Tradition, Priesthood and Progress

No human being can stop time. It flows. Change is inevitable. To live is to change, as Cardinal Newman wrote, and yet the very same Catholics who value Newman so much, seem to want to prevent change, in a way, to stop the flow of time. Such actions create such horrible tension. It would be as if I would spend psychic energy trying to prevent my own body and mind from changing in time. It would be as if I would try to spend my own psychic energy trying to prevent my mind from growing in wisdom. Such a condition is not a condition of joy—the condition Jesus wants to spread-- it is a condition of terrible inner and outer conflict.

“Tradition is important.” I have heard time and time again. True, it is important. My very thoughts were developed within the context of a tradition—my parents and teachers taught me language, but the language that they taught me forty years ago did not include terms like internet, globalization, inter-religious, or historical consciousness. I learned those terms as time went on. There was no Platonic dictionary that my teachers dispensed these terms from, some vault of knowledge that some intellectual class agreed to open from time to time. There is the evolving universe, that human beings are helping to construct, and aspects of the evolving universe, being partially constructed by human beings, are given names by human beings. And so the internet and the reality of the internet.

One of the names given and one of the human realities named is “tradition.” I have been taught within the Catholic tradition, a dynamic tradition. I inherited vocabulary from others older than I am and now that I am forty two there are younger teachers who teach me as well. What I have learned about the Catholic tradition is that it evolved. The institution and the sacrament of the priesthood developed in time. There were no ordinations made by the Apostles. The Catholic Church constructed ordination and priesthood. Does that mean that these constructions are inauthentic? No, most definitely, they are authentic, but we must examine the claim that the Spirit of Christ is not encouraging ordination and priesthood to evolve even further. Currently, the Church is in crisis because our current understanding of the priesthood is not giving life. Priests have been protected, images have been protected, and children have been harmed. We are now becoming aware that this is an international problem. What we learn from this situation and how we change because of it will determine much. It is difficult to change. It might seem scary to some, but we are a people who meet change with faith in Christ.

We must have faith in God and in the evolving universe, to paraphrase Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Does that mean that we shake off our traditions? No. It means that we let them evolve and help them evolve—authentically. Any tradition that does not evolve is not a living tradition and will then become a dying prison cell in which people live by rote.

We all live and to live is to change. We all change. To be wise is to learn from the evolving nature of our own minds and bodies. To be wise is to discern between authentic change, change motivated by love, by positive energy, and change motivated by selfish grasping or anxiety. The true traditions, the traditions that live and give life, that nurture, are the traditions that change in positive ways. Let’s pass that tradition of positive change on to the next generation of Catholics by living our living tradition. It is time for some changes in the way we understand priesthood.