I don't have the time to decode this borderline schizophrenic nonsense, what's the point and how does it relate to the right to access currently inaccessible land?
It's saying that custom can obtain the force of law. This is relevant to the Right to Roam, because some areas are open to public use by custom, and this can challenge strict interpretations of property rights. I think mjh2539 is trying to gain a rhetorical toehold for traditional Commons rights. Since those rights are traditional and very old, it somehow seems fitting that the argument should be expressed in old-fashioned Catholic theological language.
I appreciate that an intensely "conservative" cultural form is used here to make a pro-populist argument for "liberal" rights.
This lines up well with the kind of stances that the Anglican Church ended up taking in theology. That Church follows both Scripture and Tradition. (By contrast, and generalizing a bit, I think an extreme Protestant stance would tend to value only Scripture.) This feels like a more secular version of same.
Over time I've come to appreciate more the way in which the Anglican Church, as you put it, "follows both Scripture and Tradition". A single clever person can manipulate with relative ease the interpretation of a written document (for instance, scripture), but to manipulate an entire custom is much more challenging, although arguably not impossible. Thus, although evil customs can certainly emerge gradually over time, a given custom is, in my opinion, more often than not founded on an older course of reasoning that was righteous in origin.
To put it more concretely: a written document from a thousand years ago is almost unintelligible to all but specialist linguists, and its accurate interpretation difficult for all but specialist social historians. Yet the customs displayed by a people that long ago would still seem very familiar today. Which would you trust to form the basis of your community's sense of justice - the faded old document in a strange language, or the equally ancient tradition passed down habitually across generations?
