It is written down. The dogmas of the Church are explained very well in patristic literature, consiliar documents, papal encyclicals, the Catechism and other magisterial documents. However, one cannot convert all teaching to paper, just like one cannot replace school with a reading room with manuals. More often that not the Church teaches like Christ taught, through question and answer, homilies at Mass, and personal witness.
This is not unlike the Free Republic, the value of which is in the live exchange rather than in the collection of documents that FR has, not matter how great these documents are in themselves.
“Tradition, according to Roman Catholicism, is therefore as much “the Word of God” as Scripture. According to the Catechism, Tradition and Scripture “are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well- spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing and move towards the same goal” (CCC 80). The “sacred deposit of faith” — this admixture of Scripture and tradition — was supposedly entrusted by the apostles to their successors (CCC 84), and “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone.... This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome” (CCC 85).
The Catechism is quick to deny that this makes the Church’s teaching authority (called the magisterium) in any way superior to the Word of God itself (CCC 86). But it then goes on to warn the faithful that they must “read the Scripture within ‘the living tradition of the whole Church’ “ (CCC 113). The Catechism at this point quotes “a saying of the Fathers[:] Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word” (CCC 113).
So in effect, tradition is not only made equal to Scripture, but it becomes the true Scripture, written not in documents, but mystically within the Church herself. And when the Church speaks, her voice is heard as if it were the voice of God, giving the only true meaning to the words of the “documents and records.” Thus tradition utterly supplants and supersedes Scripture.
In other words, the official Catholic position on Scripture is that Scripture does not and cannot speak for itself. It must be interpreted by the Church’s teaching authority and in light of “living tradition.” De facto this says that Scripture has no inherent authority, but like all spiritual truth, it derives its authority from the Church. Only what the Church says is deemed the true Word of God, the “Sacred Scripture... written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records.”
This position obviously emasculates Scripture.”
http://www.mbrem123.com/bible/sufficn.php