With any area of faith and practice where do you appeal as grounds to make and justify your decisions? For some it is reason, for others experience, to others it is tradition that has the final word. Is the bible enough for Roman Catholics or must they look beyond scripture for certainty of God's will, and on what grounds do they believe this to be true?
Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) decided to excommunicate the Holy Roman Emperor who was daring to invest senior bishops with the sacred symbols of their office when they were appointed. The Emperor's action was a challenge to the Pope because it was the Pope who appointed bishops and he gave them their directions. Gregory's successor's continued this idea of Papal supremacy by taking a new title 'Vicar of Christ', which was more comprehensive than that of 'Vicar of Peter', to indicate that the Pope was not ony Peter's successor, but Christ's ambassador and representative on earth. One thrust of Pope Gregory's reforms therefore was to centralize the Church under papal control. (incidenty'y it was through this that the system of local of parishes in diocese was extended and to emphasize the holy state of clergy, all clerrgy were now to be celibate and marriage was forbidden to them (2nd Lateran Council of 1139). In the 13th century conciliarists desired to modify the theories of papal authority pioneered by Pope Gregory VII and to say that ultimate authority should not rest with the Pope but with a General Council of the church. In 1940, Pope Pius II, who was a Conciliarist before his election as Pope, published a papal bull Execrabilis formally forbidding appeals by any church body to a general council. THis meant there was no avenue of appeal about any papal declaration or decision to a general council. From this point on, any appeal to a General Council was a crime against Canon Law. The pope must sign off to what the council has said because there is papal supremacy. Therefore any differences that the council had to what the pope decreed were dismissed by the pope.
The conviction that scripture is the ultimate authority of faith and practice was officially condemned by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). This council established the view that Scripture and tradition are actually two forms of God's Word - "written' and "unwritten". Crucial to the authority of tradition was the apostolic succession from Peter to the popes. However it was not until the First Vatican Council (1870) that papal infallibility became a binding dogma for Roman Catholics. According to this teaching, the pope, when speaking as Peter's successor is preserved from error and may put into effect doctrines that are necessary to be believed for salvation. Thus the pope's were given ultimate authority to interprete scripture. Since the church preceded the canon and the canon was authorized by the church, Roman Catholic theologians saw that the church was the mother of Scripture. They believed that if the Spirit inspires the canon then it must be that the spirit inspires its living interpreter, the church. Tradition is inspired through the church to become the means through which the Word of God is transmitted so much so that the two "are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the other."(Austin Flannery, pg 755) The Second Vatican Council affirms that Scripture and tradition flow from the same source saying:
"In order that the full and living gospel might always be preserved in the church the apostles left bishops as their successors.. They gave them their own position of teaching authority... Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture, then are bound closely together, flowing out from the same divine wellspring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move toward the same goal... [Sacred Tradition faithfully] transmits in its entirety the Word of God... It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound, and spread it abroad by their preaching. Thus it comes about that the church does not draw her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone. Hence, both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal feelings of devotion and reverence. Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the church" (Austin Flannery, Vatican Council 11: The conciliar and postconciliar documents, 1975, pg 754)
Both scripture and tradition are held as equal offspring of divine revelation in the church. From this principle emerges Rome's dogma of implicit faith (fides implicia), which requires acceptance of all dogmas commanded by the church. Faith must not be held in scripture alone as Rome denies the sufficency of Scripture as the sole rule for faith and practice. Just as the New Testament supplements the Old, they argue that the church's ongoing interpretation supplements both. (Ratzinger, Revelation and Tradition, 1966, pg 29)
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