Dr.

Robert Hickson

14 September 2015
The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

The Challenge of Tradition:

What Is to Be Preserved and Why
--Epigraphs-The fruit of the sacrifice can also be wasted. The saying about the blood of the
martyrs sowing seeds does express an unquestionable truth, but it includes the
condition that the martyr not be left alone and forgotten, but that the seed be
sown in the soil of memory and veneration. (Josef Pieper, The Seed Requires
Soil, in his Anthology, Tradition as Challenge: Essays and Speeches (South
Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2015), p. 134my emphasis added.)
***

It seems clear that people have different affinities to a given particular

argument, so that other arguments have little appeal to them. The argument [for
the indestructibility of the soul] that says the most to me is that of the soul's
capacity for truth. This is to be found in Plato and in Augustine and Thomas
[Aquinas]. In the Summa Theologica we read: Because the soul is capax veritatis
(capable of truth) it is therefore also immortal. The latter clause is a conclusion.
Its validity can only be understood, of course, by someone who has understood the
content of the preceding clause [i.e.,Because the soul is capax veritatis....]....But
here I have to know what truth is and what constitutes knowledge of the truth; I
must 'see' that knowing the truth, despite all our radical dependence on our
physical organs, is a process which is fundamentally independent of all
physiological processes. To be aware precisely of this...is the essential and
difficult factor. (Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality, in Tradition as
Challenge: Essays and Speeches, pp. 58-59my emphasis added)
***
But, naturally, exploration of the world and subjugation of nature are not
something that can be isolated from human existence as a whole. And here is the
special subject of concern: whether man, as a spiritual and moral being, can be
trusted or reasonably expected not to make wrong use of the scientific and
technical achievement [e.g., fission-and-fusion, nuclear weaponry] through
which monstrous power is delivered into his hands. A large part of that worry
about what man might become, in the midst of this world which is changing ever
faster and more fundamentally, has been concerned with the preservation of
something which remains constant throughout all the turbulent change; of
course, not just something or other that remains; it is, instead, a question of
keeping pure and unadulterated the truly human possession, that original gift
of truth [e.g., Sacred Tradition, Divine Revelation, Deposit of Faith] about man
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himself and about the world [the creation and createdness]; it is a question of
preserving the inheritance from which mannot only the man of knowledge,
but also the man of actionis nourished and which is the foundation of life.
That this thesaurus [treasure, treasury, repository] should not be lost in oblivion
but handed down intact through the generations and received by themthen
handed down further and again receivedthat is what is important. To say it
differently: the worry, arising from the vehement historical changes, about what
makes up the truly human [humane life]this worry is growing with similar
intensity and it has become identical with the worry about tradition [hence
especially about sacred tradition]. (Josef Pieper, Tradition in the Changing
World (1960) in his Anthology Tradition as Challenge: Essays and Speeches
(2015), pp. 5-6my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)
***
We still have to confront the question of the unique character of sacred
tradition [to include preserving a faithful Memoria Corporis: for example, the
faithful Memory of the Corpus Christi, and of the Martyrs, and, where possible,
of the whole Corpus Christi Mysticum] and whether it alone can really be called
'tradition.' Two things have grown clearer in our discussion, I believe. The first is
this: only in sacred tradition that goes back to divine speech [a Theios
Logos] does the first in line hand over something actually received, that is,
something not confirmed by his own insight. This is, considered purely
formally, the purest imaginable form of tradition. Second, again because of the
divine origin of the traditum, the sacred tradition can be matched by no other
form of tradition in respect to its authoritarian character and power to create
an obligation. It has even been said [in Nikolaus Monzel's Die berlieferung
(1950)], 'a special revelation through God's word' establishes a 'traditional
connection' [and consequent moral obligation] that is so strong that there is an
analogy with it 'in no other field.' (Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim
(South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2010), pp. 40-41my bold emphasis
added)
***
Tradition as Challenge is the title of Josef Pieper's recently published and long awaited English
translation of Tradition als Herausforderung his deeply reflective and engagingly varied book of
collected essays and speeches first published as a whole in Munich, Germany in 1963, over a half
century ago.1 This counterpointed collection still has much to teach an attentive and receptive reader,
1 Josef Pieper, Tradition as Challenge: Essays and Speeches (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2015), 260
pages. The publication date was on 30 August 2015, only two weeks ago. Through the kindness of Bruce Fingerhut, the
General Editor and Publisher of St. Augustine's Press, this writer received a cloth copy of this book in the mail on 28
August as a gift. It was also the poignant, first anniversary of the death of my beloved friend, Anthony Fraser of
Scotland, who also cherished the writings and contemplative character of Josef Pieper. Further page-references to this
book will be placed in parentheses in the main body of this essay above. Josef Pieper's title, Tradition as Challenge, also
recalls the meditative little book by Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M., entitled The Challenge of Faith (Fitzwilliam, New
Hampshire: Loreto Publications, 2004), 104 pages. Like Josef Pieper, Brother Francis is also attentive to the different

