Before Benedict's visit, the Archbishop of Canterbury quipped, "The Pope and I both like cats and we both like acquiring Anglican clergy".When they met, the frail old man and the busy hirsute giant were as happy together as schoolboys.
The Pope was flawless throughout. Gentle, relaxed and happy. He may have won over a few of the Nope-to-the-Pope brigade.
He smiled as he shook hands with his first woman vicar, Dr Jane Hedges. She greeted him in Westminster Abbey.
Though he thinks Rowan Williams isn't a priest, at the tomb of Edward the Confessor they spoke a joint final blessing.
He blessed babies and the old. He met with five sex-abuse victims. His shy demeanour made the thousands at his rallies prouder to be Catholics.
Finally, Benedict made blessed a holy and learned man, John Henry Newman, author of hymns such as Lead, Kindly Light. Perhaps only Newman would have objected to this honour.
After the Pope's visit, the old negatives remain. He still denies the validity of Anglican Orders.
There is deep friendship between Rome and Canterbury but no hope of reunion.
He expressed sadness that church authorities were not quick or decisive enough in dealing with sex abuse. Surely the opposite is true.
Bishops reacted with the speed of light in covering up and conniving with the foul crimes committed by priests on children. His apologies seem to be a PR substitute for deeds.
When Benedict demands blind obedience to all his edicts, he quotes Newman as his ally. He's quite wrong. Forty years ago, Newman taught me that Paul VI had no right to impose on anyone his fallible views on birth control.
Bishops treat all Benedict says as infallible when he hasn't exercised infallibility once! They may have to accept his galloping infallibility. Most Catholics don't and won't. It's not Christian.
Newman said of Pius IX, the first pope declared infallible: "We have come to a climax of tyranny. A long-serving pope becomes a god and does cruel things without meaning it."
Before 1870, Newman was inclined to believe in papal infallibility; he didn't actually believe in it. Many orthodox Catholic bishops denied it.
Newman always stressed "the consensus of the faithful". Only the faith of the whole people of God proclaimed infallibly can "block the exercise of personal conscience". A ban on contraception held by only 10pc can't. As to Benedict's ban on condoms to control Aids, any Catholic is as free as any atheist to label it lunacy.
If Newman had to make a toast, it would be to conscience first, to the Pope after. Polls show Catholics are the Pope's good servants but God's first.
Peter De Rosa is a former Catholic priest and author with Annie Murphy of Forbidden Fruit
SIC: EH/IE
Mr De Rosa is wrong about Newman and papal infallibility. He most definitely did believe in it. What he doubted was the prudence of formally defining it as a dogma at that particular stage in history. He thought the dogma true, but its definition impolitic.
ReplyDeleteAlso the now infamous quote of Newman about toasting conscience is yet again taken out of its context. Newman would have been mortified to see it interpreted as setting up conscience over and against the Pope. A Catholic conscience which denied papal teaching would, for Newman, have been a defective conscience.
Two lengthy Newman quotes come to mind here, backing up what the previous commenter says:
ReplyDelete"When men advocate the rights of conscience, they in no sense mean the rights of the Creator, nor the duty to Him, in thought and deed, of the creature; but the right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, according to their judgment or their humour, without any thought of God at all. They do not even pretend to go by any moral rule, but they demand, what they think is an Englishman's prerogative, for each to be his own master in all things, and to profess what he pleases, asking no one's leave, and accounting priest or preacher, speaker or writer, unutterably impertinent, who dares to say a word against his going to perdition, if he like it, in his own way."
"Unless a man is able to say to himself, as in the Presence of God, that he must not, and dare not, act upon the Papal injunction, he is bound to obey it, and would commit a great sin in disobeying it. Primâ facie it is his bounden duty, even from a sentiment of loyalty, to believe the Pope right and to act accordingly. He must vanquish that mean, ungenerous, selfish, vulgar spirit of his nature, which, at the very first rumour of a command, places itself in opposition to the Superior who gives it, asks itself whether he is not exceeding his right, and rejoices, in a moral and practical matter to commence with scepticism. He must have no wilful determination to exercise a right of thinking, saying, doing just what he pleases, the question of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, the duty if possible of obedience, the love of speaking as his Head speaks, and of standing in all cases on his Head's side, being simply discarded."