DR. NEWMAN AND THE CHURCH OF ROME.
WHETHER Dr. Newman has done the best for his Church by refusing the Cardinal's hat, may fairly be doubted, even by those who see in that refusal, as they well may, a new proof of the complete unworldliness and simplicity of one who has done more for the intellectual side of Roman Catholicism than all the rest of the Roman Catholics of his generation put together. There can be no doubt that if he had accepted the Cardinal's hat, he would have given to the world at large a far more distinct impression that the authorities of the Roman Church do not now wish even to discourage that party in it which was more or less disaffected to the proceedings of the Vatican Council, and who would have had the seat of infallibility left vague, if they could,—the party, as we may call it, of Bishop Strossmayer, Bishop Dupauloup, and Father Newman. No doubt the obvious inclination of the present Pope to heal the jealousies caused by the bitter controversies of 1870 would make no difference to explicit doctrine. The Church cannot go back. What has been decided by a General Council cannot be revoked, and no honours lavished on the non-Opportunist party now, can undo the doctrinal effect of the Vatican decree. It re- mains clear to all the world that before a man can become a devout Catholic, he must be willing to accept ex main° the definitions of any Pope concerning moral or religious doctrine, when officially addressed to the whole Church. And it is well for all who are hesi- tating or the least disposed to hesitate on the subject, to know that this is the final deliverance of the Church of Rome on the subject,—a deliverance as final as any of the ancient decisions of General Councils on doctrine or rites. It is good for shaky Protes- tants to know exactly what they have to get over, before they can become genuine Catholics ; and no doubt the result will be that many Protestants who would otherwise be so shaky as to shake down into Catholics, will now remain steadfastly where they are. Still, looking to the apparent object of the " non-Oppor- tunist" party,—their desire, namely, to make the Church of Rome the home of many who are quite unable to accept what may be called the rigidly Ultramontane view,—one would cer- tainly suppose that for such a man as Dr. Newman to be pre- sented to the world as one of the Princes of the Church, would have been regarded by them as an enormous gain. For those, for instance, who are wholly unable to believe that the whole of " the Syllabus " is pure divine truth, or that, for the future, a Catholic has nothing to do but to move the Pope to speak his mind on any moral or religious question of the day, in order to know exactly what he ought to think of it,—that, in short, there is to be a constantly accumulating store of infallible dicta, by the careful codification of which the whole moral truth of human life may be rapidly mapped out,—for all persons offended by this class of ideas, it would have been a great security to have Dr. Newman placed before the Church as one whom the pre- sent Pope delights to honour. For this, at least, must be im- plied in such a choice,—that the Holy See, under its present ruler, is not inclined to encourage new definitions of Catholic truth, and is especially disinclined to encourage new definitions of a kind to scare those, whether inside the Church or out- side it, who, though dissatisfied with the anarchy of Protes- tantism, are in great dread of the violent exercise of authority within the Church of Rome. To all these, it would undoubtedly have been a great comfort to think that the mood of the Church, for the present at all events, is unfavourable to the policy of the late Pope, unfavourable to any increased demands on the prin- ciple of intellectual obedience. If that assurance did nothing else, it would be a security against new shocks and surprises, against new attacks upon the Liberal Catholics, and new con- demnations for not agreeing with the Univers but rather with the writings of Lacordaire and Montalembert. Doubtless, such security could be only temporary. Leo XIII. may be followed by a Pope who would even exaggerate the tendencies of Pio Nono, and put a strain on the moral and intellectual submissiveness of Catholics such as very few of them could bear. Still, by the very necessity of his position, the Liberal Catholic is apt to take a san- guine view of such a question as this. He would say that though the decree of the Council of the Vatican must stand, it still remains for the Church to explain more clearly in what sense it is to be interpreted. The limits placed by the Council on the infallibility of the Pope are still sufficiently vague. What is a " definition," on a subject of faith or morals, as distinguished from a mere statement P What shall be the evidence required that the Pope deliberately means to teach the Church in his official capacity ? All this is still open to discussion. Any sign of a reaction towards a less