Sacred Oral and Written Tradition

[Contarini]

My point is that the gospel was not written until many years after the establishment of the Church and the Gospel was in fact written from the very sacred traditions as taught by the apostles in their ministry. That is their origin.

Yes, but here’s why this is a bad argument:

No thoughtful Protestant disagrees that the New Testament came from oral preaching. This is very clearly taught by important Protestant apologists such as Martin Chemnitz. The question is rather whether we can be confident that all divine revelation was *eventually *written down in Scripture or not. Furthermore, it seems to me that official Catholic teaching does give Scripture a special status. It isn’t just one repository of Tradition. It was written down under divine inspiration. So the question is: once the Holy Spirit inspires people to write down the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles, does that writing then become the only fully reliable repository of divine revelation, or does there continue to be an authoritative, reliable, infallible “handing down” of the original oral teaching that is distinct from Scripture, even though it and Scripture are interdependent on each other?

Edwin

 

[JRKH]

:
Ori

DV9 - Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known.

DV10 - Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church.

I find this extremely disturbing from the church who claims to be the One True Church. It seems the leaders of the Catholic Church debates within themselves what consists of the Sacred Deposit of Faith that was once for all delivered to the Saints. Does anyone else see the major problems with this when we are trying to determine the will of God?

In short NO, I do not see a problem.

Debates have always been a part of how the Holy Spirit guides the Church. This has been true since apostolic times. After all there was much debate at the Council of Jerusalem before a decision was reached.

The Holy Spirit inspires wise and learned Churchmen in various ways. These Churchmen must then try to communicate this inspiration as best they can using the spiritually inferior method of human language. Those who read or hear them will understand, or not understand, based upon their own level of inspiration, faith and knowledge. Thus “disagreements” can arise and discussion ensues to determine and clarify an issue.

No there is no need to fear debate within the Church, even on such an issue aswhat might consitute Sacred Tradition. God guards and protects His Church in all of this so that, once a conclusion is reached we can have confidence that it does, indeed reflect the will of God for us.

Compare this to the protestant situation. When there is disagreement and debate, the result is often a new split in protestantism rather than humble submission of the ego to the Will of God.

Peace
James

 

[JRKH]

That is a matter of some debate.

Certainly true but hardly relevant.

Yes, but with the collapse of the Western Empire a sharp gap opened between written Latin and the oral language of the people. The Western Church failed to bridge this gap adequately, and by the later Middle Ages this rather elitist approach had hardened into a fear of “misunderstanding” by the common people. As I’m sure you know, the liturgy was always celebrated in Latin, though at some times and places bits of it might be repeated in the vernacular, and many selections and paraphrases were available for those educated enough to read the vernacular (the practice of parallel-column Missals with complete vernacular translations of the liturgy dates back not much earlier than the beginning of the 20th century, as far as I know, and of course such books would not have benefited the illiterate). There doesn’t seem to have been an entirely consistent practice with regard to Scriptures in the vernacular. At times, under pressure of heresy, vernacular Bibles were banned (though in fairness many of these may have been loose paraphrases themselves), but in the decades before the Reformation there was an explosion of vernacular translations in just about every European language except English (where such translations were banned because of the Lollards), and as far as I know the Catholic Church had no problem with these translations until the reaction to the Reformation brought about a more uniform and repressive policy.

He never practiced law, and he did not get far with his legal studies before throwing them over to join the Augustinian Order. This is a very poor argument. You are right that Calvin’s education was legal and humanistic (i.e., “liberal arts”) rather than theological. But Luther had a doctorate in theology.

A liturgy celebrated in a language they did not understand, though of course a pious layperson would have understood the basic structure and some of the phrases. But they would not have understood the Scripture readings, which as far as I can tell were only rarely accompanied by a vernacular translation (because this is how things were done in the decades immediately before Vatican II, people often assume that this was the traditional practice–if you have evidence for this, please tell me, because I have honestly looked and not found much).

