Latest / The Uncensored Catholic / Show 53: Sacred Tradition, Part 1
Transcript
- 1:00Hey, y'all, welcome to today's show. Today, I want to get
- 1:03into a really interesting topic. You know, the debate since the past five
- 1:07hundred years or so, or at least since about the mid fifteen hundreds,
- 1:11has been whether Christians should follow the Bible alone, as Protestants maintain, or
- 1:18the Bible plus sacred tradition, as the Catholic Church maintains. The Catholic teaching
- 1:23being that God gave us both the Bible and taught his apostles things that weren't
- 1:30written down in the Bible, which the Bible actually says, he said many
- 1:34other things, and they would fill all the books on earth if they were
- 1:36all written down. And we follow the teachings of the Church that Jesus founded
- 1:45as much as we do the teachings of the Bible, because both are guaranteed
- 1:49to be accurate by the Holy Spirit. And in some cases the Church may
- 1:53actually take pre eminence because not everything in the Bible is clear. Some things
- 2:00are open to interpretation, and in that case we turn to the Church and
- 2:04say, through sacred tradition, how do we understand this teaching in the Bible.
- 2:10That is, frankly, the most common sense way to look at I
- 2:15can think of, especially since the early Church wrote the Bible. I mean,
- 2:19it was the Apostles and that actually wrote the New Testament, and for
- 2:25the first few hundred years there really wasn't a Bible. That the Catholic Church
- 2:31published the Bible. Choosing what scriptures would comprise the Old Testament as being inspired
- 2:38by the Holy Spirit and what you know, modern to their era, contemporary
- 2:45works, I guess you would say, we're accurate, We're true. There
- 2:47were many fault gospels that were written. I won't say many, but there
- 2:52were several, one being the Gospel of Judas by the Gnostics that tried to
- 2:55paint Judas as a hero as opposed to the one who betrayed Christ. There
- 3:00were all kinds of gnostic writings and other heretics. And the Church, with
- 3:06its authority given by the Holy Spirit, guaranteed by Jesus Christ, I should
- 3:12say given by Jesus Christ, guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, inherently chose which
- 3:17books should go with the Bible. And then you know, fourteen hundred,
- 3:22almost fifteen hundred years later, Martin Luther just started throwing out books because he
- 3:25didn't like him, they didn't agree with his interpretation. His authority was the
- 3:30only authority he respected. Somehow he said the Bible alone. But when questioned,
- 3:37he actually wrote, when they say, why did you know, they
- 3:39say Martin Luther changed the words of Jesus Christ to say something he didn't actually
- 3:44say, which he actually did. He say, he changed faith and works
- 3:47to faith and learn. And they said by what authority does he do this?
- 3:51He said, you can tell the papists insulting Catholics a good Christian.
- 3:54They're always insulting people that doctor Luther is his own authority. So it was
- 4:01the Bibles of soul authority. But actually to Martin Luther, it was Martin
- 4:04Luther who was his sole authority. And that's true of well, certainly Calvin
- 4:11and many Protestant leaders. The Catholic Church relies on the unbroken tradition, having
- 4:19been handed to the apostles on Day one by Christ when he founded his church
- 4:24upon the rock that was Saint Peter. We're going to get into this,
- 4:28but first of all, of course, I want to take a couple of
- 4:30questions and answers from the classic book Radio Replies. This one gets into more
- 4:36philosophical questions. I guess you would say or theological. But the first question
- 4:41is very important. What is man? They answer, Man is a living
- 4:46being endowed with a sensitive material body and a spiritual soul, which is immortal
- 4:50of its very nature, and which rejoices in the two spiritual faculties of intelligence
- 4:55and free will. Man is not an animal. Man as a holy soul,
- 5:02an immortal and a soul that can be raised up to the divine through
- 5:06the cooperative effort of God and man because God gives us free will, or
- 5:13can reject God but will still live for fraternity in hell. Man has an
- 5:20intellect and a rationality. Man has a heart es capable of love. Man
- 5:26is not a simple, one dimensional being. In other words, they ask,
- 5:30may we say that man has a soul? Or the questioner asks,
- 5:33I should say, They answer the two priests, it is we may speak
- 5:38that way. Strictly speaking, however, man is a composite being, consisting
- 5:43of both body and soul, the soul, of course, being the noble
- 5:46component of the element. You cannot separate the human from the soul. If
- 5:50you do, he dies. The soul is the animating force of the body,
- 5:57and every human being, of course has a soul. You cannot ac
- 6:00separate the physical from the soul either, that's a big mistake that well the
- 6:05Gnostics made for want, and many Protestant groups have repeated throughout the years.
- 6:13Somehow, all the heresies just keep recycling every few years, and they will
- 6:17deny the physical. Well in many cases, like when they deny the necessity
- 6:27of the sacraments, they say they're just symbolic. No, I'm not symbolic.
