[Campion]

Sacred tradition is merely the Church’s understanding of the Bible through the centuries. Unless you want to discount Jesus’ promise to lead the Apostles and those who came after them “to all truth” — a promise recorded in the Bible, sacred tradition is authoritative, not in contradiction to Scripture but as the church’s divinely guided *understanding* of Scripture.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Yep, that's how it's always presented, cleverly-designed to make it easy-to-swallow. The problem is the "Church" varies in its understanding, by time, place, leadership, and denomination, whereas the Bible does not. Meanwhile, we "kingdom of priests" (Ex. 19:6), we "royal priesthood" (1 Pe. 2:9), can understand and interpret God's settled Word perfectly well ourselves (at least when the Church doesn't keep the Bible from the laity), without needing the Church arrogating authority unto itself to intervene between us and God with its "authoritative" pronouncements and anathemas. We can do so precisely because Jesus' promise of the Holy Spirit leading us to all truth was not made merely to the apostles and their successors but instead to all believers.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Leaving aside the debate over the primacy of tradition and scripture, there’s an interesting thought experiment which occurs to me. Suppose that the early church—say, the third or fourth century—had made the following decision: “We believe God wants every believer to have his own copy of the Bible (and to make sure he is literate and that it is in his own language).” Would the printing press really have taken another whole millennium to be invented?