"Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink -- to the Pope, if you please -- still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards."
--John Henry Cardinal Newman
In the works collected here, including An Essay on the Development of Christian doctrine, A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, and On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, John Henry Cardinal Newman, the great nineteenth-century English theologian, debunks a few Catholic myths:
Myth #1: The...

John Henry Newman's decision to become a Roman Catholic was confirmed by his work on one of his major contributions to theology, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Ironically, the writings that brought him into the Catholic Church were viewed so suspiciously by Church officials that from his very first days as a Catholic he experienced distance, avoidance, distrust, and even cynicism in his relationship with the hierarchy. In hope of obtaining an honest and competent critique of his views on the development of doctrine, he conceived the idea of a presentation of his ideas, not in...