Tradition and Capital-C Custom

In a rather obtuse opinion piece about a lecture he didn't understand, Chris Jackson, a Catholic writer, expressed a sentiment that is unfortunately common in American Catholic circles. Reacting to a talk on the re-integration of our natural lives––one that encouraged a return to folk dance and sustainable farming––Jackson quipped, “Apparently tradition means returning to the Bronze Age.”¹ In place of intelligent cultural engagement, Jackson proposes “just the actual Church and actual Traditional Catholicism.” Had he been present at the Roman Forum symposium, where the lecture occurred, he would have heard a talk encouraging Catholics to embrace AI––a talk that made heavy use of the appeal to inevitability, or the claim that something must be good because it’s going to happen. This second lecture received much flack under the circumstances, and justifiably so. Many Catholics, especially in America, succumb to a progressive passivity in the face of technological change––and, indeed, in the face of all change that does not proclaim its moral intentions in bright neon letters. This passivity will dismiss any cultural critique of a non-propositional, non-doctrinal sort as morally pointless, “Bronze Age thinking.” Conservatives, unfortunately, are the greatest apologists of what is here to stay.