I'm sure you know that many do not agree with that assessment.
. . .and Sacred Tradition
Which is easy since the Catholics developed it.
The Catholic faith that is, is the faith that was, and is the faith that will be
Hmmm. . .I guess it depends on what you mean by that. I know that the Catholic church has changed it's position on some things, like whether priests can marry, whether Mary was eternally a virgin and was assumed into heaven rather than dying a human death, whether the apocrypha was divinely inspired. Maybe you aren't counting those things as part of what you mean by 'faith'.
Some clarifications here 1) Priestly celibacy is not a Doctrine of the Church, it is a Church discpline that is G Gospel Counsel that Christ himself attested to (c.f. Mt 19: 11-12) and St. Paul (c.f. I Cor 7:32) and also we see in the vision of heaven presented in the book of Revelation (c.f. Rev 14:4) and is an eschatological sign in that those who embrace it for the “kingdom of God”, as Christ taught in St. Matthew’s Gospel and St. Paul lived are anticipating the life to come where “those who are deemed worth to attain to the coming age and the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage” (c.f. Luke 20: 35).
Now does the Catholic Church see marriage in a negative light, of course not, it is one of the seven sacraments, which as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas taugth, are visible signs of an invisible grace that God uses to make us Holy.
2) As for the teaching of Mary ever virgin. That has never been rejected by the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church teaches the same thing and this teaching is attested by all the Fathers. It was not questioned until the 4th century when Helvidius raised it and St. Jerome, the greatest biblical scholar of his, and perhaps ever, wrote against that position
3) Finally, the “apocrypha”, which is Catholic and Eastern Orthdox circles, are called the “Deueterocanonicals” where always part of the OT canon used by the Early Church and the Fathers.
The Anglican Patristic Scholar JND Kelly who in his book “Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 53-54” provides solid evidence that the Dueterocanonicals were recognized as the Canonical Old Testament in the early Church. Kelly writes:
“It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than the [Protestant Old Testament] . . . It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deutero-canonical books. The reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was . . . the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. . . . most of the Scriptural quotations found in the New Testament are based upon it rather than the Hebrew.. . . In the first two centuries . . . the Church seems to have accepted all or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without question as Scripture.
Quotations from Wisdom, for example, occur in 1 Clement and Barnabas. . . Polycarp cites Tobit, and the Didache [cites] Ecclesiasticus. Irenaeus refers to Wisdom, the History of Susannah, Bel and the Dragon [i.e., the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel], and Baruch. The use made of the Apocrypha by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Clement of Alexandria is too frequent for detailed references to be necessary”
In addition to the constant witness of the CHurch Fathers, the NT itself shows an affinity to the LXX version of the OT (Greek-Septuigiant) as close to 70% of the OT quotes in the NT come from the LXX source.
Finally, the canonical lists drawn up during the 4th century, as the NT canon was completed shows the Deuterocanonicals were accepted. St. Athanasius’ 39th Easter letter lists the 27 New Testament books and 40 of the 46 Old Testament books that would be in the Catholic Canon (Baruch was included, the other 6 deuterocanonical books are admitted there use as devotional reading. The Council in Rome in 382 led by Pope Damasus, along with St. Jerome, listed the 46 books of the OT and 27 NT that are in the Catholic Bible today. While there is some historical disputes as to what was actually in Pope Damasus’s Decree, it is also clear that Jerome’s completed Latin Vulgate Translation consisted of all the books that are in the Catholic Canon today. The Councils of Hippo and Carthage, 393 and 397 AD, respectively are consistent with Rome in 382 and those councils sent there lists for Rome for approval. In summary, the canon in the Catholic Church at the end of the 4th century is the same canon that The Council of Trent, (1534 to 1565), in response to Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc, reaffirmed. Thus, it is accurate to state that the Catholic Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, protected and defended the orthodox Catholic faith and canonized the scriptures that were in conformity with apostolic tradition. Here is a nice article from Newadvent.org (Catholic site) which goes through scholarly detail on the formation of the canon.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274a.htm
I agree that priestly celibacy has changed over the years, it was not always a requirement and it is not required in Orthodox Churches (which used to be part of the same church before the schism) as long as the Priest was married prior to ordination.
The Apocphyra were always in the Bible, until Martin Luther took them out. They were considered scripure by 1st century Christians and were always included among the Old Testament until the 1520s or 1530s
The Jews did not canonize them only because they could not find texts of them in Hebrew, only in Greek. But, lo and behold, texts of some of the apochyphra were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Hebrew.
Please provide specifics when you make these statements. Thank you!