The Necessity of the Past

“The first task of church history as a theological discipline is to free us from our own parochialism and make us truly catholic… There is one commandment and one only which church historians must scrupulously observe: honor thy father and mother. They must accept the past as it offers itself to them…. A church which has lost its memory of the past can only wander about aimlessly in the present and despair of its future. Having lost its identity, it will lose its mission and its hope as well.”