on Chapters 3 and 4 and the Epilogue and then offer my overall review and comments on this book.

I like the cover of the book: the designer has adapted a photograph of Newman the National Institute for Newman Studies identifies as being taken  in 1888 (and published in a book titled Cardinal Newman by William Barry). The photograph may have been flopped (Newman is facing left in the NINS portrait) and color has been added subtly to his face and hair and to the outer garment Newman is wearing (red). That is also the portrait of Newman that Scepter Publishers and I selected for the cover of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation with Newman facing Henry VIII, although their designer cropped it differently and left it in black and white:

It is also the portrait chosen by Oxford University Press for the 2019 reissued edition of Father Ian Ker's great biography of Newman, with different color choices (red for his cassock and zucchetto):

But enough about the cover: on to the rest of contents!

Chapter 3. The Development of Doctrine and Its Counterfeits
*Development of Doctrine: The Voice of the Magisterium
*How Is an Authentic Development of Doctrine to be Discerned?
*Newman's Seven Notes of an Authentic Development of Doctrine
*A Test Case of Authentic Development of Doctrine: "Dignitatis Humanae"
*Conclusion: Two Counterfeits of the Authentic Development of Doctrine
*Appendix: Francisco Marin-Sola's Thomist Reception of Newman

Hutter begins this chapter (pp. 130-131) with a great explication of Newman's famous sentence, "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant" as he concludes that the history Newman is speaking of is salvation history, the "unfolding truth of the divine Word" which the Catholic Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, continuously passes on. Thus "to be deep in history in this precise sense of salvation history means to be deep in the [Catholic] Church."

Hutter then examines "the voice of the recent magisterium to ascertain its teaching on the development of doctrine", citing Dei Filius from the First Vatican Council and Dei Verbum from the Second, reviews Newman's seven notes from the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, and then provides a test case.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this chapter is how Professor Hutter submits his argument to Father Ian Ker's chapter 2, "The Hermeneutic of Change in Continuity" in Newman on Vatican II in developing his test case of whether or not the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, is an authentic development of doctrine. I think it's worth quoting his footnote in which he says he abstains "from the academic temptation to be original" and "rather gratefully" relies "on Ker's astute analysis and argumentation" because it "strikes [him] as just right" (note 36, page 146). Then Hutter goes on to use pages 65-71 of Father Ker's book, demonstrating how Dignitatis Humanae, magisterially affirmed at the Second Vatican Council, passes the test of Newman's seven notes of true development of doctrine--which is not a matter of private judgment or sovereign self-determination. He also comments on the dangers of both ecclesial antiquarianism and presentism: neither a static past nor a progressive future fulfill the Church's mandate to teach the Gospel and hand on the Tradition. Hutter brings in a connection to St. Thomas Aquinas in the Appendix to this chapter as he explores the work of Dom Francisco Marin-Sola, OP, and his work on the development of Christian doctrine in The Homogeneous Evolution of Catholic Dogma, a neglected work.

Chapter 4. The University and Its Counterfeit
*University Education and (Natural) Theology as a Science
*The Indispensability of (Natural) Theology for University Education
*Becoming a Master of the Twofold "Logos", Thought and Word
*A Pragmatic Postscript
*Appendix: Metaphysics and Natural Theology

I have been reading and studying Newman's The Idea of a University since I first discovered Newman in 1979 while attending Wichita State University as sophomore pursuing a B.A. in English Language and Literature, knowing then that I could not receive the fullness of a liberal arts, university education at that institution as it was willing and able to instruct me. As a few of the students at the Newman Center who were enrolled in the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and I realized, we were going to have to seek other sources for that fullness of education, unfortunately rather unsystematically.

Based upon his extensive experience at colleges and universities as a student and professor, Hutter also has a great respect for the idea and ideal Newman presents in these lectures while knowing that many of those institutions he's familiar with have not achieved the goals of a fully integrated university education. He calls most of the colleges and universities that exist today "polytechnical" institutions, without a unity of purpose beyond the sports team and making money. He mocks derisively those colleges who add a few master degree programs so they may claim the title university without approaching universal knowledge at all! They become polytechnical, hyperpluralistic institutions on a smaller scale.

Once again fulfilling his thesis that Newman is "A Guide for Our Times", Hutter demonstrates how Newman anticipated the decline of university education since he saw signs of great errors based upon private judgment and the sovereign subject: "authority, tradition, habit, moral instinct, and the divine influences" were being rejected in the nineteenth century; "patience of thought, and depth and consistency of view" were mocked, while "free discussion and fallible judgment [were] prized as the birthright of each individual." Newman knew he was already fighting a battle he might lose when he founded the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin (although he lost it for a different reason) as a bulwark against the secularized, liberalized, utilitarian university of his own time. Newman traced that polytechnical ideal to Francis Bacon, using higher education for material and social desires, not the fulfillment the human person through understanding his relationship to his Creator through natural theology and a philosophical habit of mind. That's why Theology must be a subject at a true university, not "religious studies", "the Bible as literature" or a survey course on world religions.

Newman saw that "the human being was being eliminated as a subject worthy of study"; Hutter sees now that we have "transhumanist outlook" as the liberal eugenicists today demand the freedom to design human beings, changing or enhancing "properties of one's own nature (intelligence, gender, emotions, body features, etc) with the assistance of biotechnology."

One of passages that affected me most, as I reflected on my incomplete education, was Hutter's substantial quotation of the Trappist monk Dom Eugene Boylan's This Tremendous Lover. In 1946 Boylan "made a keen observation about an emerging problem in the intellectual life that has only escalated since then": the use of imagination instead of abstract, metaphysical thought, substituting what might be for what is; non-being for Being. Boylan identified the results as false substitutions are made in thought and discourse:

• sentiment in principle for [instead of] argument
• particular for the general in argument
• metaphor in place of reality
• opinion for certainty
• prejudice for judgment
• quantity for quality
• matter for the ultimate reality

Even though I attended Catholic elementary and secondary schools, I received--in the late sixties and seventies--an education based on imagination and not abstract, metaphysical thought. Combined with the weak catechesis of that era, I might quote Paul Simon to say that "it's a wonder I can think at all"! except that I did discover John Henry Newman in 1979--receiving some good orientation and guidance--and did study the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the early nineties, married a good man, made good friends, and kept reading and studying Newman's life and works, thank God.

