Pope Francis recently gave an address to the International Theological Commission (ITC) in which he returned to a theme he often emphasizes: the dangers of traditionalism and the need to avoid going backward. Traditionalism is – unfavorably – contrasted in his view with a proper understanding of the Church’s tradition. In theory, this has some value; in practice, it’s leading to disaster.
He identified tradition as “what makes the Church grow upwards from below, like a tree: the roots.” And he continued:
On the other hand, someone else said that traditionalism is the “dead faith of the living”: when you close in on yourself. Tradition – I want to underline this – makes us move in this direction: upwards from below: vertical. Today there is a great danger, which is to go in another direction: “backward-ism.” To go backward. “It has always been done this way”: it is better to go backward, it is safer, and not go forward with tradition. This horizontal dimension, as we have seen, has led some movements, ecclesial movements, to remain fixed in time, somewhere back when. They are the backward-ists. …
