NEWMAN,

THE COUNCILS,
AND VATICAN II
z Ian Ker z

“[T]he continuing identity of an idea is not conserved

by remaining static . . . although it has to undergo
change, this is not for the sake of change itself . . .
—but in order for the idea to remain the same. It is this
kind of change which Newman terms development.”

In March 1831 Newman was invited to contribute a history of

Councils to a new library of theological works. That summer he
began work on the project; but by August he had decided that the
Eastern Councils would need a volume to themselves. He told one
of the editors of the library that what was needed was “a connected
history of the Councils . . . not taking them as isolated, but
introducing so much of Church History as will illustrate and
account for them.”1
The comment is significant for two reasons. First, it makes
the point that Newman was a historical theologian who was
convinced that theology should not be separated from history.
Thus: “What light would be thrown on the Nicene Confession
merely by explaining it article by article? To understand it, it must
be prefaced by a sketch of the rise of the Arian heresy . . . .” This

1
The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, eds., Charles Stephen Dessian et
al. (London: Nelson, 1961–72; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), ii. 352–3.
Hereafter cited as LD.

Communio 28 (Winter 2001). © 2001 by Communio: International Catholic Review

 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 709

does not mean, of course, that Newman identified the theologian with
the so-called historical theologian: he was not envisaging always
“combining history and doctrinal discussion,” and in this case he was
thinking of reserving detailed discussion of specific theological topics
for notes in an appendix to the work.2
Secondly, the remark anticipates the way in which Newman
was to become acutely aware of the interdependence of Councils
which were not isolated from each other but could be properly
understood only in relation to each other. We shall see how Newman
reacted to Vatican I, immediately prophesying not that the definition
of papal infallibility would make further Councils redundant but that
there would have to be another Council to complete and moderate
the First Vatican Council.
At this stage Newman thought that he could complete the
projected history by adding a further volume on Western
Councils—although the Council of Trent would need a separate
volume on its own. Not only was the work turning out rather
differently from what he had originally conceived, but he had realized
that just as it is impossible to isolate theology from history so too one
cannot study church history in separation from theology. It was not
possible to write a history of Councils as though it were purely a
matter of historical research. Like any historian, a church historian will
approach his or her subject from a particular theological point of view.
In Newman’s case, he was quite honest about the fact that he would
be writing his history in the context of his own attitude to the
theological liberalism of his time: he would inevitably be “resisting the
innovations of the day, and attempting to defend the work of men
indefinitely above me [the Primitive Fathers] which is now assailed.”3
In the end, Newman’s first published book, which was
completed at the end of July 1832, turned out to be on a much
narrower topic than his own revised plan envisaged. Far from being
a history of the Eastern Councils, it was not even a history of the
Council of Nicaea, which he later admitted only “occupied at most
twenty pages.”4 In fact, it was really a history of the Arian heresy
which gave rise to the Council, which of course could not be

2
LD, ii. 352–3.
3
LD, iii. 43.
4
Apologia pro Vita Sua., ed. Martin J. Svaglic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 35.
Hereafter cited as Apo.
710 Ian Ker

understood without an understanding of Arianism. However, not only

was it too specialized for the intended theological library, but one of
the two editors objected that Newman’s view of tradition seemed to
be more Roman Catholic than Protestant.
The Council which most concerned Newman during his
Anglican period, and particularly the Oxford Movement, of course,
was the Council of Trent. When he and Richard Hurrell Froude
were in Rome in 1833, they called on Nicholas Wiseman, then
Rector of the English College. According to Newman’s diary for
6 April, they “had long talk with him”;5 it was their second visit.
What they heard was not encouraging: to their dismay, they
discovered that there was no prospect of reunion between Rome
and Canterbury without unconditional acceptance of Trent. When,
three years later, Newman delivered in Oxford his Lectures on the
Prophetical Office of the Church viewed relatively to Romanism and
Popular Protestantism, published in 1837, he made clear what the
ecclesiological Via Media implied in the title involved for the
Tractarian reception of Trent. The fundamental distinction he
makes between two kinds of Tradition is the most significant part
of the book as it insists on the absolute authority of Scripture (as
against the Romanists), while at the same time allowing for the
importance of Tradition (as against Protestants). He divides
Tradition into “Episcopal Tradition,” which is derived from the
Apostles, and “Prophetical Tradition,” which consists of the
interpretation of Revelation and which is a “body of Truth,
pervading the Church like an atmosphere,” and “existing primarily
in the bosom of the Church itself, and recorded in such a measure
as Providence has determined in the writings of eminent men.” It
is this latter Prophetical Tradition which Newman maintains may
be “corrupted in its details,” so that the explicit doctrines which
develop out of it “are entitled to very different degrees of credit.”
So far, then, as Councils are concerned,

