Examine John Henry Newman’s changing attitude to Infallibility, between the end of Vatican 1 in 1870 and Gladstone’s attack in 1875.
In this essay I propose to analyse Newman’s attitude to Infallibility during the period outlined above. I will examine his letters in particular to note the range of correspondents and the approaches taken. I will attempt to see a pattern in relation to his views expressed to mere enquirers writing to him, to national and professional writers seeking information or debating points and to family and friends in connection with the doctrine of Infallibility. Over this five-year period I will deduce from mainly primary sources, his views expressed on Infallibility and his developed reasoning and then present conclusions.
Firstly a short historical background to Victorian Britain will set the context. Mid-Victorian Britain saw political reform as a main agenda. There was an established order of churches, characterised by denomination but more telling, by social class, and a defined place in society. The plight of the poor and the devastating effects of industrialisation were not uppermost in the church’s role. These views were being challenged with an increasing secularisation of society, by movements set up to reform and give more people a voice in government, and questioning the relevance of the church. The church played a role in e.g. the Christian Socialist Movement, set up as much to control and limit reform as it was to assist the poor.
This was a time of expansion by the Catholic Church, since the re-establishment of the hierarch in 1850. Popular liberal attitudes questioned the loyalty of Catholics to the state and since the 1850’s newspapers and periodicals characterised this view as ...
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...ring 1982), pp. 86–88.
Rahner, K. ‘A Critique of Hans Kung’. Homiletic and Pastoral Review 71, May 1971, pp.10 – 26.
Schatz, K. Papal Supremacy: From its Origins to the Present. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996, pp.151-162.
Strange, Roderick. John Henry Newman: A Mind Alive. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008.
Sugg, J. ed. A Packet of Letters: a selection of correspondence of John Henry Newman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Tierney, B. Origins of Papal infallibility 1150 – 1350. (‘Studies in the History of Christian Thought’).Leiden: EJ Brill, 1972.
Ward, W. William George Ward and the Catholic Revival. London: Longmans Green andCo.1893, p.274. Accessed 9 March 2014: https://archive.org/details/riwilliamgeorgeward.
Wolfe, J. Religion in Victorian Britain: Culture and Empire. Manchester: The Open University Press, 1997.
"Inquisition." In New Catholic Encyclopedia, edited by Berard L. Marthaler, 485-491. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2003.
To begin with, it must be remembered that Catholic culture and Catholic faith, while mutually supportive and symbiotic, are not the same thing. Mr. Walker Percy, in his Lost in the Cosmos, explored the difference, and pointed out that, culturally, Catholics in Cleveland are much more Protestant than Presbyterians in say, Taos, New Orleans, or the South of France. Erik, Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, points out that the effects of this dichotomy upon politics, attributing the multi-party system in Catholic countries to the Catholic adherence to absolutes; he further ascribes the two-party system to the Protestant willingness to compromise. However this may be, it does point up a constant element in Catholic thought---the pursuit of the absolute.
Kings often struggled with the Church over power and land, both trying desperately to obtain them, both committing atrocities to hold onto them. Time and time again, the Popes of the postclassical period went to great extremes to secure the Church’s position in the world. Both the Crusades and the Inquisition are examples of this. D...
Many new changes came to Victorian England as a result of the age of industrialization. Where there were once small country parishes, manufacturing towns were springing up. One change resulting from industrialization was the shortage of clergy to fill the new parishes in these towns. These new parishes reflect the demographic changes of the English countryside. Rural villages grew into booming towns. Where a single parish was once sufficient, there was now a need for multiple parishes. The Church of England went about meeting these demands for new clergy in two major ways, actively recruiting men to the clergy and restructuring theological facilities and changing the requirements for ordination. These factors show us some of the upheaval and reconstruction that was going on in the Anglican Church in Victorian England. This was a direct result of the need to train a large number of clergy in a relatively short period of time.
Carleton- Munro, Dana. The Speech of Pope Urban II. At Clermont, 1095. The American Historical Review. 11. no. 2 (1906): 231.
Wolffe, J. 1997. Religion in Victorian Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press in association with the Open University
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century a “Catholic” candidate, Paul Blanshard, ran for presidency. Blanshard was a burden to the Republicans due to his religion. The view of Catholicism was an institutional and political problem. Even if the candidate was not Catholic, he was married by a Catholic priest and apparently that was a connected him to Catholic problems. A political problem because Catholicism was a world power that of Pr...
Roles of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been scrambled with the times past and development of Western society. Regardless of the fact that the West is no longer entirely Catholic, the Catholic tradition is still strong in Western countries. The church has been a very important foundation of public facilities like schooling, Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in religion. In many ways it has wanted to have an impact on Western approaches to pros and cons in numerous areas. It has over many periods of time, spread the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a foundation of continuousness connecting recent Western culture to old Western culture.-
Theological Context." Reformation & Renaissance Review: Journal of The Society For Reformation Studies 7, no. 2/3: 337-346. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 24, 2014).
In this essay I will identify the issues which brought about this papal encyclical in 1891, specifically the social conditions of people, resulting from industrialisation and the church’s Christological role in declaring human dignity in terms of God’s plan for mankind. I will set out the historical position in Britain in this late Victorian era within the context of European radical political upheaval, as part of the need for reform and a response from the Church. These issues will be compared with the encyclical one hundred years later, to analyse the development of policy in1891 and 1991 in terms of the church’s teaching, within the context of the wider social and political movements of the late twentieth century. I will determine that whilst John Paul II used the centenary in 1991 to publish Centesimus Annus and see it as a ‘re-wording’ of the original, it ultimately failed to take forward the radical change envisaged in Rerum Novarum, with limited exceptions.
In de-emphasizing the role of the Church, it’s rituals, and offices, and supplanting them with a more direct and personal approach to God and spirituality; the Protestant Reformation, through the works of Martin...
The Victorian Era was a very Christian and prudish time. Through the 19th century, England was an all Christian country. Their established church was “The Church of England.”
Gonzalez, Justo L. 1984. The early church to the dawn of the Reformation. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
In the 19th Century, the Catholic Church’s survival depended, in part, on its success in developing a powerful role as a social provider. Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages and other similar services increased and multiplied in the course of the 19th century. Overall, the Catholic Church’s role as a service provider was an extraordinary organisational achievement and exceeded anything that had been provided by any other non-state organisation.
Ullmann, Walter. A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. New York City, NY: Routledge, 2003.