Epilogue: A Newmanian Theological Journey into the Catholic Church
*Moral Theology
*Justification, Church, and Eucharist
*Magisterium
*Encountering Mother Church
*Clarity

The epilogue is Hutter's conversion story from Lutheranism to Catholicism. In the context of the book, it demonstrates how he recognized that even teaching morality in a Lutheran seminary led him to base his instructor on his own private judgment and as a sovereign subject. There was no authority to guide him or his students or even his ecclesial community--not even Martin Luther himself! Even believing in the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion could not result in any reverence for the matter of Holy Communion, as crumbs and bits of the Body of Christ were treated like mere bread, unless the pastor of a certain parish cared. Hutter notes the great influence of Pope St. John Paul II's encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, and Ecclesia de Eucharistia. It's a great conversion story and a fitting end to the book as it demonstrates again Newman's influence today.

Selected Bibliography
Index of Names
General Index

The bibliography is excellent, and the footnotes, as I mentioned, are important to read. I recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the influence of Newman's teachings and writings on conscience, faith, ecclesiology and the Church's magisterium, and the idea of a university. I enjoyed and benefited from "hearing" Professor Hutter's voice of reason and experience throughout his discussion of these important subjects. It's a book I've had a hard time putting down even after I read the last word.

Book Review, Part I: John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits

Reinhard Hutter's book on John Henry Newman was on the top of my wish list for 2020 new releases and I finally purchased my copy from Eighth Day Books on the Monday of Holy Week and read it before the Paschal Triduum began. It was worth the wait and I highly recommend it both to those who've studied Newman and those who are new to Newman and interested in certain religious controversies.

In my review here, I'm interspersing my comments throughout the table of contents. At the end of the review (in a second post), I'll state my overall conclusion about the book.

Subtitle: A Guide for Our Times

Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Prologue: Newman and Us
*Newman's Sojourn "from Shadows and Images into Truth"
*Structure, Scope, and Objective

Hutter establishes a cogent reason for writing this book proposing Newman as "A Guide for Our Times" noting that Newman saw three problems in his own century that would continue to develop and deepen unless the Catholic Church raised up champions against them: (1) the Spirit of Liberalism in religion; (2) the usurpation of religion and faith by rationalism; and (3) the unfettered rule of the principle of private judgment in religion. Hutter cites Newman's 1873 sermon "The Infidelity of the Future" as a prescient forecast of our situation now.

After providing an appropriately detailed biography of Newman, Hutter establishes the Structure, Scope, and Objective of the book: each chapter deals with a counterfeit of the true meaning of its term (conscience, faith, Newman's idea of the development of doctrine, and the university) and describes how Newman provides a defense of the truth. As Hutter notes, the main issue in each chapter is Newman's opposition to the principle of "private judgment" and the idea of a "sovereign subject", a person who, as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in 1991 (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) can determine his or her own reality, which must be accepted by even those who know that reality is not true.

The real surprise to me was that Hutter establishes St. Thomas Aquinas as the main interlocutor to Newman in three of the four chapters. Since I have usually read that Newman was not a systematic theologian--more of a controversialist--this Newman-Aquinas connection was enlightening. As Hutter explains, Newman consulted Aquinas on conscience; Hutter thinks Aquinas help us understand what Newman says about faith more clearly; and Newman and Aquinas shared a vision of a university education.

Hutter cites other indications of Newman's regard for Aquinas, including evidence that he had read Aquinas while at Oriel College (thus as an Anglican); that he had Aquinas' complete works in his library and several other volumes by Aquinas; that there are annotations on different volumes, and that in 1878, after Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Aeternus Patris, re-establishing Aquinas as the Common Doctor of Catholic philosophy and theology, Newman was confident that he would not be found to be in conflict with Aquinas in his Grammar of Assent. Hutter also notes that Newman had been disappointed to learn that Aristotle and Aquinas were not in style in Rome while he studied for the Catholic priesthood after his conversion.

Hutter offers an excellent explanation for how the different methods of Newman and Aquinas complement each other. Newman's theological genius is psychological, phenomenological and controversial--he practices theology in a "context of discovery", defending Catholic teaching "not just in its notions but its reality"; Aquinas, the Common Doctor, best represents theology in the "context of justification", explaining Catholic teaching systematically, doctrinally, and speculatively. Newman and Aquinas have the same philosophical master: Aristotle.

Hutter then sets out to demonstrate how Newman addresses "today's most pressing issues from a Catholic perspective," starting with Conscience and Its Counterfeit.

Chapter 1. Conscience and Its Counterfeit
*John Henry Newman on Conscience and Its Counterfeit
*Aquinas on Synderesis and Conscientia
*Synderesis
*Conscience and Prudence
*The Erroneous Conscience
*Invincible Ignorance
*The Erroneous Conscience and the Counterfeit of Conscience
*Aquinas and Newman--Complementary Accounts of Conscience?
*Conscience and the Magisterium
*Freedom of Conscience as Freedom in the Truth
*Seven (7) Appendices on various aspects of Conscience, including notes on Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Kant, and Fichte on definitions of Conscience

Because I've studied and even presented on Newman's defense of the true idea of Conscience against its Counterfeit of "self-will" none of what Hutter said about Newman's great contribution here was new to me, except for his discussion of how Aquinas' systematic explanation of synderesis as an innate habit and of conscience as an act, and how those terms, which Newman does not precisely use, back up Newman's explanation of conscience and how important that defense is to our true understanding of our moral choices, our freedom, and our obedience to Christ and His Church. The counterfeit of conscience, self-will, is a manifestation both of private judgment and liberalism in religious matters, making the individual the center of both the habit of choosing the good and the action of conscience deciding what is good. The individual determines what is good for herself--regardless of its objective value as revealed by God and His Church--and decides which action/choice will be good for herself and consistent with what she wants.

