To some tradition can have every appearance of being the dead weight of the Church's past determining the present and because of its formative and stifling power preventing any future advance. In other words, it can be seen as a suffocating and life-draining force which must be rejected if men are to respond authentically to the demands of the present. On the other hand no person, no organization is without a past, and it is being unrealistic to act as though it did not exist. Tradition is the past of the Church - what is handed down - and it is also the primary channel or source through which we are introduced into the mystery of Christ, and as such it contains all the various elements that have grown up in the history of the Church, above all scripture and those elements outside scripture that help us to understand more clearly the basic message of the Gospel.