Holy Spirit

The Third Person of the Trinity has always represented one of the most interior, personal, and mysterious aspects of Catholicism; in the nineteenth century, as a sign of transcendence, the Spirit also embodied the desire for universal reconciliation or synthesis. Perhaps precisely because of this all-embracing character, close association with personality (i.e., identity), and inability to be pictured, the Holy Ghost became the dominant symbol of a Catholic community searching for ways to express its emotional experience. Margaret Mary Reher has argued the importance of the Holy Spirit in the ecclesiologies of the Americanists, but the Spirit's role went quite beyond the confines of a theological difference among bishops.

In an autobiographical memoir written late in life Manning described the origin of his own devotion to the Holy Ghost. He noted that after he had published a series of sermons, someone castigated him because he had not included any reflections on the Third Person of the Trinity. As a result, Manning purchased every book he could find on the subject and soon realized that an appreciation of the Holy Ghost was at the heart of the Church's infallibility. The "perpetual presence and office of the Holy Ghost," he wrote, "raises the witness of the Church from a human to a Divine certainty." Manning's interest in the devotion was thus rooted in his own conversion experience from the Anglican to the Roman Church. The Holy Spirit represented that principle of life which supported the unity, perpetuity, and visibility of the Body of Christ.

Manning argued that this "temporal office" of teaching had been given on Pentecost "emphatically to the Apostles, and inclusively to the faithful." The people, "listening for a voice to guide them in the midst of contradictory teachers," would hear the Holy Spirit primarily in "Pontiffs, Councils, Traditions, Scripture, and universal consent." Although individuals could exercise their reason and private judgment, those human faculties could not really be considered "principles of faith." The English churchman's work definitely stood out among the theologians of the nineteenth century as giving a spiritual foundation to an apologetics of hierarchical authority.

Just as Manning's discourses on the Holy Spirit in Temporal Mission were framed within the context of his conversion from Anglicanism, so his work Internal Mission cannot be understood outside of his battle with the nineteenth century laicist state. In 1873 the cardinal wrote a series of essays on "Caesarism and Ultramontanism. " At that time the Prussian government had passed the Falk laws curtailing the Church's liberty in the German Empire to communicate with Rome , educate the clergy, and appoint priests to parishes. Manning referred to these policies as manifestations of a "modern Caesarism," or the union of the spiritual and temporal powers in one person. To counteract it he outlined the principles of "Ultramontanism." This latter, he wrote, consists (1) in the separation of the two powers, and the vesting them in different persons; (2) in claiming for the Church the sole right to define doctrines of faith and morals; and (3) to fix the limits of its own jurisdiction in that sphere; (4) in the indissoluble union of the Church with, and submission to, the universal jurisdiction of the Holy See.

Manning believed that only the Church with its doctrine, discipline, faith, and jurisdiction rooted in the Holy Spirit was capable of limiting the state's encroachment on the modem liberties of conscience, religion, family life, and citizenship. Only the strength of the Spirit could withstand the assaults of the absolute state. The Internal Mission repeated this position in its discussions of the virtue of faith. Referring specifically to the attempts in England "to interfere with the Christian education of your children," Manning argued that the test of the Spirit dwelling in the hearts of the faithful would be their obedience and loyalty to the institutional Church.