Evolution of Doctrine
John
Courtney Murray said the Modernist concept of Evolution of Doctrine was the most
important contribution from Vatican II. By teaching there are no definite fonts
of Revelation (Scripture and Tradition) and that doctrine is in a continual
state of change that adapts to present conditions, religion is subject to
personal interpretation. People then feel free to determine beliefs and morals
on their own without any need for God. Everything became possible once the
Modernist theory of the Evolution of Doctrine was accepted by the Council.
Development of Doctrine
Although
similar in name, the concept of Development of Doctrine directly refers to God,
Who, through the course of history, made infallible doctrines clearer. Author,
G. K. Chesterton described Modernism as a dilution of dogma based on
skepticism. He explained that Development of Doctrine is not an essential
change of beliefs, as taught by Modernists, but a perfection and clarification
of those same beliefs. This occurs when a pope or general council formally
defined or settled a previously debated issue.
When
we talk of a child being well-developed, we mean that he has grown bigger and
strong with his own strength; not that he is padded with borrowed pillows or
walks on stilts to make him look taller. When we say a puppy develops into a
dog, we do not mean that his growth is a gradual compromise with a cat; we mean
he becomes more doggy and not less.
Development
is the expansion of all the possibilities of a doctrine, as there is time to
distinguish them and draw them out; and the point here is that the enlargement of
medieval theology was simply the whole comprehension of theology. (G. K.
Chesterton, St. Thomas and Aquinas: the Dumb Ox, pp. 27-28) (Francisco
Radecki and Dominic Radecki, Vatican II Exposed as Counterfeit Catholicism [Wayne,
Mich.: St. Joseph’s Media, 2019], 337-38)
