A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent
Expostulation, Dec. 27, 1874
"I add one remark. Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into
after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink - to the
Pope, if you please,-still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards."
Newman, from the conclusion
Newman was opposed to the definition of Papal infallibility at the First Vatican
Counicil in 1870, on the grounds that it was "inopportune". As the most
siginificant Catholic writer in England, however, when the British Prime Minister, William
Gladstone, launched an attack on the loyalties of Catholics to their country in the his
1874 pamphlet The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance.
Newman's answer came in the form of a letter to the leading Catholic layman in
England (leading in terms of social position), the Duke of Norfolk. In making his response
he defended Catholics and the pope, but he also used the opportunity to assert as a
Catholic position the absolute primacy of conscience: for Newman papal infallibility was a
taken in the most restricted terms possible. Here the 4th Chapter, "Divided
Allegiance" and the 5th Chapter, "Conscience" are reproduced.
Chapter 4: Divided Allegiance
... One attribute the Church has, and the Pope as head of the Church, whether he be in
high estate, as this world goes, or not, whether he has temporal possessions or not,
whether he is in honour or dishonour, whether he is at home or driven about, whether those
special claims of which I have spoken are allowed or not-and that is Sovereignty. As God
has sovereignty, though He may be disobeyed or disowned, so has His Vicar upon earth; and
farther than this, since Catholic populations are found everywhere, he ever will be in
fact lord of a vast empire; as large in numbers, as far spreading as the British; and all
his acts are sure to be such as are in keeping with the position of one who is thus
supremely exalted.
I beg not to be interrupted here, as many a reader will interrupt me in his thoughts,
for I am using these words, not at random, but as the commencement of a long explanation,
and, in a certain sense, limitation, of what I have hitherto been saying concerning the
Church's and the Pope's power. To this task the remaining pages, which I have to address
to your Grace, will be directed; and I trust that it will turn out, when I come to the end
of them, that, by first stating fully what the Pope's claims are, I shall be able most
clearly to show what he does not claim.
Now the main point of Mr. Gladstone's Pamphlet is this: that, since the Pope claims
infallibility in faith and morals, and since there are no "departments and functions
of human life which do not and cannot fall within the domain of morals" (p. 36), and
since he claims also "the domain of all that concerns the government and discipline
of the Church," and moreover, "claims the power of determining the limits of
those domains," and "does not sever them, by any acknowledged or intelligible
line from the domains of civil duty and allegiance" (p. 45), therefore Catholics are
moral and mental slaves, and "every convert and member of the Pope's Church places
his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another" (p. 45).
I admit Mr. Gladstone's premisses, but I reject his conclusion; and now I am going to
show why I reject it.
In doing this, I shall, with him, put aside for the present and at first the Pope's
prerogative of infallibility in general enunciations, whether of faith or morals, and
confine myself to the consideration of his authority (in respect to which he is not
infallible) in matters of conduct, and of our duty of obedience to him. "There is
something wider still," ' he says (than the claim of infallibility), "and that
is the claim to an Absolute and entire Obedience" (p. 37). "Little does it
matter to me, whether my Superior claims infallibility, so long as he is entitled to
demand and exact conformity" (p. 39). He speaks of a third province being opened,
"not indeed to the abstract assertion of Infallibility, but to the far more practical
and decisive demand of Absolute Obedience" (p. 41), "the Absolute Obedience, at
the peril of salvation, of every member of his communion" (p. 42).
Now, I proceed to examine this large, direct, religious, sovereignty of the Pope, both
in its relation to his subjects, and to the Civil Power; but first, 1 beg to be allowed to
say just one word on the principle of obedience itself, that is, by way of inquiring
whether it is or is not now a religious duty.
Is there then such a duty at all as obedience to ecclesiastical authority now? or is it
one of those obsolete ideas, which are swept away, as unsightly cobwebs, by the New
Civilization? Scripture says, "Remember them which have the rule over you, who
have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow." And, "Obey them
that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves; for they watch for
your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with
grief; for that is unprofitable for you.---The margin in the Protestant Version reads,
-those who are your guides"; and the word may also be translated
"leaders." Well, as rulers, or guides and leaders, whichever word be right, they
are to be obeyed. Now Mr. Gladstone dislikes our way of fulfilling this precept,
whether as regards our choice of ruler and leader, or our "Absolute Obedience"
to him; but he does not give us his own. Is there any liberalistic reading of the
Scripture passage? Or are the words only for the benefit of the poor and ignorant, not for
the Schola (as it may be called) of political and periodical writers, not for individual
members of Parliament, not for statesmen and Cabinet ministers, and people of Progress?
Which party then is the more "Scriptural," those who recognize and carry out in
their conduct texts like these, or those who don't? May not we Catholics claim some mercy
from Mr. Gladstone, though we be faulty in the object and the manner of our obedience,
since in a lawless day an object and a manner of obedience we have? Can we be blamed if,
arguing from those texts which say that ecclesiastical authority comes from above, we obey
it in that one form in which alone we find it on earth, in that one person who, of all the
notabilities of this nineteenth century into which we have been born, alone claims it of
us? The Pope has no rival in his claim upon us; nor is it our doing that his claim has
been made and allowed for centuries upon centuries, and that it was he who made the
Vatican decrees, and not they him. If we give him up, to whom shall we go? Can we dress up
any civil functionary in the vestments of divine authority? Can I, for instance, follow
the faith, can I put my soul into the hands, of our gracious Sovereign? or of the
Archbishop of Canterbury? or of the Bishop of Lincoln, albeit he is not broad and low, but
high? Catholics have "done what they could"-all that any one could: and it
should be Mr. Gladstone's business, before telling us that we are slaves, because we obey
the Pope, first of all to tear away those texts from the Bible.
With this preliminary remark, I proceed to consider whether the Pope's authority is
either a slavery to his subjects, or a menace to the Civil Power; and first, as to his
power over his flock.
