THE YEAR OF THE BIBLE? Please, Please, let it be the year of Sacred Tradition.

The Bishops of the Catholic Church in England have made this year 2020 the Year of the Bible.  So where this is taken seriously, and I hope in not too many places, we will be discussing the Bible in isolation from tradition, as one of the foundational elements of Our Faith.   But where did the Bible come from?   The document praises St Jerome who turned 'scripture' into Latin, but this was an evasion.   The Councils of Carthage and Hippo had already determined the canonical books that Jerome would use.    It was finally at a Synod in Carthage in  397 that the bishops of the Catholic Church finally drew up the Canonical books that would be used in the Churches and which Jerome translated into Latin, since the Mass was said in Latin.   Their decision was ratified by the Pope.   But this did not devalue many other scriptures the Church decided not to use.   Letters from the early Fathers and Ecclesial writers of the Patristic age, Ignatius of Antioch, Pope Clement, and many others  were still a reference point.   This is what the Church  calls Tradition.   In order to understand and expand many texts in the New Testament, and in order to understand the place of Mary in our Catholic Faith we have to go back to the sources in the early Church to understand dogmas like Mary the new EVE, the Assumption, and indeed what did the very early Fathers believe when it comes to the doctrine of the Real Presence.  

So the point is that the Bible can only be a foundation of the Catholic Faith when it is read within the Church, that is with the traditions and beliefs corresponding to  what the early Church believed.    Otherwise the Bible takes us away from the Real Jesus.   Remember the false Christs and prophets that Jesus foretold.  And remember that after the Reformation as Protestants interpreted scripture they broke into over 25,000 sects.   Let us therefore cling to the Bible, but keep also our Sacred Tradition.




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