My dear brethren,
Among the reproaches charged against the Church by her enemies, there are two which contradict each other. Heresy reproaches her with making new doctrines, and that for this reason she is no longer the Church of Christ. Unbelief, on the other hand, steadfastly holds to the doctrines of her origin; that she must, therefore, be obstinate and an enemy to progress. Both are unjust reproaches. For it is not the Catholic Church which has departed from the teaching of Christ. She has added nothing new, but heresy has rejected many of the teachings and means of grace of Christ, which she continues to preach. The Church is not an enemy to progress, but she is an enemy to a return into the darkness of paganism, of vice, and of the gross ignorance of religious things, which she would countenance if she turned her back upon the light of the Gospel, if she rejected the teachings of divine revelation, as unbelief wants her to do. That the Church knows of a progress is taught by her divine founder Himself in today's Gospel in these words: "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, shall come, He will teach you all truth."
Not a word of divine revelation has been rejected or changed by the Church; we will neither reject, nor be deprived of, a syllable of it. But for progress away from heresy and unbelief, which are a step backward from light into darkness, we are grateful. We willingly commit ourselves to the guidance of the Church, wherein the Holy Ghost fulfills the promises of Christ: "But when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth, He shall glorify me; because He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you." Let us allow ourselves to be conducted by the hand of the Church through this Holy Spirit ever deeper into the truths of faith; there we shall find contentment and joy, until faith is at last changed into the vision of God face to face. Amen.
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