In fundamentals, the Church rejoices in being unchangeable; but she is sometimes charged with being too stiff and stationary, even in those externals that are the legitimate sphere of change. And in one sense, I think this is, indeed, true; if we mean by the Church its mortal machinery. The Church cannot change quite so fast as the charges against her do. She is sometimes caught napping and still disproving what was said about her on Monday, to the neglect of the completely contrary thing that is said about her on Tuesday. She does sometimes live pathetically in the past, to the extent of innocently supposing that the modern thinker may think to-day what he thought yesterday. Modern thought does outstrip her, in the sense that it disappears, of itself, before she has done disproving it. She is slow and belated, in the sense that she studies a heresy more seriously than the heresiarch does.
-Where All Roads Lead (1922)
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