Class 27: Leo XIII and Late
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19 C Catholicism
29 March 2006
Introduction
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German, American, English Romanticism
Henry Cardinal Newman
Pope Leo XIII
Catholic Modernism at end of 19th C
Protestant Biblical Scholarship
American Romanticism: Second Great
Awakening
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Second Great Awakening
 First half 19th C (pre-Civil War)
 Effected all Protestant denominations
 Specialty was revival camp meetings led by itinerant preachers
 Blacks welcomed at most meetings, but not well treated
afterwards
 Founding of A.M.E. Church, 1815
 Shakers 1800, Mormons 1830
Transcendentalism
 The beauty of nature; man’s ability to appreciate the beauty of
nature
 Man in beautiful because he is part of nature
 God in nature; not as scientific truth but as beauty
 Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Brownson, Dickinson (?)
 Dissident voices: Hawthorne, Melville
German Romanticism
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Hegel (1770-1831)
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Christianity moves man beyond the law; Speculative Idealism
Jesus brings love that restores mankind to wholeness, a holy innocence The
Spirit of Christianity
The Incarnation makes explicit the implicit unity of God and man; Jesus not
like Socrates
Christianity as revelation of Spirit
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
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Influenced by Pietism in early years
Religion not founded on calculating reason; nor even so much on Scripture
Experience of piety is the key
Does not defend relation based on moral needs of society
Rejects Deist’s God of Intelligent Design
Jesus Christ as the arch-type for humanity; importance of community is
understanding and transmitting this spirit (truth)
Immanence of God in nature
English Romanticism
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Poets
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Keats (1795-1821); Shelley (1792-1822); Blake (17571827); Coleridge (1772-1834), Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Romantic view of nature and human history
Oxford Movement
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Anglican; rooted in a reaction to political and economic
liberalism
Recognized the pretensions of science and reason to solve
all problems
Opposed to Bentham and utilitarianism
Opposed to Latitudinarians
Opposed to Church’s increasing acceptance of secularism
John Henry Cardinal Newman (18011890)
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Born into a family with Huguenot background; taught to read
Bible as a child, but no religious training otherwise
Went to Oxford in 186 as an undergraduate;
 Became the most important Tractarian for Oxford movement
Trip to Italy and North Africa put him in touch with the ancient
Church which he felt must be restored in England
 “Lead, kindly light”
 Initially, Newman sees Church of England as middle way
between Catholicism and Calvinism
Received into Catholic Church 1845, ordained 1847
 Writes Apologia Pro Vita Sua to explain his conversion
Founds an Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England
Rector of Catholic University of Dublin, 1851 (Idea of a
University, 1873)
Made a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII 1879
The Pillar of the Cloud, At Sea.
June 16, 1833. www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse90.html
LEAD, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene—one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path, but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
Newman’s Thought
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Ecclesiology
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Papal Infallibility
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Acknowledged and accepted primacy of Pope and unwritten tradition of
infallibility
Had some concerns about written definition
History and Dogma, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
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Augustine’s arguments against Donatists; importance of Catholic Church
Tract 90 (1841) on Thirty Nine Articles: “It is our duty … to the Catholic
Church and our own to take our reformed confession in the most Catholic
sense. We have no duties toward their framers”
Opposed to liberal belief in progress and that there are no permanent
supernatural truths
Importance of apostolic Church as vessel of revealed truth
Time is necessary for human mind to fully grasp the Truth; but Truth itself
does not change
Develops criteria for changed perspective in grasping truth opposed to
heterodox developments
Science
Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903)
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Countered Bismarck’s anti-Catholic
movement, Kulturkampf
Known as the encyclical pontiff
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Rerum Novarum
Providentissimus Deus
Created Pontifical Biblical Commission
Bismarck and Kulturkampf (War of
Civilization)
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Bismarck (1815-1898)
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Kulturkampf
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Believed in Prussian monarchy; and unification of German Confederation
under Prussia
Franco-Prussian War impetus for strong confederated Germany
Bismarck made Chancellor of Germany un 1870; agenda to unify in laws,
customs and national spirit Germany
Concern about a country within a country
Relations with Papacy broken in 1870
German state passes laws against Church education; expels Jesuits; seizes
Church property
All clergy had to be German; educated in Germany
End of Kulturkampf
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Formation of German Catholic political party
Bismarck wanted to impose tariffs on grain and industrial goods entering
Germany; in this he was opposed by economic liberals; needed Catholic
support to pass economic agenda
Rerum Novarum, 1891
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Uphold rights of laborers to a fair wage, but
also upholds right to private property
Concern about poor
Emphasis on common good
State has the right to intervene in economy
on behalf of individual and society
Cornerstone of modern Catholic social
teaching
th
19
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C Biblical Scholarship
Beginning of Historical Critical Method roots in the Enlightenment
 Reimarus (1694-1768): Deist, roots of historical Jesus;
resurrection a fraud; failure of eschaton led to Christian theology
opposed to Jewish; Jesus as an apocalyptic Jewish prophet
 Lessing (1729-1781): Published Reimarus’s work; tries to
reconcile Reimarus with Christian faith; “teachings not true
because book is sacred; book is sacred because teachings are
true”
David Strauss (1808-1874)
 Life of Jesus
 Test historical accuracy of New Testament claims about Jesus
 Much mythical material in New Testament
 Developed rules of historical critical method
Albert Schweitzer Quest for Historical Jesus 1906
Catholic Modernist Controversy
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Late 19th C controversy focused on relation of Biblical criticism to
Catholic theology
Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) The Gospel and the Church (1902)
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Very influential biblical Scholar
Questioned authorship of Old and New Testament works
Jesus as a radical eschatological Jewish prophet part of 1st C apocalypticism
Christian dogma develops to meet new challenges in each age; dogmatic
definitions are always relative and variable
Eventually Loisy became very skeptical about Church as bearer of truth
Ecclesial Reaction
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Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 1893, admitted some value to
historical critical method, but not if weakened authority of Bible or Church
Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 1907, condemned historical method
altogether
Alfred Loisy excommunicated 1907
Assignments
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Bokenkotter, Chapter 28 (skim only)
First Vatican Council, First Dogmatic
Constitution on Church of Christ, available at
www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/V1.HTM
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Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum,
www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclical
s/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerumnovarum_en.html