Charlemagne was 700 years before the Reformation, and while his reforms did have some longterm effects, the chaos of the tenth century swept many things away. You would do better to start with the twelfth century “Renaissance” (more deserving in truth of that name than the later movement in Italy).

Not always by any means

I seriously doubt that most of them could read Latin.

Edwin

Edwin,
A couple of points on the above responses.
Education varied quite wildly over the 1500 years between the time of Christ and the Protestant Reformation. However at no time during that period did literacy reach anything like the level that we take for granted today. In particular, after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, education took a back seat to daily survival. The Church played a very large role in the protection of learning and education during these times and Latin evolved into the language of the Church because, due to the “Roman influence” in western Europe, it was a language that continued to cut across “Tribal boundaries” at least to some extent.
As far as people being educated in Latin, If nobles were educated, they were educated in Latin. In fact Latin continued to be a basic language study up until relatively recently. If we go back just 80 to 100 years I suspect we would find Latin as part of most higher education requirements.

Peace
James

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Dear Edwin:

One other thing regarding the use of Latin in the liturgy and the purported lack of understanding on the part of ‘the people’–today’s people are woefully ‘uneducated’ in language on the average. Today it is rare to find a person who can make himself minimally understood in another language besides his ‘native’ one --while trilingualism and more is usually found, in the U.S., among the wealthy.

But in those ‘older times’, you have to remember that people were much more used to knowing ‘more than one’ language. After all, they did not have all the ‘distractions’ we have today. And language itself was in a state of flux.

In England/Brittain for example after the 11th century, the nobles spoke French and many spoke Latin; they could also ‘get along’ with Italian or Spanish (both ‘Romance’ languages and full of cognates especially with the Latin knowledge). The Anglo-Saxon peasants (whose own earlier Breton or Celtic had been affected by the Germanic languages and even a few Viking phrases) were by necessity familiar with the French… . often with Welsh or Gaelic as well. The Germanic languages were also known to some extent due to the tradings involved during the Middle Ages. In Spain, some were comfortable with Arabic, or with Hebrew, in addition to the Spanish.

Also, ‘rote memorization’ was not disdained. If you were exposed on approximately 2/3 of the days of the year (there were many local and national feast days where Mass was held) to the same phrases which were cognates to words you already knew in your language (Dominus vobiscum is not hard to comprehend as “the Lord be with you” whether one is speaking French, Italian, Spanish, or even German), you are going to gain a pretty fair understanding even if you yourself are not literate nor do you ‘use’ the particular language on a daily basis.

 

[Contarini]

Edwin,
A couple of points on the above responses.
Education varied quite wildly over the 1500 years between the time of Christ and the Protestant Reformation. However at no time during that period did literacy reach anything like the level that we take for granted today.

Agreed. Though who knows–in a few decades we may no longer take it for granted. Given the writing ability of even my better students, I’m not optimistic about the future of literacy in this culture.

I shouldn’t have jumped on the word “ancient.”

In particular, after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, education took a back seat to daily survival. The Church played a very large role in the protection of learning and education during these times and Latin evolved into the language of the Church because, due to the “Roman influence” in western Europe, it was a language that continued to cut across “Tribal boundaries” at least to some extent.

No disagreement there, but there is a further dimension: with the collapse of the Western Empire and the military takeover by “barbarian” chiefs/kings, the old Roman aristocracy found power and influence largely through the Church (I’m talking about the sixth century in particular, and I’m relying on Peter Brown largely). This meant that the Church became a force for the preservation of Roman culture, including a sophisticated form of Latin as opposed to the increasingly simplified forms spoken by the people. This had all the good effects that Catholic apologists generally ascribe to it, but it also had the more dubious effect of opening up a huge gap between elite and popular culture. I tend to think that the Church could have done more to bridge this gap, but it’s easy to sit at my computer in 2008 and say this. Or perhaps not so easy. As I suggested earlier in my curmudgeonly way, we appear to be seeing such a gap open again. That’s one of my reasons for being on this board. Internet forums like this are the contemporary equivalent of vernacular culture, as opposed to (say) the elite culture of academic conferences and journals. I want to bridge that gap as much as possible. (Admittedly this is an unusually literate and intellectual Internet forum.) At any rate, the Church in some times and places in the Middle Ages did do a good job of fostering a vernacular religious culture–Anglo-Saxon England, for instance. But as vernacular culture grew across Europe in the 12th century and later, the Church became more and more nervous about heresy, and this led to some very unfortunate repressive measures.

