Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Tradition means whatever is delivered, as well as the way and means, by which the object delivered came to us.
The proper source of Revelation is the word of God, which is both written and unwritten. The written is contained in the Sacred Scriptures, the unwritten in Sacred Tradition.
When we speak of the unwritten word of God, we do not mean that it has never been written, but that it was never written by the man to whom God revealed it. It was committed to writing afterwards by his disciples, or by others, who heard it from his lips.
The word Tradition, considered in its object, means whatever is delivered or transmitted: in this sense it is called objective tradition. If we consider, however, the act, or the way and the means, by which an object is propagated and transmitted, this is called active tradition. This active tradition includes of necessity the object, delivered to us. Likewise, the object of tradition supposes an active tradition, without which it could not have reached us.
We must always, therefore, take Tradition in its composite sense, that is, as made up of two parts-the act of transmission, and the thing transmitted.
In the following pages, therefore, Tradition must always be understood to mean not only the doctrine accepted, or the custom that prevailed in apostolic times, but also the way or the means, by which that doctrine or custom has come down.
To give an example, Scripture does not state on what day Jesus Christ was born. But an old tradition tells us that the Son of God, as man, was born on the twenty-fifth of December. Behold the object of a Tradition. The Church accepted and set that date for its celebration. Christians, in obedience to the Church, have observed it every year since Christ ascended into heaven. Behold the active tradition. These are the two elements. The belief that Christ was born December 25; the teaching Church that set that date for its celebration.
The observance of Lent, the Friday abstinence, the celebration of Sunday instead of Saturday, on these, Scripture is for the most part silent. But Tradition clearly tells us they were observed in apostolic times. The Church approved of them and transmitted them from generation to generation to the present day. The Apostles did not write of them. Why should they? They were taken as a matter of course. Some of the early Christians, disciples of the Apostles, or their disciples in turn, wrote of them to inculcate on the Christians, of their days, what the Apostles had taught and preached. The same applies to other discipline and doctrine that had not been written, but was believed and practiced.
Whenever, therefore, we speak of Tradition in general, we always mean this Complex Tradition: the object with its manner of transmission, namely, the Church that gives it value and authority. They both go together, as philosophers say like matter and form. It is in this sense that the Council of Trent understood and considered Tradition. It solemnly declared:
“Following, then, the examples of the orthodox Fathers, it [the Church] receives and venerates with a feeling of piety and reverence all the books both of the Old and New Testaments, since one God is the author of both; also the traditions, whether they relate to faith or morals, as having been dictated either orally by Christ or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church in unbroken succession.”[1]
- [1] Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, p. 17.