especially those who want to understand more fully, and in a more differentiated way, the Concept and
Reality of Tradition.2 Although the book's original reflections were first published just after World War
II and mainly between the years 1952-1960 (with one exception, in 1962, an essay on the concept
and reality of virtue) Dr. Pieper's insights are both timeless and also timely. For, it is the case that
many professed Catholics today, even high prelates of the Church, are dismissing or irreverently
trivializing the meaning and reality of Sacred Tradition, not only certain longstanding ecclesiastical
traditions, but also fundamental Tradition as such as an indispensable source of Divine Revelation, to
include the reliable authority to have chosen the adequate and final Canon of Divinely Revealed Sacred
Scripture.
Although this essay proposes now to consider only a few of Josef Pieper's reflections in his
versatile Anthology, we hope that the reader will be thereby sufficiently inspired to read and to savor
the entire book.
Before we consider how Josef Pieper clarifies the concept of tradition to include both the
process and the content of sacred tradition he proposes to answer a question that he himself
forthrightly formulates: What is meant by the 'Christian West'?
Now we need to treat the substance, the content of this Latin, Western...[and]
Germanic mind. And this would be the starting point for the proper answer to the
question: What is meant by the 'Christian West'?the attempt at an answer, the
suggestion to look at and consider a definitive answer. The answer can be
compressed into these few words: theologically grounded existence in the world!
This is meant as the quintessence and distinctive character of the Western
mind.
One thing is immediately clear: if this is so, the West is by its very nature, and
from the beginning, a tense arrangement. It is an explosive combination and it
undoubtedly requires a special intellectual and spiritual energy to link both
elementsand to keep them linkedso that neither of them grows out of
control and that neither causes the disappearance of the other. Existence in the
world has, of itself, the natural tendency to separate itself from its foundation in
theology and religion. And religion is always tempted to become unworldly. To
aspects and nuanced meanings of Sacred Tradition, as such, and attentive especially to Catholic Theology and to the
Catholic Concept and Believed Reality of Divinely Revealed Sacred Tradition as one of the Sources of Faith, and
indispensably so.
2 See also Josef Pieper's earlier and more conceptual book, ber den Begriff der Tradition (1958), and especially its later
update, revision, and expansion, berlieferung: Begriff und Anspruch (1970), which has also now been translated and
published by St. Augustine's Press in 2010, only five years ago. See Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim (South
Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2010)It is a short book containing only some 83 pages of text; but is 116 pages
in length with the extensive bibliography provided and with the translator's two Introductions included.