As far as people being educated in Latin, If nobles were educated, they were educated in Latin.

Formally, sure. There were vernacular schools, at least in the later Middle Ages, but they were primarily for the common people. But there was a lot of teaching that went on in the household–that was primarily how women were educated, after all. I’m pretty sure that a lot of nobles would have had some literacy in the vernacular but little or no knowledge of Latin. Again, I’m talking about the later Middle Ages primarily. Certainly this was true of women, few of whom knew Latin, and of middle-class folks.

In fact Latin continued to be a basic language study up until relatively recently. If we go back just 80 to 100 years I suspect we would find Latin as part of most higher education requirements.

Certainly, but we would also find that “higher education” was a lot less common than it is now.

And the emphasis on a secular, classical Latin education (not to mention the addition of Greek) as essential to the formation of a “gentleman” came out of the Renaissance. It was one of the ways in which the Renaissance/modern idea of a “gentleman” differed from the older concept of knighthood, which put less emphasis on intellectual achievements.

Edwin

 

[twb1621]

Yes, but here’s why this is a bad argument:

No thoughtful Protestant disagrees that the New Testament came from oral preaching. This is very clearly taught by important Protestant apologists such as Martin Chemnitz. The question is rather whether we can be confident that all divine revelation was *eventually *written down in Scripture or not. No it was not nor could not have been according to John’s Gospel. Furthermore, it seems to me that official Catholic teaching does give Scripture a special status. It isn’t just one repository of Tradition. It was written down under divine inspiration. The Catholic Faith holds fast to the doctrine that each of the three, Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and Magisterial teaching are required together and that not one can go without the other. So the question is: once the Holy Spirit inspires people to write down the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles, does that writing then become the only fully reliable repository of divine revelation, or does there continue to be an authoritative, reliable, infallible “handing down” of the original oral teaching that is distinct from Scripture, even though it and Scripture are interdependent on each other?
there does continue to be an authoritative, reliable, infallible “handing down” of the original oral teaching that is distinct from Scripture.
Edwin

 

[twb1621]

“…The Scriptures we have in hand expressly state that they do not contain everything (St. John 20:30; 21:25), or give us an account of all that Christ had said or done (St. John 16:12). In addition, we know that there existed other Apostolic writings now lost, such as an earlier letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians mentioned in 1 Cor. 5:9: “I wrote to you in my letter … But now I am writing to you…” Also missing is a Laodicean epistle recommended to the Colossians by St. Paul, probably written by himself (Col. 4:16). Nevertheless, the fact there are certain Apostolic writings missing is of no fatal consequence to Catholics. This is so because the Catholic Church maintains that divine revelation is fully contained in her Deposit of Faith (body of teaching), comprised of both written Scripture and Tradition. Tradition here is Apostolic Tradition, not merely the tradition of men, and ranks equally with the written word to complete divine revelation. Tradition supplements the written word of God, it does not contradict it. Furthermore, it assists the Church to fully understand and appreciate the whole written word. Tradition embraces all those truths which have been passed on from age to age either orally, in the writings of the Church Fathers, in the Acts of the Martyrs, in early paintings and inscriptions, in the practices and customs of the Universal Church, and in the definitions of Councils and Popes.”
It really can not be said any planner I don’t think.
lumenverum.org/apologetics/DefendtheFaith/page65.html

 

[Contarini]

One other thing regarding the use of Latin in the liturgy and the purported lack of understanding on the part of ‘the people’–today’s people are woefully ‘uneducated’ in language on the average.

