Liberalism and Newman:
The Anglican Vision and Response
A Doctoral Dissertation by Father John McCloskey
Prologue
Having had the opportunity to read a considerable number of the works of Newman, both Anglican and Catholic, not to mention various biographies and critical studies of the man and his era, I thought a few lines appropriate regarding his impact on one aspiring Doctor in the sacred science of Theology.
When I began my systematic study of Newman early on in the academic year, I was already aware of him, from previous reading, as an excellent prose stylist, a leading religious figure of the nineteenth century, and an authority often quoted by authors on different sides of the same question. After a detailed reading that anticipates many re-readings, I have come to see him in a different light: a canonizable saint, a possible doctor of the Church and a religious genius that speaks directly to us of the late twentieth century with little need of interpretation.
He was indeed a complicated man, but only because he was dealing with complicated questions in an extremely complicated age, the age of the emergence of the modern ideologies. The whole gamut of theological and apologetical questions passed through his able hands leaving a rich and many-faceted inheritance for such students as myself. Many of the positions that he puts forth with such agility and depth in the first part of the nineteenth century appear to have been plucked bodily from the preparatory documents of the Second Vatican Council. Each person can indeed search for in Newman and probably find statements, often brutally taken out of context, that will support his own thesis, however mistaken that thesis may be. Nevertheless, I believe that one must go to the first principles, in this case Newman himself, for a true understanding of the man.
These first principles as personified in Newman are Authority, Sanctity, and Freedom. He sought from his earliest years an authority that "could neither deceive nor be deceived." He wanted to believe that he had that infallible authority in the Anglican Church, but the events of the day and a close examination of history gradually proved him wrong and he inexorably set out on "The Path to Rome" where he encountered that Authority with guarantee of the Holy Spirit.
His adoption of an old Evangelical motto "Holiness before Peace" reveals to us that thirst for holiness that led to incessant prayer, mortification, strict obedience to superiors, an adherence to duty and a holy intransigence in the uncompromisable. His choice of the celibate life, not at all common among Anglican clergymen of that age, his searing and uplifting exhortations as revealed in his Pastoral and Plain Sermons, all reveal a man gifted with great graces who responded as fully as possible given his position in a schismatic Church.
Finally, there is his love for freedom. He moved at his own pace, passively trusting in God, at the same time allowing grace, current events, history, and the mysterious current of his own mind to take their shape and guide him. He lived his own theory on "Development of Dogma" with the realization that he was growing inevitably towards the Truth. He refused to do proselytism for a position that he was not sure of, remaining to the end loyal to the Anglican Church until he saw its fundamental weakness. He could not in conscience influence his followers to abandon the church of their birth without being certain of the truth. He refused to force the conscience of the others, even though often it was easily in his power.
In short, I have indeed been fortunate to dedicate myself to a detailed reading of the works of that young English divine and I look forward to following up this doctoral thesis with another of more length. I only hope that this work will help and even stimulate the vast work that remains to be done on a man who "cor ad cor loquitur." In this thesis we see Newman grappling with the same problems that afflict us today; we call it secular materialism, he, Liberalism.
My sincere thanks go to Dr. Domingo Ramos, a devoted follower of the Fathers, who with benevolent forbearance guided this work. Also a note of appreciation to D. José Morales who perhaps would not go so far as to say with W.G. Ward "Credo in Newmanuum," but nonetheless is an expert on the subject. He graciously spent several hours pointing out the proper readings for the following study.
