In this throwback episode from 2023, Paul and Dominic have a conversation with Shaun Blanchard about Vatican II and the development of doctrine. Shaun offers a brief history of the Church’s understanding about how doctrine develops over the past few centuries and how that culminated at Vatican II. Then we discuss how the Church’s teaching is not rigid or static but that the Church is always in a process of reform. As Dei Verbum says, “For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.”

Shaun Blanchard is Lecturer in Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia on the Fremantle campus in Western Australia. A North Carolina native and graduate of UNC, Oxford (Blackfriars Hall), and Marquette, Shaun writes on a variety of topics in early modern and modern Catholicism, especially Jansenism, Catholic Enlightenment, the history of the papacy, and the Vatican councils.

He is the author of The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II (OUP: 2020) and, with Ulrich Lehner, co-edited The Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology (CUA: 2021). With Stephen Bullivant, Shaun co-wrote Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (OUP: 2023). With Richard T. Yoder, Shaun co-edited Jansenism: An International Anthology (CUA Press: 2024).

LINKS

Shaun Blanchardhttps://nd-au.academia.edu/ShaunBlanchard

Traditionis Custodes Was Never Merely About the Liturgyhttps://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/traditionis-custodes-was-never-merely-about-the-liturgy/

The Reform Was Real: Continuity and change at Vatican IIhttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/reform-was-real

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