Two Cardinals: Conflict and Controversy in the Victorian Catholic Church

Abstract

Two Cardinals:Conflict and Controversy in the Victorian Catholic Church The Thomas I. Gasson, S.J. Lecture, Boston College, Fall 2018 I want to assure you, first of all, that I appreciate the irony of my position. I will be speaking to you a fair amount today about John Henry Newman. I am not a Newman expert. My only real claim to be so is a certain familiarity with Newman's contemporary and nemesis, the other great Victorian convert cardinal, Henry Edward Manning, who was Archbishop of Westminster and head of the English Roman Catholic Church from 1865–1892, about whom I am currently writing a book. I like to think that John Henry would appreciate the irony; I'm not so sure about Henry Edward. Irony was not his métier. The irony of my position is more, even, than you would be likely to know. If there was any individual or group whom Manning disliked as much, if not more than, Newman, it was the religious order to which I have the honor of belonging. To have his side of the conflict with Newman presented by a Jesuit is an irony that even old Manning might have appreciated. I also appreciate the delicacy of my position. Most of you, I imagine, are fairly well acquainted with Newman's life. And I suppose that you have conceived an admiration for him. Well, I will be telling you about the perception of Newman by someone who did not admire him, who believed that Newman's influence on English Catholicism was almost wholly detrimental. Now there was a time in the Church's history when we would have tried to paper over the disagreement between two great contemporary churchmen. We would have talked about personality differences, or differences in perspective: anything to avoid the conclusion that two important Church leaders had differed [End Page 99] over substantive issues. There were, indeed, significant differences between the personalities of Newman and Manning that can explain, as we shall see, some of the conflict between them and the disparity in the offices they occupied within the Church in England. One was arguably the most important Catholic theologian and the greatest writer of English prose in the nineteenth century, the other an activist archbishop and a political actor of consummate skill. This can account, again, for some of their different perceptions of the Church's needs and wants. I shall presume, however, that we are now grownup enough as Catholics to face the possibility of real, substantive disagreement between Church leaders about authority in the Church and the mission of the Church in the world. God knows, we should be used enough to such disagreement by now! John Henry Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, declared a "blessed," and will be made a saint. The same is unlikely to happen to Henry Edward Manning. It would be a mistake, however, to allow the beauty and attractiveness of Newman's personality or the uncongeniality of Manning's, to stand in the way of an effort to understand and evaluate their disagreements over the direction of the Church in their day. Saints are not always the best leaders, and powerful leaders who manifest little tolerance for opposition are not always wrong. Similarly, Newman is popularly thought to have been vindicated by the Second Vatican Council, whose father he is often acclaimed to be. Manning's paternity with regard to Vatican I—where he earned from his enemies the sobriquet "il diablo del concilio"—earns him little admiration today: you can consult John O'Malley's book on Vatican I for an assessment of that role.1 And yet, the concerns and debates in the Church of our day are not, perhaps, the best initial guides to understanding what was at issue between Newman and Manning almost 150 years ago. There is an influential book in the field of historiography, which begins with the line, "The Past is a Foreign Country,"2 and as a sometime-history professor, I'm beginning to think the past becomes alien after only about a generation. After 148 years since Vatican I, to understand that Council, we need...