I believe we are wandering off topic, here. But, to answer your question, in a sort of circuitous way, of course, the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets. From Paul's famous letter to the believing Jews, the epistle to the Hebrews, 1:1ff, "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways..."
But, where do any prophets tell us that Mary would be immaculately conceived (herself), be a Co-Redemptrix, the Queen of Heaven and deserves, therefore, veneration? I am not interested in "traditions of Rome" or advice from its personnel. I am asking, where in the Scriptures are these doctrines taught?
So you DID notice the shiny object!
Neither you nor any other FReeper non-Catholics have been able to tell me by whose (human) provenance we have the NT at all. I'm not talking about authorship -- the Holy Spirit is the principal author of Scripture --- but about provenance in the historic sense. By what evidence or whose authority do we think there are four Gospels, and only four? And that their authors were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John --- thus securing their apostolicity?
The fact is that the Bible itself, having no table of contents, does not tell us what books comprise the Bible. That means it cannot have a complete and absolutely non-contingent, self-contained authority because it does not even define itself. This means that some outside authority would have to delimit and secure what we even mean by the Bible. But who?
The is only one possible historic answer to that, and it is the Church --- and that's to be understood in the broadest sense, I'm not just talking about a guy sitting at a desk on the Via del Sant'Uffizio. I'm talking about the "sense of the faithful" who were following the precepts and practices of the Apostles.
Which books were "received" by the churches as being entirely inspired and appropriate for liturgical use?
How did Irenaeus of Lyon (130-202 AD) know how to answer that question? He knew from Polycarp (69-159 AD). But how did Polycarp know? From John the Evangelist (15-100 AD), in other words, the preaching and practice of the Apostles, Big T Tradition, a.k.a. Apostlic Tradition, a.k.a. "that which was handed down from the Apostles."
If you want to know what is the main thing we know from Tradition, the obvious answer would be: The Scriptures.
Other "main things" would be the basics of the Liturgy, the Sacraments, distinctive elements of Christian life like lifelong monogamy, Sunday gathering for worship, the rejection of abortion, the Christology of the Apostles' Creed, the most primitive, lived beliefs and practices later written down in the "Didache" and the "Shepherd," the Liturgy of St. James, Letters of Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, the Epistle of Barnabas of of Polycarp of Smyrna, fragments preserving statements by Papias of Hierapolis, the Epistle to Diognetus.
This is not Scripture, but note this: this is the very first generation AFTER Scripture was written, the generation that had personal contact with Paul and the Twelve Apostles and the other faithful ones of the Apostolic Generation, the generation which distributed the actual sacred manuscripts, and guaranteed the authorship and authenticity of what they distributed. If there were no authoritative First Generation oral teaching, there would be no New Testament.
In 2 Timothy, Paul wrote: "Take as a model of sound teaching what you have heard me say, (i.e. oral tradition) in faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the rich deposit of faith with the help of the Holy Spirit (thus we know Holy Spirit guards the oral transmission of sound teaching.) (1:13-14).
Later, in the same letter, he further instructs Timothy, "You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me (oral tradition, again) before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (here we see oral teaching passed down to the next group of faithful men,and the next)" (2:1-2). Thus the oral teaching of the apostles was to be preserved and transmitted from generation to generation.
St. Paul doesn't write to Timothy and say, "Only the written stuff is all you need"; rather, he writes Timothy to entrust to other faithful men, who will be able to instruct others, what he preached.
In 2 Thessalonians, St. Paul nails it: "So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (2:15). And again: (1 Corinth. 11:1) "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
So you are to hold firm to: (1)word of mouth AND (2) his practice (which we are to imitate) AND (3)his letters.
The letters he wrote (epistles) are only one part of this three-part source: we hold firm to what the Apostles wrote, what they preached, and what they did.
Anyone who rejects Tradition as having no role in matters of faith and who wish to return to a "primitive New Testament" Church have no grounds for quoting Scripture. The "primitive New Testament" Church relied on the oral teaching of the apostles and their successors, a broader deposit of truths than just the (important) subset which eventually achieved written form in the NT.
Why is anyone surprised by this? There was a church a good 50-60 years before there were four written Gospels, the Epistles and the Revelation of John. There was a church for centuries before there was a canon of Scripture.
Once you grasp that reality, you have the necessary foundation you need to see that Apostolic Tradition has true authority. If it did not, there would be no historic authority "there" to confirm the canon. To reject Tradition is to cut the ground out from under the Gospels, to remove the very foundation that undergirds, upholds and provides us with this inestimable and God-breathed gift, the Holy Scriptures.