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Newman, Vatican II, and the Triple Office
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Although not directly quoted in the documents of Vatican II, Newman should be regarded as an ‘invisible Father’ of the Council. This is evident the Council Fathers’ recognition of the importance of the historical situation as the place for practicing theology, a recognition of ‘the signs of the times’. We encounter revelation as fact rather than a set of hand‐me‐down propositions. Both Newman and Vatican II appreciated the role that the whole community of the Church plays in the articulation of doctrine. Newman invoked the model of the priestly, prophetic and regal office conferred on the Church by her Lord to challenge the increasing polarization between teachers and taught in the church and the damaging centralism that ensued. In a similar way the Council wished to restore a fruitful interplay between periphery and centre by acknowledging the collegiality of the bishops, and calling for a full involvement of laity in the life of the Church.
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References
1 One exception might be provided by Andrew Meszaros’ suggestion that Yves Congar in drafting key passages of section 8 of Dei Verbum might well have had the work of Newman very much in mind (Andrew Meszaros, ‘“Haec Traditio proficit”: Congar's Reception of Newman in Dei Verbum, Section 8’, New Blackfriars, 92, (March 2011), pp. 247–254).
2 The ‘wounded surgeon’ of T. S. Elliot's East Coker comes to mind.
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11 Bernard Lonergan, ‘Theology in its New Context’, ibid., 55–67. For Newman, too, there is a similar turning to the subject: ‘self‐knowledge is at the root of all real religious knowledge … God speaks to us primarily in our hearts. Self‐knowledge is the key to the precepts and the doctrines of Scripture’. (Newman, John Henry, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1, (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1910), p. 42Google Scholar).
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