Chapter 2. Faith and Its Counterfeits
*Newman on Faith and Private Judgment
*Faith [Divine Faith]
*Private Judgment
*Protestantism and Private Judgment
*Divine Faith Is a Matter of Grace
*Thomas Aquinas on Divine Faith
*The Formal and the Material Object of Faith
*On Abjuring the Formal Object of "by which" of Faith
*Conclusion: Divine Faith and Its Counterfeit
*Appendix 1 (Newman's Studies in Rome; notes on Catholic Theologians on Faith)
*Appendix 2 (Certitude and Truth)

This chapter best exemplified how St. Thomas Aquinas' systematic theology of Divine Faith as one of the theological virtues, infused in our souls through the grace of baptism with water in the Name  of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit informs Newman's orthodox treatment of faith in a few Catholic sermons and other works. One of the main issues for Newman was that his conversion--becoming a Catholic years after he received the gift and grace of Divine Faith in baptism--was not a matter of private judgment and act of a "sovereign subject" deciding what was best for him, consistent with his own values, but was a response to truth. In his epilogue, Hutter cites an image Newman used of a man using a lantern to guide his way home in the dark--once inside his home, he doesn't need the lantern any more. This certainly conforms to Newman's statement in the Apologia pro Vita Sua that after becoming Catholic he did not need to form private judgments on the Church's doctrine because he had submitted to the living authority of God, "the oracle of God":

FROM the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption. 

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles, which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive of them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power. 

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. . . . (Chapter 5. The Position of My Mind Since 1845)

Here I'd like to highlight Hutter's use of the the appendices at the end of these chapters. He uses them, like his rather extensive footnotes, to explore related subjects (the seven appendices at the end of Chapter 1 outline the various definitions of conscience by Protestant reformers and the speculations of Catholic theologians like Karl Rahner, SJ, and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger). The first Appendix to this chapter shows Newman's development in understanding Divine Faith through his studies of and notes from Catholic theologians like Suarez, Bellarmine, Lugo, Tanner, and Perrone (Jesuit, post-Tridentine). Thus Newman, who as an Anglican had thought of faith as "a higher reason and a gifted inference, came to understand the "process of supernatural faith" or the "analysis fidei" by 1853. As Hutter notes, almost twenty years later (1870), Newman would write the Grammar of Assent including a "compelling description of divine faith in its full and authentic Catholic scope", quoting Chapter 5, section 3, pages 152-153. In the second Appendix to this chapter, Hutter explores the Grammar of Assent further by presenting Newman's arguments on the Indefectibility of Certitude, section 2 of Chapter 7.

Since this is becoming a very long post, I'll break off here. For my comments the next two chapters, Hutter's Epilogue, and my summary review, please see my post next Tuesday (my late mother's birthday!), April 21:

Chapter 3. The Development of Doctrine and Its Counterfeits
*Development of Doctrine: The Voice of the Magisterium
*How Is an Authentic Development of Doctrine to be Discerned?
*Newman's Seven Notes of an Authentic Development of Doctrine
*A Test Case of Authentic Development of Doctrine: "Dignitatis Humanae"
*Conclusion: Two Counterfeits of the Authentic Development of Doctrine
*Appendix: Francisco Marin-Sola's Thomist Reception of Newman

Chapter 4. The University and Its Counterfeit
*University Education and (Natural) Theology as a Science
*The Indispensability of (Natural) Theology for University Education
*Becoming a Master of the Twofold "Logos", Thought and Word
*A Pragmatic Postscript
*Appendix: Metaphysics and Natural Theology

Epilogue: A Newmanian Theological Journey into the Catholic Church
*Moral Theology
*Justification, Church, and Eucharist
*Magisterium
*Encountering Mother Church
*Clarity

Selected Bibliography
Index of Names
General Index

Sophie Scholl's Conscience and Blessed John Henry Newman

Sophie Scholl, White Rose objector to Nazi rule in Germany, and her brother Hans were guillotined on February 22, 1943. Scholl is one of the most admired women in 20th Century German history because she and her brother, with a few others at the University of Munich, tried to persuade the German people to reject that Nazi rule by publishing pamphlets and distributing them widely.

As Paul Shrimpton explains in a 2018 article in the UK's Catholic Herald, Blessed John Henry Newman's teachings on conscience inspired Sophie and The White Rise group because of Theodor Haecker's translations:

The man who brought Newman’s writings to the attention of the Munich students was the philosopher and cultural historian Theodor Haecker. Haecker had become a Catholic after translating Newman’s Grammar of Assent in 1921, and for the rest of his life Newman was his guiding star. He translated seven of Newman’s works, and on several occasions read excerpts from them at the illegal secret meetings Hans Scholl convened for his friends. Strange though it may seem, the insights of the Oxford academic were ideally suited to help these students make sense of the catastrophe they were living through. . . .

When Sophie’s boyfriend, a Luftwaffe officer called Fritz Hartnagel, was deployed to the Eastern Front in May 1942, Sophie’s parting gift was two volumes of Newman’s sermons. After witnessing the carnage in Russia, Fritz wrote to Sophie to say that reading Newman’s words in such an awful place was like tasting “drops of precious wine”.