Americans at least. People in the rest of the world are a different story. Europeans are usually pretty good in at least one language beside their own, and for Africans it’s even more important (because the “mother tongue” is often only spoken by a fairly small number of people within one’s own tribe).

But in those ‘older times’, you have to remember that people were much more used to knowing ‘more than one’ language. After all, they did not have all the ‘distractions’ we have today. And language itself was in a state of flux.

Latin wasn’t–which was of course why it was preferable in many ways.

In England/Brittain for example after the 11th century, the nobles spoke French and many spoke Latin;

Not many, unless they were in the Church.

they could also ‘get along’ with Italian or Spanish

I don’t think that was true until the Renaissance.

I take your point about multilingualism in general. But we’re talking about Latin in particular. And in fact the use of Latin was a fairly sharp boundary marker between the world of the learned and the world of the unlearned, which latter included almost all women and many male aristocrats, at least until late in the period.

Also, ‘rote memorization’ was not disdained. If you were exposed on approximately 2/3 of the days of the year (there were many local and national feast days where Mass was held) to the same phrases which were cognates to words you already knew in your language (Dominus vobiscum is not hard to comprehend as “the Lord be with you” whether one is speaking French, Italian, Spanish, or even German), you are going to gain a pretty fair understanding even if you yourself are not literate nor do you ‘use’ the particular language on a daily basis.

You would have a fair understanding of what certain phrases meant. You would not get much if anything out of the ritual reading of Scripture, which is the original point being discussed. I just think it’s misleading to claim that people in the Western Middle Ages knew Scripture from the liturgy. They were more likely to know it from stained-glass windows, from sermons, from vernacular paraphrases and dramatizations. Indirect forms, filtered through both official and popular traditions of interpretation and embellishment.

Edwin

 

[JRKH]

Agreed. Though who knows–in a few decades we may no longer take it for granted. Given the writing ability of even my better students, I’m not optimistic about the future of literacy in this culture.

I hope you are wrong, but I’m afraid you are not.
In any event it is a pleasure to read such nicely expressed responses from someone who recognizes the complexities of understanding the activities of the Church within the framework of history.

No disagreement there, but there is a further dimension: with the collapse of the Western Empire and the military takeover by “barbarian” chiefs/kings, the old Roman aristocracy found power and influence largely through the Church (I’m talking about the sixth century in particular, and I’m relying on Peter Brown largely). This meant that the Church became a force for the preservation of Roman culture, including a sophisticated form of Latin as opposed to the increasingly simplified forms spoken by the people.

Well said. The Church took a number of important duties after the Fall of the Western Empire and, I think, handled most of them pretty well. Unfortunately it also put the Church too much into the “political” realm. Especially during the times of the Barbarian Kings.
However, in regards to the Use of Latin, Certainly we cannot deny that Latin became a large and useful unifying force in Europe for many centuries after the Fall. As such the Church was wise to preserve and use it. As to the changing landscape of language, that is an ongoing thing even today. Who would want to try to read some of the Old English Stories in their original form?

This had all the good effects that Catholic apologists generally ascribe to it, but it also had the more dubious effect of opening up a huge gap between elite and popular culture. I tend to think that the Church could have done more to bridge this gap, but it’s easy to sit at my computer in 2008 and say this.

Well I’m not much of a distant history person, but I suspect that, in the ancient world of Rome, there was a pretty big gap between the haves and have nots. This simply continued on into the middle ages.
I do not disagree that there were a number of things the church might have done better, but as you say it is easy to sit here now and look back and say that. Of course when we sit here and consider the current state of our world and the Church’s role in it, a picture of how to procede is not so clear.

Or perhaps not so easy. As I suggested earlier in my curmudgeonly way, we appear to be seeing such a gap open again. That’s one of my reasons for being on this board. Internet forums like this are the contemporary equivalent of vernacular culture, as opposed to (say) the elite culture of academic conferences and journals. I want to bridge that gap as much as possible. (Admittedly this is an unusually literate and intellectual Internet forum.)

