Tradition: a cure for Tropophobia?

Yes, I've made up the term "morphobia" below. Just shows how bad my Greek is, doesn't it? By "morphobia", I mean "tropophobia" the fear of making changes.

I think the present Global Climate is spawning a lot of tropophobia at the moment. "The world is spinning too fast, I'm buying lead Nike shoes to keep myself tethered to the days I try to lose" as Damon Albarn proclaims (see, I am hip and with it! The band? Gorillaz!! The song? 1999-2000! hahahaha) and change is now happening rapidly, especially with all this telecommunication lark. When I've actually posted this passage on the blog, it will be published around the world in a matter of seconds.

So here's the problem. Should the Church try to keep up? For a change to occur in the Church, that change would have to be measured against Scripture and Tradition. The trouble is that there are millennia spanned by Scripture and Tradition, so it takes time for the Church to check out a change, by which time another change will necessitate itself. The Church could never keep up with the changes going on in the world. But then, she doesn't need to, and nor is she meant to.

The Church doesn't change! Pure and simple. She doesn't change because she is Christ's bride, both Visible and Eternal, both Militant and Triumphant, just as her Groom is both God and Man. Time has no dominion over the Church, since she is ruled only by her Husband. If time has no dominion over the Church, then the idea that she need to be changing as the world changes is denying her Eternal nature. That's not to say that she doesn't grow.

Ed Pacht reminded me that I once was a baby, and now I am a fully grown (vertically) man. I remained the same person, but I changed in stature, not as a person. As an Aristotelian (via Aquinas), I say that my substance has not changed, though my accidents have. Likewise , the Church has grown: the Scriptures, the Tradition, the Apostolic Succession, the Catholic Creeds - indeed the Catholic Faith - have all grown with her.

Members of the Church are Eternal beings per gratia Dei. That is the absolute essence of the promise of the Lord Christ. Become a member of the Church, and you are guaranteed salvation (though this requires a lifetime of working out as St Paul tells us). Thus, the people within the Church do not change either, unless they choose to be cut off. That vine imagery Our Lord told us about is an incredibly powerful and instructive vision.

Tradition therefore as the thread that runs through the Church, tempering exegesis and hindering eisegesis, provides us with the antidote to Eccliesiastical Tropophobia by reinforcing the doctrine of having faith in God Who will not let any change affect his Church. If we continue to work at being members of this wonderful Body of Christ, then all the changes in the world will not affect us.

There is also something else that doesn't change - the nature of sin. Sin is, by definition, that which God prohibits by His will, yet suffers it to occur through the free-will of His creatures. If God doesn't change, then neither does that which consitutes sin. In its mission to minister the grace of God to the world, the Church finds herself performing the same task as she has always done. This is despite the number members she possesses. Notice then that as she has grown from a company of a few men and women from the first century, she has carried the same message, the same grace, the same comfort, the same life-giving water, the same food for the soul.

Membership levels are down, and His Holiness, Pope Benedict has said that the Church will become smaller, and many people within the Church live in fear of this. These live on the principle of "adapt or die". The Church does neither. If she is well populated by the Faithful, then this is due to the Call of God, if not then the seeds sown by the proclamation of the same Gospel is falling on unsuitable soil.

On the contrary, adaptation is death, for to adapt the word of God is a gross heresy.

This is not a fear of change. Indeed the stability of the Church allows the Christian a safe anchor upon which to build her/his life, and to take courage to face the world as it mutates second after second. Firm in our faith, sure in our active membership of the Body of Christ do we battle, Sin, the World and the Devil.

No lead Nike shoes for me!