Imagine the Roman Catholic Church not as a building, not as a group of people, but as one of those fancy dessert and sandwich plates one finds only in the Ritz or Plaza Hotels during teatime. Imagine it: a beautiful bone-china plate, delicate, suspended by a decorative metal stand, a rod, bored through the middle of the fine plate. The rod holds the plate aloft, and straight, and the little cucumber sandwiches and miniature pastries are artfully arranged on the surface of the plate. If the rod is defective, the plate will be slanted and defective as an upper-crust tea service: all the cakes and sandwiches will slide off, into the oblivion of the waiter’s table scraper and napkin.
Imagine, though, the rod cannot be, will not be, defective. It is the axis built by God to hold the plate, the visible Church, aloft as a foundation of faith for the members, but also by example, for the world. Now the paint and gilt on the plate may become faded, there may be chips and cracks, but the rod holds it straight and level at the essentials.
What is this rod? It is the Deposit of Faith, it is the Tradition of the Church founded by Our Lord, centered in the person of Peter, or the Papacy. “Where Peter is, there is the Church”. The Papacy is the lodestone of Tradition- it does not encompass it, but rather is its head. As Christ is Head of the Church, His Vicar is Head of Tradition.
So I see that rod, holding that plate, as visibly the purview of the Papacy: not the individual man alone, but that man as holding the Office and with the graces that Office gives him. The farther one is out on that plate, the farther is one from Tradition, from the Papacy as Holder of that Tradition. Thus, there may be people, even the Pope himself (in his private actions, his non-ex-cathedra, non-infallible teaching), who are right at the edge of the plate, leaning toward this or that excess or error, yet still within the confines of still being Catholic and not heretical or apostate. To fall off the plate is to forsake the Papacy and the Tradition the Office guards: and to forsake the Vicar of Christ is to forsake Christ.
But why? It sounds all so medieval, so crafted, so un-abstract, so, so- carnal! How can an office that is necessarily held by a man, how can a bunch of writings and practices and art and whatnot carry the sublime truths of Almighty God? Surely because God is Spirit, He would just go to each individual spiritually, enlightening them, letting the visibilities and practices: the art, the hierarchies of churchmen, the archaic sacraments and sacramentals- be more about the needs of the surrounding culture- that is, a matter of choice?
These questions hit right at the nature of Tradition as it is understood in the Catholic sense- and indeed, hit at the Incarnation of God Himself: for one can level the same criticisms that one levels at a particular-bound Church, to the Person of Christ as He appeared in history.
What is Tradition? It is this question that those who would answer to the (mis) nomer “Traditionalist” are really fighting about: and it is this same question that those who would call themselves “Progressive Catholics” are fighting about. Those ‘middlemen’ who are called now, “Neo-Con Catholic”- I think these find the point of least struggle and go about trying to run the show. But it is interesting that these, the "Neos", who I think believe themselves the most moderate, in the plate image, the closest to the rod of the Papacy in the center, are perhaps closer to the edge because they are focused not on the Papacy, nor Tradition, but rather on the individual man’s idiosyncrasies who holds the office, or perhaps on the political and material advantages in their own nation-states. A hard judgement but I wonder if it is accurate nonetheless.
What is Tradition? What is this rod, this essential foundation? I borrow here from Mr. Davies, and from Father Ripperger’s articles on Tradition in The Latin Mass magazine.
Tradition comes from a Latin word meaning, "what is handed down". This is a general meaning of the word, and can mean anything from family tradition to company policy. These human forms of tradition are what form us in varying ways, they help us to form habits of action and thinking, informing and strengthening the will, which in turn grow the character and virtues (or vices) of a person. A person is not separate completely from the traditions he has been formed within: the concept of radical individuality is really a lie. The differing modes of tradition have different impacts upon a person: that is, familial traditions will be much more powerful than company policy (depending on the company, I suppose). However, it is hubris on our part to think that we are self-made men and women: we are, like candles, formed by the structures and people around us: we always retain our free will, but everything else about us: our temperaments, character, personality, intellect: are unique products of the traditions we have received from others.
Nearly two thousand years ago, Our Lord brought a new entity into existence. It was the extension of His Body, the physical reality of “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”. It was the birth of Our Lady’s Son renewed, with the sending of God’s Spirit to Mary and the Apostles on Pentecost. Our Lord gave to this new entity Himself, it was meant to spread the reality of God’s Incarnation across all time and space. One has to let this shocking reality set in. God came in a physical Body, and left a physical Body, imbued with the Holy Spirit, in the reality of the Eucharist, but also just as real, in the reality of a Church.
Thus, His Church is not a religious community, nor is it a culture: although it encompasses those characteristics by its nature of having many people within it. The Church is like no other organization in the world, past, present or future: it is the Creator Himself, growing and forming His Incarnation through His children, children of the Church, children of His Mother (“Behold, here is thy Mother”). When we Catholics talk blithely about “The Body of Christ”, we forget that this is a living reality, and not just a symbolic term.
Therefore, anything a part of this Body becomes charged with organic and living meaning: Sacrament, sacramental, liturgy, art and architecture: each is an extension of Christ Himself, as we baptized are. This lays great meaning on each person, each act sanctioned by the Church. God chose these means, able to be grasped by both the senses, the soul and the intellect, because that is how we are made; and as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, it is through these means that the will is moved and the person is formed.
We are again talking about tradition, what Christ handed down and wished the Apostles to hand down: namely, Himself as a living reality in Scripture, the Magisterial teachings of the Church: the Sacraments, sacramentals; the art, architecture and liturgy; the music and the martyrs and saints- that is, the riches and deposit of Faith as expressed in what has been handed down: Tradition, with a capital “T’. It has a capital “T” because it is part of the living Body of Christ.
Our Lord, therefore, forms us through this extension of His Incarnation. To be a Catholic in the living Tradition of the Church is to be with Christ as Our Lady, St. Joseph and the Apostles were with Christ. This Tradition is the means by which He forms us: as was stated before, none of us becomes what we are with an absence of traditions given us by others. The “nature state” of Hobbes and Locke is pure nonsense. We are born into society, culture, and traditions that form us. The Catholic Church is the culture and tradition of Christ, and is Christ Himself extended over space and time, and encompassing the members of His Body- and founded on another person, the person of Peter and his successors. It is as if Christ handed Himself to Peter, but as an Infant, for Peter to hold- and the Successors of Peter are charged still to guard and care for this Church, these Traditions.
How can anyone, then, take that Tradition into his own hands, even attempt it, in order to remake Christ’s Body into his own image? It is sacrilege. Christ’s Tradition is a beautiful organism flowering and winding its way through the tragedies of human history, using them as stakes on which to grow; changing those very tragedies into triumphs for the salvation of the world. It is the vine to which we must remain attached; for Tradition is the knowable and visible witness for Christ in the world.
Thus is the majestic music, the lives and relics of the saints and martyrs, the soaring testimonials of architecture, the erudite teaching, the missions and missionaries throughout the history of the Church; the billions of Confessions, millions of Holy Orders, Vows and Marriages, and the liturgy as a setting for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: thus are these witnesses and realities making present the ineffable Person of Our Savior to the world that needs Him.
Here we must grasp the serious fact that what we do as Catholics, what the hierarchy does, with this Deposit of Faith, this Tradition in its varying and living forms, what the Pope does or does not do- we are in a very real sense, doing to Christ Himself. The rod in the plate on which the very souls and bodies of the faithful rest is a living rod, and we must strive to look to the rod for our reality, our stability: it is the foundation of Faith, reaching through our plane of existence to the beyond.
The next part will discuss the jewel in the crown of Tradition: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
