Introduction to Cardinal H. E. Manning's Sermon: "Dominus Jesus"

HENRY EDWARD MANNING, Archdeacon of Chichester, published his fourth volume of sermons in 1850; barely a year later he was received into full communion with the Catholic Church. In this volume Manning offered a detailed and organic description of the new vision of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, although the literary form of sermons chosen by the author somewhat disguised the systematic character of its content. His ecclesiology—matured in the previous three years—could be properly described as incarnational and pneumatological. He did not, however, consider these two aspects as chronologically distinct ecclesiological moments, but as inseparably integrated in the living reality of the Church. His fourth volume of sermons was also a personal manifesto: it declared his position and set the markers defining the path he intended to follow in future. It led him from Canterbury to Rome.

Manning, in his correspondence with Mary Wilberfore, had described this volume of sermons as a book on the subject of infallibility. In fact, it reads more as a study on the nature of the Church, and of the role of the sacraments in its life and in the life of individual Christians, than as a treatise on infallibility. This should not be a surprise because Manning aimed to present infallibility within its proper setting: the nature of the work of redemption and of the Church. The Church was for Manning the home and resting place of revealed truth. And the entirety of revealed truth, as proposed by the Church, is binding to those who belong to it; the very nature of faith excludes a partial reception. Having said that, in one sermon in the fourth volume, Manning went on to consider the case of those who, because the truth is not proposed to them, do not come to know it. He also pondered the case of those who, because of some deeply ingrained prejudice, cannot recognize the truth of revelation when confronted with it. The title of the sermon could not be more signifying: "Christ preached in any way a cause of joy."

Manning's ideas on the subject were unambiguous: any fragment of divine truth is a source of divine life for those who receive that truth and live by it. And, he added, "No ignorance of truth is a personal sin before God, except that ignorance which springs from personal sin." ¹ If that were the case, why should men need the teaching of the visible Church? Would it not be enough for man to discover and follow the truth with his own reason (aided or not, as the case might be, by divine grace)? To Manning's mind, this question ignored the greatness of the treasure of the possession of the truth of revelation. Truth in general, and divine truth in particular, identifies man to Jesus Christ—something that ignorance or error can never do even when held in good faith. Besides, God is calling man to walk the path of truth, not to install himself and find a definitive abode at any stage of truth. Manning thought that there was also another aspect that those who asked the question did not understand: the moral role of the Church as a means for the probation of man. Submission to the teaching Church is an essential element of man's regeneration: it constitutes the probation of his intellectual nature. According to Manning, it is an intrinsic part of God's salvific plan that the pride of the human intellect—man's tendency "to put subjective opinion in the place of objective truth"—is to be curbed by the submission of men "as learners to an order of men who are divinely commissioned to teach." ² Man's rebellion, which destroyed the image of God in him, is therefore corrected by his acceptance...