¹ See the survey of neo‐scholasticism in Kerr, F., Twentieth‐Century Catholic Theologians (London 2007), 1‐16Google Scholar.

² The early decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which were considered to have continuous binding authority, can be found in the Enchiridion Biblicum: Documenta Ecclesiastica Sacram Scripturam Spectantia (Rome 1954).

³ It is not a ‘method’ as if it were a fixed and defined procedure, but the willingness to adopt a variety of investigative tools, each suited to the particular type of evidence, which have emerged in the critical examination of evidence, either past or present and both textual and non‐textual, over the last two hundred years.

⁴ Bloch, M., The Historian's Craft (ET by P. Putnam, Manchester 1992), 4Google Scholar.

⁵ See O'Loughlin, T., ‘Huperetai … tou logou: Does Luke 1:2 Throw Light onto the Book Practices of the Late First‐Century Churches?’ in Houghton, H.A.G. ed., Early Readers, Scholars and Editors of the New Testament (Piscataway, NJ 2014), 1‐15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Krasevac, E.L., ‘Questing for the Historical Jesus: Need We Continue?’ Doctrine and Life 51(2001)590‐604Google Scholar.

⁷ The text used is that on the Vatican website.

⁸ His fifth volume, focussed on mariology – a work of the late 1950s – being the most egregious example of this tendency.

⁹ Dogma 1: God in Revelation (London 1968); on p. xi, Schmaus stresses its newness: ‘To avoid any misunderstanding, I would like to stress that this work is not at all a summary or revision of my older German text (Katholische Dogmatik), but a completely new treatment of theology based on the developments which have taken place as a result of the Second Vatican Council.’

¹⁰ Dogma 1, pp. 70‐91.

¹¹ I am using the ET by Fitzmyer, J.A. from Theological Studies 25(1964)402‐8Google Scholar.

¹² See O'Loughlin, T., ‘Divisions in Christianity: The Contribution of “Appeals to Antiquity”’ in Oliver, S., Kilby, K., and O'Loughlin, T. eds, Faithful Reading: New Essays in Theology and Philosophy in Honour of Fergus Kerr OP (London 2012), 221‐41Google Scholar.

¹³ See Walgrave, J.‐H., Newman the Theologian (ET by A.V. Littledale, London 1960)Google Scholar which is an extended essay to lay out a theory of dogmatic development such that one could then study the history of doctrines.

¹⁴ See the work of Hippolyte Delehaye whose great work, Les légendes hagiographiques, appeared in French in 1905 at the time of great fears over ‘modernism’; see the introduction, pp. v‐xxi, by T. O'Loughlin to the 1998 reprinting of The Legends of the Saints (Dublin 1998) for the relationship of Delehaye's work and research on the scriptures.

¹⁵ This is the key point made by Krasevac (2001).

¹⁶ As I write there are in the media accusations of a massive cover‐up of child abuse in the north of England just a few decades ago, of chemical attacks in Syria and a range of US counter‐attacks, and of the burial without any marker of babies born in a convent nursing home in Galway in Ireland in the period before c.1960: in all three cases there are calls for ‘proper’ or ‘public investigations’ which will apply critical rules of evidence to the affairs – these methods and those of ‘the historical critical method’ are essentially the same.

¹⁷ De doctrina christiana 2,28,42‐2,29,46.

¹⁸ See O'Loughlin, T., ‘Newman, Vincent of Lérins and Development’, Irish Theological Quarterly 58(1991)147‐66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ Though it should be noted that this acceptance is far less obvious among theological students where the demands of historical inquiry are very often felt as faith‐threatening.

²⁰ Bolin, T.M., ‘The Biblical Commission's Instruction, On the Historical Truth of the Gospels (Sancta Mater Ecclesia) and Present Magisterial Attitudes Towards Biblical Exegesis,’ Gregorianum 93(2012)765‐84Google Scholar.

²¹ See, for example, Gaudium et spes, 1.

