“Traditionalism,” in its different forms, is a sickness based on a mistaken concept of Tradition. In its genuine meaning, “Tradition” plays an important role in the Church along with Sacred Scripture, from which it is inseparable.
The Church has a splendid history. Her spiritual treasures—the saints—light up with their lives the past twenty centuries, and light up our lives today. The Church is also the source of culture, of incomparable works of art, science, literature, education, and charity. This history also lives in the heart of every human being through Jesus Christ, who is the same today, yesterday, and forever.
The Second Vatican Council spoke to us about all of this. Its documents also enable us to hear the voice of our Founder, who preached many of those same ideas beginning in the 1930s. All of the Church’s councils form a unity of teaching doctrine, none of it contradictory. And so, if I may put it this way, Opus Dei finds its doctrinal patrimony in Vatican II; there one finds both what is new and what is traditional.