In another letter, Fritz wrote: “We know by whom we were created, and that we stand in a relationship of moral obligation to our creator. Conscience gives us the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.” These words were taken almost verbatim from a famous sermon of Newman’s called “The Testimony of Conscience”. In it, Newman explains that conscience is an echo of the voice of God enlightening each person to moral truth in specific situations. All of us, he argues, have a duty to obey a right conscience over and above all other considerations.

At the White Rose trial, Sophie said that it was her Christian conscience that had compelled her to oppose the Nazi regime non-violently. The same was true for Hans: he, like his sister, had found in Newman and other Christian writers the resources and inspiration to make sense of the brutal and demonic world around him.

More on Haecker here. He also translated Newman's Development of Christian Doctrine, Historical Sketches, and The Dream of Gerontius! (Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, translated The Idea of a University.) More about Newman's influence among Catholics in 1920's Germany here.

Sophie and Hans wanted to follow Haecker, Newman, and their White Rose partner Christoph Probst into the Catholic Church right before their executions, but were persuaded not to because of how it would have affected their mother, a devout Lutheran lay preacher!

In 1990, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger explained how he had been inspired by Newman's thoughts on conscience after the Nazi regime had been destroyed:

In January 1946, when I began my study of theology in the Seminary in Freising which had finally reopened after the confusion of the war, an older student was assigned as prefect to our group, who had begun to work on a dissertation on Newman's theology of conscience, even before the beginning of the war. In all the years of his military service he had not lost sight of this theme, which he now turned to with new enthusiasm and energy.

We were soon bonded by a personal friendship, wholly centred on the great problems of philosophy and theology. Of course, Newman was always present. Alfred Läpple— the name of the abovementioned prefect — published his dissertation in 1952 with the title: Der Einzelne in der Kirche (The Individual in the Church).

For us at that time, Newman's teaching on conscience became an important foundation for theological personalism, which was drawing us all in its sway. Our image of the human being as well as our image of the Church was permeated by this point of departure.

We had experienced the claim of a totalitarian party, which understood itself as the fulfilment of history and which negated the conscience of the individual. One of its leaders had said: "I have no conscience. My conscience is Adolf Hitler". The appalling devastation of humanity that followed was before our eyes.

So it was liberating and essential for us to know that the "we" of the Church does not rest on a cancellation of conscience, but that, exactly the opposite, it can only develop from conscience.

Precisely because Newman interpreted the existence of the human being from conscience, that is, from the relationship between God and the soul, was it clear that this personalism is not individualism, and that being bound by conscience does not mean being free to make random choices — the exact opposite is the case.

I wonder if Sophie, Hans, and Christoph realized they were being executed--born into eternal life--the day after their guide to conscience John Henry Newman's birthday 142 years earlier?

Compare and Contrast: More and Newman

The Catholic World Report has published my feature article on St. Thomas More and Blessed John Henry Newman on Conscience. I based this article on two of the talks I gave at the Spiritual Life Center's Summer Symposium on Conscience and Conversion:

St. Thomas More and Blessed John Henry Newman may not on first glance seem to be a good pairing: the twice-happily married lawyer and public servant and the celibate Oxford Fellow and Oratorian priest. The sixteenth century Catholic martyr and the nineteenth century convert and confessor; the witty teller of merry tales and the seemingly sensitive controversialist.

With a second glance, the viewer sees what they share: Both of them were born in London (actually in the City of London); both attended the University of Oxford; if More was “made for friendship” in Erasmus’s famous line, Newman selected “Cor ad cor loquitor” (Heart speaks to heart) for his motto as Cardinal, emphasizing the bonds of friendship and personal influence. They shared a desire for holiness and seeking out truth; they are both Catholic (More by birth and nurture in a Catholic family; Newman by adult conversion); More and Newman defended the truth with their pens, taking on the subjects of their day (heresy’s attack on Catholic teaching in More’s era; liberalism’s attack on religious truth in Newman’s).

Most importantly, for both of them, the true Catholic understanding of conscience was crucial in their lives. For More, following his conscience led him to martyrdom; for Newman, following his conscience led him to become a Catholic. More and Newman revealed their understanding of conscience’s purpose, authority, and source in defense of the authority of the Church’s magisterium and the role of the papacy in the Catholic Church. While they are often cited as defenders of individual conscience, they also stressed the source of conscience’s authority in each individual: God’s law, natural and revealed—and the Church’s role in teaching and defending that law.

Please read the rest there. I appreciate Father Juan Velez's recommendation that I submit the article to CWR!

The Conscience of the King: November 8, 1528

The Tudor Society reminds us that on November 8, 1528:

Henry VIII made a public oration to “the nobility, judges and councillors and divers other persons” at Bridewell Palace to explain his troubled conscience regarding the lawfulness of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In this speech, the King explained that due to his worry that Mary was not his lawful daughter and that Catherine was not his lawful wife, he had sent for a legate “to know the truth and to settle my conscience.”

The issue of Henry VIII's conscience, like St. Thomas More's, is central to our views of the English Reformation and can even be a crucial element in our evaluation of Henry VIII's character. Was he really so troubled by his conscience regarding his marriage to Katherine of Aragon? Was he just citing his conscience and his concern about the admonitions in Leviticus as an excuse? Why wasn't his concern answered by the contrary admonitions in Deuteronomy and the fact that his father had obtained a dispensation from any possible affinity from the Pope?

Henry Ansgar Kelly's The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII was first published by Stanford University Press in 1976 and is now published by Wipf and Stock. He analyses Henry's conscience and notes that we will never really know "Henry's mind". Kelly says that Henry is neither a Machiavellian nor a great Protestant hero (defying the Pope) in this matter, but that the truth is somewhere in between these extremes: Henry was "partly hypocritical and partly conscientious". Kelly says that Henry VIII had to justify himself before God and did believe that his marriage to Katherine was sinful, but also that he "possessed massive powers of rationalization, and was prepared to resort to cant and skulduggery to attain ends that he believed were fundamentally righteous."