think both elements together, and, above all, to live them together: that is the
Christian West! This is what distinguishes it from the non-Western [as such],
and also from a non-Western Christianity. (22-23my emphasis added)
Now Dr. Pieper will help us sharpen our understanding as to what is meant by this concept of a
theologically grounded existence in the world.
It means, first, an affirming attitude towards the world. World here means,
above all, the visible world, the world of things we can see, hear, smell, taste, and
touch. It includes also the affirmation of real living humanity itself, and, not least,
the affirmation and recognition of natural human reason! Existence in the world,
therefore, amounts to taking seriously natural reality in all its aspects [by virtue
of the Creation]. This natural reality [its very createdness] possesses, it is
maintained, a genuine being and function of its own, which cannot be ignored
and obliterated by any kind of absolutizing of the religious.....
The first of St. Thomas' [affirming] arguments can be expressed in a single
sentence: all thingsthe visible ones, the body, and also man's natural reasonall
these things are good because they are created by God. Omne ens est
bonumthis sentence occurring in the Western theory of being, which,
incidentally, is quite Pauline, means simply: the world is good because it is
creation; things are good insofar as they are creatures. The second [affirming]
argument comes from a sphere which is theological in a still more intensive
sense; it derives from the theology of the sacraments [themselves grounded in
the Incarnation itself]: if visible things in their sacramental function become tools
and vehicles of salvation, not only water, bread, and wine, but, above all the
human bodywhy then would all these not be good and worthy of affirmation,
even demanding affirmation and reverence?
These arguments are in no way merely an inner-theological concern or just of
purely theoretical interest. Instead, they are decisive for our practical attitude
towards the world....It includes the claim that the worldly sphere be formed and
shaped according to the ultimate theological norms [also in view of the ill fruits of
the Fall of Man]in some way or other, but certainly in an existentially serious
way. (23, 25-26my emphasis added)
Josef Pieper is also honestly and justly aware that, when he merely utters this word 'tradition,' a
choir of many critical voices, composed of alarm, defense, opposition, and protest makes itself heard
(6), especially among the liberal progressive intellectuals in the Modern World. After listing many of
their searching and challenging objections, he says, in his characteristic fairness:
The critical objections and questions, which in today's world [of 1960] largely
characterize the intellectual, are not to be taken lightly. And no one who
undertakes to defend the claim of tradition and to show it as a necessary
element of a complete, rounded, and meaningful human existence can
4

dispense himself from becoming involved with this opposing position. (6my
emphasis added)
Now he will lead into a clearer understanding of the very concept of tradition, before considering
both the process of tradition and the variously proposed contents of a specific tradition that is reliably
to be passed on and sincerely received intact by later generations:
The first thing that must happen is to achieve the greatest possible conceptual
clarity. It is above all necessary to situate the concept of tradition in its right and
proper place....The appeal to tradition has happened, and does happen, in the
wrong place: for example..., in the sphere of scientific exploration and in the
practical sphere which is based on it....What is important, however, is the very
clear thesis about tradition which Pascal [1623-1662], at the age of twenty-four
distilled for himself out of the experience of this methodological debate [about
scientific method and the ways of the humanities and theology]. Put in a
somewhat simplified and brief formulation, Pascal's conclusion is as follows:
obviously there are two different types of scientific study. Those of the first type
are based on experience and arguments from reason, the model of this type being
physics. Those of the second type are based on authority and tradition, the model
of this type being theology....But, of course, even in its own specific field,
tradition [as, often enough, in the Catholic Church today] can be robbed of respect
and effectiveness; it can be endangered or simply destroyed. To see this more
clearly, one must try to grasp more precisely what is really meant by the concept
of tradition. In normal parlance it always has two meanings: on the one hand,
the process of handing on, tradere, and, on the other hand, the content of what is
handed on: the traditum or the tradendum [this gerundive also means what should
be or ought to be handed on, and even done so as an obligation as well as a form
of gracious and equitable, moral fittingness]. (7-8, 9my bold emphasis added;
italics in the original)
Dr. Pieper will then have us consider the requirements of the transmitter, and well as the
requirements of the recipient of a message, as when a father passes on to his son something of moment:
Tradition as an historical process takes place between two partners, an older and a
younger one, a father and a son, between two generations....It is not a dialogue,
not an exchange, not a mutual communication. One partner, the one handing on,
speaks, and the other listenswhen it is a question of the tradition process....It is,
furthermore, important that the one handing on in the tradition process does not
hand on anything of his own, anything he has acquired himself, but something that
he, too, has received from elsewhere [e.g., fides ex auditu, in Saint Paul's
meaning in Romans 10:17]....Naturally, in the relationship between the
generations there is also a handing on of what one has acquired oneselffor
instance, in the case of a researcher who, by teaching, communicates his own
discoveries. But we do not call this tradition in the strict sense. Language itself
resists this use of the term. Tradition, therefore, does not simply mean handing
5

