Toward a Catholic Legal Theory of Time?

Rick's question about the possibility of Burkean Christians raises larger questions about our understanding of time.  If we are progressively building the Kingdom in history, does that give us a more meaningful understanding of history than those who are simply "marking time?"  Legal historian Mary Dudziak suggests that time remains woefully undertheorized, but that our presumptions about time have an impact on the law:

In the scholarship on law and war, time is seen as episodic. It is sometimes seen as linear and progressive, but the most common feature is that time is episodic. There are two different kinds of time: wartime and peacetime. Historical progression consists of moving from one kind of time to another. Law is thought to vary depending on what time it is. The relationship between citizen and state, the scope of rights, the extent of government power are thought to depend on whether it is wartime or peacetime.

A central metaphor is the swinging pendulum – swinging from strong protection of rights and weaker government power to weaker protection of rights and stronger government power. Moving from one time zone to the next is thought to cause the pendulum to begin swinging in a new direction.

Maybe the episodic, pendulum-swinging view of history is more consistent with the (Protestant?) emphasis on our fallen condition ("the more things change, the more they stay the same . . .") than with the (Catholic?) confidence that we are actually building something?