Cyril O'Regan, recipient of the 2024 Ratzinger Prize, speaks on the concept of tradition. 

Abstract: "Recognizing that tradition is a disputed concept in modernity, both St. John Henry Newman and Pope Benedict XVI articulate the notion of tradition and concretely perform in articulating particular views on God, Christ, the sacraments, and the Church. At the same time, Newman and Benedict also launch a counterattack against the two dominant forms of secular reason: the ahistorical form, in which the temporality necessary for tradition and its development is denied; and the historicist form, in which, if history is not the history of mere opinion rather than truth, then it is the history of power."

Cyril O’Regan is the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He specializes in systematic and historical theology, with specific interests in the intersection of continental philosophy and theology, religion and literature, mystical theology, and postmodern thought. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University College Dublin, and master of arts, master of philosophy, and doctoral degrees from Yale University.