Word to the Wise
Sunday, August 29, 2021 - 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - B
[Deut 4:1-2, 6-8; Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23]"[I]n vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” [Mark]
Our Catholic faith is broad and rich in "traditions" and in "Tradition." I outline the latter word's first letter with a capital "T" because the richness and complexity of Catholic expression has a way of blurring the distinction between various traditions with a small "t" and Tradition with a capital T. One example of the latter would be the two major dogmatic beliefs about the Blessed Mother - the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Neither of these is explicitly found in scripture but are based on the authority of the early Church fathers, rooted in what they knew from scripture. However, there are many "traditions" about Mary that, while not opposed to scripture and Tradition are not required of Catholics. The rosary, much beloved of us Dominicans, is not required.
I mention all of this because Jesus severely criticizes the scribes and Pharisees because they were making their self-serving interpretations of the law seem like the law itself. Even those who were well-intentioned could get so wound up in intricacy that they lost all the purpose of the law. Sometimes I meet Catholics who are so caught up in "validity" that they lose sight of the purpose of a sacrament. The old term for this problem is "casuistry."
All Tradition and tradition must serve scripture first and be a healthy and holy expression of our faith as handed down but still living and growing. A great Lutheran theologian, Jaroslav Pelikan, once wrote that Tradition is "the living faith of the dead, not the dead faith of the living." We must always be aware of this in proclaiming what is required in our Catholic life and why it is required so that we don't come under Jesus' criticism of teaching as God's law mere human precepts. AMEN