Pope Benedict, in 2005, spoke of a needed "hermeneutic of reform" which stresses the continuity of the council with the history of the church, warning against a "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture" which tends to stress a break with the past.

A sense of continuity is, of course, absolutely necessary. Our life as Catholic Christians can never stray from the astonishing good news of God's definitive entrance into human life, in the person of Jesus. Our entire history has been a process of exploring this good news. Jesus, truly God and truly human, calls us into an exploration of what it means to be authentic human beings. As long as there are human beings, this exploration will continue.

A championing of a sense of discontinuity has, indeed, occurred over the ensuing decades. Those who would hold that the church must change beyond recognition find the burden of proof weighing upon themselves. We have changed as a church, and we must continue to change. But any abandonment of the treasure of the mystery of the Word Made Flesh, crucified, buried, and risen, is absurd and fatal.

Change is often lampooned as a product of careless thought. The era in which I grew up is often characterized as a time of supreme goofiness, with "psychedelic vestments" and worse at Mass. Many complain that Catholics my age and younger simply were not catechized correctly. Each of us has only one period of history in which to live. I can do nothing but report that my numerous teachers of religion never strayed from addressing the issue of how to be a genuine human being. I found this far from goofy.

I would like to suggest that we as a church can accurately appreciate the council with a remembrance of the idea of "development of doctrine," first articulated by St. Vincent of Lerins in the fifth century and prominently championed by Blessed John Henry Newman in the 19th. This is the idea that we all have the task of discovering together, as the community of the church, the significance of the mystery of Christ as the people of the world live their individual and collective lives.

St. Vincent wrote: "Is there to be no development of religion in the church of Christ? Certainly, there is to be development and on the largest scale. ... Development means that each thing expands to be itself ... . The religion of souls should follow the law of the development of bodies. Though bodies develop and unfold their component parts with the passing of years, they always remain what they were."

How do we interpret what Jesus does in human lives? We understand that he offers conversion — repentance and healing — to each of us. The resulting development is a gift which we offer for the good of the entire People of God.