Posted on 08/07/2025 1:01:50 PM PDT by ebb tide
On July 31st, Vatican News reported that St. John Henry Newman will become the newest Doctor of the Church:
“Pope Leo XIV has ‘confirmed the affirmative opinion of the Plenary Session of Cardinals and Bishops, Members of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, regarding the title of Doctor of the Universal Church, which will soon be conferred on Saint John Henry Newman.’”
Because Newman is generally revered by Traditional Catholics, it is natural to ask why Leo XIV has approved making Newman a Doctor of the Church (and, for that matter, why Francis canonized Newman in 2019). After all, we have learned from painful experience that the proponents of the Vatican II revolution seldom promote anything that will not support their anti-Catholic “progress” — so what is it that Rome finds appealing in the works of Newman today?
Looking back at Francis’s first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, it is clear that the most destructive claimant to the papacy in history was also eager to misappropriate Newman’s reputation to justify the heretical changes that would be unleashed on the Church over the subsequent twelve years.
Although we can find some recent statements about Newman from the hierarchy related to ecumenical relations with Anglicans — such as a 2024 homily from Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández — the true appeal of Newman appears to reside in the way in which his works can be manipulatively interpreted in support of the Synodal Church. We can see this chiefly in two currents of thought: evolution of Church teaching, and the role of the faithful in that evolution, through the sensus fidei.
Evolution of Church Teaching
To understand Newman’s influence on how the Synodal Church’s architects think about the evolution of Church teaching, we should begin with Francis’s October 9, 2021 address to open the Synod on Synodality:
“The Holy Spirit guides us where God wants us to be, not to where our own ideas and personal tastes would lead us. Father Congar, of blessed memory, once said: ‘There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church’ (True and False Reform in the Church). That is the challenge. For a ‘different Church,’ a Church open to the newness that God wants to suggest, let us with greater fervour and frequency invoke the Holy Spirit and humbly listen to him, journeying together as he, the source of communion and mission, desires: with docility and courage.”
Francis cited Yves Congar’s True and False Reform in the Church as the “authoritative” inspiration behind the project to create a “different church.” If we look to True and False Reform in the Church, we find the way in which the heretic Congar relied upon Newman:
“In any reform movement, impatience threatens to ruin everything and to make an ambivalent initial inspiration evolve in a sectarian direction. In a passage worthy of status as a classic, Newman offered some reflections about this that Jean Guitton has taken and aptly applied to Newman himself. The innovator, whose reform turns into schism, lacks patience. He does not respect the slowness either of God or of the church, or the delays that come into everyone’s life. He moves with a kind of inflexible and exasperated logic toward ‘all or nothing’ solutions, in which viable possibilities are rejected along with problems. For a while, he insists that the church should satisfy his demands immediately, or otherwise he will leave. The heretical innovator doesn’t know how to wait for an idea to mature; rather, he launches his idea, immediately and inflexibly pushing it to its consequences. In so doing, such people not only risk failing to achieve the change they seek, but they spoil for others the possibilities for change that might have come about. So many times impatience or excessiveness has seriously harmed causes in the church which of themselves were perfectly appropriate.”
In other words, Congar believed that the difference between a heretic and a true reformer often amounts to little more than patience: if the true reformer would simply move cautiously, he could guide the Church to accept ideas that otherwise would be considered heretical if they were introduced impatiently. Congar found his support for this troubling concept in Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua:
“In reading ecclesiastical history, when I was an Anglican, it used to be forcibly brought home to me, how the initial error of what afterwards became heresy was the urging forward some truth against the prohibition of authority at an unseasonable time. There is a time for every thing, and many a man desires a reformation of an abuse, or the fuller development of a doctrine, or the adoption of a particular policy, but forgets to ask himself whether the right time for it is come: and, knowing that there is no one who will be doing any thing towards its accomplishment in his own lifetime unless he does it himself, he will not listen to the voice of authority, and he spoils a good work in his own century, in order that another man, as yet unborn, may not have the opportunity of bringing it happily to perfection in the next. He may seem to the world to be nothing else than a bold champion for the truth and a martyr to free opinion, when he is just one of those persons whom the competent authority ought to silence; and, though the case may not fall within that subject-matter in which that authority is infallible, or the formal conditions of the exercise of that gift may be wanting, it is clearly the duty of authority to act vigorously in the case.”