on something, but rather, handing on something which has already been

received as handed on. Quod a patribus acceperunt, hoc filiis tradiderunt; what
has been received from one's fathers is passed on to the sons. This sentence from
[Saint] Augustine designates the structure of the process with complete
precision. (9-10my bold emphasis added)
Making us also think of the Catholic Church today, Josef Pieper now moves from the handing on
of the tradition's full content with integrity, and he thus considers the comparably decisive matter of its
adequate reception, also with integrity:
It is the decisive element and at the same time the critical point of the process of
tradition. I am referring to the reception of the tradendum xwhat is to be passed
onby the last in the series, the young generation. This is immediately
apparent: if the last in the series [for example, in 2015 A.D.] does not accept
what is offered him in this process (with a view to pass it on), then tradition does
not come about; it does not happen at all. That is why I said this is the critical,
the sensitive spot [as in the willing reception, today, of the full, not selective,
Catholic heritage of Authoritatively Defined Dogmas, i.e., the cumulative and
entire, hierarchical set of Irreformable Doctrines]. (10my bold emphasis
added; italics in the original)
Becoming then more specific about this difficult and decisive element of reception, he says:
The first question to ask is: of what kind is this reception, what does it look like,
how does it happen? Second, what are the presuppositions of its coming about?
Receiving the tradendum does not happen simply through taking cognizance of it.
It is possible for me to know it very well and still not accept it. Here is a
problem which is very relevant today [even in 1960] which I can here only point
out. It is the problem of history and tradition: namely, that, despite the most
extensive historical knowledge of the material of tradition [such as knowledge of
the detailed history of dogmas], it is nevertheless possible to be without
tradition, becauseto use Gabriel Marcel's [the French philosopher's] words
what happens is merely a registering, but there is no longer any memory [as in
a memoria fidelisa memory faithful to the truth of the past, itself one of the
indispensable elements of the first cardinal virtue of Prudentia]. Taking notice and
having knowledge is clearly, on the part of the receiver, not enough for tradition
as a process of handing onto come about and be completed. Instead, what is
required is that the one who is last in the series accepts the tradendum really as
something handed on to him and therefore as something he does not already have
and does not take himself, but as something he allows himself to be given by
another and for which only someone else [e.g., Church authority personally
rendered] provides the guarantee [or reliably vouches for it]. That means that
it is required that he accept the tradendum as valid and affirm it on the authority
of anotherwithout the possibility of his examining it and verifying it for
himself. In other words, if it is at all possible to speak of tradition in the strict
sense of the word, something is presupposed on the part of the receiver which
6

corresponds fairly exactly to what people call faith. [That is to say, Ad fidem
pertinet aliquid et alicui credere (Saint Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II q. 129 a. 6)
i.e., It is pertinently characteristic of the act of faith to believe something and
(concurrently) to trust someone. In other words, The believer...accepts a given
matter as real and true on the (trusted) testimony of someone else.] We
[therefore] hardly need specially to mention why the coming into being of this
act of faith is bound up with manifold conditions, and that there are [just] as
many (concomitant) difficulties, dangers, and obstacles. (10-11my bold
emphasis added; italicized Latin formulations, except for tradendum, are
likewise mine own.)

In addition to the indispensable basis and fitting fostering of respect, trust, and reverence before
authority for the continuous sustenance of human culture, there is the matter of gratitude:
In the worldly conduct of this [hypothetical or actual] critical traditionalist there
will always be a characteristic element of fundamental reverence and
thankfulness, an explicit respect for what has grown [in the vital medium of
culture] to maturity and before the continuity of the connections in life that
concern more than the individual....I mean rather the selfless readiness to receive
something that you could never pay for out of your own resources, and the
modesty to know that you are in debt and at the same time in no position to pay
that debt. I am talking about the power of gratitude, the loss of which really
makes us disinherited [as Gabriel Marcel has so inimitably expressed it,
especially in his book, Das Grosse Erbe (1952)The Great Inheritance (or
Legacy) in English]....This origin [of our precious revelatory inheritance],
however, which throughout all history continues to contribute and be effective,
remains always thankfully remembered and respected [in and by a Memoria
Fidelis to the Body of Tradition, the Memoria Corporis]. Gabriel Marcel has
interpreted this encompassing gratitude as consisting in recognizing and
appreciating again (re-connaissance), as the attempt in a mysterious restitution
to respond to what has been received [as a Gift] without debt or obligation.
To this yes, this universal assent [of gratitude], there corresponds...a clear
no, or at least a very decisive distrust, for example, of the all-too-exclusive
talk of the future [and hence of novelty or progress]as though for human
beings there was only something to hope for and nothing to remember and
nothing to be thankful for. Respect for tradition [hence for the Divinely
Received Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church, a part of her Depositum
Fidei(1 Tim. 6:20)] produces a distrust of that zero-point radicalism that
fancies it is always possible to start again from scratch with a tabula rasa, as well
as a distrust of the inclination to treat each new moment as a completely new
situation, and so forth. Against all this [as at the upcoming three-week October
2015 Synod on Marriage and the Family] we shall have to take our stand....3
3 Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim (South Bend, Indiana, St. Augustine's Press, 2010), p. 58my emphasis

