This is a continuation of a discussion about Cardinal Newman which started in a thread about Vatican II and the infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium.

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The point is that Newman held that the Bible itself can and does contain errors that go back by the Inspired authors.

He spoke of "obiter dicta." "Things said by the way." He said that the Biblical authors themselves could be and were mistaken on various 'unimportant" historical and geographical matters.

Pope Leo XIII and Pope Benedict XV condemned this error most forcefully. But not as having been propagated by the "great" Cardinal Newman.

You're not reading me.

Newman said that the Inerrant Word of God could contain error.

The handful of examples of alleged errors he gave are irrelevant.

He was such a sloppy thinker that he even mixed in things he considered TRIVIAL in the Bible with things he considered ERRONEOUS and called both "obiter dicta."

Problems with translations are irrevelant in the context of this discussion of Newman's errors. The point is that Newman claimed that if we had the original Hebrew and Greek Biblical texts and nothing else we would find all sorts of errors in them.

I am not suggesting that anyone forged a letter or slipped Pope Pius X a mickey.

I am suggesting that it is possible that the not very scholarly and not always careful pontiff had someone else write a letter in support of the great Newman against the Modernists who cited him as an authority and signed it, never dreaming that Newman, to say the least, was not so great and not so very different from the Modernists as the author of that dumb letter made out.

Clerics tend to trust the word and the judgments of other clerics who are playing by the clerical rules and have kept out of major trouble. Giuseppe Sarto blindly followed the crowd and the party line and held that Newman was an Official Great Catholic of Recent Times.

This disastrously false judgment is not worthy of respect. It certainly does not come close to being binding on anyone.

I am far from being the first Catholic who has found grave fault with Newman's "faith." A great theologian of his day said, "Newman mixes up everything!"

YOU recently claimed in these very pages that Pius IX distrusted the great Newman and refused to make him a cardinal. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seemed to be lauding Pius IX for taking this stance.

Popes and other potentates frequently employ ghost writers. It is generally believed by scholars that Pope Pius X was incapable of writing the more scholarly and involved portions of PASCENDI GREGIS and had help from an eminent theologian.

I don't see why we need trust Pius X's personal letter to the Bishop of Limerick about Newman any more than we trust his praise of the Abbe Loisy's horrendous Modernist salvo of a book. (But maybe that approbatory blurb was put out by someone in his Venetian office in whom he had misplaced trust.)

It is nonsense to say that Pius X might have been an accomplice of the Modernist Newman. No one has said that Newman was a Modernist. I have said that Newman's teachings on Biblical Inerrancy were heterodox. I also think that the writer of the letter "clearing" him was guilty of crass ignorance and that certain tricky expressions in the letter are evidence of a certain bad faith or troubled conscience.

The intention of the author of that dumb letter apparently was to stick it to the Modernists. The problem is that the author of that dumb letter, not knowing the facts about Newman, or employing some sort of complicated clerical mental reservation as regards them, falsely made Newman out to be some paragon of orthodoxy. The truth is that the Modernists could NOT honestly be accused of claiming as their "friend at court" someone whose faith and whose ecclesiological hands were white as no fuller on earth can whiten.

The problem with those who think always in terms of black and white is that they project to others accusations of total blackness when all that has been proposed is that basically white knights have some stains of alarmingly dark gray on their basically good names.

How uncomfortable all this makes the good, pious Catholic! Well, it's the Apocalypse. There's no point in having an Apocalypse at all unless it's uncomfortable. And it's far more uncomfortable to have one's faith in God's Truthfulness shattered by crypto-Modernists who know how to play the Roman game and with some justice consider the above-mentioned dumb letter from Pius X the ace up their sleeve.

I certainly did make the remark about Pius IX. After 30 yrs however Pius X apparently saw things differently.

The Trent Council must have had the most complete Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts and they still proclaimed that more work in compiling the best Bible was needed.

Acc to you, Newman only gave a handful( i guess this is a small amount) of examples of errors that he found in the Bible.

