Cardinal Newman wrote a tremendous treatise “The Development of Doctrine” which was hugely influential in our conversion to the Catholic Church.
Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM., Cap. wrote an excellent article explaining Newman’s thinking on the authentic development of doctrine. It is a must read entitled “On the Relevance and Reality of the Development of Doctrine Today” published by Catholic World Report.
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Newman would be aghast. Authentic doctrinal develop is not a jettisoning of the absolute truths but a deeper and fuller understanding of truth revealed by Jesus Christ and the apostles. The development is organically the same truth understood in a deeper way. The oak sapling of the first century is still organically an oak 2,000 years later, it has not changed into a cactus or a maple tree.
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If you are on the correct path and take a wrong turn and realize a mile down the road you are heading in the wrong direction, it is not rigid or backward-looking turn around and go back to get on the right track again.
Progressives say, “Keep going! We need a new way.” The right-thinking person says, “It is OK to go back, if it gets us back on the right track.”
Of course, those who hold to the objective, authentic doctrine handed down infallible by the Church are considered rigid, backward-looking.
Well, call me rigid!
Read the whole excellent article here to better understand where we are in the Church today and the big divide between differing interpretations of “the development of doctrine.”