It is no coincidence that the conference was entitled “Catholic Church, where are you going?” And its subtitle was this statement from Cardinal Carlo Caffarra: “Only a blind man can deny that in the Church there is great confusion.”
The speakers were cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, and, from Hong Kong, Joseph Zen Zekiun, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the philosopher and former president of the Italian senate Marcello Pera, the canonist Valerio Gigliotti, the bioethicist Renzo Puccetti. There was a replay of a talk given by Cardinal Caffarra in defense of the encyclical of Paul VI “Humanae Vitae,” now under reconsideration. And Cardinal Burke also raised his critical voice in an extensive interview published just before the conference on La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana and in English on LifeSite News.
But perhaps the most original element of the conference, developed by Cardinal Brandmüller and incorporated in the “Declaratio,” was the reference to a text by Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890) on the key role of the faithful in bearing witness to the true doctrine of the Church: “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.”
Newman published this text anonymously in the English Catholic magazine “The Rambler,” of which he had been the editor. At the time it raised heated controversy. It was republished in 1961 just before Vatican Council II and since then has become a classic.
In it Newman reviews the moments of the Church’s history in which the orthodoxy of the faith was lost by many of the bishops and saved instead by many of the ordinary baptized. And he gathers from this that on matters of doctrine listening to the voice of the faithful - not to be confused with public opinion, but to be verified in its fidelity to the tradition of the Church - is not only desirable, but a duty.
A lesson of history more valid now than ever, and one to which the “Declaratio” gives voice. In the hope that it may be heeded even by him who sits on the chair of Peter.