Replies

Well, I'm an "RC" reading this, and I find no difficulty at all defending that statement. Most of the objections that Protestants have to Catholic belief and practice are things that the P's don't see clearly taught in Scripture. So most don't involve a contradiction at all, just what they see as lack of clear Scriptural basis.

I see your point and you are correct about FReepers seeing a "lack of clear Scriptural basis" for many Roman Catholic beliefs and practices, as has been demonstrated by FReepers on the Religion Forum many times and in many rebuttals on many threads over many years.

If I understand what your post means, Catholics can make up any doctrine that cannot be DISPROVEN by the Holy Bible.

I'm going to break up the paragraph below because it's just too... um, JPII. He is hard to excerpt in the first place.

From Fides et Ratio (JPII)

"There are also signs of a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God. One currently widespread symptom of this fideistic tendency is a “biblicism” which tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scripture the sole criterion of truth. In consequence, the word of God is identified with Sacred Scripture alone, thus eliminating the doctrine of the Church which the Second Vatican Council stressed quite specifically.

"Having recalled that the word of God is present in both Scripture and Tradition, the Constitution Dei Verbum continues emphatically: “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture comprise a single sacred deposit of the word of God entrusted to the Church. Embracing this deposit and united with their pastors, the People of God remain always faithful to the teaching of the Apostles”. Scripture, therefore, is not the Church's sole point of reference. The “supreme rule of her faith” derives from the unity which the Spirit has created between Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church in a reciprocity which means that none of the three can survive without the others."

I realize you find this bizarre because I think it is condemning the very thing you believe, but this is the way the Church teaches.

If I understand what your post means, Catholics can make up any doctrine that cannot be DISPROVEN by the Holy Bible.

If you want my REAL position and point, it is as follows:

The post-Apostolic church which took on the name "Catholic," which had it's primary centers in the original patriarchies of Rome, Antioch, Ephesus and Jerusalem, was the heir of the church established by the Jesus and the Apostles (there are no other contenders, unless you want to claim allegiance to the Gnostics and other heretical groups). That church was the one that received, discussed, and eventually accepted ("canonized") the 27 books we all now know as the "New Testament." By the time that process was completed (circa. 380 A.D.) we can find taught (and largely accepted) most of the "Catholic doctrines" that Protestants claim are "unscriptural."

Bottom line: These early Christian founders and teachers didn't find any contradiction between what they believed through Tradition and what Scripture taught; in fact, they affirmed that what Scripture taught and what they believe were the same thing. That is my view as well.