A high-powered conference in Sydney will seek to shed light on whether Tradition liberates or enslaves us.
Tradition Conference 2013 will take place at the University of Notre Dame’s Sydney campus from July 2-5.
The conference will feature seven international speakers and a bevy of well-known Australian philosophers and theologians, including Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, John Haldane, Mark Kingwell and Dr Tracey Rowland.
Speakers will critically examine the claims of tradition’s advocates and detractors, asking a range of eminently contemporary questions.
Do traditions, particularly religious ones, impede personal identity and development, for example? Can we save damaged traditions?
Are we able to criticise religious traditions, other than our own? And what is the relationship between traditions and ‘the (Sacred) Tradition’ of the Catholic Church?
Dominant ideas about tradition were often the site of the Church’s biggest headache in terms of public perception, conference organiser Matthew Beard told The Record last week.
“It is often the point at which the Church probably cops the most criticism; that the Church is traditional; it’s conservative; it’s dated, and that it’s unable, because it is so traditional, to remain relevant in a modern era,” Mr Beard, a UNDA PhD candidate, said.
“The idea of the conference is to challenge that idea, to talk about tradition – what are some of its shortcomings, but also, what does it have to offer.”
With organisers keen to connect with the wider public, the conference will also feature a public debate between British Professor John Haldane and Canadian Professor Mark Kingwell on the topic Tradition: Friend or Foe of Freedom?
With well-known radio host and atheist, Phillip Adams, as its moderator, no one knows where the debate will lead, Mr Beard said – a dynamism he is excited, rather than worried, about.
As well as addressing enduring philosophical questions, conference organisers also have their proverbial finger on the pulse when it comes to contemporary suspicion of religion.
“Some people charge Islam, for example, with restricting freedom, particularly to women – that the tradition itself is restrictive to women,” Mr Beard said.
“People charge Christian traditions with similar things, particularly regarding sexuality and marital norms.
“They will charge religion with restricting individual freedoms. The question is whether they are right or not; whether they have something to lend to the debate; whether they are capturing something that is representative of tradition or whether there is perhaps a misunderstanding of what ‘freedom’ really means in those types of claims.”
Questions surrounding the often uneasy intersection of Church Tradition and secular traditions underlie debate about how the Church should communicate in the modern world, Mr Beard said.
“The way in which the truths that Catholicism holds to be true are represented to broader society is going to have to be different to the way in which Catholicism has discovered this truth itself and in which Catholics discuss those truths amongst themselves.
“That’s something that I do think is beginning to get legs within Australian society … to argue that the things Catholics hold to be true are true, not just because of Divine Revelation.
“We can actually discover a great deal of that truth philosophically,” Mr Beard said.
While a natural law approach had a number of favourable qualities, there was definite resistance from other Catholics.
“There are Catholics who think we should be unashamedly Catholic in public debate and that we should only use religious talk in conveying the truth, that that is the only way we are going to be able to authentically present the truth,” he said.
“It’s a really interesting debate as to the best way to present the truth in a public setting,” Mr Beard said.
Tradition 2013 will take place from July 2-5 in Sydney.
More information is available at www.tradition2013.nd.edu.au and at www.facebook.com/tradition2013 or via email: Tradition2013@nd.edu.au.