Newman on Infallibility & Vatican I (vs. "One Peter Five")

The website, One Peter Five is a leading voice of radical Catholic reactionaryism and in particular, has the notorious distinction of being in the forefront of the cutting-edge reactionary disdain of Vatican I, the ecumenical council held in 1870. Often led in this regard by Peter Kwasniewski, it habitually attacks that council because it defined both papal infallibility and papal indefectibility. In other words, this sort of thinking holds that Vatican I made a wrong turn, overthrowing legitimate Catholic tradition, and that this has -- so we are told -- unfortunately brought about the supposedly hideous and "confused" current state of affairs in the Catholic Church, with Pope Francis reputedly violating his office, enabled and justified by the decree of the big bad council Vatican I.

The reactionaries tell us that Vatican I brought about what they are now calling "hyperpapalism." Other recent synonymous epithets include "papolatry" (which One Peter Five was using four years ago) and "ultramontanism" (which it was using last year). Peter Kwasniewski wrote on his Twitter (X) page on 12 November 2023: "I'm beginning to wonder if hyperpapalism is the most subtle and insidious of all heresies." The editor of One Peter Five, a very nice man named Timothy Flanders (with whom I am on friendly terms) wrote on 3 June 2022:

When we released our editorial stance last year we identified one error above others which seems to be at the root of our current crisis: the false spirit of Vatican I. This false spirit – meaning a false interpretation of said council . . . [italics his own]

At least Flanders qualified his position insofar as it held that a false interpretation of Vatican I was the problem, rather than the council itself (the same thing happened with Vatican II, as it has with all ecumenical councils, and indeed, also with the Bible). But since that time, things have developed beyond that. Hence, in the recent article on that blog, "Can We Learn Anything from the Critics of Vatican I?" (by Darrick Taylor, 11-13-23), the writer opines:

Several figures in the traditionalist sphere have questioned the wisdom of ultramontanism and even the definition of papal authority enshrined by the First Vatican Council, as having been the origins of the current tyrannical exercise of papal authority.

At length he concludes:

So did Vatican I lead to the exaltation of papal authority we see today? The answer is a complicated one. At least in part, the answer is yes. . . . 

Moreover, belief in the near god-like powers of the papacy long preceded Pastor Aeternus and was a source for it. . . . 

The difficulties with Pastor Aeternus are real, . . . 

All of this is necessary background informstion for the specific topic I wish to address. Dr. Taylor, I contend, inaccurately present St. John Henry Cardinal Newman's views of the council and  papal infallibility itself. His views have been unfortunately misunderstood (in the most chareitable view) by those on the ecclesiological far left and far right, ever since his conversion in 1845. Everyone wants to claim Newman as "their own" because he was so brilliant. Now, it's true that Newman was an "inopportunist" as to the definition of papal infallibility at that time (i.e., he was not in fabvor of it being defined in 1870). That's not the same as disbelief. For example, I am an inopportunist with regard to to the proposed declaration of Mary Mediatrix as a dogma, while at the same time I firmly believe in the doctrine itself. I sinply don't think the time is yet right to proclaim it at the highest magisterial level. This is pecisely analogous to Cardinal Newman and papal infallibility before 1870, as I will elaborate upon below.

St. Cardinal Newman was also critical of the extreme ultramontanists who were pushing for a decree that didn't happen, and about various intrigues and unsavory methods used by some extremists in or surrounding the council. Moreover, he wrote eloquently about the need for further future clarification of the newly proclaimed dogma. All of that is quite true, but it is not the same as rejection of papal infallibility itself or the actual decree. Newman accepted both things: the first (with somewhat less "certainty") for many years before it was decreed, and the second immediately upon its publication. Dr. Taylor ignores both of these factors, and presents such a one-sided picture of Newman's opinion (giving the impression that St. John Henry Newman would be on his side). Taylor also writes:

I have some sympathy for Döllinger [the German historian who famously rejected Vatican I and was excommunicated, and began the Old Catholics], as did Newman. Döllinger was a fine historian and defender of the Church for many decades before the 1860s, and a man of exemplary character. His downfall began when Ultramontane newspapers attacked him as a heretic and a traitor, well before his opinions became heresy. He did not deserve such treatment from fellow priests, who should have treated him like his “true brethren,” in Newman’s phrase.

