What with the “canonization”
of John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) coming up in a couple of weeks, we
thought we would add our two cents as well as a few hundred words into the
discussions that are raging. (Canonization does not "make" someone a saint; it is a certification process.) By and
large, the discussion seems to be whether Newman was a liberal or a
conservative. From the interfaith
viewpoint, however, it seems more to the point whether Newman was in agreement
with the Just Third Way.
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| John Henry Newman |
For the record, Newman
was opposed to liberalism of any kind, even that with which he agreed! As he
explained in an appendix (not generally included these days) to his Apologia
Pro Vita Sua (1864), he opposed liberalism as an Anglican, supposing the
Anglican position to be conservative. After his conversion to Catholicism, he
realized that what the English political and religious establishment regarded
as conservative was really a different form of liberalism, and rejected it.
Newman then
expressed puzzlement at the fact that Charles Forbes René de
Montalembert (1810-1870) and Father Jean-Baptiste
Henri Dominique Lacordaire (1802-1861), both former associates of Hugues-Félicité Robert de
Lamennais (1782-1854) — the founder of liberal
Catholicism — agreed with Newman in repudiating de Lamennais’s liberalism and
English “conservative” liberalism. At
the same time, both Montalembert and Lacordaire continued calling themselves
liberals! Newman concluded by saying that it pained him to disagree with two
such eminent and orthodox thinkers, and supposed that they must mean something
else by the term liberalism. As
Montalembert said later,
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| Montalembert |
To new and fair practical
notions, honest in themselves, which have for the last twenty years been the
daily bread of Catholic polemics, we had been foolish enough to add extreme and
rash theories; and to defend both with absolute logic, which loses, even when
it does not dishonour, every cause. (Montalembert, from his Life of Lacordaire, quoted by John Henry
Cardinal Newman, “Note on Essay IV., The Fall of La Mennais,” Essays Critical and Historical. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897,
173-174.)
That appears to
be the case. Alexis-Charles-Henri
Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859) described three types of liberal
democracy in Democracy in America (1835, 1840). These were 1) French or European in which the
collective or State is sovereign, 2) English, in which an élite is
sovereign, and 3) American, in which the human person under God is sovereign.
Interestingly, de
Tocqueville worked with de Lamennais in the legislature during the brief Second
French Republic. De Tocqueville
recognized de Lamennais’s ability and even shared some of the same goals, but
thought he was an arrogant jackass: “He has pride enough to walk over the heads
of kings and bid defiance to God.” (Alexis de Tocqueville, The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville. Cleveland, Ohio: The World Publishing
Company, 1959, 191.)
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| Lacordaire |
The American type
of liberal democracy is embodied in the original intent of the U.S.
Constitution, which almost every pope since Pius IX has approved — although not
using the word liberal to describe it. Pius IX modeled the first constitution
of the Papal States on the U.S. Constitution.
This was the “Fundamental Statute,” which William Ewert Gladstone (1809-1898)
erroneously thought was derived from the unwritten English constitution. Leo XIII kept a special copy of the
Constitution, a gift of Grover Cleveland at the suggestion of Cardinal Gibbons,
in his personal apartments, and showed it to favored visitors.
Newman continued
to reject the term liberalism, but eventually reached some sort of accommodation
with American liberalism, most likely through his lively “debate” (we’re being
polite) with Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876). Like Montalembert, Lacordaire, and even
Blessed Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam (1813-1853) and Newman himself, Brownson at
first supported de Lamennais and then condemned him in his unique Brownsonian
manner. Newman even invited Brownson to
be on the faculty of the Irish university he was trying to put together,
although probably fortunately for Brownson’s temper and Newman’s peace of mind
Brownson declined.
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| Gibbons |
In Testem
Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899), Leo XIII carefully distinguished American
liberal democracy (“Americanism”) as a political theory from Americanism
applied to religious doctrine (modernism and socialism). This was largely as a result of a distorted
translation into French of a biography of Brownson’s friend Father Isaac Hecker
(1819-1888) in which the translator Abbé Felix Klein (1862-1953) — possibly
inadvertently — made the mistake of using terms that meant one thing in
American liberalism and almost the exact opposite in French liberalism.
This gave the
French modernists a weapon against the more orthodox elements in the Church. Some conservative French prelates were calling
the Americans Archbishop John Ireland (1838-1918) and James Cardinal Gibbons (1834-1921) heretics. The French conservatives appeared to assume
that when Ireland and Gibbons called themselves progressive (another word that
has completely changed its meaning) and liberal they meant the exact opposite
of what the Americans actually meant.
Gibbons and
Ireland were both hurt that Leo XIII demanded their explicit submission to Testem
Benevolentiae Nostrae (which they gave after trying to figure out what was being
condemned), but socialists, modernists, liberals, and progressives have used
the different meanings of liberalism to spread confusion and obscure the
inroads of socialism and modernism down to the present day.
So, yes, Newman
was a liberal . . . but not in any sense either he meant or today’s liberals
mean the term.
#30#
