Leo XIV’s Doctor of the Church: "Christianity Entered History as an Idea rather than an Institution"

On 31 July, Leo XIV announced that English Cardinal John Henry Newman would be declared a Doctor of the Church, with the formal proclamation to follow.
Cardinal Newman’s most notable work is An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), written during his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. He published a revised edition in 1878.
In this book, he introduced the concept that Christian doctrine matures organically, like a living idea, rather than remaining static.
However, he applied this concept to the Church.
Cardinal Newman nods to "Mister Guizot's suggestion, that Christianity, though represented in prophecy as a kingdom, came into the world as an idea rather than an institution, and has had to wrap itself in clothing and fit itself with armour of its own providing, and to form the instruments and methods of its prosperity and warfare."
François Guizot (1787–1874), a French liberal Protestant (Huguenot), is the person to whom he refers. A young man, Guizot …More