New Archive Blog Published

The SMGs, the archives, and the living tradition of Pilgrimage

When thinking of the nature and purpose of an archive, there is a danger that it will be seen as an entity fixated upon and concerned purely with the past: of interest, primarily, to the historian and the antiquarian, and perhaps of limited relevance to contemporary concerns and activities. However, it may be said that of all people, the Christian should be most firm in rejecting this idea. Through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ it is affirmed that the Godhead decisively intervened in human history, such that past and present are united through the redemptive activity of Jesus Christ. Thus, as the Catholic Church has affirmed, history read aright demonstrates the Holy Spirit working through successive witnesses to the living tradition: in the words of the late Archbishop Michael Ramsey, the Church is a ‘community of experience reaching across the generations’.