Glenn Arbery
What John Henry Newman says about conscience shocks the modern secular sensibility, which treats it (if at all) as the “socially constructed” result of any number of cultural influences. The conscience is a messenger from God: giving saints courage to resist tyranny, even unto death.
by Emmeline Deane, oil on canvas, 1889
The canonization of John Henry Newman was momentous for the Catholic academic world. Certainly, Newman’s magisterial book, The Idea of a University, has guided faithful Catholic educators ever since its publication, but Newman’s courageous example is just as important. It’s impossible to imagine a college like Wyoming Catholic College, dedicated to the central theological tradition of the Church and focused on the great books of the West, without the profound intellectual and spiritual journey that Newman undertook. What started with the Oxford Movement in 1833 developed in depth and subtlety, guided by conscience, and resulted in his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845, which signaled the beginning of his major work.
Given the “post-truth” atmosphere of much public discourse today, it strikes me that Newman’s writing on conscience is crucially important to us. I had read some of these texts years ago in a discussion group at Assumption College, but I was reminded of them this week when my wife brought to my attention an article in the Catholic Herald about Newman and the White Rose movement in Germany.[1] For years now, we have used the moving film Sophie Scholl in our classes, but we had not recognized the inspiration she and her colleagues owed to Newman.
What Newman says about conscience—that it is “the voice of God in the nature and heart of man”—shocks the modern secular sensibility, which treats it (if at all) as the “socially constructed” result of any number of cultural influences. For Newman, it is a kind of participation in God, » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2024/10/john-henry-newman-conscience-age-glenn-arbery.html