Cardinal
Newman: Trojan Horse in the Church
by
Rev. Paul M. Kimball (Author)
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The conversion of Cardinal
Newman, an educated, renown Anglican,
gave respectability to converting to Catholicism
in England. Recusant Catholics had been
treated as social outcasts and persecuted
when the English monarchy outlawed the
practice of the true faith. Hence the
Catholic hierarchy rejoiced when Cardinal
Newman broke the ice for many Anglicans
to enter the Church and eloquently defended
the Catholic faith. Yet, heroes are still
human, and converts to the Church are
practically unable to completely discard
their non-Catholic mindset simply by their
baptism. All this made the Catholic hierarchy
both in Rome and in England both praise
and fear this newly adopted son. How could
his Protestant mindset be criticized and
he still be used as a showpiece of Catholic
respectability? Cardinal Newman’s
theory of the development of doctrine,
along with his other ideas that were controversial
during his time, are herein analyzed by
renown theologians and an equally literary
Catholic, Orestes Brownson. On the other
hand Newman’s famous biographer,
Wilfred Ward, made the Cardinal an untouchable
anti-liberal to traditionally minded Catholics,
yet an avian guard liberal pioneer to
liberal Catholics, including the very
founders of the school of Modernism. Even
if it can be argued that Newman act in
good faith, what is not generally known
is that he formed his own school of thought
within the Church favoring a mutability
of Catholic doctrine, seemingly adopted
and acclaimed by the Second Vatican Council. |