1. Mr. Gladstone says that "the Pontiff declares to belong to him the supreme
direction of Catholics in respect to all duty" (p. 37). Supreme direction; true,
but "supreme" is not "minute," nor does "direction" mean
"supervision" or "management." Take the parallel of human law; the Law
is supreme, and the Law directs our conduct under the manifold circumstances
in which we have to act, and may and must be absolutely obeyed; but who therefore says
that the Law has the "supreme direction" of us? The State, as well as the
Church, has the power at its will of imposing laws upon us, laws bearing on our moral
duties, our daily conduct, affecting our actions in various ways, and circumscribing our
liberties; yet no one would say that the Law, after all, with all its power in the
abstract and its executive vigour in fact, interferes either with our comfort or our
conscience. There are numberless laws about property, landed and personal, titles,
tenuresq trusts, wills, covenants, contracts, partnerships, money transactions,
life-insurances, taxes, trade, navigation, education, sanitary measures, trespasses,
nuisances, all in addition to the criminal law. Law, to apply Mr. Gladstone's words,
"is the shaclow that cleaves to us, go where we will." Moreover, it varies year
after year, and refuses to give any pledge of fixedness or finality. Nor can any one tell
what restraint is to come next, perhaps painful personally to himself. Nor are its
enactments easy of interpretation; for actual cases, with the opinions and speeches of
counsel, and the decisions of judges, must prepare the raw material, as it proceeds from
the Legislature, before it can be rightly understood; so that "the glorious
uncertainty of the Law" has become a proverb. And, after all, no one is sure of
escaping its penalties without the assistance of lawyers, and that in such private and
personal matters that the lawyers are, as by an imperative duty, bound to a secrecy which
even courts of justice respect. And then, besides the Statute Law, there is the common and
traditional; and, below this, usage. Is not all this enough to try the temper of a
free-born Englishman, and to make him cry out with Mr. Gladstone, "Three fourths of
my life are handed over to the Law; I care not to ask if there be dregs or tatters of
human life, such as can escape from the description and boundary of Parliamentary
tyranny"? Yet, though we may dislike it, though we may at times suffer from it ever
so much, who does not see that the thraldom and irksomeness is nothing compared with the
great blessings which the Constitution and Legislature secure to us?
Such is the jurisdiction which the Law exercises over us. What rule does the Pope claim
which can be compared to its strong and its long arm? What interference with our liberty
of judging and acting in our daily work, in our course of life, comes to us from him?
Really, at first sight, I have not known where to look for instances of his actual
interposition in our private affairs, for it is our routine of personal duties about which
I am now speaking. Let us see how we stand in this matter.
We are guided in our ordinary duties by the books of moral theology, which are
drawn up by theologians of authority and experience, as an instruction for our Confessors.
These books are based on the three Christian foundations of Faith, Hope, and Charity, on
the Ten Commandments, and on the six Precepts of the Church, which relate to the
observance of Sunday, of fast days, of confession and communion, and, in one shape or
other, to paying tithes. A great number of possible cases are noted under these heads, and
in difficult questions a variety of opinions are given, with plain directions, when it is
that private Catholics are at liberty to choose for themselves whatever answer they like
best, and when they are bound to follow some one of them in particular. Reducible as these
directions in detail are to the few and simple heads which I have mentioned, they are
little more than reflexions and memoranda of our moral sense, unlike the positive
enactments of the Legislature; and, on the whole, present to us no difficultythough now
and then some critical question may arise, and some answer may be given (just as by the
private conscience itself) which it is difficult to us or painful to accept. And again,
cases may occur now and then when our private judgment differs from what is set down in
theological works, but even then it does not follow at once that our private judgment must
give way, for those books are no utterance of Papal authority.
And this is the point to which I am coming. So little does the Pope come into this
whole system of moral theology by which (as by our conscience) our lives are regulated,
that the weight of his hand upon us, as private men, is absolutely unappreciable. I have
had a difficulty where to find a measure or gauge of his interposition. At length I have
looked through Busenbaum's Medulla, to ascertain what light such a book would throw
upon the question. It is a book of casuistry for the use of Confessors, running to 700
pages, and is a large repository of answers made by various theologians on points of
conscience, and generally of duty. It was first published in 1645-my own edition is of
1844-and in this latter are marked those propositions, bearing on subjects treated in it,
which have been condemned by Popes in the intermediate 200 years. On turning over the
pages I find they are in all between fifty and sixty. This list includes matters
sacramental, ritual, ecclesiastical, monastic, and disciplinarian, as well as
moralrelating to the duties of ecclesiastics and regulars, of parish priests, and of
professional men, as well as of private Catholics. And these condemnations relate for the
most part to mere occasional details of duty, and are in reprobation of the lax or wild
notions of speculative casuists, so that they are rather restraints upon theologians than
upon laymen. For instance, the following are some of the propositions condemned:-"The
ecclesiastic, who on a certain day is hindered from saying Matins and Lauds, is not bound
to say, if he can, the remaining hours"; "Where there is good cause, it is
lawful to swear without the purpose of swearing, whether the matter is of light or grave
moment"; "Domestics may steal from their masters, in compensation for their
service, which they think greater than their wages"; "It is lawful for a public
man to kill an opponent, who tries to fasten a calumny upon him, if he cannot otherwise
escape the ignominy." I have taken these instances at random. It must be granted, I
think, that in the long course of 200 years the amount of the Pope's authoritative
enunciations has not been such as to press heavily on the back of the private Catholic. He
leaves us surely far more than that "one fourth of the department of conduct,"
which Mr. Gladstone allows us. Indee4, if my account and specimens of his sway over us in
morals be correct, I do not see what he takes away at all from our private consciences.
But here Mr. Gladstone will object that the Pope does really exercise a claim over the
whole domain of conduct, inasmuch as he refuses to draw any line across it in limitation
of his interference, and therefore it is that we are his slaves-let us see if
another illustration or parallel will not show this to be a non sequitur. Suppose a
man, who is in the midst of various and important lines of business, has a medical
adviser, in whom he has full confidence, as knowing well his constitution. This adviser
keeps a careful and anxious eye upon him; and, as an honest man, says to him, "You
must not go off on a journey to-day," or "You must take some days' rest,"
or "You must attend to your diet." Now, this is not a fair parallel to the
Pope's hold upon us;,for the Pope does not speak to us personally, but to all, and, in
speaking definitively on ethical subjects, what he propounds must relate to things good
and bad in themselves, not to things accidental, changeable, and of mere expedience; so
that the argument which I am drawing from the case of a medical adviser is a fortiori in
its character. However, I say that though a medical man exercises a "supreme
direction" over those who put themselves under him, yet we do not therefore say, even
of him, that he interferes with our daily conduct, and that we are his slaves. He
certainly does thwart many of our wishes and purposes; and in a true sense we are at his
mercy: he may interfere any day, suddenly; he will not, he cannot, draw any intelligible
line between the acts which he has a right to forbid us, and the acts which he has not.