. . . some Councils speak far more authoritatively than

others, though all which appeal to Tradition may be
presumed to have some element of truth in them. And this
view, I would take even of the decrees of Trent. They claim

5
LD, iii. 276.
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 711

indeed to be Apostolic; and I would grant so much, that they

are the ruins and perversions of Primitive Tradition.6

At this stage, then, Newman sees the decrees of Trent as deeply

flawed, although containing elements of the true Apostolic or
“Episcopal Tradition.”
By 1841 Newman has shifted his position. In Tract 90
Newman attempts to rebut the most obvious objection to the
whole Tractarian theory of the Via Media: namely, the existence of
the very Protestant-sounding 39 Articles to which members of the
Church of England had to subscribe. In his effort to give them a
Catholic interpretation, he had to confront Article xxi, which laid
down that General Councils “may err, and sometimes have erred,
in things pertaining to God.” According to the Article, only those
doctrines which “are taken out of Holy Scripture” are
authoritative. But according to Newman, while it is true that
Councils may err, this is not the case when “it is promised, as a
matter of express supernatural privilege, that they shall not err.”
And this promise “does exist, in cases when general councils are .
. . gathered in the Name of Christ, according to our Lord’s promise.”
Nothing is said about Trent, but, as Newman knew perfectly well,
the Church of Rome certainly regarded it as just such a Council,
that is, a “Catholic” or “Ecumenical” or “general” Council. What
Newman is at pains to emphasize in Tract 90 is that the Thirty-
Nine Articles can hardly be said to be aimed at Trent since that
Council had not yet taken place when they were drawn up; rather,
they are directed against “the received doctrine of that day, and
unhappily of this day too, or the doctrine of the Roman Catholic
schools.” Indeed, Newman is anxious to show that, if anything, the
Articles gain “a witness and concurrence from the Council of
Trent,” which was also concerned to condemn false teachings.7
Anyone reading Tract 90 can see that Newman by now has
reached the position of recognizing Trent as an authentic General
Council. But to understand how he has reached this position, we
need to go back two years to the summer of 1839 when “for the
first time a doubt came upon” him “of the tenableness of

6
Via Media, i. 250–2. Hereafter cited as VM. All references to Newman’s works,
except where otherwise stated, are to the standard uniform Longmans edition.
7
VM, ii. 291–2, 295–6, 308.
712 Ian Ker

Anglicanism.”8 Far from being concerned with Tractarian

controversies, he wanted to spend the long vacation on purely
academic research: he intended returning to his “own line of
reading—the early controversies of the Church.”9 This time it was
not the fourth century and the Arian problem but the fifth century
and the Monophysite heresy. His reading was intended to be
preparatory to various scholarly editing projects. But in the course
of his studies, he was struck by two “very remarkable” features of
the Council of Chalcedon—“the great power of the Pope (as great
as he claims now almost), and the marvellous interference of the
civil power, as great almost as in our kings.”10 It was obvious that
the first aspect argued for Roman Catholicism, whereas the second
could provide justification for the erastian nature of Anglicanism.
However, as he read on, by the end of August he had become
“seriously alarmed.” He explains in the Apologia what had so
startled him:

My stronghold was Antiquity; now here, in the middle of

the fifth century, I found, as it seemed to me, Christendom
of the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries reflected. I saw
my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite. The
Church of the Via Media was in the position of the Oriental
communion, Rome was, where she now is; and the
Protestants were the Eutychians.11

In other words, the orthodox Christian faith was being upheld by

the Pope, whereas the heretics divided into an extreme and a more
moderate party. The theological picture of Christendom in the
fifth century presented to Newman a very disquieting analogy to
that of the nineteenth century, with Rome on the one side, and
Canterbury and Geneva respectively on the other.12

8
Apo., 108.
9
LD, vii. 110.
10
LD, vii. 105.
11
Apo., 108.
12
Stephen Thomas, Newman and Heresy: The Anglican Years (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 205, claims that Newman’s account here
should be viewed in the light of the “rhetorical purpose” of the Apologia—“But
what particularly provokes suspicion is that Newman does not support this splendid
piece of self-dramatization by any corroboration of letters or memoranda of the
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 713

