Speaker: Fr Joseph Carola SJ

Date and time: 6pm, 12th September 2023

Location: St Mary’s Cathedral College, Chapter Hall (2 St Mary’s Rd, Sydney, 2000)

Fr Joseph Carola SJ was born in Houston, Texas, in 1962. After entering the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus in 1980, he was ordained a priest in 1993. In 2001 he obtained his doctorate in theology and patristic sciences from the Patristic Institute Augustinianum in Rome and has been a professor of patristic theology at the Gregorian University since 2002. He is a revered lecturer, spiritual director, and preacher. His most recent publication is Engaging the Church Fathers in Nineteenth-Century Catholicism from the Saint Paul Centre. Fr Carola is visiting Australia at the invitation of the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy.

At various points in the history of the Church, her teachings have undergone what some could describe as ‘change.’ For example, when Pius IX solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, this dogma changed, or “moved”, from a matter of implicit faith to a matter of explicit faith.  

Change is a general category. Some changes are developments, while other changes are corruptions. When it comes to Church doctrine, development leads us to greater clarity, while corruption leads us to obscurity and heresy. But how are we to define “doctrinal development,” and how are we to distinguish it from corrupt and heretical “new doctrine”? This lecture explores the complexities of antiquity, novelty, and genuine doctrinal development through the lens’ of St Vincent of Lerin and St John Henry Newman.