The same journey, the same press of business, the same indulgence at table, which he
passes over one year, he sternly forbids the next. Therefore if Mr. Gladstone's argument
is good, he has a finger in all the commercial transactions of the great trader or
financier who has chosen him. But surely there is a simple fallacy here. Mr. Gladstone
asks us whether our political and civil life is not at the Pope's mercy; every act, he
says, of at least three quarters of the day, is under his control. No, not every, but
any, and this is all the difference-that is, we have no guarantee given us that there will
never be a case when the Pope's general utterances may come to have a bearing upon some
personal act of ours. In the same way we are all of us in this age under the control of
public opinion and the public prints; nay, much more intimately so. journalism can be and
is very personal; and, when it is in the right, more powerful just now than any Pope; yet
we do not go into fits, as if we were slaves, because we are under a surveillance much
more like tyranny than any sway, so indirect, so practically limited, so gentle, as his
is.
But it seems the cardinal point of our slavery lies, not simply in the domain of
morals, but in the Pope's general authority over us in all things whatsoever. This count
in his indictment Mr. Gladstone founds on a passage in the third chapter of the Pastor
Aeternus, in which the Pope, speaking of the Pontifical jurisdiction, says:
"Towards it (erga quam) pastors and people of whatsoever rite or dignity, each and
all, are bound by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, not only in
matters which pertain to faith and morals, but also in those which pertain to the discipline and the regimen of the Church spread throughout the world; so that, unity with
the Roman Pontiff (both of communion and of profession of the same faith) being preserved,
the Church of Christ may be one flock under one supreme Shepherd. This is the doctrine of
Catholic truth, from which no one can deviate without loss of faith and salvation."
On Mr. Gladstone's use of this passage I observe, first, that he leaves out a portion
of it which has much to do with the due understanding of it (ita ut custoditi, etc.).
Next, he speaks of "absolute obedience" so often that any reader who had
not the passage before him would think that the word "absolute" was the! Pope's
word, not his. Thirdly, three times (at pp. 38, 41, and 42) does he make the Pope say that
no one can disobey him without risking his salvation, whereas what the Pope does
say is that no one can disbefieve the duty of obedience and unity without
such risk. And fourthly, in order to carry out this false sense, or rather to hinder its
being evidently impossible, he mistranslates (p. 38) "doctrina" (Haec est
doctrina) by the word "rule."
But his chief attack is directed to the! words "disciplina" and
"regimen." "Thus," he says, "are swept into the Papal net whole
multitudes of facts, whole systems of government,, prevailing, though in different
degrees, in every country of the world" (p. 41). That is, "disciplina" and
"regimen" are words of such lax, vague, indeterminate meaning that under them
any matters can be slipped in which may be required for the Pope's purpose in this or that
country, such as, to take Mr. Gladstone's instances, blasphemy, pooor-relief,
incorporation, and mortmain; as if no definitions were coontained in our theological and
ecclesiastical works of words in such oommon use, and as if in consequence the Pope was at
liberty to givre them any sense of his own. As to discipline, Fr. Perrone says,
"Diiscipline comprises the exterior worship of God, the liturgy, sacred rites,
psalmody, the administration of the sacraments, the canonical form of sacred elections and
the institution of ministers, vows, feast-days, and the like"; all of them (observe)
matters internal to the Church, and without any relation to the Civil Power and civil
affairs. Perrone adds, "Ecclesiastical discipline is a practical and external rule,
prescribed by the Church, in order to retain the faithful in their faith, and the
more easily lead them on to eternal appiness."-Prwl. Theol., t. 2, p. 381, 2nd
ed., 1841. Thus discipline is in no sense a political instrument, except as the profession
of our faith may accidentally become political. In the same sense Zallinger: "The
Roman Pontiff has by divine right the power of passing universal laws pertaining to the discipline of the Church; for instance, to divine worship, sacred rites, the ordination and
manner of life of the clergy, the order of the ecclesiastical regimen, and the right
administration of the temporal possessions of the church."-Jur. Eccles., lib.
i. t. 2, $ 121.
So too the word "regimen" has a definite meaning, relating to a matter
strictly internal to the Church: it means government, or the mode or form of government,
or the course of government; and as, in the intercourse of nation with nation, the nature
of a nation's government, whether monarchical or republican, does not come into question,
so the constitution of the Church simply belongs to its nature, not to its external
action. Certainly there are aspects of the Church which involve relations towards secular
powers and to nations, as, for instance, its missionary office; but regimen has relation
to one of its internal characteristics, viz., its form of government, whether we call it a
pure monarchy or with others a monarchy tempered by aristocracy. Thus Tournely says,
"Three kinds of regimen or government are set down by philosophers, monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy."Theol., t. 2, p. 100. Bellarmine says the
same, Rom. Pont. i. 2; and Perrone takes it for granted, ibid., pp. 70, 71.
Now, why does the Pope speak at this time of regimen and discipline? He tells us in
that portion of the sentence, which, thinking it of no account, Mr. Gladstone has omitted.
The Pope tells us that all Catholics should recollect their duty of obedience to him, not
only in faith and morals, but in such matters of regimen and discipline as belong to the
universal Church, "so that unity with the Roman Pontiff, both of communion and of
profession of the same faith being preserved, the Church of Christ may be one flock under
one supreme Shepherd." I consider this passage to be especially aimed at National
size="1">iSM: "Recollect," the Pope seems to say, "the Church
is one, and that, not only in faith and morals, for schismatics may profess as much as
this, but one, wherever it is, all over the world; and not only one, but one and the same,
bound together by its one regimen and discipline and by the same regimen and
discipline-the same rites, the same sacraments, the same usages, and the same one Pastor;
and in these bad times it is necessary for all Catholics to recollect that this doctrine
of the Church's individuality and, as it were, personality, is not a mere received opinion
or understanding, which may be entertained or not, as we please, but is a fundamental,
necessary truth." This being, speaking under correction, the drift of the passage, I
observe that the words "spread throughout the world" or "universal"
are so far from turning "discipline and regimen" into what Mr. Gladstone calls a
"net," that they contract the range of both of them, not including, as he would
have it, "marriage" here, "blasphemy" there, and
"poor-relief" in a third country, but noting and specifying that one and the
same structure of laws, rites, rules of government, independency, everywhere, of which the
Pope himself is the centre and life. And surely this is what every one of us will say as
well as the Pope, who is not an Erastian, and who believes that the Gospel is no mere
philosophy thrown upon the world at large, no mere quality of mind and thought, no mere
beautiful and deep sentiment or subjective opinion, but a substantive message from above,
guarded and preserved in a visible polity.