As we now return to Josef Pieper's Tradition as Challenge (1963, 2015) first published in
German during the turbulent Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) we shall also see his own
modesty and his candor, even as he considers the obstacles of passing on a Tradition to the young, and
thus also to one's own son:
One such obstacle [to the transmission of tradition] which is continually set up by
the older generation, i.e., by the generation that at any given time in history has its
hand on the tiller, is precisely the use of the name tradition. This argument,
which, incidentally, does not have to be expressly formulated, not only does not
find acceptance but hinders the young person, for his part, from achieving any
living realization of the traditum. Besides, such an [inattentive, even imperious,
negligent, or condescending] answer shows that the older generation [to include
progressive Prelates of the Catholic Church?] no longer manages to make of the
tradition a living presence in their own lives, and that here we are already
facing what has been called bad preservation (of tradition). (11-12my
emphasis added)
If Modern Churchmen in the Catholic Church expressly, or implicitly, believe the newer Credo of
Credo in Evolutionem, to what extent will they likely even try to understand and to teach to the
younger generation the Catholic Church's Sacred Tradition whole and entire, in its proper intactness? If
such Neo-Modernist Churchmen further believe in Naturalism and Historicism and the Hegelian
Dialectic and emergent Inculturation and Cultural Relativism, or Nominalism, what are the chances
for a respectful and reverent teaching of the Church's Sacred Tradition and its contents such as: the
Creation, the Fall of Man, the Gift of the Incarnation (where the ultimate work of creation was linked
to the origin of that creation), the full Doctrine of Divine Grace, Mortal Sin that extinguishes
Sanctifying Grace in the Soul; and the whole interrelated assembly of Irreformable Doctrine (Dogmas),
to include the meaning of the Glad Tidings (Evangelium): the Possibility of attaining Eternal Life,
but also, in our abiding Defectibility, the Grave Risks of our not attaining it?! When there is an
atmosphere of Credo in Evolutionem and a Presuming Subjectivism (the God of My Choice), the
transmission of a nourishing, objective Revelation and Tradition will be an arduous process, a bonum
arduum indeed! Josef Pieper understood this well, as our many personal conversations also confirmed.
Dr. Pieper comments further in his 1963 book, as follows:

added. See, also, Gabriel Marcel, Das Grosse Erbe (Mnster, Germany, 1952), pp. 22, 24, and 29on Gratitude and
Tradition.

Whoever wants to hand on tradition must see that the content of the tradition, the
old truths, are kept really alivefor example through a living language,
through creative rejuvenation and the shedding of skins, so to speak, through
continual confrontation with the immediately present, and, above all, with the
future, since in the human sphere that alone [sic] is the truly real....What an
ambitious task is included in the act of handing on....Tradition, as the living
process of handing on, is a highly dynamic thing....But this is ultimately the
crucial point: that the content and substance [especially the sacred content and
substance], which transcends time, is preserved down through the
generations. (12-13my emphasis added)
But, we may immediately then ask: What is this content, for the sake of which the effort of
keeping it alive is worthwhile? (13) For, after considering the periphery of human customs and
traditions, we easily move right to the kernel of religious conviction and ritual (13) Periphery
and kernel that, of course, is the vital distinction on which everything depends (13): It could well
be that a group of people...begin...also to lose the traditions which directly concern the centre of
their existence. (13-14my emphasis)
Josef Pieper then helps us further in our search for a distinguishing characteristic, and for
a common feature that distinguishes the tradita which have the highest claim on
our commitment, [and] one will [thus] find that the characteristic common to
them all is sacred traditionand it does not matter whether we are dealing with
moral norms for living, with interpretation of the meaning of the world and
existence, with the celebration of the great feasts [like Easter], or, with the
substance of artistic representation [as in Sacred Icons]. (14my emphasis
added)
Furthermore, says Pieper, even
If we ask Plato what, in his opinion, is the quintessence of the wisdom of the
ancients, this is the answer we receive: that the world proceeded from the
ungrudging goodness of God; that God holds the beginning, middle, and the end
of all things; that the soul of man survives death; that it is worse to do injustice
than to suffer it; that, after death, judgment awaits us, along with punishment
and reward, and so on.....Here Plato is speaking of nothing other than the divine
guarantee that the world has meaning and that [the virtuously good] man is
safe. And so it is the same theme spoken about in the Christian tradition
although in a completely new way. (14-15my emphasis added)
Pieper is still trying to answer the question: What is there...that needs...to be preserved as
essential: as essential because otherwise the content of what is truly human would be destroyed? (15):