Cant means "hypocritical and sanctimonious talk" and skulduggery is "underhanded or unscrupulous behavior; trickery".
I have not read Kelly's book and think it would be low on my reading list, though it does look interesting and well written.

If we compare what a semi-apologist for Henry VIII says and what an enemy of Thomas More says, however, I think you readers would agree that even his enemy would never say that Thomas More, in citing his conscience in the matter of Henry VIII's supremacy, was "partly hypocritical", that he "possessed massive powers of rationalization" or was "prepared to resort to cant and skulduggery" in defense of his unstated position against Henry VIII's Supremacy over the Church in England. The opposite would be true; he could have rationalized away his objections to the monarch, the representative of the State taking over the spiritual authority of the Church; evidently many Englishmen did.

Thomas More made no public statement and maintained silence, merely refusing personally, in the name of conscience, to swear the oaths Henry VIII wanted enforced. Therefore, there was no cant to speak of and no skulduggery at all, since More never did anything tricky or underhanded.

Heroes and Sages and Their Consciences

Two years ago this October, I presented on Blessed John Henry Newman: Conversion and Conscience at the Spiritual Life Center. During the presentation on conscience I discussed Newman's depiction of the false idea of conscience he described in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk in response to Gladstone's pamphlet warning against the divisive effects of Papal infallibility in England:

When men advocate the rights of conscience, they in no sense mean the rights of the Creator, nor the duty to Him, in thought and deed, of the creature; but the right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, according to their judgment or their humour, without any thought of God at all. They do not even pretend to go by any moral rule, but they demand, what they think is an Englishman's prerogative, for each to be his own master in all things, and to profess what he pleases, asking no one's leave, and accounting priest or preacher, speaker or writer, unutterably impertinent, who dares to say a word against his going to perdition, if he like it, in his own way. Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience to dispense with conscience, to ignore a Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a licence to take up any or no religion, to take up this or that and let it go again, to go to church, to go to chapel, to boast of being above all religions and to be an impartial critic of each of them. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self-will.

In my post-Easter mystagogical reading, In The Redeeming Christ by F.X.Durrwell, that author presents a higher standard of personal judgement in his chapter on Christian Obedience. He compares and contrasts The Greek Ideal of perfection and human excellence to the Old Testament and then New Testament ideals. I was struck by his characterization of Greek moral ideals according to a humanist standard:

Pagan man saw perfection as belonging to the order of reason; he expected to find it in the fullest human development of his own faculties. This humanism found its purest expression in the Greek world. This Greek ideal lay not in holiness in the biblical sense--consecration, union with God's will--but in the autonomous development of all that is noblest in man. This search for perfection achieved its goal most characteristically in the hero and in the sage. The hero's heroism consisted in an affirmation of himself whereby he was superior to all adversity, a lofty kind of egoism. The wisdom of the sage lay in grasping the great principles of human life and living in conformity with them. In both cases the result was complete freedom: each obeyed only himself, his own will to be great, the truths learnt from his own reason. Even when the Greek was obliged to carry his heroism as far as death, it remained always a heroism of fidelity to himself.

It may be a higher standard, but it's the same autonomy that Newman described as a false image of conscience and the standard it responds to: the individual decides what is excellent, good, and true--for him. It is still "the right of self-will". By that standard, what's excellent, good, and true for me might not be excellent, good, and true for you. We can establish no objective standards to respond to and measure ourselves by. If this rule applies to all areas of human endeavor, we can soon have no science, no arts, no literature, no history that we can share--we can hardly discuss the standards by which we judge the success of a scientific experiment, a painting, a novel, or a narrative, because of individual subjectivity. Judgment of excellence and perfection becomes a matter of taste, and de gustibus non disputandum est (of taste, there is no disputation or discussion). This is that "dictatorship of relativism" that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of to the College of Cardinals in 2005 before his election as Pope Benedict XVI:

We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.

We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An "adult" faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceipt from truth.

We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.

On this theme, St Paul offers us as a fundamental formula for Christian existence some beautiful words, in contrast to the continual vicissitudes of those who, like children, are tossed about by the waves: make truth in love. Truth and love coincide in Christ. To the extent that we draw close to Christ, in our own lives too, truth and love are blended. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like "a clanging cymbal" (I Cor 13: 1).

Here the standard--and Father Durrwell would certainly agree--is not myself but Jesus Christ, my Redeemer and Lord, His love and true humanism.

More on In The Redeeming Christ soon. And FYI: I will be speaking on Blessed John Henry Newman this summer at the Spiritual Life Center in the Docentium Series on August 18. My topic is "John Henry Newman on Faith, Family and Friends".

Newman, Gladstone, and Conscience AND Obedience

Tod Worner writes for Aleteia:

The attack was swift and fierce. The leading light and liberal lion in British politics, Prime Minister (sic) W.E. Gladstone, launched a scathing broadside against Catholics in the British Empire. Fearful that a Catholic’s allegiance to the Church in Rome threatened a vile treachery, Gladstone fulminated that “no one can become [the Catholic Church’s] convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another.”

It wasn’t the first time it had happened, English Catholic priest (and convert from Anglicanism) John Henry Newman surely lamented. Nor would it be the last. And so he was compelled to respond. In his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk written in 1875, Newman schooled the prime minister on the true “moral and mental freedom” of the Catholic faithful. The letter, in fact, turned into a brilliant treatise on the Catholic Conscience. And it is doubtful Gladstone even knew what hit him.

Read the rest there, which includes excerpts from the chapter on conscience in Newman's letter.

Gladstone wasn't Prime Minister in 1874 when he wrote his pamphlet four years after the declaration of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870 at the First Vatican Council: The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance. He did know what hit  him: he responded to Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk in another pamphlet, Vaticanism: an Answer to Reproofs and Replies. In that second pamphlet, Gladstone states that England has not yet realized what it lost when Newman became a Catholic--it would take time, as it had in the case of John Wesley, for historians to assess the effects of Newman's conversion on religion in England.