Well expressed. This is a wonderful board. I hope enough people will contribute to see that it stays up and continues to be useful. A resource of this quality is hard to find.

At any rate, the Church in some times and places in the Middle Ages did do a good job of fostering a vernacular religious culture–Anglo-Saxon England, for instance. But as vernacular culture grew across Europe in the 12th century and later, the Church became more and more nervous about heresy, and this led to some very unfortunate repressive measures.

This is probably true, but here again it is difficult to really put ourselves in “The time” and truely understand if the Church was “over-reacting” or not.
I often think of the “Knee-Jerk” reactions we here so often in our modern world, and even on this board at times. Who today wants to justify the internment of the Japanese Americans during WWII, yet it was done. Even in our recent history we see the reaction of some Americans to “Arabs” in this Country after 9/11. My point being that things are always more complicated in the present tense than in the past tense.
All we can try to do is look at causes and effects and hopefully avoid the same mistakes that were made in the past.

(Cont)

 

[JRKH]

Formally, sure. There were vernacular schools, at least in the later Middle Ages, but they were primarily for the common people. But there was a lot of teaching that went on in the household–that was primarily how women were educated, after all. I’m pretty sure that a lot of nobles would have had some literacy in the vernacular but little or no knowledge of Latin. Again, I’m talking about the later Middle Ages primarily. Certainly this was true of women, few of whom knew Latin, and of middle-class folks.

Actually we are speaking, generally, of such a large time frame that it would be difficult to make any real judgement on the state, type and thrust of education. I’m sure it fluctuated widely. After all the Church and Western Europe had to deal with a lot. In addition to the Fall of Rome, there were numerous Barbarian invasions, Several bouts of Black Death, and the threat of Islam. Not to mention the more “normal” occasions of drought, Flood, Famine, etc.
However, my opinion is the opposite of yours in regards to the nobles use of Latin. I believe that, as time went on, nobles became more well versed in Latin. It would only make sense since Latin was the language of the Church (which carried large diplomatic duties all through this period) and as such a common language across borders. In addition, I believe that most treaties and such documents were written in Latin during these times.

Certainly, but we would also find that “higher education” was a lot less common than it is now.

No doubt

And the emphasis on a secular, classical Latin education (not to mention the addition of Greek) as essential to the formation of a “gentleman” came out of the Renaissance. It was one of the ways in which the Renaissance/modern idea of a “gentleman” differed from the older concept of knighthood, which put less emphasis on intellectual achievements.

Edwin

Interesting. I hadn’t thought of “gentleman” developing in that way.
Some good thoughts in all of this.

Peace
James

 

[M0nkey]

So the question is: once the Holy Spirit inspires people to write down the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles, does that writing then become the only fully reliable repository of divine revelation, or does there continue to be an authoritative, reliable, infallible “handing down” of the original oral teaching that is distinct from Scripture, even though it and Scripture are interdependent on each other?

First of all, the Church does not lift up Sacred Tradition over Sacred Scriptures. They both spring forth from the same well.

If the scriptures are an infallible palpable way to communicate the word of God (will of God). Why is there so much division among Protestants? If your logic holds true, this would not be the case and it would the Catholic Sacred Tradition that would be split into many parts instead.

Finally, having Sacred Scriptures as the only way to draw closer to God or learn more about God would be like going to class while there is no teacher to tell you how to read the book. This is why oral interpretations and the teachings of the faith are so important. Hope that helps. Godbless.

 

[Contarini]

First of all, the Church does not lift up Sacred Tradition over Sacred Scriptures. They both spring forth from the same well.

If the scriptures are an infallible palpable way to communicate the word of God (will of God). Why is there so much division among Protestants? If your logic holds true, this would not be the case and it would the Catholic Sacred Tradition that would be split into many parts instead.

Finally, having Sacred Scriptures as the only way to draw closer to God or learn more about God would be like going to class while there is no teacher to tell you how to read the book. This is why oral interpretations and the teachings of the faith are so important. Hope that helps.

Well no, it doesn’t. It’s not at all clear to me that you actually read what I wrote.

