As the Council ratified the dogmatic Constitution on the church Lumem Gentium, Pope Paul VI said, “It was Newman’s Council.’ The Constitution clearly said: “The body of the faithful as a whole, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief… thanks to a supernatural sense of faith which characterizes the people as a whole…” Newman wrote years back: “That Holy House which Christ formed in order to be the treasury and channel of His grace to mankind… was, even from (the Apostles’) time, the seat of unbelief and unholiness as well as of the true religion. Even among the Apostles themselves, one was ‘a devil.’ No wonder then that ever since, whether among the rulers or the subjects of the Church, sin has abounded, where nothing but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit should have been found. It is so in this day; our eyes see it; we cannot deny it.” But he also added: “There are in every age a certain number of souls in the world, known to God, unknown to us, who will obey the Truth when offered to them, whatever be the mysterious reason that they do and others do not… They are the true Church, ever increasing in number, ever gathering in, as time goes on.”80 The Church tries as best she can to make her saving doctrine known to all men, but few there are who take her teachings to heart. Moreover, the Church’s unity flows from this inner life. All may not keep the Spirit. There may be dead elements, but there will be an invisible lot who keep faith and love. The Church lives in her invisible members. The Living Spirit of God came down upon it at Pentecost and made it one by giving it life.78 We have to be deeply convinced of the Church’s supernatural character; she was by no means blind to the frailties of her children. That Holy House which Christ formed in order to be the treasury and channel of His grace to mankind was, even from the Apostles’ time, the seat of unbelief and unholiness as well as of the true religion. This may become a painful burden for the faithful, but we have to live by the crude fact that was present from the beginning. The Communion of Saints goes as far as to identify the true Church with those few who respond to God’s calling. The Church, then, properly considered, is that great company of the elect, which has been separated by God’s free grace and His Spirit from this sinful world, regenerated and vouchsafed perseverance unto life eternal. The great invisible company, who are one and all incorporate in the one mystical body of Christ, and quickened by one Spirit. They must bear witness to the truth. If it be so, we must be willing to suffer for the truth.

Cardinal Newman recalls that “the Nicene dogma was maintained during the greater part of the 4th century not by the unswerving firmness of the Holy See, Councils, or Bishops, but by the ‘consensus fidelium’”. Newman, of course, does not deny that the body of bishops taken together was orthodox, or that many of the clergy stood by the laity as a support and guide, or that the laity had first received the faith by means of bishops and priests, or that some sectors of the laity were ignorant or corrupted by the Arians who occupied the episcopal sees and ordained a heretical clergy. As early as 1849, Newman had suggested the meaning of the word ‘consult’, which he would explain ten years later. It is a word that expresses confidence and deference, but not submission. The faithful’s “advice, their opinion, their judgment on the question of definition is not asked; but the matter of fact, viz. their belief, is sought for, as a testimony to that apostolic tradition, on which alone any doctrine whatsoever can be defined.” In the same sense, Newman goes on to explain, we can “consult” the liturgies or rites of the Church, not because they speak, but because they are witnesses to the antiquity or universality of the doctrines which they contain crystallized. Newman went on to say, “there is something in the ‘pastorum et fideliumconspiratio’ (A Conspiracy of pastors and Faithful), which is not in the pastors alone.”