Yes, Newman wanted everyone to be treated with the requisite Christian charity. This tells us nothing whatsoever about what Newman thought of Döllinger's actual views, and one would never find that out by reading only this article by Dr. Taylor, who cited two words from Newman's letter of 3 April 1871 (Letters and Diaries, vol. XXV, p. 308). What Dr. Taylor doesn't inform his readers about are those precise thoughts, expressed by St. Newman in the same letter:

I neither can take Dr Dollinger's view of it, nor do I enter into the reasons which are contained, as you report them, in his Reply. . . . I have never made the Pope's Supremacy or Infallibility my ground for becoming a Catholic . . . but the doctrine has no difficulty to me. . . . I do not know where we should be if our fundamental principle were not, that the ultimate enunciations, the upshot and outcome of the Church's delibberations are certainly true. . . . 

Let us have a little faith in her [the Church] . . . 

Newman biographer Ian Ker recounts some of Newman’s thoughts on this topic:

[H]e continued to think Dollinger ‘wrong in making the worst of the definition instead of making the best’. It was simply playing into the hands of the extremists to exaggerate the terms of the definition, which in fact had been a ‘defeat’ for the Ultramontanes. (John Henry Newman: A Biography, Oxford University Press, 1988, 665; citing Letters and Diaries, edited by Charles Stephen Dessain et al, Oxford: 1977, Vol. XXV, 438)

But he wondered why ‘private judgment’ should ‘be unlawful in interpreting Scripture against the voice of authority, and yet be lawful in the interpretation of history?’ The Church certainly made use of history, as she also used Scripture, tradition, and human reason; but her doctrines could not be ‘proved’ by any of these ‘informants’, individually or in combination. No Catholic doctrine could be fully proved (or, for that matter, disproved) by historical evidence — ‘in all cases there is a margin left for the exercise of faith in the word of the Church.’ Indeed, anyone ‘who believes the dogmas of the Church only because he has reasoned them out of History, is scarcely a Catholic’. (Ker, ibid., 684, citing Difficulties of Anglicans, II [Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, 1875], 309, 311-312)

As the editor of a quotations book of Cardinal Newman, The Quotable Newman (Sophia Institute Press, 2012), and a second and third book of quotations, adding up to 1070 pages total, I'm in a position to know what Newman thought about these things, and I've written about it more than once, including at length a dozen years ago. My first quotations book contains no less than eihteen pages on Newman's view of papal infallibility. Here is what St. Cardinal Newman thought about the actual conciliar definition of papal infallibility, after it was promulgated:

The most unfounded and erroneous assertions have publicly been made about my sentiments towards it, and as confidently as they are unfounded. Only a few weeks ago it was stated categorically by some anonymous correspondent of a Liverpool paper, . . . that it was, “in fact understood that at one time Dr. Newman was on the point of uniting with Dr. Dollinger and his party, and that it required the earnest persuasion of several members of the Roman Catholic Episcopate to prevent him from taking that step,”—an unmitigated and most ridiculous untruth in every word of it, . . .

On July 24, 1870, I wrote as follows:—

I saw the new Definition yesterday, and am pleased at its moderation—that is, if the doctrine in question is to be defined at all. The terms are vague and comprehensive; and, personally, I have no difficulty in admitting it.

. . . Also I wrote as follows to a friend, who was troubled at the way in which the dogma was passed, in order to place before him in various points of view the duty of receiving it:—

July 27, 1870.