At first glance, it may not be clear how this helps the cause of those who have created the blasphemous Synodal Church, but the key is that it opens the door to the acceptance of developments that pre-Vatican II popes might have considered heretical. Thus, we frequently heard from Francis that we must be open to the “spirit” guiding the Church to take new paths — we must be a “listening Church” to discern the signs of the times. If, as Newman told us, “there is a time for everything,” all we need to do is listen to the People of God to know whether the time has truly come for changes that might have been considered heretical under Pius XII and his predecessors.
Thus, we have good reason to suspect that Newman is being named Doctor of the Church not to bring attention to his orthodox and edifying teachings but to give cover for those who want to continue “assimilating” toxic errors into the religion of the Synodal Church.
We might insist that Newman never would have accepted such an interpretation of his words, but that mattered little to Congar. And, looking back at Francis’s first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, it is clear that the most destructive claimant to the papacy in history was also eager to misappropriate Newman’s reputation to justify the heretical changes that would be unleashed on the Church over the subsequent twelve years:
“The unity of faith, then, is the unity of a living body; this was clearly brought out by Blessed John Henry Newman when he listed among the characteristic notes for distinguishing the continuity of doctrine over time its power to assimilate everything that it meets in the various settings in which it becomes present and in the diverse cultures which it encounters, purifying all things and bringing them to their finest expression.”
Thus, we have good reason to suspect that Newman is being named Doctor of the Church not to bring attention to his orthodox and edifying teachings but to give cover for those who want to continue “assimilating” toxic errors into the religion of the Synodal Church.
The Role of the Sensus Fidei in Church Teaching
Newman’s role in shaping how the Synodal Church views the sensus fidei is even more clear due to the fact that the International Theological Commission’s (ITC) 2014 document on the topic, Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church, cites Newman extensively. The ITC document defines the relevant concepts as follows:
“As a theological concept, the sensus fidei refers to two realities which are distinct though closely connected, the proper subject of one being the Church, ‘pillar and bulwark of the truth’ (1Tim 3:15),[3] while the subject of the other is the individual believer, who belongs to the Church through the sacraments of initiation, and who, by means of regular celebration of the Eucharist, in particular, participates in her faith and life. . . . In the present document, we use the term, sensus fidei fidelis, to refer to the personal aptitude of the believer to make an accurate discernment in matters of faith, and sensus fidei fidelium to refer to the Church’s own instinct of faith. According to the context, sensus fidei refers to either the former or the latter, and in the latter case the term, sensus fidelium, is also used.”
The document goes on to credit Newman with renewing the focus on the sensus fidei fidelium as a way to justify developments in Church doctrine:
“The 19th century was a decisive period for the doctrine of the sensus fidei fidelium. It saw, in the Catholic Church, partly in response to criticism from representatives of modern culture and from Christians of other traditions, and partly from an inner maturation, the rise of historical consciousness, a revival of interest in the Fathers of the Church and in medieval theologians, and a renewed exploration of the mystery of the Church. In this context, Catholic theologians such as Johann Adam Möhler (1796-1838), Giovanni Perrone (1794-1876), and John Henry Newman gave new attention to the sensus fidei fidelium as a locus theologicus in order to explain how the Holy Spirit maintains the whole Church in truth and to justify developments in the Church’s doctrine. Theologians highlighted the active role of the whole Church, especially the contribution of the lay faithful, in preserving and transmitting the Church’s faith; and the magisterium implicitly confirmed this insight in the process leading to the definition of the Immaculate Conception (1854).”
