Catholic Authority: Superior to Scripture

"It is the Church, the holder of Tradition, that gives life to the dead letter of Scripture. Experience shows that it is only in the life of the Church, the Bride of Christ, that Scripture, divinely inspired as it is, becomes 'living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword' (Heb 4:12)"

"In regard to these truth [faith and morals] the authority of Tradition and of the Bible is equal...Nevertheless, as we shall see later, the Church is superior to the Bible in the sense that she is the Living Voice of Christ, and therefore the sole infallible interpreter of the inspired Word, whenever an authoritative interpretation is required."

-A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, 1951 (pg 2)
with imprimatur and acknowledgment of Pope Pius XII

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"Then there is Sacred Scripture, which is read every Sunday at Mass. It presents a good opportunity to apply these teachings from the Old and New Testaments to our daily lives, which in turn will help us to get to heaven. For many Catholics it is the only time during the week that they will hear the Word of God." -Father John Carl Lombardi

Catholic Authority: Trumping Scripture

More from A Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion:

"What then must the Catholic Christian generally believe?

He must believe all that God has revealed and the Catholic Church proposes to his belief, whether it be contained in Holy Scripture or not."

"Is the Infallibility of the- Pope the same as the Infallibility of the Church?

Yes, precisely. The Pope is the Supreme Pastor and Teacher, whose voice all the faithful, clergy and laity, 'lambs and sheep,' are commanded by Christ to hear and to follow. If he could teach error ex cathedra, the Church would then follow him into error, and would thereby fail; and so the promises of Christ would be falsified, which is impossible."


"Application: In matters of faith never trust your own judgment, but always humbly submit to the decisions of Holy Church; for when you believe what the Church teaches, you believe the Word of God."

Pope on Salvation

Salvation is open to all, but the way is not easy, pope says:

"Salvation through Christ is open to all, but the way is not easy because it requires a real commitment to love and justice, Pope Benedict XVI said. The pope, speaking Aug. 26 to hundreds of pilgrims at his summer residence outside Rome, said that when Christ told his disciples the gate to heaven was narrow he did not mean it was for the privileged few. "Christ's message goes in the opposite direction: Everyone can enter into (eternal) life, but for everyone the gate is narrow ... because it requires commitment, renunciation and mortification of one's own egotism," the pope said. Christ made clear that people will ultimately be judged on the basis of their works in this world, he said. "The evildoers will find themselves excluded, while those who have done good and sought justice through sacrifice will be welcomed. It will not be enough to declare oneself a friend of Christ," the pope said."

Catholic Authority: Follow the Leader

I enjoy reading older Catholic materials as they are less likely to water-down Catholic beliefs in the name of ecumenism. And since it is claimed that the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church never change, looking to older material cannot be considered inaccurate today.

A Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion from 1889 states the following:

"Why are Protestants so much prejudiced against the Catholic Church, and why is it so difficult to convert them? It is because from infancy the minds of their children have been impressed with a false view of the History of their Religion—a Religion that dates only from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Why should not Catholics with equal, and even greater, effect confirm our children in their attachment to the Church, by showing them how to trace her to the times of the Apostles, and even to the Creation of the world? Is it not, then, of the greatest importance to teach them, together with their catechism, the History of their Religion? History is a safeguard against internal doubts, and a bulwark against all external attacks. He who has, by this means, been fully strengthened in his conviction that the Catholic Church is from God, and that she is the Only True Church, cannot but love her and submit his intellect to her doctrine and his heart to her precepts, and thus remain all his lifetime faithful to her.

After this proof from History that the Catholic Religion is Divine, the Catechism proper commences, and teaches us that we must submit to its doctrine; namely, that we must, 1. Believe what the Church teaches; 2. That we must also practise, that is, do the will of God; and 3. That we can neither believe nor do the will of God without His grace, which we receive by means of the Sacraments and of Prayer."

First, I find it interesting that the proof of the Divinity of the Roman Catholic Church should be determined from history books rather than God's book.

Second, once one has submitted to history, he must submit his intellect to the Church, believe everything the Church tells him, and receive the sacraments through the Church to do the will of God.

No one comes to the Father except through the Roman Catholic Church?

Mother Teresa: Works Without Joy

Mother Teresa’s “Crisis of Faith” is making the rounds on the news as some of her personal letters have been made public:

“A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, ‘neither in her heart or in the eucharist.’"

“Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'"

In addition to these newly publicized letter, Mother Teresa has said the following:

“We never try to convert those who receive [aid from Missionaries of Charity] to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men — simply better — we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life — his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation.” Life in the Spirit: Reflections, Meditations and Prayers; Pgs 81-82.

I am just posting a few excerpts, but it appears that Mother Teresa possessed a universalist-type faith that brought no joy. But despite Mother Teresa’s confusion over the basic gospel message and her decades of darkness in her “faith”, the Roman Catholic Church has declared her presence in heaven through her beatification in 2003.

I find that interesting.

Catholic Tradition and Purgatory

"I have more than once commented on the incorrectness of that method of arguing, which demands that we prove every one of our doctrines individually from the Scriptures. I occupied myself, during my first course of lectures, in demonstrating the Catholic principle of faith, that the Church of Christ was constituted by Him the depositary of His truths, and that, although many were recorded in His Holy Word, still many were committed to traditional keeping, and that Christ himself has faithfully promised to teach in His Church, and has thus secured her from error. It is on this authority that the Catholic grounds his belief in the doctrine of Purgatory: yet, not so but that its principle is laid down, indirectly at least, in the word of God."

-Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Wiseman


"There is not much in Scripture on Purgatory except that in Second Maccabees 12:45, Judas sends a collection to the Temple for those fallen in battle, found with amulets on, "that they might be freed from this sin." Luther saw so clearly that this referred to Purgatory--which he rejected--that he rejected this book too, declaring it not part of Scripture. Some have tried to see an implication of Purgatory in Matthew 12:32. There Jesus speaks of the sin against the Holy Spirit that will be forgiven "neither in this world nor in the next." But the expression quoted is known in Rabbinic literature, where it means merely "never." Still less could we deduce purgatory from First Corinthians 3:11-15. Paul means if the work of some Christian worker has been of such low quality that it burns down, he himself will be saved "as through fire." But the fire seems to mean the apocalyptic fire of the last day, not a fire of purgatory.

But our belief in Purgatory rests on the tradition and definitions of the Church, at the Councils of Lyons II, Florence, and Trent.”

-The Basic Catholic Catechism