. . .  For myself, ever since I was a Catholic, I have held the Pope’s infallibility as a matter of theological opinion; at least, I see nothing in the Definition which necessarily contradicts Scripture, Tradition, or History; . . .

And I confess, the fact that all along for so many centuries the Head of the Church and Teacher of the faithful and Vicar of Christ has been allowed by God to assert virtually his own infallibility, is a great argument in favour of the validity of his claim. (A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation [Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching] – online; Chapter 8: “The Vatican Council”, [book and chapter both linked to the left], Volume 2, 1874; reprinted by Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1900, 299, 301-305, 308-315, 339-340; see also Chapter 9, “The Vatican Definition,” for an excellent discussion of many epistemological and ecclesiological aspects of infallibility)

The remarkable thing is that Cardinal Newman believed in papal infallibility as early as June 1839 (!), as he reported in 1843, while still an Anglican:

In June and July 1839, near four years ago, I read the Monophysite Controversy, and it made a deep impression on me, which I was not able to shake off, that the Pope had a certain gift of infallibility, and that communion with the See of Rome was the divinely intended means of grace and illumination. . . . Since that, all history, particularly that of Arianism, has appeared to me in a new light; confirmatory of the same doctrine. (Correspondence of John Henry Newman with John Keble and Others, 1839-45 [edited at the Birmingham Oratory, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1917], 219; Letter to John Keble, 4 May 1843)

We have much similar documentation of his views prior to 1870:

Popes, . . . are infallible in their office, as Prophets and Vicars of the Most High, . . .  (Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England [1851; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908], Lecture 8; cf. Note 1)

As to the Infallibility of the Pope, I see nothing against it, or to dread in it, . . . (cited in Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman [vol. 2 of two volumes: London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912], 101; Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 17 November 1865)

Applying this principle to the Pope’s Infallibility, . . . I think there is a good deal of evidence, on the very surface of history and the Fathers in its favour. On the whole then I hold it; . . . (in Ward, ibid., 220-221; Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 23 March 1867)

I hold the Pope’s Infallibility, not as a dogma, but as a theological opinion; that is, not as a certainty, but as a probability. . . . To my mind the balance of probabilities is still in favour of it. There are vast difficulties, taking facts as they are, in the way of denying it. . . . (in Ward, ibid., 236; Letter to Peter le Page Renouf, 21 June 1868)

I agree with you that the wording of the Dogma has nothing very difficult in it. It expresses what, as an opinion, I have ever held myself with a host of other Catholics. (in Ward, ibid., 310-311; Letter to O’Neill Daunt, 7 August 1870)

As I have ever believed as much as the definition says, I have a difficulty in putting myself into the position of mind of those who have not. (in Ward, ibid., 308-309; Letter to Mrs. William Froude, 8 August 1870)

I do not thank him for the odious words, which he has made the vehicle of it. I will not dirty my ink by repeating them; but the substance, mildly stated, is this:—that I have all along considered the doctrine of the Pope’s Infallibility to be contradicted by the facts of Church History, and that though convinced of this, I have in consequence of the Vatican Council forced myself to do a thing that I never fancied would befall me when I became a Catholic:—viz.: forced myself by some unintelligible quibble to fancy myself believing what really after all in my heart I could not and did not believe, and that this operation and its result had given me a considerable amount of pain. I could say much, and quote much from what I have written in comment upon this nasty view of me. . . . (in Ward, ibid., 558-559; Letter to the Guardian, 12 September 1872, in reply to John Moore Capes)

I think we can safely conclude that St. Cardinal Newman offers no support for either reactionaryism, nor for the novel and dangerous, skeptical, faith-challenged view that reactionaries -- and particularly the site One Peter Five -- are now advocating with regard to Vatican I.

Related Reading:

Cdl. Newman, Vatican I & II, & Papal Infallibility (Clarification) [12-10-05]

Kwasniewski vs. Cdl. Newman Re Pope- & Council-Bashing [12-3-20]