Newman inspired anti-Nazi heroine and martyr

Last updated on: January 18, 2017 at 10:06 pm by Kate Cousino

Newman inspired anti-Nazi heroine and martyr 2017-01-18T22:06:27-04:00 Kate Cousino

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Those of you coming here from my old blog will recall my love of Cardinal Newman, whose motto I took for my own: Cor ad cor loquitur, “Heart speaks to heart.”

One of Newman’s most misunderstood principles is that of the ‘primacy of conscience’. If that sounds familiar to you it is because it has made it’s way into Church documents, where it has then been often misinterpreted by folks on both extremes of conservative and liberal as giving some kind of license for individual interpretations of moral teaching.

I can go into why that is an incorrect understanding of the principle in another post. What I want to do here is point to an example of Newman’s principles put into action.

From The Catholic Herald, a British Catholic newspaper:

New documents unearthed by German academics have revealed that the writings of the 19th-century English theologian were a direct influence on Sophie Scholl, who was beheaded for circulating leaflets urging students at Munich University to rise up against Nazi terror.

…behind her heroism was the “theology of conscience” expounded by Cardinal Newman, according to Professor Günther Biemer, the leading German interpreter of Newman, and Jakob Knab, an expert on the life of Sophie Scholl, who will later this year publish research in Newman Studien on the White Rose resistance movement, to which she belonged.

….

Under questioning from the Gestapo Scholl said she had been compelled by her Christian conscience to peacefully oppose Nazism.

Sophie and Hans both asked to be received into the Catholic Church an hour before they were executed but were dissuaded by their pastor who argued that such a decision would upset their mother, a Lutheran lay preacher.

The article goes on to mention the influence of Newman on other members of the ant-nazi resistance.

It makes me think…every week I ask pardon for “what I have done and what I have failed to do”. Sophie Scholl felt a moral duty to do the good that her conscience commanded that was as great as the moral duty not to do evil.

Do I really accept that I am as culpable for my sins of omission as I am for my sins of commission? Do I seek to form my conscience so as to be more sensitive to the voice of God speaking to me? Do I feel bound to do good, and not merely avoid evil?

Would I do what Newman did, in converting to the Church, and face losing my home, job, friends? Would I do as Sophie did, in opposing the Nazi’s, and face losing my very life?

Would you?

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