Recently, a very uncommon title of Doctor of the Church was officially received John Henry Newman. This title can be considered worthy without peculiar controversy, as Newman was a brilliant, prolific and influential theologian, but there can be reasonable concerns that his fresh position will be willingly abused in order to advance the "synodical" disinvolvement and doctrinal mashership dressed in the costume of the "development of doctrine" that Newman actually allowed.
It is so worth mentioning on this occasion what Newman considered to be an authentic and acceptable improvement of the doctrine, and what an unacceptable violation of it. Newman compared the actual improvement of the doctrine to the improvement of the human body – an adult is clearly different from a child, even in terms of weight or height, but in terms of physionomy, proportions of body or continuity of intellectual life he remains the same man as the child.
The same is actual of the revealed doctrine – its improvement can trust solely on a deeper or more thorough denunciation of what has always been contained in it in an implied and implied form. For example, neither in the Old Testament nor in the fresh Testament does the phrase "hyperstatic union" or even "Holy Trinity", but these are concepts whose content can be clearly deduced from the reading of these documents—and whose clear, clear presentation became essential in the light of the spreading heresy of arianism.
A violation of doctrine – or an effort to delude it into a deceptive attrap – occurs erstwhile the expected "development" of doctrine constitutes a de facto fundamental denial of its existing shape. This, for example, is the claim that, contrary to the 20 centuries of unequivocal declarations made by the Fathers of the Church, doctors of the Church, saints and popes about the admissibility of the death penalty, the death punishment is to abruptly become doctrinally "unacceptable" in the light of tearful, infantile slogans about "better knowing of human dignity." Similarly, it is suggested that, contrary to the sacramental tradition established for 20 centuries, divorcees surviving in re-repeated, unsacrificed relationships may accept Holy Communion (thus adding the sin of sacrilege to the sin of fornication) if only they are allowed to do so "the voice of conscience referred to the peculiar complexity of limitations."
In conclusion, Newman's theological reflection, which wolves in sheep's skins already have the nerve to stamp the dire confusion they have spread, is indeed a valuable tool to separate authentic doctrinal improvement from the cheap, frail sophistry of this wolf pack. A thorough grasp of this fact may in itself prove to be a crucial improvement origin – not on a doctrinal level, but on an equally crucial level of applicable wisdom, without which man is condemned even to specified embarrassing errors as confusing the maturity of an adult being with the deformation of Frankenstein's monster.
Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
