In the natural realm, biological living beings act in view of five ends: nutrition, organic growth, self-defense, self-repair, reproduction. The analogies to spiritual life are present in the development of the Church's nourishment from the Word of God, sacred Tradition, and the sacraments (nutrition), doctrinal consideration of the truth (growth), her doctrinal activities of self-definition (self-defense), her movements of reform (self-repair and vital development), and the spiritual fecundity of charity (spiritual fruitfulness). In a wide range of historical contingent circumnstances these processes of a unified life can take on a wide range of expressions (much like a biological individual or species can develop in a wide array of ways in diverse environmental conditions, through time). However, the mystery is that there is only one Church in and through all the conditions of history, and her doctrinal self-expression and self-communication remains one through all time and through all conditions. It is this mystery of organic continuity amidst change that the Church seeks to denote when she speaks of the mystery of the development of doctrine, as an integral dimension of the ongoing life and vital flourishing of the Catholic Church.
[Thomas Joseph White, OP, Principles of Catholic Theology; Book 1, On the Nature of Theology, The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2023) pp. 80-81.]