On July 31, the Vatican announced that Pope Leo XIII will declare St. John Henry Newman, the 19th-century English Catholic convert priest, theologian, philosopher, educational theorist, and writer, a “Doctor of the Church.” Only 37 such “doctors” have been recognized over two millennia. This declaration will put Newman in the elite company of such heavenly dignitaries as Anselm, Athanasius, Augustine, Basil the Great, the Venerable Bede, Catherine of Siena, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Hildegard of Bingen, Irenaeus of Lyons, John Chrysostom, and Thomas Aquinas.
Though Newman was only beatified (declared “Blessed”) in 2010 and canonized as St. John Henry in 2019, the idea that he would one day be declared both saint and doctor was held in high places long before. Jean Guitton, a French theologian and friend of Pope Pius XII, recounted that, in 1957, the increasingly frail pontiff whispered into his ear, “Console yourself: Newman will one day be a Doctor of the Church.” Pius’s prophecy is now coming true.
What does it mean to be a “Doctor” of the Church? The title—from the Latin docere, “to teach”—indicates that the saint is not just holy but also has excelled at shining light on some aspect or aspects of the Christian faith. Many doctors have titles indicating their specific contributions. Augustine is the Doctor of Grace, for obvious reasons. Francis de Sales is called the Doctor of Charity for his teachings on divine love. The mystic St. Teresa of Avila is Doctor of Prayer.
What title should Newman receive? His life and work supply an overabundance of lessons and possible titles. As we will see, many of the lessons have instructed both Catholics and non-Catholics.
A first option is Doctor of Faith and Reason. In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, Pope St. John Paul II hailed Newman among the modern thinkers who have demonstrated “the same fruitful relationship between philosophy and the word of God” as such greats as Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. Because of Newman’s attention to human reasoning as it actually works, the philosopher Edward Sillem saw him as introducing a more accurate approach to human persons as thinkers. He wrote that Newman “stands at the threshold of the new age as a Christian Socrates, the pioneer of a new philosophy of the individual person and personalist life.”
He might also be named the Doctor of Education. Upon declaring Newman “Blessed” in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI singled out Newman’s educational work: “Firmly opposed to any reductive or utilitarian approach, he sought to achieve an educational environment in which intellectual training, moral discipline and religious commitment would come together.”
Alternately, he might be the Doctor of Preaching. In his own time, contemporaries both Catholic and Protestant recognized his ability to speak powerfully of the things of God. A younger contemporary, Richard Church, said Newman’s sermons “made men think of the things which the preacher spoke of, and not of the sermon or the preacher.” T.S. Eliot thought Newman, whose motto as a Catholic cardinal was cor ad cor loquitur, “heart speaks to heart,” one of the two greatest (with Lancelot Andrewes) preachers in the English language.
Then again, he could be the Doctor of Doctrinal Development. His contribution to Christian doctrine in this sphere is recognized beyond the Catholic Church. Though many Christians have disagreed with Newman’s assessment of the legitimacy of certain developments concerning Mary or the papacy, for instance, he has won admirers even among those disagreeing. Reformed theologian Carl Trueman wrote a decade ago how Newman brought him to understand “the institutional Church as the context and primary agent” in the historic debates about Christ’s nature. He called Newman a “lifelong companion and constant friend” who “posed to me the questions to which all Christians must give an answer.” Similarly, historian of doctrine Jaroslav Pelikan, a Lutheran who became Eastern Orthodox, placed Newman at the heart of the fifth volume of his classic history of Christian doctrine precisely for Newman’s ability to navigate modernity. Pelikan recognized Newman’s genius for reconciling how the different aspects of eternal truth are grasped and understood in Christian history.
All the titles proposed are plausible—and many more. Perhaps the best title is Doctor of Conscience. In an age that so disregards the human ability to know God and the laws guiding how humans are to think and act in order to flourish, Newman speaks clearly. Throughout his preaching and writing, Newman strove to help others recognize what he called “the aboriginal vicar of Christ.”
In contrast to modern notions of a mere “moral sense” or a faculty of arranging personal values, Newman asserted that in conscience we receive moral truth from outside ourselves—from God, to be precise. In A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875), Newman described “counterfeit” notions of conscience circulating for at least a century. These counterfeits included conscience as “utility,” “expedience,” “the happiness of the greatest number,” “State convenience,” “the pulchrum” (meaning what is merely beautiful), “long-sighted selfishness,” and “a desire to be consistent with oneself.”
Instead, Newman defended what he took to be not merely the Catholic but the ecumenical understanding of conscience as “a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives.” What does conscience tell us? Newman’s answer is that we hear the “Divine Law,” which is “the rule of ethical truth, the standard of right and wrong, a sovereign, irreversible, absolute authority in the presence of men and Angels.” And conscience operates in the midst of our lives, bidding us to do or not do specific actions. Indeed, Newman argues, this cannot simply mean self-will or what our age might call “following your bliss.” Instead, “conscience has rights because it has duties.”
Newman’s view is deeply biblical, echoing Romans 2, where St. Paul writes of the Gentiles that “what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness.” Nobody can claim complete ignorance of the moral rules of the universe or that God has not made them known to some degree. This aspect of Newman’s teaching captivated Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, growing up in Nazi Germany. One could not plead ignorance as an excuse for acting on orders that were known to be evil.
Newman was no fool. He understood that people do not always properly interpret what their consciences are telling them even when sincerely trying to know what is right. Yet, Newman says, “though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience.” If we have tried to the best of our abilities to ensure that what we took to be conscience was not self-will, expedience, or one of the other counterfeits, then even if our conscience was mistaken in a particular instance, it is better that we followed it in the moment. Put differently, we always have an obligation to do what we understand to be morally right.
Even in the case of papal commands, Newman understood that conscience might forbid a Catholic from obeying non-infallible orders, though he noted one must be sure that it is conscience and not “that miserable counterfeit which, as I have said above, now goes by the name.” Indeed, such a decision “must follow upon serious thought, prayer, and all available means of arriving at a right judgment on the matter in question.”
Newman’s balanced understanding of conscience and ecclesial authority is a great part of his ecumenical appeal. He does not stint on either but wishes them to be given their full breadth. For Newman, conscience is at the basis of true religion. If one sincerely believes one’s conscience dictates that one act or not act, believe or not believe, obedience is mandatory. Because God knows the heart, sincere but mistaken acts of obedience to the light of conscience are rewarded with more and clearer light. The person who persistently follows conscience will be led to put away mistaken views of the truth and one’s duty and hold on to the correct ones. For Newman, that is a building process. Obedience to the natural law in conscience prepares us to receive revelation with greater and greater understanding.
In his religious autobiography, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman wrote that the central Christian truths he believed God had revealed to his conscience as an Anglican Christian were the same truths he held after his 1845 reception into the Catholic fold: “What I held in 1816, I held in 1833, and I hold in 1864. Please God, I shall hold it to the end.”
“Doctor” does mean “teacher,” but the one who brings truth also brings healing. Doctor Newman’s teaching restores to us the ability to hear Christ who speaks to us from the beginning in conscience.
