Newman’s Letter to the Duke of
Norfolk was hailed by many as one of his masterpieces. It is indeed
a masterpiece and very Newmanian, because steeped in the supernatural
throughout. Unfortunately, this aspect of it has largely vanished as
time went on. The Letter has been remembered as a subtle
endorsement of private conscience against papal authority as defined in
terms of papal infallibility at the Vatican Council of 1870.
The Letter is far more than a vindication of the patriotic loyalty of Catholic laity against the insinuations of Gladstone, who served four times as Prime Minister and loved to dabble in theology.
The Letter is rather the vindication of the supreme authority of supernatural revelation. This is why the Letter begins with a chapter on the authoritative character of the Ancient Church as setting the rules of conscience against the encroachment of the State. One may indeed take the Letter for a treatise on Conscience and the Papacy.
A sedulous attention to the Letter
might have prevented the trivialization of Catholic conscience by much
of the “new” theology unjustly laying claim to Newman. May the Letter
prove a major remedy to the moral malaise engulfing a clergy and a laity
caught in a misconstruction of the aggiornamento.