Newman’s first book was meant to be on the early Councils

of the Church, even though in fact it confined itself to the heresy that
necessitated the Council of Nicaea. The first serious threat to his
Anglicanism came from the (then) next but one Council of the
Church. As a Roman Catholic theologian, he ended his life as a
theologian very largely preoccupied with the First Vatican Council.
That event led him to reflect not only on that Council but more
generally on Councils in general. Much, but not all of this theology
of Councils, is to be found in his private letters of the time.
On 26 June 1867 Pope Pius IX announced that a General
Council was to be convened. The prospect of the definition of papal
infallibility particularly concerned Newman, and not only because of
the specific doctrine but because all dogmatic definitions by Councils
were apt to arouse controversy in the Church. Even in the case of the
early Councils which had been necessary because of heresy there had
been a great deal of confusion and dissension in the wake of their
decisions. In the case of papal infallibility there were none of those
“heretical questionings” which, Newman had pointed out in the
Apologia, “have been transmuted by the living power of the Church
into salutary truths.”13 Even at this early stage of the proceedings
Newman was well aware that Councils can have effects which are not
intended. For by defining the infallibility of the pope the Council
would not merely be saying something about the pope; the definition
would inevitably have wider repercussions on the Church. Apart from
the enormous controversy it would generate, it would necessarily lead
“to an alteration of the elementary constitution of the Church” in so far
as it would encourage popes to act independently of the bishops.14
This is not the place to consider Newman’s particular objections to a
definition by the Council. But his objection to its opportuneness does
have a more general significance. His caution about precipitate

time—something he always does in the Apologia when he can . . . .” However, this

ignores the fact that Newman had every reason at the time to keep quiet aboust
this devastating bombshell for fear of unsettling his Tractarian followers. Yet he was
not totally circumspect, writing on 22 September 1839 to his then closest friend
Frederic Rogers: . . . the whole history of the Monophysites has been a sort of
alterative . . . .” (LD, vii. 154). The OED defines this obscure word as a medicine
which produces alteration in the processes of nutrition.
13
Apo., 237.
14
LD xxiv. 377.
714 Ian Ker

changes or developments was aimed at the Ultramontanes—“We do

not move at railroad pace in theological matters, even in the 19th
century”—but has a wider relevance for own times. He insisted that
the Church “moves as a whole,” as a communion rather than an
ideology, has “no right rudely to wipe out the history of centuries . .
. .” It was particularly serious if “a grave dogmatic question was being
treated merely as a move in ecclesiastical politics.”15 In the
contemporary Church it has sometimes seemed that those pressing for
the ordination of women, for instance, have been more concerned
with feminism than doctrine.
Although Newman was scandalized by the intrigues of the
Ultramontanes, he could not agree with the German church
historian Dollinger that their behavior in any way affected the
validity of the Council. Such political maneuvering was
unfortunately a feature of Councils. The fact was that General
Councils had “ever been times of great trial” and “the conduct of
individuals who composed them was no measure of their result.”16
History showed that Councils had “generally two characteristics—a
great deal of violence and intrigue on the part of the actors in
them, and a great resistance to their definitions on the part of
portions of Christendom.”17
When the definition was finally passed, Newman
immediately began to adumbrate a theology of reception. A large
minority of bishops had absented themselves in protest from the
final vote, and in the absence of a “moral” unanimity there was
some doubt about its validity. But if there was no persistent, united
opposition on their part to the definition, and, most important of
all, “if the definition is eventually received by the whole body of
the faithful, . . . then too it will claim our assent by the force of the
great dictum, ‘Securus judicat orbis terrarum.’”18 This aphorism of St
Augustine, which had made such a deep impression on Newman
in the summer of 1839, shortly after the first blow, once again rang
insistently in his ears. “The universal Church is in its judgments

15
LD, xxv. 93, 95.
16
LD, xxv. 158.
17
LD, xxvi. 281.
18
LD, xxv. 165.
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 715

secure of truth” was Newman’s own free translation.”19 This meant

that “the general acceptance, judgment of Christendom” was not
only “the broad principle, by which all acts of the rulers of the
Church are ratified,” but also “the ultimate guarantee of revealed
truth.”20
As soon as it became clear that the definition was the mind
of the Church, Newman began to reflect, pragmatically as ever, on
what was now a fait accompli. Before he had had no illusions about
the human side of Councils; now he was ready to admit that “a
General Council may be hampered and hindered by the action of
infidel governments upon a weak or time-serving episcopate.” The
argument that papal authority required strengthening was not lost
on Newman, who was by now prepared to admit:

It is . . . better that the individual command of Christ to

Peter to teach the nations, and to guard the Christian
structure of society, should be committed to his undoubted
successor. By this means there will be no more of those
misunderstandings out of which Jansenism and Gallicanism
have arisen, and which in these latter days have begotten
here in England the so-called Branch Theory . . . .21

Although, however, the actual wording of the definition,

which was weaker than the Ultramontanes had wanted, was quite
unexceptionable and even desirable in theory, still the reality was
that, “considered in its effects both upon the Pope’s mind and that
of his people, and in the power of which it puts him in practical
possession, it is nothing else than shooting Niagara.” The
proceedings at the Council were certainly scandalous but that was
no excuse for Dollinger and others to exaggerate what had actually
been defined. The important thing, Newman urged in his private
correspondence, was patience: “Remedies spring up naturally in
the Church, as in nature, if we wait for them.” The definition
could not simply be considered by itself; the context, or rather lack
of context, was very important, for the “definition was taken out
of its order—it would have come to us very differently, if those
preliminaries about the Church’s power had first been passed,

