[To pv, et, and bn]: Fellas?
Why you’re at tell us all about the changes in doctrine on abortion, homosexuality, and women ordaination. Did he change Catholic doctrine while I was sleeping?
What good does an "unchanged doctrine" do if it isn't enforced? Or even if "debate" is allowed on it? What happened to the old Catholic Church that would have just told people "No" from the beginning and that would have been the end of it? Oh, that's right . . . Vatican II and its philosophical enablers happened!
The Catholic Church has changed radically. The fact that the Syllabus of Errors is still "theoretically" in force and still locked up in some musty old archive doesn't change the fact that post-VII papal and conciliar statements have said the exact opposite and are the basis of life in the Church today.
An unchanging church would be just that--unchanged. The post-VII church is so different from its predecessor that it isn't even recognizable as the same religion. Instead the patristic consensus on the Hexameron has been relegated to the dustbin of history and written off as "just their pre-scientific opinion" (while those same fathers' pre-scientific opinions on the virgin birth and the real presence are still held to as authoritative) and "St." Henry Cardinal Newman's "development of doctrine" thesis (which horrified his contemporaries but is adhered to as "gospel" by today's "conservative" Catholics) is invoked to justify this (dare I say it?) "evolution" in the Catholic worldview as an organic continuation of the ancient and even pre-Constantinian church.
Go to the library and find a big book called a "dictionary." Then look up the word "unchanging" in it. Maybe then you will understand.
"Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the shepherds of Israel, that fed themselves: should not the hocks be fed by the shepherds?"
"Woe to the pastors, that destroy and tear the sheep of my pasture, saith the Lord."
"St." Henry Cardinal Newman's "development of doctrine" thesis (which horrified his contemporaries but is adhered to as "gospel" by today's "conservative" Catholics) is invoked to justify this (dare I say it?) "evolution" in the Catholic worldview as an organic continuation of the ancient and even pre-Constantinian church.
Incorrect. The writings of St. Vincent of Lerins (died c. 445) led to John Henry Newman's conversion. St. Vincent's writings align with the teachings of the Church Fathers regarding the Deposit of Faith and Morals. The Vincentian Canon: "Care must especially be had that that be held which was believed everywhere [ubique], always [semper], and by all [ab omnibus]." By this triple norm of diffusion, endurance, and universality, a Christian can distinguish religious truth from error.
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"But some one will say perhaps, 'Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ's Church?' Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alternation, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning." ~ St. Vincent of Lerins
The Catholic Church has changed radically. The fact that the Syllabus of Errors is still "theoretically" in force and still locked up in some musty old archive doesn't change the fact that post-VII papal and conciliar statements have said the exact opposite and are the basis of life in the Church today.
An unchanging church would be just that--unchanged. The post-VII church is so different from its predecessor that it isn't even recognizable as the same religion.
All good points and spot on, especially the bolded. For actual changes in doctrine one should look to religious liberty, false ecumenism/religious unity and the Church's views on non-Catholic religions as opposed to the usual hot button, political topics of abortion, homosexuality and women's ordination. When one truly investigates pre-Vatican II teachings on the former topics it is very difficult to walk away saying "doctrine did not change" or "the Catholic Church did not change". I do understand, however, why most Catholics prefer not to go down that route.