It is a question of what content of tradition has the absolute claim to be kept alive
at all times so that each new generation is in a positionand thus can be expected
to accept and affirm it with full and fresh energy [e.g., the Humility of God in
the Incarnation, or His Assumed Human Nature Designedly Passible (Capax
Doloris et Laboris et al.)]. The answer to this question will again be: they are the
aspects of tradition which can be referred to as sacred tradition; they are what, in
truth, is worth preserving and what it is necessary to preserve. (15my
emphasis added)
Once again, Pieper emphatically says that preserving sacred tradition, while also intimately trying
to enliven it vividly, is something which cannot be achieved without direct involvement [existential
engagement] in the current problems of the age. (16) Such is his forthrightness and courage.
Pieper still wants to face a timely and timeless critical objection posed by Nietzsche himself in
the late nineteenth century:
Nietzsche was correct in his diagnosis: What is most under attack today [even in
2015 in Rome?] is the instinct and will for tradition; all institutions which owe
their origin to this instinct are in confrontation with the taste of the modern
mind.....The objection is as follows: sacred tradition and wisdom of the ancients
are big words; but they are only words. Sacred is what demands reverence
and respect of everyone. But on what basis is that which is called sacred
tradition really binding on us? Why must it absolutely be preserved and
handed on? How can such an obligation be substantiated? Continuity of the
truly human? All very fine, but where is it written that humanity is not
perhaps in the process of fundamental change? And who are the ancients, in
fact? How is the authority attributed to them [or to the Catholic Church now!]
legitimized? (16my emphasis added)
Pieper surprisingly then turns to Plato for an answer to Nietzsche's last question, and he even
considers Plato's answer has timeless validity (16):
This ranking of the ancients [the palaioi and the archaioi] is based, as Plato
expressed it, on the fact that settling close to the gods, they were the first to
receive knowledge which has come down from a supernatural source, a theios
logos, a divine saying, and that, since then, anyone who wants to share in this
messagewhich is not accessible to man in a natural wayis dependent on
them [as on the Church, analogously]. In brief: the ultimate legitimation of the
wisdom of the ancients and of the sacred tradition incorporated in it is,
according to Plato, revelation and inspiration in the strict sense; these alone
[also in Christianity] provide the foundation for the obligatory nature of
tradition insofar as it is binding on man. (17-18my emphasis added)
In the Christian universe of discourse, moreover, Christ's personal Knowledge is vouched for by
the authority and authoritative tradition of the Church. (Christ Himself did not have the theological
10