19
Essays Critical and Historical, ii. 101.
20
LD, xxv. 165, 172.
21
LD, xxv. 259.
716 Ian Ker

which . . . were intended.”22 If the Council, which had been cut

short prematurely by political events and suspended indefinitely by
Pius IX, did reassemble, it would hopefully “occupy itself in other
points” which would “have the effect of qualifying and guarding
the dogma.”23 If this was not to be, then the Council would be
completed and modified by another Council, as had happened
before in the history of the Church. It was characteristic that
Newman turned for guidance to the history of the early Church:

Another consideration has struck me forcibly, and that is,

that, looking at early history, it would seem as if the Church
moved on to the perfect truth by various successive
declarations, alternately in contrary directions, and thus
perfecting, completing, supplying each other. Let us have a
little faith in her, I say. Pius is not the last of the Popes—the
fourth Council modified the third, the fifth the fourth. . . .
The late definition does not so much need to be undone, as
to be completed. It needs safeguards to the Pope’s possible
acts—explanations as to the matter and extent of his power.
I know that a violent reckless party, had it its will, would at
this moment define that the Pope’s powers need no
safeguards, no explanations—but there is a limit to the
triumph of the tyrannical—Let us be patient, let us have
faith, and a new Pope, and a re-assembled Council may trim
the boat.24

Considering that Newman had consoled himself with the

thought that there were advantages in popes doing what Councils
had normally done in the past, and considering that after Vatican
I it was widely believed that there would be no need of future
Councils, this letter is a remarkable prophecy of Vatican II. And,
of course what Newman says about the way in which the Church
moves “alternately in contrary directions” has application not only
to Vatican II, which was hardly a linear process of movement from
Vatican I, whatever the extreme Ultramontanes of the time may
have assumed or hoped about the eventual reinforcing and
strengthening of the definition. It may also apply to Vatican II and
subsequent developments. Post-Vatican II progressives may find

22
LD, xxv. 262.
23
LD, xxv. 278.
24
LD, xxv. 310.
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 717

that their scenario for the future is as unrealistic as any

Ultramontane hopes that may have been entertained for the
development of the definition of papal infallibility.
The letter quoted above represents the view that Newman
was forming, above all on the basis of his knowledge of the
Church’s early Councils. He continued to insist that the first
defined Catholic dogmas “were not struck off all at once but
piecemeal—one Council did one thing, another a second—and so
the whole dogma was built up.” It was precisely because “the first
portion of it looked extreme” that controversies arose which led to
subsequent Councils which “explained and completed what was first
done.”25 From our vantage point, it is an exact prediction of the
Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the Church, Lumen
Gentium, where the papal primacy is moderated by its being placed
within the context of the apostolic college of bishops: the pope is
the head, but still a member, of the college and not exalted above
it.
What Newman has to say about the inevitable confusion
Vatican I had caused applies even more to the effect of Vatican II
on the internal life of the Church. True, no dogmatic definitions
of the magnitude of papal infallibility were passed, but the actual
consequences of the second reforming Council were much more
disruptive on a large scale. After all, in a real sense Vatican II
brought the era of the Tridentine Church to a close, whereas
Vatican I did no such thing. Certainly a “new” dogma had serious
theological repercussions: “intellectual scrutiny” was required of
‘the Vatican definitions, and their sense will have to be wrought
out”—but, Newman stipulates, “in friendly controversy—words
which have an obvious application in the era we live in. Catholic
theology had absorbed Trent; it now had another Council to
digest. Theologians had had three hundred years to explain and
interpret Trent—but “now we are new born children, the birth of
the Vatican Council . . . . We do not know what exactly we
hold—what we may grant, what we must maintain.”26 These words
apply at least as much to the period immediately after Vatican II,
and indeed even later. The fact was, Newman pointed out, that
Councils “generally acted as a lever, displacing and disordering

