Tradition
by Dr. D.Q. McInerny, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary. Reprinted with permission from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter Newsletter, May, 1999 in our Una Voce- Springfield Area September 1999 newsletter.
The transmitters of a tradition must be marked by an overriding sense of loyalty to it. They must see it as their solemn obligation to pass on the tradition precisely as they have received it.
No coherent social group of any kind, be it a family, a nation, or a church, is possible without tradition. A tradition, we could say, is a society’s continuing self-awareness of its identity and its purpose. It both defines a society and protects the integrity of its essential nature.
The word "tradition" has its roots in the Latin verb tradere, whose basic meaning is "to hand over," or "to hand down." A tradition is transmitted from generation to generation for one basic reason: it is regarded as intrinsically valuable and as something which is transcendant of time.
Tradition has several elements to it. First and foremost, a tradition must, of course, have specific contents: there must be something concrete, a body of knowledge, a lore, which is handed down. The contents of tradition may take any number of specific forms—e.g., written laws, music, a whole range of patterns of behavior. Then there must be the recipients of a tradition; this would be the society as a whole to which the tradition pertains.
Tradition involves those who are specially charged with the responsibility of preserving intact its contents and of faithfully transmitting them, such as, for example, the elders of a tribe, or a priesthood. But often this task devolves informally upon the entire adult population of a society.
Like every living thing, a tradition changes, but it changes as a living thing, which is to say, organically. Traditions are not manufactured, any more than are oak trees. To attempt massively to transform a tradition is to kill it. An oak tree cannot be changed into an elm tree. Continuously to tinker with a tradition is to trivialize it.
The contents of any given tradition can be passed on with varying degrees of success, and good success in this effort depends on the attitude of those in whom the tradition has been chiefly entrusted. The transmitters of a tradition must be marked by an overriding sense of loyalty to it. They must see it as their solemn obligation to pass on the tradition precisely as they have received it. This of course entails their being unqualifiedly dedicated to the preservation of the tradition in its full integrity. Their own integrity is directly linked to their ability to maintain the integrity of the tradition. The conscious abandonment of the tradition on their part would constitute a betrayal of the society it represents.
The value of any tradition depends directly on the value of its contents, and its centrality to the society to which it pertains. The greater the value of the contents of a tradition, the greater the obligation to preserve them from corruption. The contents of some traditions are so valuable, and the traditions themselves so inextricably a part of the societies to which they pertain, that if those contents were to be seriously compromised, the survival of the societies themselves would be jeopardized. This is preeminently the case with regard to sacred tradition and its relation to the Catholic Church.
If a tradition is to be efficaciously received, the receivers must be properly disposed, and this involves on their part a fundamentally healthy attitude toward tradition itself. This means, first and foremost, that they appreciate its necessity. Receiving a tradition is not a one-time activity; it is a continuing activity. The serious reception of a tradition involves an earnest resolve to keep a tradition. Although the distinction between the transmitters and the receivers of a tradition is a real one, there is a sense in which every adult in a given society is both a transmitter and a receiver of tradition, and one’s vitality as a transmitter depends upon one’s vitality as a receiver.
If a tradition is central to the society to which it pertains, then there is, as intimated above, a strict interdependence between the tradition and the society. On the one hand, a tradition rises out of and therefore depends upon a society. It is, as it were, the memory of a society. On the other hand, the very identity of a society depends upon its tradition, for if a society were to lose its tradition it would be like an individual losing his memory. Short of its complete loss, the serious weakening of a tradition would have the effect of disorienting a society and corroding its unity. A society with a tenuous hold on tradition is teetering on the brink of dissolution.
A tradition can be weakened in any number of ways, and in various degrees, but once a tradition is actually broken it ceases to be a tradition, and it can never be restored as that tradition. A tradition is continuous and unbroken or it is nothing. A tradition is broken as a result of its ceasing to be a critical part of the lives of the members of the society to which it pertains; they therefore lose the capacity to pass it on to the next generation. Antecedently, they have ceased to see the vital link between the tradition and their very identity as a society. They no longer appreciate the fact that the tradition is the very heart of their society. When the heart stops beating, the society dies.