G.K. Chesterton — Orthodoxy:
I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a [group] . . . . Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.
I think that G.K Chesterton hit on quite a point here. Holy Tradition was not simply imposed from above, as though panels of bishops sat and chose all of Holy Tradition. Inevitably there was an internal conversation in the Church as the Church responded to the Holy Spirit. That conversation was both formal and informal. The formal side were the definitions various Church Fathers and Councils–many of them local Councils–gave as the Church grew and developed. These formal definitions range from the development in Church leadership that we can already see in the epistles of Saint Paul, Saint John, and Saint Peter, through the later definitions on provinces, dioceses, patriarchates, through the developments in worship practices, etc.
The informal side was the acceptance of the Church . . . or the rejection of the Church. Sometimes we make it clear that our opinion of the People of the Church is actually rather low. We make all these wonderful pronouncements about the People of God, the Body of Christ. That is, as long as we do not have to really listen to the great democracy of the People of God through the ages. It reminds me of that old joke about the person who says that s/he loves humanity, but that it is people that s/he hates. You see, too often we treat the historical People of God as though they are full of wrong beliefs and superstitions that we are able to see through much better than all the People of God and her scholars throughout Church history. In fact, as Chesterton charges, we have become arrogant aristocrats who think that we know so much better what really happened and so much better what God has said than our ancestors.
Now those of you who read this blog are quite aware that I know quite a bit about many of the controversies of the Church. And, I am quite aware of superstitions and wrong beliefs that really have existed in the Church. Most often it is the Church herself that has taught me to see those superstitions and wrong beliefs in a more accurate way. You see, nowadays we too often get lost in looking at the trees and miss the forest. Or to use another metaphor, we see the tesserae and miss the mosaic.
Each cubic piece (tesserae) that forms the mosaic is actually imperfect. Like the tree in the forest, no tesserae is perfect just as no tree is perfect. It is only when one steps back and looks at the mosaic that the picture emerges in spite of the many imperfections. This is what G.K. Chesterton was pointing at. There really is a great democracy of witness in the Church. Not one person in the Church is perfect. None of the traditions in the Church is exactly perfect or clear when looked at under a microscope. The Church herself is not perfect. And, yet, somehow, when we step back and look at the Church we see Jesus and we see a picture of God’s work among us. It is to that great democracy, that great Holy Tradition to which we answer every bit as much as we answer to Our Lord.
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