Thomas Farr, President of the Religious Freedom Institute (RFI), offered remarks at an event held on October 12 and hosted by the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum University in Rome. This symposium titled, “Newman the Prophet: A Saint for Our Times,” was convened in honor of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s canonization.

Before he was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, St. John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890) was a priest in the Church of England and a scholar at Oxford University. Newman’s teachings and witness have had a profound impact within and beyond the Church, which lasts to this day. His reflections on the true nature of the freedom of conscience are a prime example.

Newman’s teachings, Farr observed, “provide a proper grounding for freedom of conscience, and for the Church’s duty to defend the truth, both to its members and to society in general.” “In both these ways,” Farr continued, “Newman prefigured the Church’s 1965 Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae.”

Summarizing Newman’s view of conscience, Farr remarked that “our freedom does not give us a moral right to do what is wrong. To the contrary, it merely increases the importance of ordering our judgments of conscience to the truth.”

Turning his attention to the modern West, Farr commented:

Today Western nations are characterized by ever deepening cultural and political chasms between those who believe that ethical norms are grounded in nature and nature’s God, and those who believe that freedom itself establishes the norms of social ethics.

Conscience has rights because it has duties. In other words, the human conscience must remain free (i.e., immune from coercion), not for its own sake, but in order that it may serve as a proper guide for discerning God’s will.

Read his full remarks here.