October 17, 2021
Dear Friends in Christ,
The Church asks its clergy & religious to pray the Liturgy of the Hours: a formal prayer of 4 volumes (books) of primarily scripture 7 times (hours) a day. One of those hours includes a spiritual writing by a church leader, saint or church document. On Friday, Oct. 8th, a reflection was included by a priest named St. Vincent of Lérins who wrote on the Development of Doctrine. Vincent became a monk & ordained a priest about 434, on the island of Lérins off the southern French coast near Cannes. He died in 445 and he was concerned about the assurance of the orthodoxy of Catholic teaching. He believed the ultimate source of Christian truth was the Scriptures, and the authority of the Church (Teaching Office of the Church through the Bishops in union with Rome known as the Magisterium) was to be invoked to guarantee the correct interpretation of the Scriptures. He followed the principle "in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all."
I was so impressed by this reflection that I have reprinted it in blue. It speaks to the truth about gaining deeper insight in our teachings yet remaining always faithful to the truth. Our Church’s teaching has deepened with time, just like our individual understanding of God, the Eucharist or any other Catholic truth has deepened with age & maturity versus our first awareness when we were young. St. Vincent uses the analogy of the growth of the body to argue the development of doctrine.
Since this is Respect Life Month, how appropriate! A child in the womb from the moment of conception has all the DNA that will determine how this child develops until natural death. An unborn child, a newborn child and any development of the person until death is all the same: a human person, though they will look differently at various stages of life!
Further understanding or development of doctrine might be challenging over time. In the early Church as well as up to this day, bishops, theologians & others would disagree. It is our faith that the Holy Spirit will guide the Church in all truth (Jn 16:13—“But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.”)
“Is there to be no development of religion in the Church of Christ? Certainly, there is to be development and on the largest scale.
Who can be so grudging to men, so full of hate for God, as to try to prevent it? But it must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from one thing into another.
The understanding, knowledge and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and the centuries, but only along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import.
The religion of souls should follow the law of development of bodies. Though bodies develop and unfold their component parts with the passing of the years, they always remain what they were. There is a great difference between the flower of childhood and the maturity of age, but those who become old are the very same people who were once young. Though the condition and appearance of one and the same individual may change, it is one and the same nature, one and the same person.
The tiny members of unweaned children and the grown members of young men are still the same members. Men have the same number of limbs as children. Whatever develops at a later age was already present in seminal form; there is nothing new in old age that was not already latent in childhood.
There is no doubt that the legitimate & correct rule of development, the established & wonderful order of growth, is this: in older people the fullness of years always brings to completion those members & forms that the wisdom of the Creator fashioned beforehand in their earlier years.
If, however, the human form were to turn into some shape that did not belong to its own nature, or even if something were added to the sum of its members or subtracted from it, the whole body would necessarily perish or become grotesque or at least be enfeebled. In the same way, the doctrine of the Christian religion should properly follow these laws of development, that is, by becoming firmer over the years, more ample in the course of time, more exalted as it advances in age.
In ancient times our ancestors sowed the good seed in the harvest field of the Church. It would be very wrong and unfitting if we, their descendants, were to reap, not the genuine wheat of truth but the intrusive growth of error.
On the contrary, what is right & fitting is this: there should be no inconsistency between first & last, but we should reap true doctrine from the growth of true teaching, so that when, in the course of time, those first sowings yield an increase it may flourish & be tended in our day also.”
St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us!
Fr. Lawrence W. Jozwiak
Pastor
“The Cross is the school of love.”
—St. Maximilian Kolbe
“There is no greater love, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.” John 15: 13