A Question of Authority

Abstract

Newman and Manning failed signally to achieve a relation of mutual peace and concord during life. But the re-discovery, in recent scholarship, of the sharpness and fertility of Manning's theological mind, is bringing about, if not a posthumous pax anglica between them, then at any rate a greater parity of intellectual esteem on the part of modern students. The collection of essays By Whose Authority? Newman, Manning and the Magisterium (1996), edited by the distinguished editor of Recusant History, and largely the fruit of symposia of 1993^ at the ‘International Institute for the Advancement of Newman Research’ at the University of Freiburg, is a major contribution to this process. As its title suggests, its common thread is ecclesiology, and notably the issue of Christian authority so central to any doctrine of the Church, since such doctrine cannot evade the question of where the exousia (‘powerful authority’) given by Christ to the apostles is now to be found — if anywhere — on earth.