Why Be Catholic and Not Just Christian?

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“How do you know what the Christian faith is? How do you know what doctrines and practices are admissible and which should be excluded? Did Jesus appoint you with the authority needed to make those kinds of decisions?

Or did he set you under a particular authority to reveal that to you? Almost all Christians that I know of will say the latter – he put you under some kind of authority to tell you what it is that you are supposed to believe and adhere to – what is the whole true faith or what is the Catholic faith.

And if you’re descended from the protestant tradition, you will usually say scripture is that authority – the Bible is that authority. If you are from an apostolic Church like say the Greek Orthodox, or the Oriental or Ethiopian Orthodox, or Catholic like me, you will say something like the Church is a binding authority over the faithful. As a Catholic we say the magisterium and the apostolic tradition handed down through the ages and protected by the Church AS WELL AS Holy scripture.

Now notice that in the case of the apostolic churches, they say both – they don’t narrow authority down to one thing. They adhere to the authority of scripture but they also adhere to the authority of the Church.
Why do they do that? Because the Bible does that – and also because the Bible doesn’t ever say that it is the only or even the highest authority? Do you know how I know that? Because the Bible never refers to itself. Never once in scripture does it say anything about “the Bible”. And a thing can’t define an attribute about itself – like its place as an authority - if it never even refers to itself to begin with.

It talks about scripture. It assumes that there is this thing known as scripture which is the written revelation of God but it never talks about this thing called the Bible which is a specific understanding of scripture based on a canon or an index of books that are considered scriptural. "

Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com

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