“It is a cause of astonishment how quickly Catholics can forget the major documents of a deceased pontiff, as if a new pontiff is supposed to overshadow and even shut away the work of his predecessor. Catholics have (or should have) a Newmanian view of development, whereby everything of importance that comes before is cherished and carried along with time, to form the basis of subsequent thought and action. We do not (or should not) have a Hegelian view where a later stage confronts and supplants an earlier, only to be itself subsumed into a new and unexpected synthesis.
Pope Pius XII is a case in point.”