"Tradition"

"Tradition"

We are called to know God personally, but we are essentially social beings. We only come to know who we are in the context of other people, in the context of living in a family, in a community. Would we be so arrogant to say that all the preceding centuries of Christians and Jews have not also known, listened to and followed the Lord? Did Christian history begin in America? With my conversion? Or in Waco, Texas, around 1962?

That is why the tradition of the Church is so important: We stand on the shoulders of all the wise persons and saints of the past. This is the true Tradition. Some historical accidents have been facilely passed on as universal tradition, yet are not the consistent coherent pattern. So we need the Body to keep us beyond cultural arrogance and tied to all the ancestors. We can’t each start from zero.

So many modern groups – street preachers, “Jesus” people – have lacked a sense of the Body, a sense of standing on the shoulders of the past. They have their God moment, and they try to move forward simply based on their private experience alone and on the “Book.” Often a small group of followers become so like-minded that they lose that sense of the larger wisdom, of histories and cultures of the centuries, they can be expected to support the local government over and against the universal good. We call it civil religion, where Christ becomes a tribal god and the Church a mere echo chamber of the state.

Both Catholics and Protestants have been guilty of this fundamentalism, but you would think Catholics would have known better by now.

from The Great Themes of Scripture