authoritative use of the Papal Chair, would be deemed by a Liberal Catholic an indication of a Providential design to put a very much wider meaning on the definition of Infallibility than any which the victorious party of 1870 would have been at all disposed to allow. And if Dr. Newman had accepted the purple, instead of declining it, the confidence in this reaction would have been much stronger. It would have been thought that the sun had begun to shine again on the Moderates, that a great school of opinion opposed to the Eltramontanism of recent years was to be fostered and that the ultimate result would be some compromise affirming the decree of 1870, of course, but so ex- plaining it as to take off all its edge, all its incisiveness, and to leave intellectual liberty in the Church pretty much as before. If Dr. Newman decidedly wished this, we think he has com- mitted an error in declining the hat. "Nothing succeeds like success." If he wished to strengthen those who think the mind of the Church an almost involuntary instrument for the slow eliciting of truth, and who do not believe that the process can be safely hurried at the discretion of its chief pastor, he should have accepted the rank offered him, and thereby raised the hopes of those who expect the Vatican Decree to be, in great measure, " explained away." Doubtless, suspected Catholics who have promised themselves to drive a coach-and- six through the Syllabus, will, whenever the time comes for proving to how very little it really commits the Church, feel the difference caused by Dr. Newman's refusal. It is a great thing to have a distinguished Cardinal for your Mend, when you desire to win the sanction of the Holy See for a parti- cular interpretation of the Church's definitions. There is a story that two Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory were once received in a public audience by Pio Nono, who mistook them for Fathers of the Brompton Oratory, and immediately inquired whether they came from the Oratory of Padre Faber. On being told the truth, the old Pope is said to have turned from them with something like an expression of disgust, merely ejaculating, " Padre Newman ! Bah !" If that story be true, there can be no doubt that the offer of a Cardinal's hat to Father Newman indicates a vast change in animas between the late Pope and the present, and that if that change had been fixed by the acceptance of the offer, a great many minds would have been comforted by the hope that the Bark of Peter had definitively gone off on the other tack.
Still, it may well be doubted whether, for the world at large,—
certainly the hesitating world of half-Protestants or would-be Catholics outside the Church,—it is not just as well that men should not be encouraged to be Catholics who are really only Newmanites. By this, we do not in the least mean to throw any shadow of doubt on Dr. Newman's own sincere Catholicism.
No one who knows his writings, really doubts that he does accept humbly and with his whole heart the teaching of the Catholic Church, on all subjects on which he thinks that that teaching has been really clear and positive. But because Dr. New- man is a Catholic, it does not in the least follow that all the many admirers and learners who delight in his teaching, are Catholics also. The difference between him and a great many of them is this :—that he bows in the end to the Church, while they only accept that in the Catholic creed which he has made it easy to them to believe. The difference is immense. Sooner or later, a Catholic must take as troth that which his infallible authority tells him is truth, even though he finds nothing in his own nature that corresponds to, or welcomes it. But a Newmanite—i.e., a mere Newmanite—one who has eagerly absorbed all Dr. New- man's most characteristic illustrations of religious truth, but who has never learned to submit to any authority as divine which decides against him, which requires his belief to go against the grain of his own nature,—is, after all, a Protestant at heart, and not a Roman Catholic. He cannot put his mind under the
bit. He cannot be subdued to an alien yoke. Authority does not convince,—it even revolts him. And for all such, nothing is
more wholesome than to know that, far from being Catholics merely because they are drawn towards a good deal which they find in Catholic writers, they would remain just as much Pro- testants—though it might be undetected Protestants—in the Catholic Church, as out of it. A Cardinal Newman might have lured them there, even though they were best where they are.
As it is, the liberal tendencies of Leo %III., though they may make a few Liberal Catholics happier for a few years than they would have been elsewhere, will probably have no permanent effect. The Vatican decree is the natural fruit of a long develop- ment of Roman doctrine, and Pio Nono, not Leo XIII., will remain the typical Pope of the nineteenth century.
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