Welcome back to the Word on Fire show.

I'm Dr. Matthew Patrusick, Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the

Word on Fire show. Thank you, as always, for joining us.

Friends, in honor of St. John Henry Newman's recently being named a doctor of the church,

we're bringing you Bishop Barron's entire Word on Fire Institute lecture series on John Henry Newman.

Throughout these next several weeks, we'll dive deep into one of Bishop Barron's spiritual and intellectual heroes.

As always, enjoy.

We're continuing our study of the essay on the development of Christian doctrine.

We saw last time that it's one of the great strokes of genius, I think, in Newman.

What we consider a more liberal point of view, right, the doctrine unfolds and develops,

calls for, in fact, demands a more conservative

point of view. Namely, there has to be an infallible authority to determine the difference

between evolution and corruption. Newman is conservative because he's liberal, if I can put it

that way. It shows how he contains within himself some of the warring

elements that we see even in the conversation today. Think again of that umpiring image, I think,

is the most helpful. The umpire is not there to shut down the play. If an umpire is over umpiring

a game, he wrecks the game. If an umpire, or umpiring a game, he wrecks the game.

If an umpire, or let's say a referee in basketball is calling every little infraction,

let's say in a game of the kids are playing, he'll wreck the game.

You can over referee, but you can also under referee.

If you under referee, then the game also collapses.

What the development of ideas calls for is this infallible authority. And see, Newman, here's the

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