Tony Blair writes article about Newman for Vatican newspaper
Romano: ‘John Henry
Newman: Doctor of the Church’ by Tony Blair In England’s green and pleasant
land saints have been thin on the ground of late, at least those recognised by the
Church. So English Catholics will take a particular pleasure in the forthcoming beatification
of John Henry Newman. It has drawn a Pope to our shores again, and one much in tune
with the spirit and ideas in Newman’s writings. Yet Newman’s life and thinking
highlight the gulf that separates us from his world of the 19th century. His national
celebrity as a theologian, his abiding preoccupation with what was religiously true,
the forensic reasoning and depth of historical scholarship that led him to leave the
Anglican Church for Rome, the furore at his departure, belong to another time. Of
course people are still moved by intellectual assent to Catholic Faith. People still
make this journey - in a less spectacular way. I should know. But elegantly written
and subtle theology does not make you a public figure or get you into the headlines
in 2010. Are his ideas, then, still relevant to us today? Newman ranked spiritual
truth above all other values. He was willing to alienate anyone, old friends and future
ones, in its pursuit. While preparing formally to enter the Catholic Church he wrote:
“No-one can have a more unfavourable view than I of the present state of Roman Catholics”.
Not the most diplomatic of sound-bites. The point was that this made no difference
to him whatsoever. He would do what he thought right however uncomfortable or unpopular
it would be. Conscience and Popularity You have to admire this intellectual
courage. It is something many Catholics glimpse in Pope Benedict XVI. Nor do Newman’s
ideas translate easily into a few short paragraphs in a newspaper. “A man of conscience
is one who never acquires tolerance, well being, success, public standing and approval
on the part of prevailing opinion, at the expense of truth”, he wrote. This is tough
counsel in the contemporary world where opinion is so overwhelmingly shaped by the
mass media. Newman notoriously toasted conscience first - before the Pope. But
he did not mean that the voice of conscience made choosing a true and right path an
easy matter, or one that dispensed with the authority of the papacy. “Our sense of
right and wrong... is so delicate, so fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured, perverted...
so biased by pride and passion”. This was where the teaching authority of the Church
comes in with its gift for discerning and defining to correct and adjudicate. So while
the gulf between us and Newman’s world is great, nonetheless, he wrote of matters
with which every Catholic and every politician has to grapple. Development of Doctrine Politicians
are in the business of change for the better, and believe that the better is not the
enemy of the best. When it comes to national development, they do not take kindly
to the idea that “nothing can be done”. Newman was first to put the concept of
development on the map. His understanding of how doctrine developed proved extraordinarily
influential in his time. He made development a key idea both inside and outside the
Church. We probably would not be using the terms Millennium Development Goals or international
development today if he had not first used the word in his theology. For the life
of the Church today, Newman’s reflections on the development of ideas evidently have
no less profound implications. He concluded it was impossible to fix a point at which
the growth of doctrine in the Church ceased. By implication it is still going on today,
and not in a vacuum. “The idea never was that throve and lasted, yet like mathematical
truth, incorporated nothing from external sources”, he wrote. Deciding whether
something was a “true” development was, of course, the prerogative of the teaching
of the Church. But Newman also described the consensus of the whole “body of the faithful”
on matters of doctrine as the “voice of the Infallible Church”. I doubt if this voice
is yet taken seriously enough on moral questions, or if we have yet fully digested
the implications of these ideas. The tendency of some religious leaders to bundle
a large number of different ideas into a bag marked “secularism”, then treat it as
a sinister package, is divisive in pluralist societies. It cuts the Church off from
possibilities of new developments in thinking. The Pope’s past dialogues with prominent
secular thinkers provides a very different example. Newman and Interfaith I
think Newman would be a staunch ally in promoting different forms of inter-religious
dialogue because of his theory of development. This might sound counter-intuitive.
Newman, like Pope Benedict, was fiercely opposed to relativism. But the interfaith
work that my Faith Foundation undertakes rests on, and generates, the opposite of
relativism. I have found that it affirms people in their different faiths, while
building respect and understanding for the faith of others. Whether in our linking
of schools and faiths around the world, or drawing universities into consortia around
an inter-disciplinary course on faith and globalisation, or working in interfaith
pairs to promote the Millennium Development Goals, those sharing our vision find that
they want to deepen their knowledge of their own faith. In my life-time, the Church’s
developing understanding of the nature and importance of inter-religious dialogue
has produced a flowering of doctrinal ideas. From the repeated proclamation that there
is no salvation outside the Church to Nostra Aetate and Pope John Paul II’s understanding
of the work of the Holy Spirit in other faiths, we have seen a development of doctrine
that encourages the Church to embrace the spiritual significance of other religions.
The Bishops of England and Wales told this story eloquently in their recent teaching
document Meeting God in Friend and Stranger. There has been controversy surrounding
Newman’s beatification. I guess that he would have expected nothing less. Some may
merely wonder if this is the right way to honour him. But none will seriously doubt
that he was, and is, a Doctor of the Church. There is still time to proclaim him as
such.