Abstract

Michael Fiedrowicz:
Against the Loss of Truth of the Faith
John Henry Newman‘s Struggle for the Dogmatic Principle
(FKTh 2022-4, p. 241–262)

On the occasion of his elevation to the cardinalate, Newman described the struggle against religious liberalism as the great constant of his life. His conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism was based on the conviction that it was no longer the Church of England, which was deeply affected by the skepticism and relativism of that era, that was capable of effectively opposing the coming age of unbelief, but only the Church of Rome that could prove to be a bulwark against the infidelity of the future. According to Newman, the strength of Catholicism was based on the dogmatic principle that defended the objective claim to truth of revealed religion and church doctrine against all subjectivities (‚private judgment‘) and relativizations by plurality of opinion (‚comprehensiveness‘). In view of similar tendencies also in the Catholic Church of the present, the lasting relevance of Newman‘s confrontation with the religious liberalism of his time becomes evident.