Let us be open to new paradigms and possibilities! But let us do so with prudence and deliberation. The problem with navigating our vessels through the powerful currents of contemporary opinion is they are pushed and pulled at the same rate as everyone else's vessels, making it impossible for us to detect the true distance and speed of our travels. We need reference points alongside the shoreline, outside of the current, to measure how far and how fast we’re moving.
This, it seems to me, is the value of the tradition of our Church. We are quick to marginalize the Church’s claims as “historically conditioned" and "anachronistic", but like the “pot calling the kettle black”, our instant, casual dismissiveness of the Church's claims reveals how beholden we are to the conditioning of the present day.
Our reflexive reaction to “Tradition” shouldn’t be that of contempt. In his book Orthodoxy, G.K Chesterton reminds us that tradition represents the established wisdom of our ancestors against the vicissitudes of what’s faddish, a “democracy of the dead,” (which) “refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
We do well to respect such wisdom, even if science or other disciplines compel us to stretch beyond our previously held views.
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