St John Henry Newman, was a contemporary of the science fiction novelists, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Newman may well have read, in French, (which his mother had taught him due to her ancestry), From Earth to the Moon by Verne (1865). However, Well’s The Time Machine (1895) was published after he had died. Nevertheless, it was Newman’s method of thinking and producing religious doctrine which could be captured in the phrase ‘going back to the future’.

One of the key characteristics identified by Pope Leo XIV, when he proclaimed Newman as a Doctor of the Church (1st November), was that his works when examined have an enduring legacy: past, present and future.

Newman highlighted the importance of composing faith-based literature, by always returning to the foundations of any topic that was being looked at in scripture, tradition, and the magisterium of the Pope, in union with the Bishops across the world. Church teaching was, therefore, to be refined using contemporary insights from scholars, together with those of the ecclesial community as a whole, clergy, religious and the laity, being consulted in matters of doctrine.  As the Vatican II document on Divine Revelation, which Newman influenced, Dei Verum phrases it, in terms of “all the Church is and Believes”. (DV, 8). Or, as Pope Francis puts it, an expression of the Synodal Pathway is to take place. This reflection, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the Pope and Bishops, Newman taught, means that deeper understanding of the core truths, which ground Catholicism, can emerge. These central beliefs do not alter in themselves. The appreciation of implications of them, interpreting the historical ‘signs of the times’, a concept Newman also inspired, are, with hindsight, more fully drawn out. As a result, Newman says Church teaching “changes in order to remain the same”.

Newman maintained that all authentic movement, in shaping the church’s self-understanding, occurs when the “assemblage of aspects, which constitute its ultimate shape, really belongs to the idea from the start”. (An Essay on the Development of Doctrine, 5). He likens the strength of this interweaving to the shaping of the strands of a cable.

Newman explores this point further by using a popular cultural reference, related to the exploits of a Victorian high-wire adventurer, Charles Blondin. He famously crossed the gorge of Niagara Falls in 1859. Newman describes his own attempt to write theology as involving mental ‘dexterity’ as well. He pays tribute to the Roman Orator Cicero, as being his self-confessed style-guide, and compares him to “…a landscape gardener, who gives depth, richness to narrow and confined premises, by ingenuity and skill in the disposition of trees and walks…enriching…pruning…(so) making him the greatest master of composition the world has seen. (Historical Sketches, Vol I, 1). 

By aiming to express his meaning clearly, Newman constantly rewrote sentences. For him, a person composing theological reflections must “creep before they can fly…” (LDXXIV,44). His advice about preaching applies to all communication of the truths of the Christian faith, so that the gospel message can be proclaimed directly and easily understood. Beginning at any particular entry point, for Newman, saintly time travel is always an adventure: “In what you write…be somewhat conversational and jump into your subject. But, on the other hand, avoid abruptness or pettiness.” (LD V, I). Going ‘back to the future’ on a voyage of discovery.

In the process, we are to take note of how our thoughts become more focused and insightful. In Newman’s book Callista, about the conversion of a pagan woman, there is a chapter entitled Am I a Christian? Newman explains the relationship between ‘continuity and change’, in Callista’s faith, as follows:

She might, indeed, have been able afterwards, on looking back, to so many things of herself; and she would have recognized that while she was continually differing from herself, and that she was changing, yet it was not a change which involve contrariety, but which expanded itself in as it were concentric circles, and only fulfilled, as time went on, the promise of its beginning. (Callista, Chapter XXVI).

Newman reminds us that church teaching develops organically within the orbit of grace.

Fr Peter Conley