Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/34

 TRADITION

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TRADITION

of all. The existence of tradition in the Church must be regarded as living in the spirit and the heart, thence translating itself into acts, and expressing itseli in words or writings; but here we must not have in mind individual sentiment, but the common senti- ment of the Church, the sense or sentiment of the faithful, that is, of all who live by its Hfe and are in communion of thought among themselves and with her. The living idea is the idea of all, it is the idea of individuals, not merely inasmuch as they are indi- viduals, but inasmuch as they form part of the same social body. This sentiment of the Church is pecu- liar in this, that it is itself under the influence of grace. Hence it follows that it is not subject, like that of other human groups, to error and thoughtless or culpable tendencies. The Spirit of God always living in His Church upholds the sense of revealed truth ever living therein.

Documents of all kinds (writings, monuments, etc.) are in the hands of masters, as of the faithful, a means of finding or recognizing the revealed truth confided to the Church under the direction of her pastors. There is between wTitten documents and the living magisterium of the Church a relation similar, pro- portionately speaking, to that already outlined be- t ween Script ure and the living magist erium. In t hem is found the traditional thought ex-pressed according to varieties of environments and circumstances, no longer in an inspired language, as is the case with Scripture, but in a purely human language, conse- quently subject to the imperfections and shortcom- ings of human thought. Nevertheless the more the documents are the exact expression of the living thought of the Church the more they thereby possess tlie value and authority which belong to that thought because they are so much the better ex-pression of tradition. Often formulas of the past have them- selves entered the traditional current and become the official formulas of the Church. Hence it will be un- derstood that the living magisterium searches in the past, now for authorities in favour of its present thought in order to defend it against attacks or dan- gers of mutilation, now for light to walk the right road without straying. The thought of the Church is essentially a "traditional thought and the Uving mag- isterium by taking cognizance of ancient formulas of this thought thereby recruits its strength and prepares to give to immutable truth a new expression which shall be in harmony with the circumstances of the day and within reach of contemporary minds. Revealed truth has sometimes found definitive formulas from the earhest times; then the living magisterium has only had to preserve and exi)lain them and put them in circulation. Sometimes attempts have been made to express this truth, without success. It even happens that, in attem])ting to express revealed truth in the terms of some philosophy or to fuse it with some cur- rent of human thought, it has been distorted so as to be scarcely recognizable, so closely mingled with error that it becomes difficult to separat e tliem. When the Church studies the ancient monuments of her faith she casts over the past the reflect ion of her living and pres- ent thought and by some symi)alliy of the truth of to-day with that of yestciilay she succeeds in recog- nizing through the olisi-uritics and inaccuracies of an- cient formulas the ])rtions of traditional truth, even when they are mixed with error. The Church is also (as regards religious and moral doctrines) the best in- terjireter of truly traditional documents; she recog- nizes as by instinct what Ix-longs to the current of her living thought and distinguishes it from the foreign elements which may have become mixed with it in the course of centuries.

The living magisterium, therefore, makes extensive use of documents of the past, but it does so while judging and interpreting, gladly finding in them its present thought, but likewise, when needful, distin-

guishing its present thought from what is traditional only in appearance. It is revealed truth always living in the mind of the Church, or, if it is preferred, the present thought of the Church in continuity with her traditional thought, which is for it the final criterion, according to which the living magisterium adopts as true or rejects as false the often obscure and confused formulas which occur in the monuments of the past. Thus are exjilained both her respect for the writings of the Fathers of the Church and her supreme inde- pendence towards those WTitings; she judges them more than she is judged by them. Harnack has said that the Church is accustomed to conceal her evolu- tion and to efface as well as she can the differences between her present and her former thought by con- demning as heretical the most faithful witnesses of what was formerly orthodoxy. Not understanding what tradition is, the ever-living thought of the Church, he believes that she abjured her past when she merely distinguished between what was tradi- tional truth in the past and what was only human alloy mixed with that truth, the personal opinion of an author sub.stituting itself for the general thought of the Christian community. With regard to official documents, the expression of the infallible magisterium of the Church embodied in the decision of councils, or the solemn judgments of the popes, the Church never gainsaj'S what she has once decided. She is then hnked with her past because in this past her entire self is concerned and not any fallible organ of her thought. Hence she still finds her doctrine and rule of faith in these venerable monuments; the formulas may have grown old, but the truth which they express is always her present thought.

IV. The organization and exercise of the living magisterium; its precise r61e in the defence and trans- mission of revealed truth; its limits and modes of action. — Closer study of the living magisterium will enable us to better understand the splendid organism created by God and gradually developed that it might preserve, transmit, and bring within the reach of all revealed truth, ever the same, but adapted to every variety of time, circumstances, and environment. Properly speaking, this magisterium is a teaching authority; it not only presents the truth, but it has the right to impose it, since its power is the very power given by God to Christ and by Christ to His Church. This authority is called the teaching Church. The teaching Church is essentially composed of the episco- pal body, which continues here below the work and mission of the Apostolic College. It was indeed in the form of a college or social body that Christ grouped His Apostles and it is hkewise as a social body that the episcopate exercises its mission to teach. Doctrinal infallibility has been guaranteed to the episcopal body and to the head of that body as it was guaranteed to the Apostles, with this difference, however, between the Apostles and the bishops that each Apostle was personally infallible (in virtue of his extraordinary mission as foimder and the plenitude of the Holy Ghost received on Pentecost by the Twelve and later communicated to St. Paul as to the Twelve), whereas only the body of bishops is infalhble and each bishop is not so, save in proportion as he teaches in conmiu- nion and concert with the entire episcopal body.

At the head of this episcopal body is the supreme authority of the Roman pontiff, the successor of St. Peter in his primacy as he is his successor in his see. As supreme authority in the teaching body, which is infallible, he himself is infallible. The episcopal body is infallil)le also, but only in union with its heail, from whom moreover it may not separate, since to do so would be to sejiarate from the foundation on which the Cliurcli is built. The authority of the pope may be exercised without tlie co-operation of the bishops, and this even in infallible decisions which both bishops and faithful are bound to receive with the same suD-