Edwin

 

[justasking4]

:

I find this extremely disturbing from the church who claims to be the One True Church. It seems the leaders of the Catholic Church debates within themselves what consists of the Sacred Deposit of Faith that was once for all delivered to the Saints. Does anyone else see the major problems with this when we are trying to determine the will of God?

I have followed this topic with great interest. I thought you had some excellent questions that would help to understand what exactly these Sacred Traditions are. Do you think you have found your answer? If so, what was it?

 

[guanophore]

I understand the footnotes. I used to own The Cathechism and the companion to it. Footnotes probably makeup 1% of the deposit of Sacred Oral and Written Tradition. I want all of it to read for myself.

This will not be possible, sorry. It is handed down only to the faithful.

Is Catholic Sacred Tradition like the golden plates of Mormonism?

A question such as this is clear demonstration that you are not ready to receive the Teachings as they were handed down to us from the Apostles.

 

[guanophore]

Why can’t Roman Catholic Christians supply the deposit of faith of Sacred Tradition when requested?

The posting limit is too small.

There are some things that are very hard to put into words.

It is not right to throw pearls before swine.

I believe that the Scriptures is the deposit of faith.

That being the case, why did you start this thread?

If you believe that there is more, please provide the entire revelation that is missing.

This would require that you enter the catechumenate, and given your previous posts, I don’t think this is likely to happen.

I don’t mind reading church fathers, but which church father’s work is considered inspired and God-Breathed for me to study?

Do you know where your bible came from? That is a good place to start. It is a product of Sacred Tradition. Since you are most familiar with this aspect of Sacred Tradition, it makes most sense to begin with this. How were the books selected that were to be included in the NT? How was the “table of contents” comprised? The pursuit of such questions will take you on the path of learning about Sacred Tradtition.

 

[Pixie_Dust]

Do you know where your bible came from? That is a good place to start. It is a product of Sacred Tradition. Since you are most familiar with this aspect of Sacred Tradition, it makes most sense to begin with this. How were the books selected that were to be included in the NT? How was the “table of contents” comprised? The pursuit of such questions will take you on the path of learning about Sacred Tradition.

That’s pretty much what happened to me. All along I was saying, “Now I’m not about to become Catholic, but…” as God slowly worked on me to bring me Home.

 

[guanophore]

Reformed:

Are you being honest in saying that you’re Catholic? The link provided under your name has plenty of information about how Catholics have bad theology.

monergism.com/directory/link_category/Bad-Theology/Roman-Catholicism/

It’s fine if you’re not Catholic, just be honest about it.

God Bless
Javier

He has redefined the meaning of the word, so that it fits his theology. He is Reformed, and if you look at his early postings, it is quite clear that he is very anti-Catholic.

 

[guanophore]

We know that Jesus is the living Word, and we have the written Word. **It is only through the written Word by the indwelling Holy Spirit that we can know **that we hear the living Word.

Where does it say this in Scripture?

On what basis is this concluded?

How does one know if one is “knowing” according to the indwelling spirit? People of opposite convictions all believe they “hear” the indwelling spirit.

The sheep of God hear the voice of Christ through the Scriptures and follow Him. We cannot trust in extra-biblical sources because there are so many deceiving spirits in the world.

If this were true, it would mean that Jesus failed in His promise, or that He is a weakling, or perhaps that he is a liar?

Mark 13:22

For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.

I thought you believed this was not possible?

However, the Scriptures must be the measuring rod to discern all spiritual truth including Catholic Sacred Tradition.

Where does the Scripture make this claim about itself, and if not, how can you claim your whole foundation on an extrabiblical tradition?

I think the Roman Catholic Church has it backwards by using Sacred Tradition to understand the Scriptures. Since Tradition is not considered to be Inspired in the same way as Scripiture, you are using fallible sources to understand revelation from God.

Such a statement demonstrates a misunderstanding of Sacred Tradition. It was Sacred Tradition that produced the Scripture. The fact that it is inspired-inerrant should be enough to demonstrate that the source of it is infallible. Scripture testifies that men, moved by the Spirit, spoke from God. What makes the Chruch infallible at these times is the HS.

