Is Cannon Necessary?

[R_C]

then why do we take our interpretation of God’s word into the world and tell others that they are sinning and living in unholiness? Why do we tell gays that we hate their sin because God forbids it? If the world is different now than it was when the words we use to support our condemnation of homosexual acts were written, how can we claim they must have the same meaning today as 1600 yrs ago?

We do not tell homosexuals that we hate their sin because God forbids it. We clearly show why all sexual behavior outside of its proper set is harmful towards man and woman, to family, to society. We explain through most sound and reasonable arguments why that sort of behavior is wrong and harmful. We further add that God has taught that such behavior therefore offends Him, who is All Good, because it is harmful. He doesn’t capriciously dislike this or that behavior - He dislikes that which harms us and love that which benefits us. Homosexual acts were very widespread in the past. Just read what the Romans used to do. Read also about pederasty in the Greek and Roman world. You will realize that such behaviors were much more common and “normal” 1600 (or 2000 or 3000) years ago than today. The Church is the defender of life and of the dignity of human beings - what she teaches, she does not teach like a cult, that we cannot do X or Y because the book or God says so! She teaches us not to do something because it will harm us, and she explains us why and how it will harm us. That is why we call God our Father, and the Church our Mother. Nobody ever did that before. Because that’s what a father and a mother do with their children: they guide them towards or away from certain behaviors that are harmful, and explain them why, educate them.

This one confounds me too.

“For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”

The Church chose which books made up the Bible 3 centuries after Christ lived. There were many versions of the Gospel not included and other versions of the books that were included. Many of those versions protested the establishment of a centralized authority created for the purpose of telling us God’s will. Why did the Church decide to use the version that painted Judas as a traitor rather than as one asked by jesus to turn him in?

Taking the Church’s word on faith that they chose the right interpretations and those interpretations just happened to give the Church incredible authority is not faith in God, but faith in

The book you mention is an agnostic book now termed “gospel of Judas”. Similar agnostic documents were well known and condemned and rejected by the Church Fathers who had learned the faith from the apostles. When the Church chose which books constituted Sacred Scripture, she already knew which were coherent with the apostolic deposit of faith and which weren’t. The others were filled with errors and led to the creation of groups such as the Arians, the Agnostics, etc. that were in grave error. It is thanks to the Church that the true Sacred Scripture was preserved - and the Church could not have done this without the guidance of Christ and of His Spirit.