25
LD, xxv. 330.
26
LD, xxvi. 59–60.
718 Ian Ker

portions of the existing theological system,” often being followed

by acrimonious controversies within the Church.27
It is, again, paradoxical that the more Newman saw reason
to dread Councils, the more the papacy appealed to him. Certainly,
if the proceedings of Councils “are to be the measure of their
authority, they are, with few exceptions, a dreary, unlovely
phenomenon in the Church.” It is striking how the more
negatively Newman felt about Councils, the more positive he was
towards the Petrine office: “The more one examines the Councils,
the less satisfactory they are—[but] the less satisfactory they, the
more majestic and trust-winning, and the more imperatively
necessary, is the action of the Holy See.”28
Turning now to the question of the reception, in the sense
of the interpretation, of Councils, Newman had already pointed
out, before the definition of papal infallibility, in a private letter of
March 1870, that even if the Council did decide that the
infallibility of the pope should be defined, that would still not rule
out the necessity of interpretation of his definitions. The same was
true of a Council’s definitions, which—just as “lawyers explain acts
of Parliament”—had to be explained by theologians. Obvious as
the fact might be, there was a serious conclusion that Newman
does not hesitate to draw from it: “Hence, I have never been able
to see myself that the ultimate decision rests with any but the
general Catholic intelligence.” It was after all implied by
Newman’s beloved maxim: “Securus judicat orbis terrarum.”29 He
certainly did not mean that definitions were not authentic until
“received” by the whole Church; only that the validity of
definitions had to be recognized by the Church—if, for example,
the pope went insane no solemn teaching by him could be
accepted. Eventually the definition of papal infallibility would look
rather different than had first appeared to people at the time. For
“the voice of the Schola Theologorum, of the whole Church
diffusive” would “in time make itself heard,” and “Catholic
instincts and ideas” would in the end “assimilate and harmonize”

27
LD, xxvi. 76.
28
LD, xxvi. 120.
29
LD, xxviii. 172.
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 719

it into the wider context of Catholic beliefs.30 As time went on,

too, theologians would “settle the force of the wording of the
dogma, just as the courts of law solve the meaning and bearing of
Acts of Parliament.”31 While it was hardly more than common
sense that ultimately the only way in which the solemn teachings
of popes and Councils could be authenticated was by the
acceptance and recognition by the Church that they were indeed
what they purported to be, nevertheless their interpretation
involved necessarily the technicalities of theology: the meaning of
dogmatic propositions was not self-evident, but they were “always
made with the anticipation and condition of this lawyer-like, or
special-pleader-like, action of the intellect upon them.”32 The fact
is, Newman pointed out, all human statements require
interpretation. And in defining doctrine, popes and Councils
enjoyed an “active infallibility,” but more was involved in the
infallibility of the Church than that, since a “passive infallibility”
belonged to the whole body of the Catholic faithful, who had to
determine the force and meaning of these doctrinal teachings,
although naturally the chief responsibility for this lay with the
theologians, whose discussions and investigations assured a clear
distinction between “theological truth” and mere “theological
opinion.” The differences between theologians maintained “liberty
of thought,” while their consensus on points of dogma was “the
safeguard of the infallible decisions of the Church.”33 Infallibility
belonged to the whole Church—again, “Securus judicat orbis
terrarum.”
It is clear all these points apply also to the Second Vatican
Council even though it was not a dogmatic Council like Vatican
I. And they help to show how naive and superficial was the idea
after Vatican II that all that had to be done was for the decrees to
be “applied,” as though the texts spoke for themselves and the
application was a simple straightforward matter. Newman by no
means ruled out the possibility of what he called “a false
interpretation” of the definition of papal infallibility. And,

30
LD, xxv. 71.
31
LD, xxv. 447.
32
LD, xxvi. 35.
33
LD, xxvii. 338.
720 Ian Ker

considering the “creeping infallibility” that followed Vatican I, he

was not so far off the mark. But in that event, he predicted,
“another Leo will be given us for the occasion.” The reference is
to Pope St Leo’s Council of Chalcedon, which, “without of course
touching the definition” of the preceding Council of Ephesus,
“trimmed the balance of doctrine by completing it.”34 Newman’s
prophecy came true with Pope John XXIII.
The dissensions within the Catholic Church since Vatican
II could have been predicted by Newman. As he knew only too
well, one of the “disadvantages of a General Council, is that it
throws individual units through the Church into confusion and sets
them at variance.”35 He was not in the least surprised at the rise of
the Old Catholics and the extremism of the only partially successful
Ultramontane party. Similarly, neither the Lefebvrist schism nor
the ultra-progressivist position in our own time would have caused
Newman much surprise. If one may use crude, political labels, the
“right” won at Vatican I and the “left” at Vatican II, but the
extremists at both failed to achieve all that they wanted. Another
similarity is that in the aftermath of both Councils it suited the
extreme protagonists on both sides, both the partially victorious
and the defeated, to exaggerate what had actually been decided by
the respective Councils. This enabled both Dollinger and Lefebvre
to claim that the Church had done a volte-face and abandoned its
tradition. For Newman to appeal to history in this way against the
Church’s judgment was like using “private judgment” to interpret
“Scripture against the voice of authority;” but if this was
“unlawful,” why should it “be lawful in the interpretation of
history?”36 The Church certainly made use of history as it made use
of Scripture, tradition, and reason, but ultimately what was
important for a Catholic was “faith in the word of the Church.”
To both Dollinger and Lefebvre Newman would only reiterate,
“Securus judicat orbis terrarum.” But at the same time he would have
sympathized with Lefebvre as he did with Dollinger over the
aggressive extremism of the opposite side. Newman criticized
Manning for the extraordinary “rhetoric” he used over the
infallibility issue, especially his pastoral letter of October 1870