It would be interesting to see what they were as this is the basis of your allegation that Card Newman was whatever you are specifically saying he was-- I am somewhat confused as to this. . It is also of note that Pius IX at one time suspected Pecci of being a liberal as the latter opposed the declaration on the Dogma of the Virgin.

The title of this discussion is Errors Of Card Newman. You have accused him of 'Bible related blasphemies' without saying specifically what they are.  

You spent 'many long days and nights' compiling Healy's critique  for publication--apparently that was done so others could read what the errors of Card Newman are. It seems like an exercise in futility to now say that wild horses could not compell you to tell disclose what they are.  Why did you bother compiling them for publication?  

I suspect the errors of which Card Newman speaks are indeed unimportant because I cannot see Pius X rehabilitating the mans character if they were crucial.

Newman's article "On the Inspiration of Scripture" can be found on-line.

In it Newman poses the question, "In what sense are the Scriptures inspired?" His answer, "Not in every sense..." Then he reveals his profound theological and cultural retardation by citing an ancient Semitic metaphor employed by the Sacred Author as something that could not possibly be inspired because it's "wrong."

It is sickening to think that a Sainted pope could propose this absolute fool as a great Catholic divine, waxing all gooey about the impressive rareness of his midnight elucubrations...

We no longer have to pretend to revere such clericalistic Old Boy networking, the kind that put the apparently unschooled and untrained Nazarene Layman, Whom we supposedly revere as our Lord and our All, on the Roman cross.

I also do not think it is a good idea to imply that the Pope either did not write or was somehow tricked into signing the letter to Limerick that is located on pg 2 of the Ordinary Magisterium discussion.

Leo XIII made Newman a Cardinal and Pius X has cleared up any misunderstanding that may linger-- that is good enough for me.

Nothing personal Cletus but I tend to accept the discernment of Pius X in this dispute.

Unless I am mistaken, you have in the past described Jesus as a Rabbi and now you are calling Him a layman-- I am confused.

Rabbi is the Hebrew word for Teacher.

Rabboni means good or dear Teacher.

Christ was called Rabbi and Rabboni in His days on earth. Those were His ordinary titles. Calling Him ONLY Rabbi or Rabboni at this late date might arouse just suspicions. But when a writer frequently calls him God and God the Son the just thing to do is to allow that the writer is using those original titles to create a certain effect and make a certain point. Of course, one may for one's own good reasons think it obnoxious or temerarious to do so.

I said that Jesus was a Layman before MEN. The eyes of supernatural faith see Him in God as the Great High Priest.

According to ancient tradition His brother James was a priest of the Temple.

His kinsman Zachariah was a priest of the Temple.

Somehow the kingly tribe of Judah mixed with the priestly tribe of Levi in the divine family tree.

But the fact remains that Jesus did not have the fullness of priesthood which He would have had, had He been of a priest before man in the divine congregation headed by Caiphas (or was it Annas?) He was Priest only in the supernatural order of the Christian New Covenant.

The choice of Christ not to be a priest in the religious order into which He was born might be, among other things, an admonition to His priests to have an abhorrence of vices that seem to plague priests in particular and have nothing Christian or supernatural about them: arrogance, formalism, hypocrisy, self-righteousness supported by no end of canon laws, human respect, infinite fire-breathing wrath at being criticized by mere laymen, such as the Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth...

And He could have been a king before men too.

And there can be no claim that the English Queen exerted a politcal pressure on Pope Leo to make Newman a Cardinal because England has not been a Catholic country for quite some time. The Queen had no say in the matter.

Yes there are  things in Card Newmans pre-Catholic time which were understandably non-Catholic. This is made clear in the letter of the Pope.

Maybe others have spoken about Queen Victoria. I didn't.

I'm not talking about things Newman said before he became a Catholic. He attacked Biblical Inerrancy after he became a Catholic. THAT's what I am pointing out. Pius X makes the claim in that letter that Newman was pure in faith once he became a Catholic. I am saying that Pius X was dead wrong in this area that allows for papal fallibility and that his being wrong poses a grave danger to souls.