2. And now I am naturally led on to speak of the Pope's supreme authority, such as I
have described it, in its bearing towards the Civil Power all over the world-a power which
as truly comes from God, as his own does, though diverse, as the Church is invariable.
That collisions can take place between the Holy See and national governments, the
history of fifteen hundred years sufficiently teaches us; also, that on both sides there
may occur grievous mistakes. But my question all along lies, not with "quicquid
delirant reges," but with what, under the circumstance of such a collision, is the
duty of those who are both children of the Pope and subjects of the Civil Power. As to the
duty of the Civil Power, I have already intimated in my first section that it should treat
the Holy See as an independent sovereign, and if this rule had been observed, the
difficulty to Catholics in a country not Catholic would be most materially lightened.
Great Britain recognizes and is recognized by the United States; the two powers have
ministers at each other's court; here is one standing prevention of serious quarrels.
Misunderstandings between the two co-ordinate powers may arise; but there follow
explanations, removals of the causes of offence, acts of restitution. In actual
collisions, there are conferences, compromises, arbitrations. Now the point to observe
here is that in such cases neither party gives up its abstract rights, but neither party
practically insists on them. And each party thinks itself in the right in the particular
case, protests against any other view, but still concedes. Neither party says, "I
will not make it up with you, till you draw an intelligible line between your domain and
mine." I suppose in the Geneva arbitration, though we gave way, we still thought
that, in our conduct in the American civil war, we had acted within our rights. I say all
this in answer to Mr. Gladstone's challenge to us to draw the line between the Pope's
domain and the State's domain in civil or political questions. Many a private American, I
suppose, lived in London and Liverpool, all through the correspondence between our Foreign
Office and the government of the United States, and Mr. Gladstone never addressed any
expostulation to them, or told them they had lost their moral freedom because they took
part with their own government. The French, when their late war began, did sweep their
German sojourners out of France (the number, as I recollect, was very great), but they
were not considered to have done themselves much credit by such an act. When we went to
war with Russia, the English in St. Petersburg made an address, I think to the Emperor,
asking for his protection, and he gave it-I don't suppose they pledged themselves to the
Russian view of the war, nor would he have called them slaves instead of patriots if they
had refused to do so. Suppose England were to send her ironclads to support Italy against
the Pope and his allies, English Catholics would be very indignant, they Would take part
with the Pope before the war began, they would use all constitutional means to hinder it;
but who believes that, when they were once in the war, their action would be anything else
than prayers and exertions for a termination of it? What reason is there for saying that
they would commit themselves to any step of a treasonable nature, any more than loyal
Germans, had they been allowed to remain in France? Yet, because those Germans would not
relinquish their allegiance to their country, Mr. Gladstone, were he consistent, would at
once send them adrift.
Of course it will be said that in these cases, there is no double allegiance, and again
that the German government did not call upon Germans in France, as the Pope might call
upon English Catholics, nay command them, to take a side; but my argument at least shows
this, that till there comes to us a special, direct command from the Pope to oppose our
country, we need not be said to have "placed our loyalty and civil duty at the mercy
of another" (p. 45). It is strange that a great statesman, versed in the new and true
philosophy of compromise, instead of taking a practical view of the actual situation,
should proceed against us, like a professor in the schools, with the "parade" of
his "relentless (and may I add 'rusty'?) logic" (p. 23).
I say, till the Pope told us to exert ourselves for his cause in a quarrel with this
country, as in the time of the Armada, we need not attend to an abstract and hypothetical
difficulty-then and not till then. I add, as before, that if the Holy See were frankly
recognized by England, as other sovereignties are, direct quarrels between the two powers
would in this age of the world be rare indeed; and still rarer, their becoming so
energetic and urgent as to descend into the hearts of the community, and to disturb the
consciences and the family unity of private Catholics.
But now, lastly, let us suppose one of these extraordinary cases of direct and open
hostility between the two powers actually to occurhere first, we must bring before us the
state of the case. Of course we must recollect, on the one hand, that Catholics are not
only bound by allegiance to the British Crown but have special privileges as citizens, can
meet together, speak and pass resolutions, can vote for members of Parliament, and sit in
Parliament, and can hold office, all which are denied to foreigners sojourning among us;
while on the other hand, there is the authority of the Pope, which, though not
"absolute" even in religious matters, as Mr. Gladstone would have it to be, has
a call, a supreme call on our obedience. Certainly in the event of such a collision of
jurisdictions, there are cases in which we should obey the Pope and disobey the State.
Suppose, for instance, an act was passed in Parliament,. bidding Catholics to attend
Protestant service every week, and the Pope distinctly told us not to do so, for it was to
violate our duty to our faith-I should obey the Pope and not the Law. It will be said by
Mr. Gladstone that such a case is impossible. I know it is; but why ask me for what I
should do in extreme and utterly improbable cases such as this, if my answer cannot help
bearing the character of an axiom? It is not my fault that I must deal in truisms. The
circumferences of State jurisdiction and of Papal are for the most part quite apart from
each other; there are just some few degrees out of the 360 in which they intersect, and
Mr. Gladstone, instead of letting these cases of intersection alone, till they occur
actually, asks me what I should do if I found myself placed in the space intersected. If I
must answer then, I should say distinctly that did the State tell me in a question of
worship to do what the Pope told me not to do, I should obey the Pope, and should think it
no sin, if I used all the power and the influence I possessed as a citizen to prevent such
a bill passing the Legislature, and to effect its repeal if it did.
But now, on the other hand, could the case ever occur, in which I should act with the
Civil Power, and not with the Pope? Now, here again, when I begin to imagine instances,
Catholics will cry out (as Mr. Gladstone, in the case I supposed, cried out in the
interest of the other side) that instances never can occur. I know they cannot; I know the
Pope never can do what I am going to suppose; but then, since it cannot possibly happen in
fact, there is no harm in just saying what I should (hypothetically) do, if it did happen.