34
Difficulties of Anglicans, ii. 312. Hereafter cited as Diff.
35
LD, xxvii. 240.
36
Diff., ii. 312.
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 721

which gave the impression that papal infallibility was unlimited.37

I think he would have been at least as critical of Hans Küng and his
party. Just as the extreme Ultramontanes did their best to
encourage “creeping infallibility,” so contemporary progressivists
constantly appeal to “the spirit of Vatican II,” but with scant regard
for the actual text, let alone for those who happen to disagree with
them as to the nature of what such a “spirit” might be.
It seems to me that Newman’s reflections both at the time
of and in the aftermath of Vatican I—reflections, I may say, which
have received little attention, at least in their fullness—are of great
interest for the contemporary Church as it seeks to interpret the
meaning of Vatican II, as well as its significance for the
development of Catholicism. Enough, I think, has been said to
illustrate how superficial is any kind of understanding which
assumes that the meaning or “spirit” of the Council is patently
obvious, rather than something which will only fully emerge in
time and through the agency of various elements in the
Church—certainly not, for example, simply through episcopal
implementation, as was widely taken for granted in the years
immediately following the Council.
In Newman’s reflections on Councils and their aftermaths,
there are in fact two different kinds of development he is talking
about. The first kind is illuminated by one of his most telling
images. It occurs in the first section of the first chapter of An Essay
on the Development of Christian Doctrine, where Newman is speaking
about the process of development in ideas. Pointing out that a
living idea cannot be isolated “from intercourse with the world
around,” he argues that this contact is actually necessary “if a great
idea is duly to be understood, and much more if it is to be fully
exhibited.” In Newman’s terminology, Christianity is just such an
“idea.” There is an obvious objection to the argument: namely,
that the further anything moves from its origin or source, the more
likely it is to lose its pristine character. Conceding that certainly
there is always the risk of an idea being corrupted by external
forces, Newman nevertheless insists that, while “It is indeed
sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring,” this is
not true of the kind of idea he is talking about.

37
LD, xxvii. 383; xxv. 230.
722 Ian Ker

Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does

not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on
the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when
its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily
rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours
of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is
foreign and temporary . . . .38

It is worth noting that the conclusion to this section

contains perhaps the most quoted of all Newman’s sayings, but
since it is invariably cited out of context it is invariably
misinterpreted. The famous words are: “In a higher world it is
otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is
to have changed often.” Newman would certainly be horrified by
the way in which this sentence is flourished by the kind of
progressivist for whom all change is necessarily desirable. For far
from being intended as a slogan for a progressivist agenda, it is in
reality a deeply conservative point that Newman is making. But this
is far from saying that the words should bring comfort to
reactionary or integralist Catholics. It is a dynamic not a static
Catholicism that Newman has in mind. In terms of his thinking on
the phenomenon of development, an idea like Catholicism has no
alternative but to be dynamic unless it is to become ossified or to
die. But there is another possibility to either living or dying, and
that is to be corrupted. It is here that Newman rejects the
progressivist alternative. For the sentence which precedes the
celebrated aphorism and which is never quoted makes it crystal
clear what kind of changing is intended: “It [that is, an idea]
changes with them [that is, external circumstances] in order to
remain the same.”39 This sentence, which is always ignored when
the concluding sentence that follows it is quoted, is crucial for
understanding the latter. And it sums up with admirable
succinctness Newman’s general theological stance, which is a via
media between conservative and liberal Catholicism in the bad
senses of reactionary and progressivist. On the one hand, the
continuing identity of an idea is not conserved by remaining static;
on the other hand, although it has to undergo change, this is not
for the sake of change itself—if this were the case, then it would be

38
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 39–40. Hereafter cited as Dev.
39
Dev., 40.
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 723

