If you're going to quote Newman, quote him correctly...

... and in context. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.

The Independent, in a piece, "Yes, Tony's not infallible but he is entitled to 'pontificate'" (April 13, 2009), goes on at some dreary length to assure readers—in case they didn't know—that Tony Blair has every right in the world to his opinion about the wonders, joys, and nearly sacred status of homosexuality. The piece of "analysis" states:

I am all in favour of freedom of speech, and I am all in favour of people arguing their point of view -- not just conforming to what they are told to say or think.

Therefore, if Tony Blair, who is a relatively recent convert to Roman Catholicism -- he was received into the Catholic faith in 2007 -- chooses to tell the Pope that he is wrong about something (in this case, homosexuality) I would say that Mr Blair is entitled to his opinion.

Catholics are not, and should not be, 'thought-controlled' by the Vatican. They look to the Pontiff for leadership, and spiritual uplift, and for infallibility in pronouncing on a very narrow area of theology. But some of the best Catholics, throughout history, have also argued with the Vatican.

Lord Acton, for example, was a Catholic convert in the late 19th century. He came within a whisker of being ex-communicated for arguing with the Vatican over matters of conscience and authority. But he is now revered as a fine Catholic thinker. It was Acton who laid down the principle, which everyone in power should hold before them, that: "All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Cardinal Newman, currently a candidate for sainthood, said: "I will drink to the Pope, but I will drink to conscience first."

I'm focusing on the line about Newman because, first, it has become commonplace for this particular "argument from Newman" to be tossed about like a secret password by those wishing to reject Church teaching on this (homosexuality), that (contraceptives), and the other thing (abortion) by claiming to be "true to their conscience". Secondly, it readily evidences the sloppiness at hand, both in terms of research and understanding.

Notice that the conscience is used here to uphold the right of someone to their "opinion". A bit later the piece states:

I am not suggesting that Tony Blair is in the same category as Lord Acton, Cardinal Newman or Dr McLaren. But attitudes and values do change over time, and especially with new knowledge. It was Pope Paul VI who declared: "We should never refuse new knowledge."

The conscience is here aligned with "attitudes" and "values." The implication is that conscience is a matter of being true to one's rather subjective and changing opinions, attitudes, and values. But is that what Newman wrote about in his "Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation"?

(Before answering that mostly rhetorical question, I should point out that I cannot find where Pope Paul VI declared, "We should never refuse new knowledge." What I did find was this quote from Mysterium Fidei, his September 3, 1965, encyclical: "And so the rule of language which the Church has established through the long labor of centuries, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and which she has confirmed with the authority of the Councils, and which has more than once been the watchword and banner of orthodox faith, is to be religiously preserved, and no one may presume to change it at his own pleasure or under the pretext of new knowledge" (par 24). That, obviously, goes a bit contrary to the quote given. If you have other ideas as to what the opinion piece was referring to, please let me know.)

Newman, at the end of the fifth chapter of his letter, wrote, "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." The meaning of that remark, logically enough, rests on what was stated prior to it. I'll highlight just two key passages here:

So much for philosophers; now let us see what is the notion of conscience in this day in the popular mind. {250} 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.

<snip>

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 {253} 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.

Newman's point (or one of his points), to put it as simply as I can, is that the rightly formed conscience, aimed at knowing truth, can never conflict with the authoritative teachings of the Pope, the Magisterium, and the Church, for all truth comes from the Author of Truth, that is, God. The conscience comes first in the sense that it is a divinely implanted gift from God that, if it considers the evidence rightly, will acknowledge the proper authority and authority of the natural law, and of the Church, the Magisterium, and the Pope. The conscience cannot and should not be coerced by the Pope (or anyone else), but it should admit to proper authority when it sees and recognizes it.

Now, might a pope have a private opinion that goes against a rightly formed conscience? Of course; after all, popes are not infallible in all things or at all time; far from it. But, of course, Pope Benedict XVI's teachings about homosexuality are not, in the end, simply his opinions or private beliefs; they reflect the formal teaching of the Church. Notice how the Catechism purposefully and carefully addresses the matter:

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (par 2357)

So, it is Scripture, tradition, and the natural law that each state, in their own complimentary ways, the truth about homosexual acts. Mr. Blair's remarks about Pope Benedict were misleading to the degree that they suggested the Pope's beliefs about homosexuality and homosexual acts are simply his outdated, historically-conditioned opinions. You hardly need a degree in history (or maybe you do?) to know that few cultures throughout time have been "pro-gay"; on the contrary, most cultures have either condemned homosexual acts outright or have treated them with severe suspicion. And many of those societies and cultures didn't rely on Scripture or Church tradition, but on the natural law.

The Independent opinion piece, in the end (well, from the very start), gets it completely wrong:

Still, Mr Blair has started a debate, and affirmed a principle that I think is important: that it is perfectly constructive for Catholics to question certain traditional attitudes and interpretations of moral theology, especially in the light of new knowledge.

This isn't about "attitudes" or "interpretations"; it is about truth. Either "gay" sex is morally good, or it isn't. Either killing innocent people is morally good or it isn't. Either rape, genocide, theft, and lying are morally good or they aren't. What should be questioned are non-traditional attitudes and self-serving interpretations based on faulty notions of freedom, autonomy, truth, and moral goodness.

• "I am a pro-adultery Catholic because my Catholic faith tells me I can be." (March 2, 2009)
• "Our personal conscience is supreme" (Feb. 7, 2007)
• The Truth About Conscience | John F. Kippley
• Happiness and the Heart | Fr. Robert J. Spitzer
• Conscience and Chaos | Dr. James Hitchcock
• The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L. Dennehy
• Authentic Freedom and the Homosexual Person | Dr. Mark Lowery
• Our Enslavement to "Freedom" | Dr. James Hitchcock
• Introduction to The Gift of Infallibility | Rev. James T. O'Connor
• Church Authority and the Petrine Element | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• What Is the Magisterium? | Thomas Storck
• Vatican II and the Ecclesiology of Joseph Ratzinger | Fr. Maximilian Heinrich Heim
• The Church Is the Goal of All Things | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• Motherhood of the Entire Church | Henri de Lubac
• Authority and Dissent in the Catholic Church | Dr. William E. May
• Understanding The Hierarchy of Truths | Douglas Bushman, S.T.L.

Comments

[Jackson]

Hear hear....

[Ed Peters]

I think we should drink to the pope and drink to conscience. Depending on what's being offered.

[M. L. Hearing]

Good piece. Thanks. And I also learned that the Pope is supposed to serve us up some "spiritual uplift."

M. L. Hearing

[David Deavel]

Acton was not a convert, either.

[Ed]

A fellow in my graduate course constantly references Newman to have said that to go against one's conscience, even if one's conscience is against the Church, would be to sin. What he fails to recognize, I fear, is that there is a difference between a well-formed conscience and one that is well informed.

Servant of God (Venerable?) John Henry Cardinal Newman, ora pro nobis!

[Eric Cantona]

Hi Carl,

You probably know this already, but it was good to see your blog comments on Tony Blair finding their way to print via the popular UK weekly newspaper "The Catholic Hearld". Indeed it was a breath of fresh air to pick up my paper this morning from Westminster Cathedral and read your comments and know that our US brothers and sisters stand with us in opposing Mr.Blair's rather misleading recent statement.

Warmest regards,

Eric