By Richard Greenhorn, OnePeterFive, January 27, 2022
Richard Greenhorn is a writer and attorney who lives with his wife and son in the Midwest.
One can only presume that the relative unpopularity of St. John Henry Newman’s “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk” comes from its very name. A tract called “On Papal Infallibility and the Duty of Conscience,” written as it is by one of the greatest Christian writers of the past two centuries, would certainly gain notoriety, and serve as a better reflection of the contents. Whatever the title, it is a text which should be read at this moment. A Catholic publisher could do the world a lot of good republishing it under a new title: “Newman on Conscience” or something of the sort.
Newman deals directly with two of the most important issues confronting any Catholic of goodwill at the present moment, namely the freedom of conscience, and the level of deference owed to authority, papal and otherwise. …