I say then in certain (impossible) cases I should side, not with the Pope, but with the
Civil Power. For instance, let us suppose members of Parliament, or of the Privy Council,
took an oath that they would not acknowledge the right of succession of a Prince of Wales,
if he became a Catholic: in that case I should not consider the Pope could release me from
that oath, had I bound myself by it. Of course, I might exert myself to the utmost to get
the act repealed which bound me; again, if I could not, I might retire from Parliament or
office, and so rid myself of the engagement I had made; but I should be' clear that,
though the Pope bade all Catholics to stand firm in one phalanx for the Catholic
Succession, still, while I remained in office, or in my place in Parliament, I could not
do as he bade me.
Again, were I actually a soldier or sailor in her Majesty's service, and sent to take
part in a war which I could not in my conscience see to be unjust, and should the Pope
suddenly bid all Catholic soldiers and sailors to retire from the service, here again,
taking the advice of others, as best I could, I should not obey him.
What is the use of forming impossible cases? One can find plenty of them in books of
casuistry, with the answers attached in respect to them. In an actual case, a Catholic
would, of course, not act simply on his own judgment; at the same time, there are
supposable cases in which he would be obliged to go by it solely-viz., when his conscience
could not be reconciled to any of the courses of action proposed to him by others.
In support of what I have been saying, I refer to one or two weighty authorities:
Cardinal Turrecremata says, "Although it clearly follows from the circumstance
that the Pope can err at times, and command things which must not be done, that we are not
to be simply obedient to him in all things, that does not show that he must not be obeyed
by all when his commands are good. To know in what cases he is to be obeyed and in what
not ... it is said in the Acts of the Apostles, 'One ought to obey God rather than man':
therefore, were the Pope to command anything against Holy Scripture, or the articles of
faith, or the truth of the Sacraments, or the commands of the natural or divine law, he
ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands is to be passed over
(despiciendus)."-Summ. de Eccl., pp. 47, 48.
Bellarmine, speaking of resisting the Pope, says, "In order to resist and defend
oneself no authority is required.... Therefore, as it is lawful to resist the Pope, if he
assaulted a man's person, so it is lawful to resist him, if he assaulted souls, or troubled
the state (turbanti rempublicam), and much more if he strove to destroy the Church. It
is lawful, I say, to resist himi by not doing what he commands, and hindering the
execution of his will."-De Rom. Pont., ii. 29.
Archbishop Kenrick says, "His power was given for edification, not for
destruction. If he uses it from the love of domination (quod absit) scarcely will he
meet with obedient populations. "-Theolog. Moral., t. i. p. 158.
When, then, Mr. Gladstone asks Catholics how they can obey the Queen and yet obey the
Pope, since it may happen that the commands of the two authorities may clash, I answer,
that it is my rule, both to obey the one and to obey the other, but that there is
no rule in this world without exceptions, and if either the Pope or the Queen demanded of
me an "Absolute Obedience," he or she would be transgressing the laws of human
society. I give an absolute obedience to neither. Further, if ever this double allegiance
pulled me in contrary ways, which in this age of the world I think it never will, then I
should decide according to the particular case, which is beyond all rule, and must be
decided on its own merits. I should look to see what theologians could do for me, what the
bishops and clergy around me, what my confessor; what friends whom I revered: and if,
after all, I could not take their view of the matter, then I must rule myself by my own
judgment and my own conscience. But all this is hypothetical and unreal.
Here, of course, it will be objected to me, that I am, after all, having. recourse to
the Protestant doctrine of Private judgment; not so; it is the Protestant doctrine that
Private judgment is our ordinary guide in religious matters, but I use it, in the
case in question, in very extraordinary and rare, nay, impossible emergencies. Do not the
highest Tories thus defend the substitution of William for James II? It is a great mistake
to suppose our state in the Catholic Church is so entirely subjected to rule and system,
that we are never thrown upon what is called by divines "the Providence of God."
The teaching and assistance of the Church does not supply all conceivable needs, but those
which are ordinary; thus, for instance, the sacraments are necessary for dying in the
grace of God and hope of heaven; yet, when they cannot be got, acts of faith, hope, and
contrition, with the desire for those aids which the dying man has not, will convey in
substance what those aids ordinarily convey. And so a Catechumen, not yet baptized, may be
saved by his purpose and preparation to receive the rite. And so, again, though "Out
of the Church there is no salvation," this does not hold in the case of good men who
are in invincible ignorance. And so it is also in the case of our ordinations;
Chillingworth and Macaulay say that it is morally impossible that we should have kept up
for eighteen hundred years an Apostolical succession of ministers without some breaks in
the chain; and we in answer say that, however true this may be humanly speaking, there has
been a special Providence over the Church to secure it. Once more, how else could private
Catholics save their souls when there was a Pope and Anti-popes, each severally claiming
their allegiance?
Chapter 5: Conscience
It seems, then, that there are extreme cases in which Conscience may come into
collision with the word of a Pope, and is to be followed in spite of that word. Now I wish
to place this proposition on a broader basis, acknowledged by all Catholics, and, in order
to do this satisfactorily, as I began with the prophecies of Scripture and the primitive
Church, when I spoke of the Pope's prerogatives, so now I must begin with the Creator and
His creature, when I would draw out the prerogatives and the supreme authority of
Conscience.
I say, then, that the Supreme Being is of a certain character, which, expressed in
human language, we call ethical. He has the attributes of justice, truth, wisdom,
sanctity, benevolence and mercy, as eternal characteristics in His nature, the very Law of
His being, identical with Himself; and next, when He became Creator, He implanted this
Law, which is Himself, in the intelligence of all His rational creatures. The Divine Law,
then, is the rule of ethical truth, the standard of right and wrong, a sovereign,
irreversible, absolute authority in the presence of men and Angels. "The eternal
law," says St. Augustine, "is the Divine Reason or Will of God, commanding the
observance, forbidding the disturbance, of the natural order of things." "The
natural law," says St. Thomas, "is an impression of the Divine Light in us, a
participation of the eternal law in the rational creature" (Gousset, Theol.
Moral., t. i. pp. 24, etc.). This law, as apprehended in the minds of individual men,
is called "conscience"; and though it may suffer refraction in passing into the
intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of
being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience.
"The Divine Law," says Cardinal Gousset, "is the supreme rule of actions;
our thoughts, desires, words, acts, all that man is, is subject to the domain of the law
of God; and this law is the rule of our conduct by means of our conscience. Hence it is
never lawful to go against our conscience; as the fourth Lateran council says, 'Quidquid
fit contra conscientiam, aedificat ad gehennam.'" ["Whatever is done in
opposition to conscience is conducive to damnation."]