You have to embrace that the Bible is God-breathed, giving to us by God and not by the Catholic Church.

We believe that both things are true. Again, your “AND NOT” theology fails. Scripture itself testifies that it is men, moved by the HS that wrote. These men were Catholic. Those inspired writings were then protected, copied, preserved, and eventually canonized by Catholics because the Catholics that did these things believed that the Catholics who wrote them were inspired by the HS.

I honestly believe most Roman Catholics have no idea what the actual contents of Sacred Traditon consist of.

There certainly seems to be no end of new things to learn.

I suspect Catholics have great difficulties discerning if something is Sacred Traditon, or just plain tradition.

I believe this is true, and the less catechesis the individual has, the more likely it is to happen. This point, in fact, is what precipitated my leaving the Church. I was ignorant, and instead of trying to learn the truth of my faith, I was drawn away by emotionalism.

To me, Sacred Tradition just means that you are to believe what the Roman Catholic Church tells you what to believe..with full and final authority.

Some how it seems incumbent upon you, if you believe this, to explain why the other 22 Rites of the Catholic Church that are not “Roman” hold the same Sacred Tradition. Then you will also have to explain how the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox who are not in communion with Rome, also hold and teach the same Sacred Traditions.

. IMO, it’s a way to control the 1 billion people (laity and clergy alike). Even the teaching of the sacraments has an element of control to it. For example, if you leave the Roman Catholic Church you do not have the fullness of the graces such as the Eucharist, baptismal regeneration, and other Roman Catholic sacraments that are exclusive to Catholic churches only. The Council of Trent is quite clear to those who apostate from Roman Catholicism. It’s quite the religious monopoly (IMO). But what do I know, since most here think I am a heretic? . I 'm glad I’m a 21st Century Protestant rather than a 16th Century Protestant.

Well, you sure do seem to have a lot of hostility toward “Romanism”. In order to justify it, though, you will have to justify having the same attitude toward all those that hold and teach the same Sacred Traditions and Sacraments that are not “Roman”. If you attempt this, I think you will find that your arguement is really not with Rome, but the Apostolic faith.

 

[guanophore]

Thanks, and I learned through debating Mormons that Roman Catholic Sacred Traditon is not new revelation (unlike Mormonism). Jude 3 and the Once for all is significant… but I just want access to the Once for All deposit of Faith of a Roman Catholic Christian. I have access to a Roman Catholc cannon of Scripture. But how do I get the rest of their Sacred Tradition? I;ve read through the Catholic Catechism 10 years ago, but that’s just a brief summary of the actual contents of Sacred Tradition.

The Sacred Tradition is handed down (paradosis), received, and passed on. This is done from a person authorized by Christ to the faithful who are able to be taught. These conditions are the ones that I think make it impossible for you to access this. It does not happen with an attitude of “how do I get the rest of theirs”.

It is not “Roman” either.

That’s helpful, but when or if I study the Church Fathers, which ones are part of Sacred Tradition, and do I accept all that they write as Sacred Tradition?

This is a very good question, to which you were already given an answer. Those parts of the writings of the Fathers that are consistent with the Apostolic teaching, in written and lived forms, represent the Sacred Tradition. Those parts of the fathers’ writings that depart in any way from the Apostolic Teaching are of historical value, but do not represent the one divine deposit of faith.

 

[Pixie_Dust]

Reformed, are you still wasting time, energy, and cyberspace by typing “Roman” in front of Catholic every single time? Do you realize it’s a grave insult and affront to our Eastern Catholic and Orthodox brethren who hold to the same Sacred Traditions that we Latin-rite Catholics do?

Imagine being a teacher in a 5th grade classroom, addressing every question and comment to Blue-eyed Girls. All of the boys, as well as the brown, green and hazel eyed girls are just left out of class participation, even though they’re all 5th graders. How long do you think a teacher could get away with that?