²² If one wishes to examine this, one can do no better than to read two adjacent articles in the 1908 Catholic Encyclopaedia. P. Allard's article ‘Slavery’ (vol. 14, 36‐9) seeks to present the situation in the best light possible glossing over that the 1888 letter of Leo XIII ‘exhorting’ the Brazilian bishops ‘to banish’ slavery was as close as it came to a formal condemnation; while J.J. Fox in ‘Slavery, Ethical Aspects of’ (vol. 14, 39‐41), accepting that owning slaves is morally lawful, concludes that possessing slaves’ descendents was lawful, even where title was defective, ‘when the stability of society and the avoidance of grave disturbances demand it.’

²³ Erickson, J.H., ‘Leavened and Unleavened: Some Theological Implications of the Schism of 1054,’ Saint Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 14(1970)155‐76Google Scholar.

²⁴ Mk 14:1 and 12.

²⁵ The best study is still Woolley, R.M., The Bread of the Eucharist (London 1913)Google Scholar.

²⁶ The evidence is laid out in Woolley.

²⁷ See O'Loughlin, T., ‘The Praxis and Explanations of Eucharistic Fraction in the Ninth Century: the Insular Evidence,’ Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 45(2003)1‐20Google Scholar.

²⁸ This is rendered in the quasi‐official Canon Law Society translation into English of 1983 as: In the eucharistic celebration, in accordance with the ancient tradition of the latin [sic] Church, the priest is to use unleavened bread whenever he celebrates Mass.

²⁹ See O'Loughlin, T., ‘The “Eucharistic Words of Jesus”: An Un‐noticed Silence in our Earliest Sources,’ Anaphora 8,1(2014)1‐12Google Scholar.

³⁰ The whole controversy can be found narrated in Taft, R., ‘Mass Without the Consecration? The Historic Agreement on the Eucharist between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East Promulgated 26 October 2001,’ Worship 77(2003)482‐509Google Scholar; and, for background, see two articles by Jammo, S., ‘The Quddasha of the Apostles Addai and Mari and the Narrative of the Eucharistic Institution,’ Syriac Dialogue 1(1994)168‐82Google Scholar; and ‘The Anaphora of the Apostles Addai and Mari: A Study of Structure and Historical Background,’ Orientalia Christiana Periodica 68(2002)5‐35Google Scholar.

³¹ See Baumstark, A., On the Historical Development of the Liturgy (Collegeville, MN 2011)Google Scholar[ET by F. West of Vom geschichtlichen Werden der Liturgie, Freiburg, 1923].

³² See Ligier, L., ‘The Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer,’ Studia Liturgica 9(1973)161‐85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ The text can be found on the Vatican's website.

³⁴ Johnson, M.E., ‘Liturgy and Ecumenism: Gifts, Challenges, and Hopes for a Renewed Vision,’ Worship 80(2006)2‐29 at 20Google Scholar, draws attention to the fact that implications of the 2001 Roman acknowledgment of the authenticity of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari are ‘mind‐boggling.’

³⁵ For a fuller study of this prayer, its history and its problems, see O'Loughlin, T., ‘The Commemoratio pro vivis of the Roman Canon: a Textual Witness to the Evolution of Western Eucharistic Theologies?’ in Day, J. and Vinzent, M. eds, Studia Patristica [Early Roman Liturgy to 600] 71(2014)69‐91Google Scholar.

³⁶ ‘On the earliest texts of the Roman Canon,’ Journal of Theological Studies 4(1903)555‐77Google Scholar.

³⁷ Liturgica Historica: Papers on the Liturgy and Religious Life of the Western Church (Oxford 1918), 77‐115Google Scholar.

³⁸ See Jungmann, J.A., The Mass of the Roman Rite: Missarum Sollemnia (ET by F.A. Brunner, New York, NY 1955), vol. 2, 159‐69 at 167Google Scholar.

³⁹ For a study of the historical blunders contained in that Instruction, see Jeffrey, P., Translating Tradition: A Chant Historians Reads Liturgiam Authenticam (Collegeville, MN 2005)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Kerr's Twentieth‐Century Catholic Theologians is the best survey.

⁴¹ See Dondeyne, A., Contemporary European Thought and Christian Faith (ET E. McMullan and J. Burnheim, Pittsburgh, PA 1958), 36‐66Google Scholar on ‘the historical character of human existence.

⁴² I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of my dear friend, Prof. Michael Hayes of Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, whose untimely death took place on Easter Sunday 2017 just as I completed it: requiescat cum sanctis in pace.