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When Pope Francis gave his first full-length interview after his election in 2013, he was asked about the importance of the church providing solid points of reference in a rapidly changing world. The new pope pulled out his thumb-worn breviary and read out a Latin quote from a fifth-century French monk.
Highlighting the words of St Vincent of Lérins, Pope Francis raised a curtain onto his pontificate: presenting a little-known but once highly influential theologian whose name and citations would soon appear in a number of papal speeches, documents and interviews over the next decade.
The pope’s favourite quote? That Christian doctrine should follow the true and legitimate rule of progress, so doctrine may be “consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age.”
It expresses how doctrine can develop and how there can be growth in the expression and awareness of the faith and in morals “while always remaining faithful to its roots,” he told reporters on the plane to Rome from Morocco in 2019.
This is the point the pope returned to again when speaking to reporters on his flight back to Rome from Canada July 29, when he said St. Vincent offered a “very clear and illuminating” rule for proper doctrinal development.
Christian doctrine should follow the true and legitimate rule of progress, so doctrine may be “consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age.”
Like every one of his predecessors, “Pope Francis has the difficult task of protecting the deposit of faith even while encouraging legitimate growth and progress,” U.S. Monsignor Thomas G. Guarino told Catholic News Service Aug. 3 in an email response to questions.
“For Vincent, the task of the entire church — pope, bishops, theologians, laity — is to foster development and growth over time, but always in full accord with the Gospel and the dogmatic tradition,” said the monsignor, who is professor emeritus of systematic theology at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, and the author of “Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine.”
This idea of growth rooted in and guided by church tradition also led the pope, speaking to reporters on the return flight from Canada, to warn against a perverted sense of tradition, an insidious sin he calls “backwardism.”
People who look to the past do not go forward with the church, the pope said; they lack the root of tradition, which provides life-giving nourishment for growth and development.
Tradition properly understood, he said, is “the root of inspiration for the church to go forward,” not backward. Tradition “is always open, like the roots of the tree, and that is how the tree grows.”
But, just like St. Vincent, the pope recognizes the opposite risk: of going too far and breaking away from the direction of the church as a whole and from church authorities, which he also briefly mentioned on the plane when he upheld his admonishment of the German Synodal Way. Continue reading
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- Carol Glatz writes for CNS
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