Principles of Catholic Theology has been rough going. The papers from the seventies read a lot like his earlier work in the Introduction to Christianity, which I find not as clear as some of his later writing. Moreover, the essays constituting Principles of Catholic Theology have been only lightly edited, so they actually seem to jump around rather than reading smoothly from one to the next.
Be that as it may, I keep reading, passing my eyes over the text, in the hopes that everything I see will make more sense later. After all, I am only a quarter of the way through my Ratzinger shelf!
In my most recent essay at reading his essay, Ratzinger argued that there is an essential link between tradition and being human. The middle terms are that tradition results from memory, and memory is presupposed to any kind of rationality, and rationality is what makes us human. I am not sure I understood Ratzinger’s argument, but it did provoke me to think about these questions on my own, and here’s what happened.
Tradition arises from the belief that the future matters, that what we do today should be formative for the future. Seen from the other way around, it arises from the belief that the past matters, that what was done in the past should have been formative for today. Both are the same thing.
Suppose we deny the premise that leads to tradition. Right away, it means that human history is meaningless, because what is done in one era cannot or should not form what is done in another. But if we keep pushing the argument, we find that my actions are meaningless even within my own lifetime, because what I did yesterday should not form what I do today. In fact, what I did, thought, and was two seconds ago should not form the present moment.
Really to live this way would be insanity. If we want to be sane, to have meaningful lives, and to contribute to a meaningful history, we have to believe that what is done in one time should be formative of a future time and formed by a past time. And this will inevitably give rise to tradition.
