The Postliberal Doctor of the Church 

Earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV announced that Cardinal St. John Henry Newman would become the 38th doctor of the Church. “I will confer the title of doctor of the Church on St. John Henry Newman, who gave a decisive contribution to the renewal of theology and to understanding Christian doctrine in its development,” the Holy Father said after celebrating Mass for the Jubilee of Catechists in St. Peter’s Square.

Newman is one of the most important theologians in the modern world. His intellectual and spiritual writings have provided many faithful Catholics, including this author, with a comprehensive understanding of the beauty of Catholicism. 

Newman’s writings are especially relevant for our secular age. Newman was famous for spending his time writing against the errors that arose from the ascendancy of liberalism. It is providential that the Church is conferring upon Newman the title of doctor at the same time that the world enters a postliberal age. 

Following Newman’s elevation to doctor, the Church should give him a title that is not only fitting to his writings but to the problems of our world. Thus, the Church should confer upon John Henry Newman the title of Doctor Against Liberalism. 

Since the start of his intellectual and spiritual journey, Newman always set himself against the errors of liberalism. Newman indicated that his opposition to liberalism was a factor that unified his whole life. Even as an Anglican, he was determined to combat the rise of liberalism, both in religion and in politics. 

Why did Newman oppose liberalism? Newman fought against liberalism because liberalism made the “mistake of subjecting to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of it.” Essentially, liberalism subjects Divine Revelation to human reason and determines that only things known by pure reason can be true. 

Newman continued, in his “Biglietto Speech,” to speak against the “anti-dogmatic nature” of liberalism.

Newman stated, 

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily…It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. 

Just as liberalism in politics denies truth in morals, liberalism in religion denies the existence of one true religion. 

Newman continued to stress how liberalism was the cause of the “great apostasia” that was sweeping through Europe at that time. He wrote, 

Even in countries separated from the Church, as in my own, the dictum was in force, when I was young, that: “Christianity was the law of the land.” Now, everywhere that goodly framework of society, which is the creation of Christianity, is throwing off Christianity. 

Liberalism’s denial of the Supreme Good of Christianity had infected Europe, starting from the Enlightenment, increasing in Newman’s day, and remaining present in our day. Dr. Patrick Deneen wrote that liberalism creates an “anticulture” where the only thing that man has in common with his fellow man is the fact that no one has anything in common. The result has been moral and social confusion that plagues modern man. 

Newman lamented that the spread of liberalism was an infestation that “may be the ruin of many souls.” The men of Newman’s time had rejected the universality of the teaching authority of Christianity in favor of following the dictates of their personal beliefs. He wrote that “instead of the Church’s authority and teaching, [modern man] would substitute first of all a universal and a thoroughly secular education, calculated to bring home to every individual that to be orderly, industrious, and sober, is his personal interest.” The liberal man decides for himself his own existence, his own morality, and becomes his own cathedral. 

Liberalism, both politically and religiously, is based on numerous errors about the human person. However, Newman had a felix culpa or “happy fault” belief of liberalism because, as Professor Adrian Vermeule wrote, it “sees either the Fall itself, or particular heresies and crimes in history, as means by which grace more abounds, such that Providence actually turns error into blessings that could not have come about absent the error.” 

For instance, one of liberalism’s errors was the elevation of the private judgment of the individual over the objective truths of morality. However, Newman says the Church’s response to the belief is “necessary for the very life of religion.” Newman wrote in the Apologia that:

Every exercise of Infallibility is brought out into act by an intense and varied operation of the Reason, from within and without, and provokes again, when it has done its work, a re-action of Reason against it; and, as in a civil polity the State exists and endures by means of the rivalry and collision, the encroachments and defeats of its constituent parts, so in like manner Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism, but [it] presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide.

Thus, Newman believed that it is a manner of Providence that the Church confronts these errors so that it can bring more souls into communion with her. As Newman put it eloquently, “our enemy is turned into a friend…he does just so much as is beneficial, and is then removed.”

Newman’s fight against liberalism is perhaps one of the excellent marks of his writing. His steadfast opposition to liberalism provides a defense against the errors that arise from this ideology. His elevation to Doctor of the Church is a sure sign of Providence guiding the Church.

As the world enters its postliberal age, the Church needs to reemerge as the leader of Western Civilization. The risk that the world reverts to the errors of liberalism or even a secular postliberalism is too significant a gamble. Perhaps declaring Newman the Doctor Against Liberalism would not only help the secular world but also assist the Church in eradicating the erroneous liberal beliefs she has adopted over the decades. 

Our postliberal age needs strong guidance. The Church needs to be the institution to shepherd the faithful. No better support can come than that from our postliberal doctor, St. John Henry Newman.