We should highlight an important point here: There is a distinction between matters of faith and other practices of the Church. The essential truths of the faith — Tradition with a capital T — do not change and cannot ever be updated or modernized. But many aspects of the life and practice of the Church — tradition with a lower case t — can and do change over time. The Church must respond to situations and questions that the earliest disciples could never even have imagined, and she must change as the world and the needs of the faithful change. The challenge, of course, both for the magisterium and the faithful, is discerning and understanding the difference between Tradition and tradition.
Two specific issues are often raised — married priests and women priests — illustrate these categories. Priestly celibacy is considered a matter of discipline, and has only been mandatory for diocesan priests in the West since around the 11th century. Changing this practice would be a different matter than changing the exclusively male priesthood, which is described as a matter of theology. Both ideas continue to provoke lively and thoughtful debate among theologians and among the faithful, but a thorough discussion is beyond the scope of this column.
