Sure. I'm always telling funny jokes about the God I worship.
Jesus heavily criticized the religious leaders of his day for substituting their own man-made rules for God's law.
Yet he also observed many of those same rules punctiliously and instructed the Apostles to follow them.
Interestingly, that's still the main bone of contention between Catholics and Protestants.
For Protestants perhaps. For Catholics the original matter of contention is ecclesiological.
Both have invented man-made rules -- like Baptists demanding abstinence from wine or pretty much any Catholic doctrine developed after about 400 AD, like the perpetual virginity of Mary.
(1) The doctrine of Our Lady's perpetual virginity isn't a "rule" - it's a teaching.
(2) The doctrine of Our Lady's perpetual virginity is well attested long before 400 A.D.
Our Lady was routinely described by St. Athanasius as "Ever-Virgin" in the 300s, for example.
It was a doctrine taken for granted by early Christians. So much so that St. Jerome in debating Helvidius in 383 on the matter informs Helvidius that the idea that Mary was not always a virgin is an innovation unheard of before.
Jerome also taught that the apocryphal books should not form a part of the canon. Why is Jerome wrong there but right in addressing Helvidius?Besides, Jerome's argument doesn't stand up when it is examined closely -- Mary and Joseph were truly husband and wife, not putatively, as Jerome argues. And the old "Jesus' brother and sisters were really his cousins" argument is specious, too, not only because of the scriptures, but because of contemporaneous church and secular documents which, for example, describe James as the physical half-brother of Jesus.
The problem is that Catholics want to claim that all of what they call apostolic teaching was held by every generation yet they do not wish to prove that all of what they call apostolic teaching was held by every generation, especially the early church.
Could you provide the exact quotes, the name of the book or letter, and the chapter number please? I'm having trouble finding any quotes using that phrase in my ECF software. Thanks.