I'd recommend the chapter on "Newman and Gladstone" (as well as the entire book) from Edward Short's Newman and His Contemporaries to understand this entire episode and Newman's great achievement in writing his pamphlet. Short describes how Newman wanted to respond to not only Gladstone but those ultra-Ultramontanists like W. G. Ward who were saying things like the Pope "has the power of deposing any sovereign, whose government he may consider injurious to the spiritual welfare of that country" and that "the Pope's temporal power is 'the very bulwark and citadel of Catholic order, liberty, and progress'" (page 234). Newman complained how much Ward mistrusted him, even hoping that Anglicans would not come to the Catholic Church through his influence! Short also describes how carefully Newman wrote this pamphlet, quoting him: it was "the toughest job I ever had." He was not only reminding his audience of the classic Catholic idea of conscience, with all its responsibilities and rights, but also narrowing the kind of papal statements Catholics would respond to with required obedience: to matters of faith and morals, not practical matters. Whatever the pope teaches, however, the Catholic must consider it with a fully formed and developed conscience, not its counterfeit. As I wrote in the January/February 2014 issue of OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine:

Since the teaching authority of the pope and the Church concerns matters of faith and morals, of “abstract doctrine” and “the condemnation of particular and given errors,” Newman states there is no conflict at all between it and the individual conscience: the conscience seeks truth, and the Church teaches and defends truth. The pope’s authority as Christ’s Vicar on Earth relies upon the authority of conscience, that “aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”

Blessed John Henry Newman further states that for one to oppose even “the supreme, though not infallible authority of the pope” in some matter (he uses the example of a pope prohibiting Catholics from drinking wine or beer), the individual cannot rely on the counterfeit idea of conscience: “serious thought, prayer and all available means of arriving at a right judgment” must be followed, and the burden of proof is on the individual, not on the pope.

Joseph Ratzinger, both as cardinal and as pope, had praised Newman’s “clear avowal of the papacy.” Commenting on Newman’s beatification in his comments to the Roman Curia on Dec. 20, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI summarized Newman’s understanding of conscience: “Conscience is both capacity for truth and obedience to the truth which manifests itself to anyone who seeks it with an open heart.” Because Blessed John Henry Newman followed the “kindly light” of truth, it led him to become a Catholic in 1845, and as Pope Benedict noted, that conversion cost him everything “that was dear and precious to him,” perhaps even his great opportunity to influence Christian theology in his lifetime. His life as a Catholic was obscure and filled with failed projects, but his letter to the Duke of Norfolk provided a great example of the influence he could have.

The chapter on conscience ends with a toast that many have misinterpreted: “Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I drink — to the pope, if you please — still, to conscience first, and to the pope afterwards.” Pope Benedict provides us with the correct interpretation: Newman is not reverting to that counterfeit version of conscience as “the right of self-will.” In the first toast Newman is again expressing our natural ability to seek and find the truth; the second toast is “dedicated to the pope because it is his task to demand obedience to the truth.”

Catholics, the English Reformation, and Liberty

Bruce P. Frohnen, Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University College of Law, writes about Catholics, the English Reformation, and the idea and ideal of liberty:

Were it true that only England provides a true history of liberty’s growth prior to the time of modern revolutions, that would be tragic from two points of view. It would show that there is in fact something “anti-liberty” about Catholicism, as Protestants often have claimed. Further, it would seem to excuse the sometimes quite oppressive and even violent treatment of Catholics by English authorities and by those who wish to follow in their footsteps today. Catholics should not need to be reminded that the English government going back to Henry VIII, and coming forward even into the twentieth-century, has been hostile toward Catholicism and Catholics. The martyrdom of numerous priests and bishops such as St. John Fisher, the sacking of the monasteries, and laws forbidding the saying of Catholic mass and even decreeing execution for priests lasted for centuries. Catholics were disenfranchised until the nineteenth-century and even in the twentieth-century social disabilities were common (e.g. J.R.R. Tolkien, being Catholic, was not allowed to dine with his Protestant colleagues at Oxford). A central justification of these injustices was that Catholics were “loyal to a foreign prince” who sought enslavement of both souls and bodies, imposing the tyrannous hierarchy of Catholicism. Even on the continent, the story often was repeated that Popes ruled their “estates” as tyrants and sought only to expand their temporal authority in order to force reconversions to their faith and re-establish a kind of absolute rule over the bodies and minds of the people. What is more, it has been this vision of Catholicism as intrinsically hostile to human liberty that has fed into an anti-Catholic sentiment in portions of the American public that has damaged religious liberty and constitutional government itself.

If true, the charges leveled at the Catholic Church and her people would be damning, indeed. Were it true that only the particular cultural institutions and developments of Protestant England, along with, perhaps, those of Protestant Holland, could produce political liberty then Catholicism would be riven by internal contradictions. Catholics recognize that, while salvation is the ultimate, highest good, liberty also is a real human good and freedom aids greatly in the development of the human person. If their religion were hostile to liberty, then, they would have to choose between salvation and freedom. Thankfully, ordered liberty is not a purely English phenomenon and Catholicism is entirely consistent with ordered liberty, not merely in theory, but also in historical practice. My purpose, here, is to examine some of the reasons for Americans’ focus on English liberty. Some of these reasons are accidental and some genuinely important. They are worth exploring for what they can tell American Catholics about ourselves and about the requirements for ordered liberty.

It is best to begin with accidental reasons. Most Americans know little about medieval and early modern history of any kind. What is more, the further one strays from English history (which has a great deal written about it, almost all of which is, well, in English) the less knowledge there is. This is not just a matter of self-centered disinterest—such “multiculturalist” arguments make just as much sense in regard to Italy or medieval Germany as in regard to Africa and the Far East, which is to say, none. It is natural and right that people know most about their own history; they always should know more than they do, but that goes for all times and all fields. American culture is predominantly British, in the wide sense, and so our historical knowledge tends to focus on Great Britain and its center, England.

