Folia Theologica 1. (1990)

Péter Erdő: The Theological foundations of Canon Law according to the works of John Henry Newman

THE THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CANON LAW

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political field, in relations with the civil authorities.61 They are however titles and manifestations of the independence of the Church. He distinguishes between the authority that the Church has received from Christ and that which she has acquired in the face of nations during its history. Not even this second type can be "fully reduced to the institutional forms" of a State Church or of an organization.62 63 Debating with Gladstone, Newman maintains that the authority and the power of the Church in the world does not come from the state, but from the

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conversion of peoples and princes, from the existence of an independent social body. And this fact is the foundation of a true social power.

As far as the internal authority of the Church is concerned, it is deduced from Revelation. Therefore Newman can state that "The Pope ... has no jurisdiction over Nature, i.e. the natural Law."64 Revelation as the source of ecclesial power has a series of implications regarding the obligatory nature of norms in the Church. From the historical point of view, which we find already in Newman’s Anglican writings, divine Providence, when it gives a revelation, makes use of the already existing (natural) order. God thereby intends to construct a divine community. He uses a formation already existing or in development. "He does but modify, quicken, or direct the powers of nature or the laws of society."65 In this way the meaning of that aspect of Newman’s final ecclesioligical position (from 1877 onwards) - according to which the Pope and the hierarchy support and complete conscience and the intuitions of natural religion - seems clearer.66 Although the specification of the relationship between ecclesial power and conscience is characteristic of Newman, his estimation of the role of authority with regard to the obligational character of norms in supernatural religion seems to coincide with that of various scholars of the Roman School.67 Some canonists of the same school confirm that there are "moral canons", but

61. DUPUY, B.D., L’autorité de l’Église selon W. E. Gladstone et selon J. H. Newman, in Newman Studien IX, Nürnberg 1974, 140.

62. Ibid.

63. Cf. DUPUY 141.

64. Diff II 358.

65. Essays Critical and Historical, II, London 1888, 194-195.

66. COULSON 168-169.

67. Cf. CONGAR 96-97.