virtue of Faith or Belief; He had Knowledge, Divine Knowledge.) We the professed Faithful
believe in the veracity of what the Church vouches for as Christ's own reliable Knowledge, indeed His
Salvific Knowledge. Such is His Revelation and Inspiration, stricto sensu. Ad Fidem pertinet aliquid
et alicui credere. (The dative pronoun alicui is a reference to the Church, that is, to the trustworthy
witness and reliable, divinely protected, authority of the Church.)
Referring to Plato's words, Josef Pieper adds: Naturally, revelation and inspiration are words
which only have their full and exact meaning in the context of Christian theology. (18) Moreover:
The kernel of every tradition is always sacred traditionfrom which the
accompanying external traditions growing up around it derive their meaning and,
even when this [derivative meaning] has died away or been abandoned, can
achieve new growth. But this kernel is sacred (and that means also:
commanding unconditional reverence) by virtue of taking its origin from a
Divine utterance [a theios logos]however this may have been heard. This is
the ultimate, and, when it comes down to it, the sole sufficient reason why
something that has come down to us through the ages must continue to be
preserved intact and handed on from generation to generation. (19)
After calling this concluding insight a radical answer, Pieper has some further-sobering words
for us and for the clerical and lay persons to be gathered soon in Rome for the 4-25 October Synod
on the Family and Marriage:
But if this radical answer [about the kernel of sacred tradition] cannot be
managed, i.e., if it can neither be given [to Walter Cardinal Kasper?] nor
accepted [by him and others], at that moment there is no longer any prospect of
doing anything to counter the acute danger of a total loss of tradition. And it
would be difficult to say how the destruction of its substance [the kernel-substance
of the sacred tradition] could be haltedthe substance [to include gratitude]
from which not only the individual but also society lives. (18my emphasis)
To this grave situation or possibility, Josef Pieper adds a final note, in which he also mentions
Rome and some Men of Acute Intellect who had been incarcerated earlier in Bolshevist Russia:
It is possible, finally, that a terrifying and hence salutary experience could be
productive [of truth, of gratitude, and of a measure of ungrudging goodness]....The
poet-philosopher Wjatscheslaw Iwanow [Ivanov]who was a pupil of Soloviejew
[Vladomir Solovyov (d. 1900)] and who [himself] died in Rome in 1949wrote
with validity about this experience [of salutary terror] in a strange little book
which has the odd title: Correspondence Between Two Corners of the Room [also
translated into English in 1984 as Correspondence Across a Room]....[It] is to
some extent a dangerous discussion between the Christian Iwanow and the liberal
[Jewish?] historian Gerschenson [Gershenzon]dangerous because it takes place
11

in Bolshevik Russia, where these two find themselves for a while put into the
same room of a State rest home for intellectual workers. Gerschenson makes
the case for simply casting off the burden of tradition and making a tabula
rasa: What a great thing it would be to dive into the river of Lethe to wash
away, without trace, all memory of religion, philosophy, art, and poetry, and to
set foot on the shore like the first man, naked, light and joyful. Against this,
Iwanow defends the healing power of tradition, which he calls eternal
memory; he celebrates it [tradition] as the life blood of all society based on
spirit and as the only force which reunites us with the origin and with the
word which was there in the beginning [in Principio]. The shallow fruit of a
conscious lack of traditionthat terrifying experience I referred toIwanow has
formulated in a superb sentence: Freedom acquired by the devious ploy of
forgetting is empty [leer is the monosyllabic and trenchant German word for
empty]. (19my emphasis added)
May the members of the forthcoming 4-25 October 2015 Synod on the Family and Marriage in
Rome gratefully allow themselves to receive and accept these final words, as well as Josef Pieper's own
cumulative insights concerning Sacred Tradition and its indispensably healing Gifts. For, as Iwanow
said, in addition to being quite delusional, a Freedom achieved by forgetting is empty [leer].
May Josef Pieper's entire book on the Challenge of Tradition and our Response of Gratitude now
come to be more worthily appreciated and reverently acted upon also by the Members of the Church
Synod in Rome on the Family and Marriage, hence on the real needs of the vulnerable Little Children.
CODA
In 1952, Josef Pieper first published in English his influential book, Leisure: the Basis of Culture,
which, for its many long years of staying uninterruptedly in print, also helpfully contained both an
excellent translation by Alexander Dru (the Pseudonym of a Polish Count) and a warmly endorsing
and insightful Introduction to the book by the poet-philosopher T.S. Eliot. (With characteristic
humility, Dr. Pieper modestly said to me more than once in our conversations down the years (19741997) that T.S. Eliot's Introduction was the real cause of its remaining in print for so many years not
his own contents! He also mentioned that he had had many struggles with the strong-willed translator,
Alexander Dru, but those struggles finally bore good fruit, he thought, and more abundantly!)
In the second chapter of Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper imparts to us one of his
memorable insights, especially for anyone, regrettably, who refuses to have anything as a gift:
We have only to think for a moment how much the Christian understanding of life
depends upon the existence of Grace; let us recall that the Holy Spirit of God
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is Himself called a Gift in a special sense [i.e., the Donum Dei in Latin]; that
the great teachers of Christianity say that the premise of God's justice is His love;
that everything gained and everything claimed follows upon something given,
and comes after something gratuitous and unearned; that in the beginning
[thus in Principio] there is always a gift.4

--Finis--

2015 Robert Hickson

4 Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (New York: New American Library, 1963authorized reprint of the original
1952 hardcover edition by Pantheon Books, Inc.), p. 33my emphasis added)

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