The Year of the Bible: What the Bible and the Church mean to Me

I bought my first Bible when I was 11 years old.   It was the Ronald Knox version.  Ronald Knox was an English clergyman who in the 1930's, again having examined the Catholicity of the Early Church, was covered to the Catholic Church.   It was an inspiring book to read, especially the psalms and the Song of Songs in the Old Testament and the Parables of Jesus in the New Testament..  Perhaps such readings brought out the Poet in me.    However reading the Bible was always in harmony with my love for the Catholic Church that nourished and fed my soul.  I cannot separate the two and I never have.   That is why the Church is always my guide when some passages confuse me.   In the Church it is known as reading the Bible with the tradition of the Catholic Church.

I now know through my study that when at the Council of Carthage 419 AD the Church gathered together all the writings of the Early Church, and there were many orthodox writings, to put aside those to use at Mass and called them the Word of God, there were many, as I pointed out in a previous post, who decided there was no longer a need for the Church and they could by 'the inspiration of the Holy Spirit' determine their own beliefs in scripture.  They left and formed heretical groups and were soon gone, but those who studied scripture with the Church, remained with the Church and the Church carried on.   After the Reformation the Protestant with no common authority divided into thousands of sects and groups, but the Catholic Church carried on.   I mean no disrespect to Protestant people, but I must follow my path and remain in the Truth which Jesus Christ died for.

So how does the Bible and Tradition work together    I go to Mass on a Sunday, which the Catholic Church calls a Sacrifice.  Further they claim it is the Flesh of Christ they are offering.   What does the Tradition of the Church say?     Now the evangelists wrote in a period of time, at the very beginning of the Church.   So if we go back to that time and examine what other writers of that time were saying about what they called 'the Breaking of Bread' we find that contemporaries of the Apostles such as Ignatius of Antioch an Clement the third successor of Peter, talking about the sacrifices, and more that the bread became the Flesh of Christ, and not figuratively.   I have post on this previously.   Therefore when I go to Mass on Sunday I know that Peter and the other Apostles offered the same sacrifice as the priest then present in my Church.   I do not have to judge for myself, the tradition of the Church is there for me to see.    

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