Elsewhere in the ITC document we find the assertion that Newman initially investigated the sensus fidei fidelium to distinguish between true and false developments in doctrine:
“John Henry Newman initially investigated the sensus fidei fidelium to resolve his difficulty concerning the development of doctrine. He was the first to publish an entire treatise on the latter topic, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), and to spell out the characteristics of faithful development. To distinguish between true and false developments, he adopted Augustine’s norm — the general consent of the whole Church, ‘Securus judicat orbis terrarum’ – but he saw that an infallible authority is necessary to maintain the Church in the truth.”
As expressed here, Newman’s concept of the sensus fidei fidelium appears to be a safeguard against improper development of doctrine rather than a mechanism that the Church’s enemies could exploit to promote heretical changes. Nonetheless, we can detect some risk that “the general consent of the Church” could be manipulated to justify false developments.
Finally, we can see that the ITC document cites Newman on the unique role of the faithful in conserving and transmitting the Faith:
"When Newman later wrote On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (1859), it was to demonstrate that the faithful (as distinct from their pastors) have their own, active role to play in conserving and transmitting the faith. ‘[T]he tradition of the Apostles’ is ‘committed to the whole Church in its various constituents and functions per modum unius’, but the bishops and the lay faithful bear witness to it in diverse ways. The tradition, he says, ‘manifests itself variously at various times: sometimes by the mouth of the episcopacy, sometimes by the doctors, sometimes by the people, sometimes by liturgies, rites, ceremonies, and customs, by events, disputes, movements, and all those other phenomena which are comprised under the name of history’. For Newman, ‘there is something in the ‘pastorum et fidelium conspiratio’ which is not in the pastors alone.’”
Nothing in this passage necessarily supports the idea of empowering the laity to advocate for doctrinal changes, but it is evident that the Church’s enemies could find some room for mischief in the idea that the laity play an active role in conserving and transmitting the Faith.
As we can see from the Final Document of the October 2024 session of the Synod on Synodality, the Synodal Church has indeed manipulated these ideas to concoct one of the most preposterously blasphemous ideas of the Francis era — that every baptized person (even the notorious heretic who was never Catholic) contributes to the sensus fidei:
“Through Baptism, ‘the holy People of God has a share, too, in the prophetic role of Christ, when it renders Him a living witness, especially through a life of faith and charity’ (LG 12). The anointing by the Holy Spirit received at Baptism (cf. 1 Jn 2:20.27) enables all believers to possess an instinct for the truth of the Gospel. We refer to this as the sensus fidei. . . .This is the reason why the Church is certain that the holy People of God cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property when they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals (cf. LG 12). The exercise of the sensus fidei must not be confused with public opinion. It is always in conjunction with the discernment of pastors at the different levels of Church life, as the various interconnected phases of the synodal process demonstrated. The sensus fidei aims at reaching a consensus of the faithful (consensus fidelium), which constitutes ‘a sure criterion for determining whether a particular doctrine or practice belongs to the apostolic faith’ (ITC, Sensus fidei in the life of the Church, 2014, 3). All Christians participate in the sensus fidei through Baptism.”
As we know from having witnessed the Synodal Church in action, this serves as the purported justification for the Synodal architects to “listen” to the People of God to discern that the “Spirit” is guiding the Synodal Church to adopt heretical teachings.
Newman surely would have been sickened to learn that his writings had even remotely contributed to such blasphemous nonsense, but we can see why Francis canonized him, and why those in Rome today want to make him a Doctor of the Church. Congar expressed the appeal of Newman well in his True and False Reform in the Church:
"You can see how every reform spirit can easily take inspiration from Augustinianism, since the spirit of reform lives by insisting that the end surpasses all means, that the meaning of things is more important than their external expression. . . . This is why reformers find support not only in Augustine himself but also in Augustinians like Newman. You can also understand how Augustinianism seems to promote dangerous or near-heterodox positions within the church.”
So while many Traditional Catholics may find some reason for optimism in the announcement that Newman will be named a Doctor of the Church, we should bear in mind that our Augustinian pope is surrounded by clerics (like Tucho) who are cut from the same heretical cloth as Congar and Francis. May St. John Henry Newman intercede for Leo XIV, and all of us, so that the unadulterated Catholic Faith may return to Rome. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
John Henry Newman Ping
I don’t really think they do.
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