Conscience, Consensus, and the Development of Doctrine

by John Henry Newman

"Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink -- to the Pope, if you please -- still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards."
--John Henry Cardinal Newman

In the works collected here, including An Essay on the Development of Christian doctrine, A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, and On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine , John Henry Cardinal Newman, the great nineteenth-century English theologian, debunks a few Catholic

Myth #1: The teaching of the Catholic Church on faith and morals has never changed and never will change. Not so, this brilliant scholar says. For just as each era has new ways of understanding, so, too, must the Catholic Church always change in its understanding of faith and morals.

Myth #2: Catholics have to do whatever the Pope says. To the contrary, according to Newman's famous quip on after-dinner toasts, the ultimate obligation of Catholics is to conscience, not the Pope.

Myth #3: It's the bishops who teach, the laity who follows. Newman turns this notion upside The laity, he says, are the source and final seal of the church's teaching; thus the bishops must listen to them.

Never before collected in one volume, these classic works reveal Newman at his eloquent best as he speaks to the religious crises of our time.

480 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1992

About the author

Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman was an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s.
Originally an evangelical Oxford University academic and priest in the Church of England, Newman then became drawn to the high-church tradition of Anglicanism. He became known as a leader of, and an able polemicist for, the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to return to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation. In this the movement had some success. However, in 1845 Newman, joined by some but not all of his followers, left the Church of England and his teaching post at Oxford University and was received into the Catholic Church. He was quickly ordained as a priest and continued as an influential religious leader, based in Birmingham. In 1879, he was created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in recognition of his services to the cause of the Catholic Church in England. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland, which evolved into University College Dublin, today the largest university in Ireland.

Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during his visit to the United Kingdom. He was then canonised by Pope Francis on 13 October 2019.

Newman was also a literary figure of note: his major writings including the Tracts for the Times (1833–1841), his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865–66), the Grammar of Assent (1870), and the poem The Dream of Gerontius (1865),[6] which was set to music in 1900 by Edward Elgar. He wrote the popular hymns "Lead, Kindly Light" and "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" (taken from Gerontius).

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually only read one of the three essays included in this book (Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine). Considering the one I read makes up the majority of it though, I am marking it as read.
This is dense material and you really have to pay attention and interact with the text while you read but this is still a great commentary on how the doctrine of the church develops and how we can differentiate between development and corruption.