David Brooks has a thoughtful column today on the decline of "institutional" thinking. In contrast to what might be termed "expressive individualism," Brooks talks about what it means to think institutionally:

In this way of living, to borrow an old phrase, we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us. As we go through life, we travel through institutions first family and school, then the institutions of a profession or a craft.Each of these institutions comes with certain rules and obligations that tell us how to do what were supposed to do. Journalism imposes habits that help reporters keep a mental distance from those they cover. Scientists have obligations to the community of researchers. In the process of absorbing the rules of the institutions we inhabit, we become who we are.New generations dont invent institutional practices. These practices are passed down and evolve. So the institutionalist has a deep reverence for those who came before and built up the rules that he has temporarily taken delivery of. In taking delivery, Heclo writes, institutionalists see themselves as debtors who owe something, not creditors to whom something is owed.The rules of a profession or an institution are not like traffic regulations. They are deeply woven into the identity of the people who practice them. A teachers relationship to the craft of teaching, an athletes relationship to her sport, a farmers relation to her land is not an individual choice that can be easily reversed when psychic losses exceed psychic profits. Her social function defines who she is. The connection is more like a covenant. There will be many long periods when you put more into your institutions than you get out.

This column made me think of an experience I had yesterday. As part of the research I am doing for a story I am writing, I had a conversation with a DRE at parishthat has recently embraced more traditional forms of liturgy, particularly in the area of music. The changes had shaken the parish up a bit, leading to somefamilies leaving the parish, but also some newfamilies joining. One anecdote she shared was that the parish tends to lose some of their high school students who gravitate toward parishes that have confirmation programs tied in to their "Life Teen" masses, whichuse contemporary Christian music. She asked the DREs at the other parishes whether the teens were more likely to stay involved in the parish after confirmation. The answer was "no," the attrition ratewas still pretty bad...:-)I wondersometimes whether our efforts to make our preaching, liturgy, or catechesis more accessible and relevant are ultimately successful. There is an irreducibly "institutional" dimension to Christian life that places real demands on its adherents. As Commonweal columnist John Garvey once put it, "the tradition makes demands upon you before you make demands upon it." We need to be deeply shaped by the Christian tradition and its practices before we have the competence to think seriously about adaptation and change.At the same time, of course, we can all tell stories of institutions that vanished or were seriously weakened because they were unableto adapt. The history of Christianity is not the story of an institution that has never changed, but rather one that has (successfully) adapted during various crisis points in its history: the transition from its Jewish roots into Hellenistic culture; the movement from the Mediterranean world of ancient Rome into the warrior cultures of Northern Europe; the response to the challenge of modern science, including the application of scientific methods to the study of scripture, to name just a few."Thinking institutionally" requires great reverence for the traditions of an institution, but it also requires creativity. The tradition requires people who are highly skilled in its practices who are capableof making wise judgments about whether and how to adapt to changing circumstances. What we need to form is not caretakers but craftspeople. The question, I suppose, is whether we are forming either particularly well right now.