This view of conscience, I know, is very different from that ordinarily taken of it,
both by the science and literature, and by the public opinion, of this day. It is founded
on the doctrine that conscience is the voice of God, whereas it is fashionable on all
hands now to consider it in one way or another a creation of man. Of course, there are
great and broad exceptions to this statement. It is not true of many or most religious
bodies of men; especially not of their teachers and ministers. When Anglicans, Wesleyans,
the various Presbyterian sects in Scotland, and other denominations among us, speak of
conscience, they mean what we mean, the voice of God in the nature and heart of man, as
distinct from the voice of Revelation. They speak of a principle planted within us, before
we have had any training, although training and experience are necessary for its strength,
growth, and due formation. They consider it a constituent element of the mind, as our
perception of other ideas may be, as our powers of reasoning, as our sense of order and
the beautiful, and our other intellectual endowments. They consider it, as Catholics
consider it, to be the internal witness of both the existence and the law of God. They
think it holds of God, and not of man, as an Angel walking on the earth would be no
citizen or dependent of the Civil Power. They would not allow, any more than we do, that
it could be resolved into any combination of principles in our nature, more elementary
than itself; nay, though it may be called, and is, a law of the mind, they would not grant
that it was nothing more; I mean, that it was not a dictate, nor conveyed the notion of
responsibility, of duty, of a threat and a promise, with a vividness which discriminated
it from all other constituents of our nature.
This, at least, is how I read the doctrine of Protestants as well as of Catholics. The
rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor expedience, nor the happiness of the greatest
number, nor State convenience, nor fitness, order, and the pulchrum. Conscience is not a
long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a
messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and
teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ,
a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings
and anathemas, and, even though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church could cease
to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have a sway.
Words such as these are idle empty verbiage to the great world of philosophy now. All
through my day there has been a resolute warfare, I had almost said conspiracy, against
the rights of conscience, as I have described it. Literature and science have been
embodied in great institutions in order to put it down. Noble buildings have been reared
as fortresses against that spiritual, invisible influence which is too subtle for science
and too profound for literature. Chairs in Universities have been made the seats of an
antagonist tradition. Public writers, day after day, have indoctrinated the minds of
innumerable readers with theories subversive of its claims. As in Roman times, and in the
Middle Ages, its supremacy was assailed by the arm of physical force, so now the intellect
is put in operation to sap the foundations of a power which the sword could not destroy.
We are told that conscience is but a twist in primitive and untutored man; that its
dictate is an imagination; that the very notion of guiltiness, which that dictate
enforces, is simply irrational, for how can there possibly be freedom of will, how can
there be consequent responsibility, in that infinite eternal network of cause and effect,
in which we helplessly lie? and what retribution have we to fear, when we have had no real
choice to do good or evil?
So much for philosophers; now let us see what is the notion of conscience in this day
in the popular mind. There, no more than in the intellectual world, does
"conscience" retain the old, true, Catholic meaning of the word. There too the
idea, the presence of a Moral Governor is far away from the use of it, frequent and
emphatic as that use of it is. 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.
And now I shall turn aside for a moment to show how it is that the Popes of our century
have been misunderstood by the English people, as if they really were speaking against
conscience in the true sense of the word, when in fact they were speaking against it in
the various false senses, philosophical or popular, which in this day are put upon the
word. The present Pope, in his Encyclical of 1864, Quanta cura, speaks (as will
come before us in the next section) against "liberty of conscience," and he
refers to his predecessor, Gregory XVI, who, in his Mirari vos, calls it a
"deliramentum." It is a rule in formal ecclesiastical proceedings, as I shall
have occasion to notice lower down, when books or authors are condemned to use the very
words of the book or author, and to condemn the words in that particular sense which they
have in their context and their drift, not in the literal, not in the religious sense,
such as the Pope might recognize, were they in another book or author. To take a familiar
parallel, among many which occur daily. Protestants speak of the "Blessed
Reformation"; Catholics too talk of "the Reformation," though they do not
call it blessed. Yet every "reformation" ought, from the very meaning of the
word, to be good, not bad; so that Catholics seem to be implying a eulogy on an event
which, at the same time, they consider a surpassing evil. Here then they are taking the
word and using it in the popular sense of it, not in the Catholic. They would say, if they
expressed their full meaning, "the so-called reformation." In like manner, if
the Pope condemned "the Reformation," it would be utterly sophistical to say in
consequence that he had declared himself against all reforms; yet this is how Mr.
Gladstone treats him, when he speaks of (so-called) liberty of conscience. To make this
distinction clear, viz., between the Catholic sense of the word "conscience" and
that sense in which the Pope condemns it, we find in the Recueil des Allocutions,
etc., the words accompanied with quotation marks, both in Pope Gregory's and Pope Pius's
Encyclicals, thus: Gregory's "Ex hoc putidissimo 'indifferentismi' fonte" (mind,
"indifferentismi" is in quotation marks, because the Pope will not make himself
answerable for so unclassical a word) "absurda illa fluit ac erronea sententia, seu
potius deliramentum, assetendam esse ac vindicandam cuilibet 'libertatem conscientiae.'
" ["From that polluted spring of 'indifferentism' flows that absurd and
erroneous opinion-or rather delusion-to the effect that everyone's 'liberty of conscience'
is to be asserted and vindicated."] And that of Pius: "Haud timent erroneam
illam fovere opinionem a Gregorio XVI deliramenturn appellatam, nimirum 'libertatem
conscientae'" esse proprium cujuscunque hominis jus." ["they do not
hesitate to foster that false opinion, called a delusion by gregory xvi, that 'liberty of
conscience' is a right belonging to every human being."] both popes certainly scoff
at the so-called'liberty of conscience'; but there is no scoffing of any pope,
in formal documents addressed to the faithful at large, at that most serious doctrine, the
right and the duty of following that divine authority, the voice of conscience, on which
in truth the church herself is built.
