[Diamond]

The misuse of Jerome’s writings are, sadly, quite typical of Webster’s arguments. One has to conclude that his “research” into the Fathers was either simply reading someone else’s proof-texting, or that, before embarking on his studies, he was so convinced by such proof-texting, he did not even truly consider what the Fathers actually wrote. How can one have independently studied Jerome, and not have read of how he calls those who say he denigrates the scriptural status of the deuterocanonicals, “fools and slanderers”?

I guess Cardinal Cajetan must have been a moron, too, like Webster:

"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed among the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned canonical. For the words as well as of councils and of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorized in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clear through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage."

You night want to infom The New Catholic Ecyclopedia of their error, too, while you're at it.

"St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books (the apocrypha). The latter he judged were circulated by the Church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture....The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries....According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent....The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament Canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent."

Cordially,

[conservonator]

Wonderful! You have discovered the beauty, reason for and the great gift that is the Magisterium! No individual man is the arbiter of truth, even the Pope, when he speaks "ex cathedra" is speaking nor for him self and his opinion but is proclaiming a universal, transcendent truth held by the Church, and expressed in councils teaching of fathers etc, not an opinion

The teaching or opinion of an individual member of the Church no matter who that individual may be is not dogma, unlike the opinions of Protestant ecleasial community founders.

[dangus]

See, this is the nonsense you get when you use out-of-context snippets to “prove” a point. The very obscure Cardinal Catejan is describing how Jerome was involved in a debate about how to teach scriptures to the JEWS. That is the canon which Catejan is refering to: the JEWISH canon. There was no such concept as Christian “canonical” books until Luther, since the bible consisted of those books which were used in liturgies. And if you had ever read any of the debates about which books were scriptural from among the Church Fathers, you would have read that the debate was ALWAYS about whether to include a book in liturgy. SO, if you’re not just proof-texting, how is it possible that you don’t know that? *I* had to look up who Catejan was; he’s a very anonymous, 500-year old obscure Cardinal who someone dug up for you because his words could be misconstrued out of context. There’s no way on EARTH you ever could have stumbled across him, except through your phony proof-text based learning.

As for the New Catholic Encyclopedia:

It was produced by laymen in mid-western 1917 America, and did not have any apologetic purpose, and frequently persumed as factual the prevailing Protestant version of truth, given the absence of English-language research into Catholic matters. It’s hardly much of a source. Yet you (or someone) has inserted your own characterizations to make it seem like it’s saying something it isn’t. If the encyclopedia or Jerome had MEANT apocryphal, they would have used that word. What was meant was canonical (approved by the Jews), verses ecclesiastical (approved by the Church, and thus including the entire New Testament).