"But, this tradition that y'all claim to hold as equal to the Word of YHWH must (in order to maintain that assumed equality) be held to a much higher standard than mere history..."
This is the key to the misunderstanding right here. We were talking about the development of Canon law via the jurist Gratian, who inadvertently included some forged papers from the papal archives in his collected documents. Papal archives in general, Canon Law in particular, are not "part of the Sacred Tradition which Catholics hold as equal to the Word of YHWH."
On the contrary, these are human documents and human laws. If you mistakenly thought Catholics held them as dogma, or if you were expecting them to be evaluated on some level far superior to that of other human documents, you were much misled. And this is a stumble on a very basic issue: the nature and significance of the papers you were studying.
It would be like this: say your father filed tax returns with the IRS for every year from 1958 to 2000, almost all of them satisfactory to the IRS. But say in 1960 his tax papers had substantial errors in them, not because of intentional fraud or negligence on his part, but because his tax preparer found that by intricately falsifying some figures he could embezzle a tidy sum of money for himself.
Say, years down the line, years after the death of the dodgy tax preparer, your father defended the figures because he didn't immediately grasp where the errors were, but his tangle with the IRS got him in a lot of trouble, landed him in court, generated horrible publicity, ruined his nascent political career -- AND he finally realized where the error was, declared it himself, and did what he could to make it right. You would not regard him as crook or as dispicable. You'd see he had defended a fraud, but only because of human error: damaging, but not (on your father's part) morally degraded.
It would be quite otherwise if he were a polygamist who had falsified all of personal ID as well as his marriage certificate. That situation would involve serious moral turpitude on his part, and would be far worse "by an order of magnitude."
"How then can one compare in force the authority of a body of work which admittedly contains error with the Scriptures which we all hold to be inerrant?"
One can't, and the Catholic Church doesn't. The whole concept of equating Canon Law with Sacred Tradition is erroneous.
"If the leaven is already baked into the bread, then throw the bread out! It is that example that I lean upon, perhaps more than any other thing, when it comes to the things of God, and especially where the record is concerned..."
Once again, your distress is triggered by a category error. If some element of Sacred Tradition or a de Fide dogma were really and truly in error --- say, the authenticity of the Four Gospels, the canon of Scripture, the Christology expressed in the Nicene Creed, the foundations of Holy Orders, the essential elements of the Liturgy --- if these were wrong, then the Catholic Church would be shown to be pervasively and irredeemably false.
But this is not what you are saying when you speak of false papers being inserted into the 9th century archive of papal correspondence, or Gratian's three-centuries-later inclusion of these forgeries into the much bigger collections of letters which formed the basis of Medieval Canon Law. Not a jot of that is Sacred Tradition, properly so called.
Do you understand that?
"And I would take exception to your position that forgeries (or psuedepigrapha, unattributed works) are withheld from the Deposit of the Faith, or Divine and Natural Law. As examples, one will find, if one truly researches the succession from Peter, that one cannot make the case without reliance upon spurious works (if even then)..."
The succession stands, even if we remove the forgeries as we must, and sink them in the deep blue sea. You may apply the same principles that you would apply to Scriptural genealogies: unexplained lacunae do not make the whole series false. In a given genealogy you may have a man described as a father who is in fact a great-grandfather: several generations are missing from the record. For instance, Matthew 1:8 omits Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, going directly from Joram to Uzziah. But that doesn't mean that there was "nobody" between Joram and Uzziah, or that the whole thing is a mythological genealogy. This is not the case at all. Some records simply have to contain ellipses to show that an ancestor does have a true descendant, a true successor, a couple generations down the line.
You say you could "go on and on," and so could I. Won't do it right now, though.
Suffice it to say that many people (both Catholic and non-Catholic) have wrongly conflated all of the Church's archives, correspondences and papers with "Sacred Tradition." Similarly, many have taken an absurdly inflated idea of papal infallibility (e.g. extending it to mere papal theological opinion) and in doing so have made a grand confusion of the spaghetti pot.
I am convinced by my own evaluation of evidence, that the Church, in her dogmas, has her spaghetti straight.
Through the providential mercy of God.
Wonderful work, again!
I so admire your ability to clearly state what you are trying to say and to do so with such a gentle spirit.
I was watching Dr. Scott Hahn’s series on apologetics last night and was struck by something he said about the discourse between Catholics and non Catholics.
He said that many people just want to argue and to be right and that causes friction between those having the dialogue.
(paraphrase, since I can’t remember it exactly)
I realized that that is the case with me here on the religion threads. I have allowed myself to get drawn into the snarky responses and snide self congratulatory tone that has been directed by others to me.
I don’t want to participate further, unless and until I can do so with the same love you have shown here.
God bless and keep it up.
TRUE... But they are invariably the means used to defend your sacred tradition. In every argument, comes the incessant role of what Irenaeus said, or what Augustine said, or what Aquinas said - and here we find that what they said is leaning upon stuff made of whole cloth. In a nut shell, that which y'all cannot defend within the Scriptures is needfully defended in your history. There is a reason why if one finds leaven, one must throw out the whole lump.
And while I am not accusing you here, it is interesting to me that your focus is on Gratian in our discussion... Holding him out with one hand, while the equally damaged Aquinas is pushed off center stage... And I would reiterate once again, that these forgeries (while powerful, and oft pointed to) are by no means the limit of this discussion.
AND he finally realized where the error was, declared it himself, and did what he could to make it right.
There's your problem right there.
Once again, your distress is triggered by a category error. If some element of Sacred Tradition or a de Fide dogma were really and truly in error --- say, the authenticity of the Four Gospels, the canon of Scripture, the Christology expressed in the Nicene Creed, the foundations of Holy Orders, the essential elements of the Liturgy --- if these were wrong, then the Catholic Church would be shown to be pervasively and irredeemably false.
But that is in fact the problem - Since y'all rely upon a demonstrably faulty history, that which you say we must stand upon cannot be proven. Shoot, the very proofs y'all use to bolster your authority are nothing but a house of cards... And where y'all go against the written Word, or wrest things out of it, your proofs are almost completely without pedigree... That pedigree being the evidence of your authority, I find therein no reason to cede to y'all at all.
Do you understand that?
Yes I do, and I have all along... And again, we are speaking of much more than these forgeries which have been singled out, and certainly more than Gratian.
The succession stands, even if we remove the forgeries as we must, and sink them in the deep blue sea. You may apply the same principles that you would apply to Scriptural genealogies: unexplained lacunae do not make the whole series false.
I reject that outright. Your authority derives from one Apostle laying hands upon the next, with no other ancillary proofs possible in evidence. Ergo, if even one gap is discovered, the pedigree is not guaranteed, and one then relies upon faith rather than an evidential claim. Real Apostolic authority comes with power, and that power has been lacking all along, so the proof, lying solely in patriarchy, must necessarily be air tight.
[...] in doing so have made a grand confusion of the spaghetti pot. [...] I am convinced by my own evaluation of evidence, that the Church, in her dogmas, has her spaghetti straight.
Your kind assurances aside, I too have wandered far seeking evidence, not only in your religion, but nearly in every religion - and I do not see what you do.