Mission

What is a tradition, anyway?

‘Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.’

One of the things that Catholic education is trying to do is place itself more in ‘the Catholic tradition’. What does that mean, and what is a tradition anyway? A writer who throws a lot of light on these questions is Jaroslav Pelikan (1923–2006). Pelikan was a scholar with a deep knowledge of the Christian tradition. Starting as Lutheran, he ended his life as a member of the Orthodox Church.

Pelikan is famous for this 1989 remark about tradition, and its evil twin, traditionalism:

‘Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are, and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenised tradition.’

Right now, the Church seems to be facing so many problems. This can discourage us. But we need to remember that Christians have always faced problems, and haven’t been beaten by them. That’s what tradition is: the learning, tested by experience, that the Church has accumulated by facing problems.

A healthy tradition faces problems with an old wisdom and a fresh outlook. It isn’t daunted by problems, because it is confident it has the resources to meet them. This is exactly how traditions develop: by facing new problems. In contrast, traditionalism refuses to encounter the situation it faces. It won’t address the new problems, and slips into irrelevance.

So, true tradition is both an opportunity and a responsibility. It is an opportunity to learn from two thousand years of reflection and experience. Our situation is never wholly unprecedented, and there is a lot we can learn.

But tradition is also a responsibility. We must ‘remember’ our own situation and make our own decisions in the light of what has gone before. This is exactly the same responsibility that fell on Christians two thousand, one thousand, and one hundred years ago, and it is how we make the tradition our own. Not by aping it, but by developing it.

Our situation is different from our forebears, so we will make our own unique contributions. Those contributions will in turn be refined on reflection and become part of the tradition, a guide for those who come after us.

Further reading: https://www.faithandleadership.com/jason-byassee-tradition-makes-innovation