There is, not surprisingly, a somewhat more sinister aspect to our ignorance of the middle ages and the sources of liberty in particular, one that applies to England as well as the continent and has ideological origins and results. The assault on courses in Western Civilization and on the study of Western history has hit hardest in the area of European history before the modern era. Americans for generations have learned increasingly little about the medieval world, becoming more and more ignorant of the development of their culture and civilization. This ignorance has allowed for ideological fantasies to gain more than a foothold on university campuses and even in the public mind.

Read the rest there. In many ways Frohnen is reflecting on the effects of the Whiggish interpretation of history, which has read into the past the defeat of Catholicism as the prerequisite for modern freedom. See Butterfield's study of this pattern of reading victory into the past: The Whig Interpretation of History. In my opinion, the best antidote to this ignorance of the medieval period is to read the works of Christopher Dawson and Regine Pernoud.

St. Thomas More and Conscience (Again)

In a letter to History Today, Hilary Mantel states that Thomas More's "conscience [was] captive to tradition and authority"--as though that were a bad thing. Thomas More's understanding of conscience, its formation, and its decision-making process was that the individual conscience must be responding to God's authority and the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church. I'm presuming now, but Mantel might think of conscience as being captive only to the individual's interpretation of events and actions and being consistent with oneself--what Blessed John Henry Newman in the nineteenth century would call conscience's counterfeit.

More offered Cromwell an explanation of the true meaning of conscience in his June 3, 1535 letter to his daughter Meg about his recent interrogation in the Tower of London. Cromwell was accusing him of a double standard, claiming his conscience was better than a heretic's conscience. More explained that the heretic was not appealing to conscience, which should have led him to follow the Church Jesus founded, but to his own ego, which had led him to reject the truth and develop individual ideas about the Church and salvation:

Whereunto I answered I would not dispute the King's authority, what his Highness might do in such case, but I said that verily under correction it seemed to me somewhat hard. For if it so were that my conscience gave me against the statutes (wherein how my mind giveth me I make no dec­laration), then I nothing doing nor nothing saying against the statute, it were a very hard thing to compel me to say either precisely with it against my conscience to the loss of my soul, or precisely against it to the destruc­tion of my body.

To this Master Secretary said that I had before this when I was Chan­cellor examined heretics and thieves and other malefactors and gave me a great praise above my deserving in that behalf. And he said that I then, as he thought and at the leastwise Bishops did use to examine heretics, whether they believed the Pope to be the head of the Church and used to compel them to make a precise answer thereto. And why should not then the King, since it is a law made here that his Grace is Head of the Church, here compel men to answer precisely to the law here as they did then concerning the Pope.

I answered and said that I protested that I intended not to defend any part or stand in contention; but I said there was a difference between those two cases because at that time, as well here as elsewhere through the corps of Christendom, the Pope's power was recognized for an undoubted thing which seems not like a thing agreed in this realm and the contrary taken for truth in other realms. Whereunto Master Secretary answered that they were as well burned for the denying of that as they be beheaded for deny­ing of this, and therefore as good reason to compel them to make precise answer to the one as to the other.

Whereto I answered that since in this case a man is not by a law of one realm so bound in his conscience, where there is a law of the whole corps of Christendom to the contrary in matter touching belief, as he is by a law of the whole corps though there hap to be made in some place a local law to the contrary, the reasonableness or the unreasonableness in binding a man to precise answer, standeth not in the respect or difference between beheading and burning, but because of the difference in charge of con­science, the difference standeth between beheading and hell.

In his chapter on St. Thomas More in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More ("More and the Heretics"), Richard Rex notes that More--and in this he certainly was a man of his time--was certain that he knew the truth. Catholic Christianity was the truth and no one had the right to deny or ignore the truth. Rex notes that we post-modernists can hardly imagine this certainty (our only certainty would be perhaps that we cannot be certain!). In his role as Henry VIII's Chancellor, he was sworn to assist the Church in finding heresy and he fulfilled that role. More regarded the obdurate heretic as a danger to society, an egoist deciding his own interpretation of God's revelation, and a person in certain danger of damnation. Thus, when More made his appeal to his right to follow his conscience, he asserted that his conscience was responding not to his own interpretation but to the teaching of the universal Church, an authority high above Henry VIII, even if the monarch did take over the Church in England.

On the Acton Institute website, writer Marc D. Guerra sums up More's understanding of conscience well; he was indeed guided by tradition and authority:

Whereas modern doctrines of conscience characteristically emphasize the self-sufficiency of the individual’s judgment, More stresses its communal nature. More, to be sure, recognized the uniqueness of the individual conscience. More was, after all, imprisoned precisely because he could not, in good conscience, swear allegiance to Henry VIII’s oath. But in contrast to the modern claim that the individual can create his own moral values, More saw the “formation of conscience” as “the fruit” of an education “in the truth.” Far from being the arbitrator and creator of its own moral order, the human conscience is in need of conforming to the truth. For More, the formation of conscience is the result of a long process in which one discovers a preexisting created moral order. This was, in some sense, the issue in More’s dispute with Henry. Henry sought to substitute his own law for the “higher law of God and Christ’s Church.” Nothing underscores the profound differences between More’s and the modernist’s understanding of conscience more than this fact: Whereas modern thought views the individual’s conscience as being above all other authorities, More’s conscience testifies to the superiority of the church’s authority to his king’s. More’s refusal to take Henry’s oath was not an act of civil disobedience but, rather, of obedience to truth and thus, in his view, an act of “genuine liberty.”

