At the end of the previous posting on this subject, we
noted that some people with agendas had found what they wanted in John Henry
Newman’s book, An Essay on the
Development of Christian Doctrine. The
problem was that what they claimed to have found was the opposite of what
Newman had actually written.
Nevertheless, religious doctrine (Christian or otherwise)
is not our affair. Our interest is social
doctrine, which pertains to the natural law, not to revelation.
Revelation pertains to the supernatural world,
not the natural world, although this discussion
employs religious terminology and is generally framed within
the parameters established for religious society.
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| John Bernard Fitzpatrick |
Just before the controversy arose regarding what Newman
meant in his book, Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick of Boston (1812-1866) had with
some reservations received Orestes Brownson into the Catholic Church. Perhaps as a test of the new convert’s
devotion and obedience, Fitzpatrick encouraged Brownson to critique Newman’s
concept on the development of doctrine.
A number of U.S. bishops, Fitzpatrick among them, were of
the opinion that because variation and change in doctrinal matters were
characteristic of Protestantism, development of doctrine was the equivalent of
change and variation and therefore itself an error. (Carey, Orestes
Brownson, op. cit., 171.) The fact
that Brownson’s own — temporarily — repudiated “Doctrine of Communion” which he
had derived from the thought of the socialists Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and Pierre
Leroux (1797-1871) resonated reasonably well with Newman’s concept of the
development of doctrine only served to convince Brownson that the American
bishops had read the situation accurately.
As far as Brownson was concerned, Newman’s concept was not merely
Protestant, but socialist. (Ibid., 97-133.)
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| John Henry Newman |
Brownson’s usual irascibility combined with the militant
fervor of a new convert, and he set to work.
For two-and-a-half years the battle raged until the American bishops, now
uneasy over the situation they themselves had in large measure created and that
was taking on the nature of a scandal, managed to persuade Brownson to drop the
issue of “Developmentism” — for a while.
(Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Orestes
A. Brownson: A Pilgrim’s Progress.
New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1963, 202.)
As had quickly became evident to thoughtful observers,
however, the real difference between the two was not in what they said, but in
their respective approaches to apologetics.
Both Newman and Brownson, of course, sought the truth. Where Newman had taken the approach dictated
by his background and experience and stressed the similarities among the different
forms of Christianity, however, Brownson was equally formed by his background
and experience and targeted the differences among the various sects.
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| Isaac Thomas Hecker |
Both men, therefore, were of essentially the same mind and
in fundamental agreement about the teachings of the Catholic Church, but each
was taking a diametrically opposed road to truth — in form, that is, not in
substance. Newman did not really care
whether he won an argument as long as he persuaded someone, while Brownson, as
his friend Father Isaac Hecker noted, could defeat an opponent, but never
convince him. (Joseph McSorley, Father Hecker and His Friends. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Company,
1953, 221.) Newman, in fact, believed
that to be argumentative was to be irreverent.
(Chadwick, The Mind of the Oxford
Movement, op. cit., 47.)
Very, very briefly, Brownson, in common with those of the
U.S. bishops who took his side in the affair until it became too embarrassing
for them, confused revelation (which
comes from God) and doctrine (which is
developed by man from revelation), and even in some instances with discipline (a
specific policy or practice to implement doctrine).
To explain, revelation is the unchanging general principle,
while doctrine consists of specific interpretations of revelation and must
develop if people are to be able to continue their faith journeys as knowledge of
this world and of the human condition expands and deepens. Where revelation is the general truth,
doctrine is a particular principle, statement, or position that is taught or advocated to apply truth to a
specific set of circumstances.
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| Christ came to fulfill the Law of Moses |
This needs to be taken one step
further, into the area of discipline,
or man-made regulations by means of which doctrine is actually and formally implemented
or a group handles administration of itself.
Thus, revelation must be consistent with what people believe about God
and at the same time not contradict reason, doctrine must be consistent with
revelation, while discipline can be anything that does not contradict doctrine.
Again, our concern here is not religious doctrine, however,
but social doctrine. Examining the specific
theological issues that divided Brownson and Newman in any depth is far, far
beyond the scope of this study, and would serve no useful purpose in any event. The simple fact is that the major Christian
bodies have from the beginning accepted the validity, even the necessity of
doctrinal development, e.g., Christ’s
declaration that He came to “develop doctrine” by fulfilling the Law of Moses,
not abolishing it.
So why even bring it up?
Because it might explain in part why the concept of social justice was
so easily hijacked by the socialists, modernists, and New Agers in what was
arguably the most democratic and genuinely liberal country on Earth — the
United States of America.
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| Opening of the First Vatican Council |
Brownson’s notion of the infallibility of the Catholic
Church (formed decades before the formal definition of the infallibility of the
teaching office of the pope at the First Vatican Council) was that all Catholic
doctrine — which he considered the same as revelation — was as unchangeable as
it was free from all error, and vice
versa. That this bears little
resemblance to the doctrine of infallibility as defined by the Council Fathers
mattered little to Brownson, even as he firmly believed that what the Council
defined was fully consistent with what he believed. That is because, in common with many people
even today, Brownson simply assumed that his understanding of a doctrine was
the only possible one.
Thus, the institutions (doctrines) of the Catholic Church
were not merely free from error, but also not subject to change or
“development” of any kind. To admit that
doctrine could “develop” was to Brownson tantamount to an admission that it was
not perfect. As far as Brownson was
concerned, Newman was therefore a Protestant.
(Brownson changed his mind later, after the damage had been done.)
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| Orestes A. Brownson |
Similarly, in the civil sphere American institutions were
perfect, precisely as the Constitution proclaimed. Why else would the Preamble to that document
have referred to “a more perfect union”?
(Brownson’s complicated rationalizations of the chattel slavery he detested but
needed to fit within what he believed to be a perfect system are . . .
interesting.)
As something of a Platonist, Brownson saw the duty of the
citizen to conform himself to his institutions, not to modify those
institutions to conform to human wants and needs within the broader parameters
of the natural law. Brownson’s opinion
of amendments to a constitution is not clear, although there had been fourteen
added to the U.S. document since its adoption by the time of his death. As he declared in what many consider his
greatest work, The American Republic
(1865) — and incidentally letting slip a bit of his Anglophobia,
The English are great constitution-mongers — for other
nations. They fancy that a constitution
modeled after their own will fit any nation that can be persuaded, wheedled, or
bullied into trying it on; but, unhappily, all that have tried it on have found
it only an embarrassment or encumbrance.
The doctor might as well attempt to give an individual a new
constitution, or the constitution of another man, as the statesman to give a
nation any other constitution than that which it has, and with which it is
born. (Orestes A. Brownson, The
American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies and Destiny. Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2003, 100.)
Unfortunately for Brownson’s opinion and the new field of
social justice (in the 1840s the term was just coming into use in the Catholic
sense, and then only vaguely), the task of any member of society when his
institutions do not meet his needs and those of his fellows is not to change
human nature. Rather, it is to organize
with others to change his institutions.
Reforming institutions is not only permissible, but
essential if institutions are to continue to be useful social tools instead of
barriers to full human development. The
caveat with any civil institution, of course, is similar to that of religious
institutions (doctrines): the underlying principle must never be violated, i.e., revelation in the case of a
religious doctrine, the natural law and respect for essential human dignity in
the case of a civil institution.
Institutions and doctrines must grow and develop, not
remain static, as long as they remain consistent with the original principle. Newman, the individualist and solitary
scholar, somehow understood this rule.
Brownson, who had developed a theory that came close to solidarism, did
not.
And that is the paradox we will look at in the next
posting on this subject.
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