the kind of change which Newman calls a corruption—but in

order for the idea to remain the same. It is this kind of change which
Newman terms development.
Now if Newman is correct in what he says about an idea
such as a philosophy or belief becoming “more equable, and purer,
and stronger” as it develops in the course of time, then this is a
diagnosis which we can apply to Vatican II. The participants in and
observers of that Council no doubt thought they knew very well
what, for better or worse, the Council meant. Both Küng and
Lefebvre had absolutely no doubt in their minds about how the
Council was to be understood, and, paradoxically, like Dollinger
and Manning, were closely in agreement about its meaning. In
retrospect, we can see much better the very limited scope of the
definition of papal infallibility and appreciate the accuracy of
Newman’s interpretation of it. But for both Dollinger and
Manning the definition loomed very large indeed and signified far
more than Catholic theology has since understood it to mean—an
understanding which received the formal endorsement of Vatican
II. In the case of Vatican II, it similarly suited both Küng and
Lefebvre to exaggerate the revolutionary nature of the Council,
even though the so-called revolution caused as much delight to the
former as distress to the latter.
If it is true—and indeed it has become something of a
truism—to call Newman “the Father of Vatican II” because of the
ways in which he anticipated the Council in his own theology,40
then it is not unreasonable to apply the theology of Councils which
he adumbrated at the time of Vatican I, together with his theology
of development, to the question of the reception and interpretation
of Vatican II, as well as to future possible developments. As
Nicholas Lash puts it, while before the Second Vatican Council
Newman was “still an occasionally suspect stranger, an outsider to
the neo-scholastic world” of Catholic theology—we might add
that he was considered much more dangerous in his own

40
See, e.g., Ian T. Ker, “Newman and the Post-conciliar Church,” Newman
Today (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), ed. Stanley L. Jaki, 121–41; Nicholas
Lash, “Tides and Twilight: Newman since Vatican II,” in Newman after a Hundred
Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), eds. Ian Ker and Alan G. Hill, 447–64.
724 Ian Ker

time—after the Council he became “its godfather and our guide

into the strange territory that now lay before us.”41
Taking Newman as our guide, then, we may legitimately
use that passage in the Essay on Development in connection with the
teaching of Vatican II and suggest that those critics, of whom Hans
Küng is the most prominent, who lived through the Council and
deplore the pontificate of John Paul II as a gross betrayal of Vatican
II, may paradoxically be in a less good position to understand the
real significance of the Council than they assume to be the case.
The idea—or “spirit”—of Vatican II will grow “more equable, and
purer, and stronger” if Newman’s analysis is correct, as the
“stream” moves away from “the spring” and “its bed has become
deep, and broad, and full.” Vatican II did not take place in a
historical void; it actually met in a decade of enormous upheaval
and change, a time of optimistic euphoria and a time of great moral
and spiritual devastation. It took place in a period of revolution and
inevitably “savoured” of “the soil” of the 1960s, that “existing state
of things,” to use Newman’s words, out of which it arose.
Assuming that Vatican II was an important Council, a Council
which brought to an end the Tridentine era, then its “vital element
needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary.”
This takes us on to the second kind of development that
Newman speaks of in his mini-theology of Councils. For it is not
only a question of the meaning and significance of an “idea” like
the theology of Vatican II becoming more luminous and focused
as it is seen in retrospect in the developing life of the Church, but
there is also the consideration that Councils open up further
developments because of what they do not say or stress.
By way of a conclusion, I should like to draw attention to
one quite unexpected post-conciliar phenomenon, which is vitally
connected with the new evangelization, but which also exemplifies
both the two kinds of Newmanian developments I have been
talking about. I refer to the rise of the so-called new “ecclesial
movements.” For, on the one hand, these initiatives can be seen as
representing a reaction against certain post-conciliar tendencies,
and thus helping to restore a balance. But, on the other hand, they
also may be viewed as a concrete realization of what I suggest will
ultimately prove to be the most significant text of the Council.

41
Lash, op. cit., 454.
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 725

One might say that, while the papacy emerged victorious

out of Vatican I, at Vatican II the two elements in the Church
which were given a high profile were the bishops and the laity.
Indeed, after the Council many bishops gave the impression that
they and the laity were now the key players in the life of the
Church. Thanks, of course, to the pontificate of John Paul II the
papacy refused to be, as it were, put down. The clergy were less
fortunate, and at least some of the crisis in the priesthood can be
attributed to the de facto marginalization of priests. But who were
these ‘laity’ to whom bishops increasingly turned to put on
committees and commissions as well as to occupy paid jobs in the
diocesan bureaucracy? They certainly didn’t include the aged or
children, who presumably belong to the ranks of the laity. Nor did
they include the uneducated. In general, the new class of “laity”
that emerged in the wake of Vatican II were articulate, middle-
class Catholics.
The movements were very different. For a start, they were
not inspired by bishops nor were they set up by diocesan
committees or commissions. They came from the “bottom” rather
than the “top.” Significantly, they met with papal approval and
encouragement under both Paul VI and John Paul II; on the other
hand, bishops were often hostile or suspicious, and even more so
the new class of episcopally approved laity. Moreover, the
movements were by no means restricted to a particular section of
the laity nor were they marked by any sort of ageism. From this
point of view, the movements very definitely represented a
reaction to an unbalanced post-conciliar tendency that was the
human result of certain emphases in the Council.
However, there was another respect in which the
movements seem to be a concrete manifestation of Vatican II
ecclesiology. For it has to be underlined that it is strictly erroneous
to call the new ecclesial movements lay movements, since priests,
bishops, religious, as well as those lay members of the movements
whose commitment to the charism and apostolate of the particular
movement to which they belong marks them out as quasi-religious,
even if canon law has not yet caught up with them, make up their
ranks. What is so characteristic and significant about the
movements is that they bring together the baptized, whatever their
particular status in the Church, in a common if differentiated
mission. The movements are not lay, but nor are they clerical, and
in this respect they represent a novel phenomenon.
726 Ian Ker