So indeed it is; did the Pope speak against Conscience in the true sense of the word,
he would commit a suicidal act. He would be cutting the ground from under his feet. His
very mission is to proclaim the moral law, and to protect and strengthen that "Light
which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world." On the law of conscience
and its sacredness are founded both his authority in theory and his power in fact. Whether
this or that particular Pope in this bad world always kept this great truth in view in all
he did, it is for history to tell. I am considering here the Papacy in its office and its
duties, and in reference to those who acknowledge its claims. They are not bound by the
Pope's personal character or private acts, but by his formal teaching. Thus viewing his
position, we shall find that it is by the universal sense of right and wrong, the
consciousness of transgression, the pangs of guilt, and the dread of retribution, as first
principles deeply lodged in the hearts of men, it is thus and only thus, that he has
gained his footing in the world and achieved his success. It is his claim to come from the
Divine Lawgiver, in order to elicit, protect, and enforce those truths which the Lawgiver
has sown in our very nature, it is this and this only that is the explanation of his
length of life more than antediluvian. The championship of the Moral Law and of conscience
is his raison d'être. The fact of his mission is the answer to the complaints of
those who feel the insufficiency of the natural light; and the insufficiency of that light
is the justification of his mission.
All sciences, except the science of Religion, have their certainty in themselves; as
far as they are sciences, they consist of necessary conclusions from undeniable premisses,
or of phenomena manipulated into general truths by an irresistible induction. But the
sense of right and wrong, which is the first element in religion, is so delicate, so
fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured, perverted, so subtle in its argumentative methods, so
impressible by education, so biassed by pride and passion, so unsteady in its course that,
in the struggle for existence amid the various exercises and triumphs of the human
intellect, this sense is at once the highest of all teachers, yet the least luminous; and
the Church, the Pope, the Hierarchy are, in the Divine purpose, the supply of an urgent
demand. Natural Religion, certain as are its grounds and its doctrines as addressed to
thoughtful, serious minds, needs, in order that it may speak to mankind with effect and
subdue the world, to be sustained and completed by Revelation.
In saying all this, of course I must not be supposed to be limiting the Revelation of
which the Church is the keeper to a mere republication of the Natural Law; but still it is
true, that, though Revelation is so distinct from the teaching of nature and beyond it,
yet it is not independent of it, nor without relations towards it, but is its complement,
reassertion, issue, embodiment, and interpretation. The Pope, who comes of Revelation, has
no jurisdiction over nature. If, under the plea of his revealed prerogatives, he neglected
his mission of preaching truth, justice, mercy, and peace, much more if he trampled on the
consciences of his subjects-if he had done so all along, as Protestants say, then he could
not have lasted all these many centuries till now, so as to supply a mark for their
reprobation. Dean Milman has told us above, how faithful he was to his duty in the
medieval time, and how successful. Afterwards, for a while the Papal chair was filled by
men who gave themselves up to luxury, security, and a pagan kind of Christianity; and we
all know what a moral earthquake was the consequence, and how the Church lost, thereby,
and has lost to this day, one half of Europe. The Popes could not have recovered from so
terrible a catastrophe, as they have done, had they not returned to their first and better
ways, and the grave lesson of the past is in itself the guarantee of the future.
Such is the relation of the ecclesiastical power to the human conscience; however, a
contrary view may be taken of it. It may be said that no one doubts that the Pope's power
rests on those weaknesses of human nature, that religious sense, which in ancient days
Lucretius noted as the cause of the worst ills of our race; that he uses it dexterously,
forming under shelter of it a false code of morals for his own aggrandisement and tyranny;
and that thus conscience becomes his creature and his slave, doing, as if on a divine
sanction, his will; so that in the abstract indeed and in idea it is free, but never free
in fact, never able to take a flight of its own, independent of him, any more than birds
whose wings are clipped; moreover, that, if it were able to exert a will of its own, then
there would ensue a collision more unmanageable than that between the Church and the
State, as being in one and the same subject-matter, viz., religion; for what would become
of the Pope's "absolute authority," as Mr. Gladstone calls it, if the private
conscience had an absolute authority also?
I wish to answer this important objection distinctly.
1. First, I am using the word "conscience" in the high sense in which I have
already explained it, not as a fancy or an opinion, but as a dutiful obedience to what
claims to be a divine voice, speaking within us; and that this is the view properly to be
taken of it, 1 shall not attempt to prove here, but shall assume it as a first principle.
2. Secondly, I observe that conscience is not a judgment upon any speculative truth,
any abstract doctrine, but bears immediately on conduct, on something to be done or not
done. "Conscience," says St. Thomas, "is the practical judgment or dictate
of reason, by which we judge what hic et nunc is to be done as being good, or to he
avoided as evil." Hence conscience cannot come into direct collision with the
Church's or the Pope's infallibility; which is engaged on general propositions, and in the
condemnation of particular and given errors.
3. Next, I observe that, conscience being a practical dictate, a collision is possible
between it and the Pope's authority only when the Pope legislates, or gives particular
orders, and the like. But a Pope is not infallible in his laws, nor in his commands, nor
in his acts of state, nor in his administration, nor in his public policy. Let it be
observed that the Vatican Council has left him just as it found him here. Mr. Gladstone's
language on this point is to me quite unintelligible. Why, instead of using vague terms,
does he not point out precisely the very words by which the Council has made the Pope in
his acts infallible? Instead of so doing, he assumes a conclusion which is altogether
false. He says (p. 34), "First comes the Pope's infallibility": then in the next
page he insinuates that, under his infallibility, come acts of excommunication, as if the
Pope could not make mistakes in this field of action. He says (p. 35), "It may be
sought to plead that the Pope does not propose to invade the country, to seize Woolwich,
or burn Portsmouth. He will only, at the worst, excommunicate opponents.... Is this a good
answer? After all, even in the Middle Ages, it was not by the direct action of fleets and
armies of their own that the Popes contended with kings who were refractory; it was mainly
by interdicts," etc. What have excommunication and interdict to do with
Infallibility? Was St. Peter infallible on that occasion at Antioch when St. Paul
withstood him? was St. Victor infallible when he separated from his communion the Asiatic
Churches? or Liberius when in like manner he excommunicated Athanasius? And, to come to
later times, was Gregory XIII, when he had a medal struck in honour of the Bartholomew
massacre? or Paul IV in his conduct towards Elizabeth? or Sextus V when he blessed the
Armada? or Urban VIII when he persecuted Galileo? No Catholic ever pretends that these
Popes were infallible in these acts. Since then infallibility alone could block the
exercise of conscience, and the Pope is not infallible in that subject-matter in which
conscience is of supreme authority, no dead-lock, such as is implied in the objection
which I am answering, can take place between conscience and the Pope.
