Back to Greek or, Better, Aramaic?
If a religion changes, it may go wrong; if it does not, it must go wrong.
The reason is that change is an inevitable feature of life and conscious or deliberate change is a necessary feature of human life. Any living religion will change as it continues through history but, of course, a dead religion does not change. And, one of the ways you know a religion is dead or dying, is its refusal to change and/or its attempt to return were once it was.
Roman Catholic tradition is not exempt from change as the law of creation and creation’s God. But any religious tradition is carried by its religious community which make and remake each other in reciprocal interaction. Leaders may assist or resist that process but they cannot do it by will alone. The most serious delusion of leaders is to think that they alone are in sole charge of a community’s past, present, or future. It is ultimately the community—which is simply the incarnate and living tradition—that will determine what stays and what goes, what changes and what develops. And, for community, tradition, or hierarchy, it is ultimately impossible to hold back the inevitable future by returning to the abandoned past.
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