Elsewhere,42 in writing about Newman’s On Consulting the

Faithful in Matters of Doctrine—tellingly, often referred to as On
Consulting the Laity in Matters of Doctrine—I pointed out that,
although Newman certainly uses the term laity in the famous
article—he could hardly help doing so in the highly clericalized
Church with which he was writing—nevertheless the historical
examples he gives from the fourth century make it abundantly clear
that the “faithful” comprised not only laity but also “presbyters,”
“holy virgins,” and “monks,” in other words priests and religious.
It was not just the laity but the faithful or baptized
Christians—whatever their canonical status in the Church—who
upheld the orthodox faith against the Arian heresy despite the
failure of the body of the episcopate to stand firm. I also referred
to a note Newman added to an appendix to the third edition of
The Arians of the Fourth Century when he republished it in 1871.
This note contains part of the article, together with some
amendments and additions, including a remarkable sentence, which
not even G. K. Chesterton at his most paradoxical could outdo:
“And again, in speaking of the laity, I speak inclusively of their
parish-priests (so to call them), at least in many places . . . .”43
I then compared Newman’s article with the Vatican II
constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, where there is indeed
a special chapter devoted to the laity. But the interesting aspect of
this chapter is the virtual absence of any Scriptural or Patristic
sources, which, of course, is not surprising as the early Church had
not yet become clericalized and so there was no need to employ
the concept. In the first two chapters, on the contrary, where the
Council sets out its essential and fundamental understanding of the
Church, the text not only bristles with Scriptural and Patristic
references, but also avoids speaking of the Church as though it
consisted of clergy and laity. The first chapter does not even
employ the terms, although it does single out “the grace of the
apostles” as “the primary” of the gifts of the Spirit. And the second
chapter deals with the “ministerial or hierarchical priesthood”
simply in terms of the specific sacrament of holy orders among the

42
Ian Ker, “Newman on the Consensus Fidelium as ‘the voice of the infallible
Church,’” in Newman and the Word (Louvain-Paris-Sterling, Va.: Peeters Press and
W.B. Eerdmans, 2000), eds. Terrence Merrigan and Ian Ker, 69–89.
43
Arians of the Fourth Century, 445.
 Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II 727

various sacraments which build up the “common priesthood of the

faithful;” again the chapter studiously avoids talking of the Church
in the usual terms of clergy and laity.
In that first section of the first chapter of the Essay on
Development, Newman says that if one was looking for the “leading
idea . . . of Christianity,” round which other ideas could be
grouped simply “for convenience,” then he would “call the
Incarnation the central aspect of Christianity.” And later in the
book he refers to the Incarnation as “the central truth of the
Gospel.”44 I have no doubt that if Newman could have been asked
the same question about Vatican II, he would have said that its
teaching on the idea or nature of the Church in those first two
foundational chapters of Lumen Gentium is the central teaching of
a Council which was overwhelmingly an ecclesial Council, a
Council concerned with the Church, its internal components and
structures, its liturgy, its relationship with other Christians, non-
Christians, and the world.
But the fact is that these two crucial chapters which marked
a radical return to the Scriptural and Patristic understanding of the
Church as primarily not hierarchical or institutional but
sacramental, the mystical body of Christ, the communion of those
who have received the Holy Spirit in baptism, have been largely
ignored in favor of the later two chapters on the bishops and the
laity. It is hardly surprising that these two more topical chapters
received more attention at the time, but in the long run it is surely
the first two chapters which do not seem to be saying anything
very new or interesting which will prove to be revolutionary—but
only in the sense of being utterly traditional in returning the
Church to its roots.
What is so significant about the new movements is that
they provide flesh and blood to these two chapters. For they are
not traditional religious orders or lay associations but communities
of the baptized who have received the “varied hierarchic and
charismatic gifts” which the Holy Spirit bestows. But if the
movements make the central meaning of Lumen Gentium clearer
and stronger, they also represent another kind of development in
Newman’s terms: a reaction against both a clericalized and a
laicized Church. It is not surprising that both wings of the Church

44
Dev., 35–6, 324.
728 Ian Ker

find them a disturbing and suspicious phenomenon. But if, in spite

of not being inspired or directed by either the hierarchy or the
“official” laity, these ecclesial movements are the work of the
Spirit, then they may throw a lot of light on the meaning, not to
say the spirit, of Vatican II. F

IAN KER teaches theology at Oxford University.