4. But, of course, I have to say again, lest I should be misunderstood, that when I
speak of Conscience, I mean conscience truly so called. When it has the right of opposing
the supreme, though not infallible Authority of the Pope, it must be something more than
that miserable counterfeit which, as I have said above, now goes by the name. If in a
particular case it is to be taken as a sacred and sovereign monitor, its dictate, in order
to prevail against the voice of the Pope, must follow upon serious thought, prayer, and
all available means of arriving at a right judgment on the matter in question. And
further, obedience to the Pope is what is called "in possession"; that is, the onus
probandi of establishing a case against him lies, as in all cases of exception, on the
side of conscience. Unless a man is able to say to himself, as in the Presence of God,
that he must not, and dare not, act upon the Papal injunction, he is bound to obey it, and
would commit a great sin in disobeying it. Prima facie it is his bounden duty, even
from a sentiment of loyalty, to believe the Pope right and to act accordingly. He must
vanquish that mean, ungenerous, selfish, vulgar spirit of his nature, which, at the very
first rumour of a command, places itself in opposition to the Superior who gives it, asks
itself whether he is not exceeding his right, and rejoices, in a moral and practical
matter to commence with scepticism. He must have no wilful determination to exercise a
right of thinking, saying, doing just what he pleases, the question of truth and
falsehood, right and wrong, the duty if possible of obedience, the love of speaking as his
Head speaks, and of standing in all cases on his Head's side, being simply discarded. If
this necessary rule were observed, collisions between the Pope's authority and the
authority of conscience would be very rare. On the other hand, in the fact that, after
all, in extraordinary cases, the conscience of each individual is free, we have a
safeguard and security, were security necessary (which is a most gratuitous supposition),
that no Pope ever will be able, as the objection supposes, to create a false conscience
for his own ends.
Now, I shall end this part of the subject, for I have not done with it altogether, by
appealing to various of our theologians in evidence that, in what I have been saying, I
have not misrepresented Catholic doctrine on these important points.
That is, on the duty of obeying our conscience at all hazards.
I have already quoted the words which Cardinal Gousset has adduced from the Fourth
Lateran; that "He who acts against his conscience loses his soul." This dictum
is brought out with singular fulness and force in the moral treatises of theologians.
The celebrated school, known as the Salmanticenses, or Carmelites of Salamanca, lays down
the broad proposition that conscience is ever to be obeyed whether it tells truly or
erroneously, and that, whether the error is the fault of the person thus erring or not.[*]
They say that this opinion is certain, and refer, as agreeing with them, to St. Thomas,
St. Bonaventura, Caietan, Vasquez, Durandus, Navarrus, Corduba, Layman, Escobar, and
fourteen others. Two of them even say this opinion is de fide. Of course, if a man
is culpable in being in error, which he might have escaped had he been more in earnest,
for that error he is answerable to God, but still he must act according to that error,
while he is in it, because he in full sincerity thinks the error to be truth.
size="1">
*"'Aliqui opinantur quod conscientia erronea non obligat; secundarn sententiam, et
certam, asserentem esse peccaturn discordare à conscientiâ erroneâ, invincibili
aut vincibili, tenet d. thomas; quem sequuntur omnes scholastici." ["some hold
the opinion that an erroneous conscience does not oblige. st. thomas holds a different
opinion, and it is a certain one, namely that it is sinful to act in a way that is
inconsistent with an erroneous conscience, vincible or invincible. st. thomas is followed
in this by all scholastic writers."] Theol. Moral., t. v. p. 12, ed. 1728.
Thus, if the Pope told the English bishops to order their priests to stir themselves
energetically in favour of teetotalism, and a particular priest was fully persuaded that
abstinence from wine, etc., was practically a Gnostic error, and therefore felt he could
not so exert himself without sin; or suppose there was a Papal order to hold lotteries in
each mission for some religious object, and a priest could say in God's sight that he
believed lotteries to be morally wrong, that priest in either of these cases would commit
a sin hic et nunc if he obeyed the Pope, whether he was right or wrong in his
opinion, and, if wrong, although he had not taken proper pains to get at the truth of the
matter.
Busenbaum, of the Society of Jesus, whose work I have already had occasion to notice,
writes thus: "A heretic, as long as he judges his sect to be more or equally
deserving of belief, has no obligation to believe [in the Church]." And he continues,
"When men who have been brought up in heresy, are persuaded from boyhood that we
impugn and attack the word of God, that we are idolators, pestilent deceivers, and
therefore are to be shunned as pests, they cannot, while this persuasion lasts, with a
safe conscience, hear us."-t. 1, p. 54.
Antonio Corduba, a Spanish Franciscan, states the doctrine with still more point,
because he makes mention of Superiors. "In no manner is it lawful to act against
conscience, even though a Law, or a Superior commands it."-De Conscient., p.
138.
And the French Dominican, Natalis Alexander: "If, in the judgment of conscience,
through a mistaken conscience, a man is persuaded that what his Superior commands is
displeasing to God, he is bound not to obey."-Theol. t. 2, p. 32.
The word "Superior" certainly includes the Pope; Cardinal Jacobatius brings
out this point clearly in his authoritative work on Councils, which is contained in
Labbe's Collection, introducing the Pope by name: "If it were doubtful," he
says, "whether a precept [of the Pope] be a sin or not, we must determine thus: that,
if he to whom the precept is addressed has a conscientious sense that it is a sin and
injustice, first it is duty to put off that sense; but, if he cannot, nor conform himself
to the judgment of the Pope, in that case it is his duty to follow his own private
conscience, and patiently to bear it, if the Pope punishes him."-Iib. iv. p. 241.
Would it not be well for Mr. Gladstone to bring passages from our recognized authors as
confirmatory of his view of our teaching, as those which I have quoted are destructive of
it? and they must be passages declaring, not only that the Pope is ever to be obeyed, but
that there are no exceptions to the rule, for exceptions there must be in all concrete
matters.
I add one remark. Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts
(which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink - to the Pope, if you
please,-still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.
Source:
John Henry Newman, "A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on
Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation, Dec. 27, 1874", repr. in John Henry
Newman, Conscience, Concensus and the Development of Doctrine: Revolutionary Texts by
John Henry Cardinal Newman, ed. James Gaffney, (New York: Image/Doubleday, 1992),
434-457
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© Paul Halsall, October 1998
