I could ask you the same question. How do you know the claims the Catholic Church makes is true. At the end of the day, both of us are acting on faith, striving to obey our Lord as we understand them.
That is not to say that both of us are right. It’s just to say that we’re all making determinations on trust. You tell me I have a problem because my church doesn’t have a magisterium, and I simply have to wade through the morass of doctrine on my own encountering many dangers and traps and delusion. But in the end of the day, you have to do the same thing. You just choose to give that responsibility to the Catholic Church and submit to its determinations. You’re still operating on trust–trust that Jesus Christ personally established the Catholic Church and personally made the Pope his Vicar on earth. What if you’re wrong??? I trust in Jesus Christ and his Word illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
You’re right. At the end of the day, what we believe is based solely on our faith and trust in God. The main reason that I can be confident that what the Catholic Church teaches is true, is based on the fact that Jesus only established one Church. He promised to remain with that Church until He came, again. He also promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”. After His Ascension, He promised to send the Holy Spirit to lead that Church “into all truth”, so I have faith to believe that’s exactly what happened.
Would Jesus ever lie to us? Certainly not! Has the Catholic Church been around since the time of Christ? Absolutely. Therefore, I have to believe that the Holy Spirit has guided Her, and Jesus has remained with Her for all that time. Not only is He with us spiritually, but He is also physically present with us in the Eucharist. The Catholic Church is the Bride of Christ that came down from Heaven. He would never leave Her, because “what God has joined together, let no man put asunder”. He gave His life for Her, so She could continue to grow and gather all of His children to Her, to also be One with Him. He “dug deep” and built His House upon a “solid rock”, with a strong foundation of faith in Him, so It could withstand all the storms to come. And, it’s still standing.
He also taught that we were all to be “as one”, just as He and His Father in Heaven, with the Holy Spirit, are One. Can God ever be separated? No, because there is only One God. Even when Jesus lived on earth, and became a man to save us all, He was never really separated from the Godhead, the Holy Trinity of God. Three distinct Persons Who are completely inseparable, being only One God. That’s what Jesus also wanted for His Church, that we should all remain together as One Body, One Spirit in Christ, undivided.
Anything is possible, but I find it hard to believe that the divinely inspired writers left out crucial information, relying on oral tradition alone (which I suppose Catholics mean the information contained in the Church Fathers???). The writers, in fact, repeat the theme of salvation over and over and over again. It was not an afterthought but everything they talked about.
Why should that be so surprising? The Jewish Law also consisted of the written Law, as well oral traditions. Not everyone was educated well enough to be able to read scripture, so many things had to be transmitted to the faithful, orally. They had to memorize scripture, to the letter, in order to do that. Also, in the early Church, all that the Apostles knew about Jesus was taught to others, both orally and by their own example. How do you think they taught the people everything that Jesus had said and done, before they had even written the New Testament scriptures? Why do you think John said that so many books could be written, that they would fill the whole world? Were all of those things unimportant or questionable, just because they weren’t written down at that time?
Why do you think they had to choose someone who had been a personal witness to Jesus when they first replaced Judas? Because, they knew that only someone who had been following Jesus throughout His public life, would know and understand, exactly, what He taught them. It wasn’t until many years later that they finally put many of the most important things on paper, but even then, they didn’t have the chance or time to write it *all *down. They were faithful to keep the whole truth of what they were taught by Jesus, and it took a lot of time and personal training by example, to teach someone new exactly what to preach as the Gospel.
I don’t understand why some people are hesitant to believe that there was a very strong oral tradition, along with strict methods and formulas to follow when they performed the ‘breaking of the bread’, or baptisms, or the ‘laying on of hands’. Jesus spent three and a half years, teaching them daily, how and what to do after He was gone. He gave all of that knowledge to them, so they could pass it on to the whole Church by word of mouth. Jesus never wrote anything down on paper, either. The Apostles learned by living the Gospel, not by reading about it. They passed it on to others the same way they learned it; by example. That’s why it was so important for the Church to remain as one, so that all of those things would never be lost to the rest of the world. The Church still teaches us by example, and not just through the written word. Written words can easily be misunderstood. So, by example, along with the written word, is the best way to teach exactly what Jesus taught.
