That seems a little like a square circle.
Seems to me every Catholic oral tradition ever produced is written not just somewhere but every where...
You guys claim that the apostles passed down oral tradition to you guys...Do you have any evidence??? Nope...Any of those traditions we can look at or discuss??? Nope...There aren't any...
If your so-called Ignatius would have said something like, 'I traveled to the Isle of Patmos to visit with the apostle John and while there John gave this command to me'...Blah, blah, blah...
Ignatius allegedly wrote a number of things to pass on to you guys, I'm sure he wouldn't have neglected to write down something that came from the lips of the apostle...
We all know that there are no oral traditions passed down from the apostles...We all know that you guys back paddle when that topic comes up...And we all know you guys use this fabrication not to prove that oral tradition was passed on (because you can't) but to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...
'The apostles passed on oral tradition and they also passed on that authority to the Catholic church'...So a few centuries later an 'oral tradition' shows up in someone's writing and 'abracadabra', that tradition must have come from God because it is written in one of our books so it is Tradition even tho there's never a source of this tradition...
The Jewish religion had an oral traditon, outside of Scriptures, firmly established well before the time of Christ. It was later recorded. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?
But I think when you say tradition (I don't think I hear the phrase “oral tradition” a lot in this context) we're probably thinking of different things. And the word itself is used equivocally.
But, really it's hard to figure out what you are saying. For example:
And we all know you guys use this fabrication not to prove that oral tradition was passed on (because you can't) but to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...
I can't tell what that means. Let's break it down syntactically:
.... you guys use this fabrication
not to prove that oral tradition was passed on (because you can't) but
to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...
So if we take out what we DIDn’t use it for we get:
... you guys use this fabrication ... to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...
Well, I don't understand that. I don't know what it means.
But I think that the charisms handed down don't need records, though if we had them it would be interesting. The documents that weren't considered canonical NT writings are interesting, but they don't have the oomph of those that were approved. Somebody, some group of somebodies, made a good, even an inspired, decision.
You know, Al Ghazali of Iran, who died 904 years ago, said that Allah was pure will and that man's response should be utter obedience. He said Allah might throw a good creature into ever lasting torment and promote and evil creature to everlasting bliss, and all we could or should do is assent, because he is Allah.
Because his thinking took over, Falsafa, philosophy, was slowly driven out of Islam. There's good reason to believe that this is why advances in science and mathematics ceased and the Muslim world was left like a blind man holding a lamp.
Like you, the Muslims would say these were all philosophies of men and not God's word.
Now we COULD say that the Muslims just ended up backing the wrong horse, so to speak. If Reason (and therefore "philosophies of men") have nothing to do with it, then it's just a matter of whether one has the grace to believe in Jehovah and Jesus or in Allah and Mohammed. And there's no way to discuss it. They wave their Korans (and weapons,) and we wave our Bibles (and weapons.)We're reduced to angry yelling.
And so you think it a scandal that seminarians study philosophy. And, it seems, confidence in the position you take while eschewing philosophy may lead to what appears to be difficulty in stating your position and what certainly seems to be hostility (not just disagreement, hostility) to any other.
But, without philosophy, there's no way to discuss this. And we're left not only with
... you guys use this fabrication ... to Catholics that it was the process or procedure that was passed on...But with an ideological rejection of the very instruments (logic and reason) which might help us talk about it -- or which might lead us to think that talking about it was worthwhile. This isn't a personal clash. It's what you get when the tools of discourse are rejected because of a particular take on what Paul says about philosophy.