Laudator Temporis Acti

Ronald A. Knox (1888-1957), The Pastoral Sermons (New York: Sheed & Ward Inc., 1960), pp. 430-431:

No, there is nothing distressing to the Christian conscience, either in the fact that St Paul should have disagreed with St Peter, or in the fact that St Peter should have been on the wrong side. Nor is it historically accurate to think of St Peter as a man wedded to old ways of thought, over-anxious about what other people would think; the account given of him in the Acts of the Apostles is enough to prove the contrary. But we may, if we will, concentrate our attention upon this particular scene in the lives of two great princes of the Church, and trace in it the age-long conflict between two forces in the history of the Church. Let us not call them two contrary, rather two complementary forces, the resultant of which is the well-being of the Catholic community. One is the tendency to strike out on new lines, try new experiments, assert, wherever it may be lawfully asserted, the principle of freedom. The other is a jealous regard for tradition, for established precedent; a reluctance to be stampeded by the fashion of the moment, to barter away, for some momentary advantage, a long inheritance of accumulated wisdom. Call them, if you will, the Liberal and the Conservative tendency; but do not forget that those words have modern associations which will confuse our thought, if we are not careful in the use of them.

I shall be told that the Catholic Church is not alone in feeling, century after century, the strain of that conflict. It is all around us; in a changing world, all our debates can easily be summed up under the formula, "Is it wiser to go forward, or to protect what we have?" But we Catholics, it must be remembered, cannot approach these questions so lightly, or with such free hands, as our neighbours. It is the first business of the Church to safeguard a deposit of revealed truth handed down to her, for all time, by a divine Founder; let her prove false to that trust, and the Church unchurches herself.

Cf. his Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 590:

[A] church in alliance with the world has unchurched itself.