480 Years Ago Today: St. Thomas More to his Daughter Meg

Thomas More wrote to his daughter Meg on June 3, 1535 describing the latest interrogation he'd been called to in the Tower of London. He had not been questioned about his response to the Succession and Supremacy since late April 1535 (he wrote to Meg on May 2). Cromwell and the others wanted him to reveal why he wouldn't swear the oaths:

To this it was said by my Lord Chancellor and Master Secretary both that the King might by his laws compel me to make a plain answer there­to, either the one way or the other. 

Whereunto I answered I would not dispute the King's authority, what his Highness might do in such case, but I said that verily under correction it seemed to me somewhat hard. For if it so were that my conscience gave me against the statutes (wherein how my mind giveth me I make no dec­laration), then I nothing doing nor nothing saying against the statute, it were a very hard thing to compel me to say either precisely with it against my conscience to the loss of my soul, or precisely against it to the destruc­tion of my body. 

Cromwell tried to compare More's conscience to the consciences of the heretics which More had investigated as Chancellor:

To this Master Secretary said that I had before this when I was Chan­cellor examined heretics and thieves and other malefactors and gave me a great praise above my deserving in that behalf. And he said that I then, as he thought and at the leastwise Bishops did use to examine heretics, whether they believed the Pope to be the head of the Church and used to compel them to make a precise answer thereto. And why should not then the King, since it is a law made here that his Grace is Head of the Church, here compel men to answer precisely to the law here as they did then concerning the Pope. 

I answered and said that I protested that I intended not to defend any part or stand in contention; but I said there was a difference between those two cases because at that time, as well here as elsewhere through the corps of Christendom, the Pope's power was recognized for an undoubted thing which seems not like a thing agreed in this realm and the contrary taken for truth in other realms. Whereunto Master Secretary answered that they were as well burned for the denying of that as they be beheaded for deny­ing of this, and therefore as good reason to compel them to make precise answer to the one as to the other. 

Whereto I answered that since in this case a man is not by a law of one realm so bound in his conscience, where there is a law of the whole corps of Christendom to the contrary in matter touching belief, as he is by a law of the whole corps though there hap to be made in some place a local law to the contrary, the reasonableness or the unreasonableness in binding a man to precise answer, standeth not in the respect or difference between beheading and burning, but because of the difference in charge of con­science, the difference standeth between beheading and hell. 

This is crucial to our understanding of More's integrity, as Richard Rex noted in his chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More: when More investigated charges of heresy, Rex notes, he referred to the egotism of the heretic, interpreting The Holy Bible idiosyncratically and ignoring the authority of the Church. He was acting upon his conscience as formed by the Church, not his own view and interpretation. The Acton Institute blog offers another summary of this distinction, commenting several years ago on The Last Letters of Thomas More edited by Father Alvaro De Silva:

Whereas modern doctrines of conscience characteristically emphasize the self-sufficiency of the individual’s judgment, More stresses its communal nature. More, to be sure, recognized the uniqueness of the individual conscience. More was, after all, imprisoned precisely because he could not, in good conscience, swear allegiance to Henry VIII’s oath. But in contrast to the modern claim that the individual can create his own moral values, More saw the “formation of conscience” as “the fruit” of an education “in the truth.” Far from being the arbitrator and creator of its own moral order, the human conscience is in need of conforming to the truth. For More, the formation of conscience is the result of a long process in which one discovers a preexisting created moral order. This was, in some sense, the issue in More’s dispute with Henry. Henry sought to substitute his own law for the “higher law of God and Christ’s Church.” Nothing underscores the profound differences between More’s and the modernist’s understanding of conscience more than this fact: Whereas modern thought views the individual’s conscience as being above all other authorities, More’s conscience testifies to the superiority of the church’s authority to his king’s. More’s refusal to take Henry’s oath was not an act of civil disobedience but, rather, of obedience to truth and thus, in his view, an act of “genuine liberty.”

More makes this point in a long, artful letter in which he relates to his daughter the story of “Company.” The letter opens with Margaret urging her father to take Henry’s oath in order to regain his freedom. More proceeds to tell her about Company, “an honest man from another quarter,” who cannot agree with the questionable verdict rendered by his fellow eleven jurors. Angered that Company is stubbornly getting in the way of their decision, the eleven urge him to be “Good Company” and agree with their verdict. Open to the possibility of correction, Company says that while he already has considered the matter, he would like the eleven “to talk upon the matter and tell him … reasons“ he should change his mind. After the jury declines his offer, Company decides to keep to his own company; otherwise, ”the passage of [his] poor soul would passeth all good company.“ As More reminds Margaret, he himself ”never intended (God being my good lord) to pin my soul to another man’s back … for I know not whether he may hap to carry it."

More would again explain his views on conscience when at trial on July 1, 1535.

Blessed John Henry Newman, Part Two: Conscience

Tonight at the Spiritual Life Center in Wichita, Kansas, I'll be presenting Part Two of this mini-series on Blessed John Henry Newman. The session tonight is dedicated to his teaching on conscience and I will also recount some details and events from the second half his life--the Catholic half.

The first session last week went well from my view: I didn't make a major mistakes, fall over, or spill my glass of water. I maintained eye contact, presented good content, with some humor, and engaged the participants in discussion with good Q & A. My husband rounded out the small group and we were most happy to see a priest friend whom we knew in college at WSU through our activities at the St. Paul's Parish-Newman Center!

Tonight's topic is challenging: many Catholics do not understand the real meaning of conscience. Newman is persuasive in his explanation of conscience's rights and duties, however, and his life demonstrates how he both formed and obeyed his conscience, which included being obedient to his superiors in the Catholic Church, even when he had hoped to accomplish things for the laity and their formation in England after centuries of neglect and obscurity. Also, many today read his defense of the rights of conscience as an attack against the teaching authority of the Church and Papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals--selective reading of his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk!

At the end of tonight's class, I'll have copies of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation available to sign and sell.