- 6:30Jesus implemented the use of water to heal the soul, to cleanse the
- 6:34soul, just as he used the clay and in his spit to heal the
- 6:40man's eyesight. He could have done with his word, but he sanctified the
- 6:43physical, and he promised he will raise our bodies to be with our souls,
- 6:49body and soul, just as He rose body and soul from the dead
- 6:55on the last day, we will be risen, just as He rose from
- 6:59the grave. They then ask, prove that a soul does exist in man.
- 7:04The answer is, a living human body is not the same as a
- 7:08corpse. Now, the soul is the difference between a corpse and a living
- 7:12being. A dead body cannot move, eat, think, express itself,
- 7:16express itself, enjoy, or be miserable, it can but fall to pieces
- 7:23and go back to dust. There is something that stops your body from doing
- 7:26that. Now it is your soul. For every activity you must find a
- 7:30principal operation behind it. The principle in a man which thinks and loves and
- 7:33as happy or as miserable, is a very real thing. It is not
- 7:38nothing less than the very body it amanates. It is not a chemical.
- 7:42No doctor examine a corpse can tell you what chemical is missing that it should
- 7:46not live. If there be nothing else save chemical substances. Let doctors and
- 7:50scientists gather together the requisite chemicals and say live. They can affect nothing like
- 7:56this. There is something that chemistry cannot reach, a soul or spirit.
- 8:01Look anyone in the face, and behind those animated features, those changing expressions,
- 8:07in the very eyes, you will read the soul. A person goes
- 8:11further and says that the soul is the difference between a living being in a
- 8:13corpse. That an animal era than a vegetable must have a soul. That
- 8:18is so, they say. Sae philosophy admits a vegetative soul, a sensitive
- 8:22animal soul, and an immortal, spiritual and human and intelligent human soul.
- 8:30In that case, the soul is the life force, the animating force.
- 8:35It's another thing that people get very confused about. They say that animals don't
- 8:39have souls. They do. It's the animating force, it's a personality.
- 8:43It's the being of that animal that leaves when they die. And it's the
- 8:46very same with plants. God gives to plants an animating force, one that
- 8:50is not, of course rational or capable of feeling. But when that animating
- 8:56force leaves that plant, the plant withers and die. When to signify the
- 9:05animating force, the soul as being united with the body. After the Resurrection,
- 9:09when Jesus appeared to the apostles, one of the first things he did
- 9:13was asked him for some fish to eat. A ghost has no need of
- 9:18food. Jesus was emphasizing that he had risen both body and soul and as
- 9:24such could still eat and still desired to eat. Get into what's really important,
- 9:31and this is probably gonna mean a multipartner. I'm not sure yet.
- 9:33I'm gonna try to keep this one to about thirty minutes, and I'm already
- 9:37about ten minutes in, so let's go with this. In the early writings
- 9:41of the Church. Before you know, the Bible was even really formalized.
- 9:46I think it was. The Bible was just kind of having its final touches
- 9:54put on it. Everything was being They pretty much knew what the gospels were,
- 9:58The Gospel of John had been written, the Revelation had been written,
- 10:03but they were still debating what books belonged in the Old Testament. If I'm
- 10:07not mistaken, when this was written. And the reason I have to be
- 10:11a little unclear is we don't know exactly what year this was written. Okay,
- 10:15we do know it was written in about the two hundreds, because that's
- 10:18when Saint Ironnaius lived, and in Saint Ironnais's time there was a very big
- 10:24problem with heresy. There were churches popping up claiming to be Christian, teaching
- 10:28doctrine absolutely opposed to what would become the Bible and the Catholic Church. Saint
- 10:35Ironaus wrote five books explaining why the heretics, especially the Gnostics, were wrong
- 10:43while their belief was incompatible with Orthodox Christianity, by which I don't mean,
- 10:48you know, the Greek or the Russian Orthodox Church. I would just mean
- 10:52faithful, true Christian belief holding fast to the truth. It's not to say
- 11:01that wouldn't be also incompative, incompatible with the Greek and Russian orthox. Sure,
- 11:03so they justn't exists at the time. When I'm saying orthodox Christianity,
- 11:07I just mean belief in the teachings of the Church and an adherence to them.
- 11:15The first two books he explained what the Nastics believed, and as I
- 11:20said, it's fascinating to read through them and find how so many of the
- 11:22same heretical, mistaken beliefs pop up again and again throughout the centuries, and
- 11:28even you know, when someone was mentioned to me this morning is very common.
- 11:35It actually began with another heretical sect, the Arians, who claimed that
- 11:41Jesus, that Jesus was a creature made by God, not part of God,
- 11:48not in the Trinity that came after, was created after the Father.
- 11:52Well, that's actually believed by the Jehovah's witness and the Church of Latter day
- 11:58Saints, the Mormons today. It's just a recycled heresy from I think to
- 12:01five hundreds. These things just keep coming up again and again and again,
- 12:07and all you really have to do is go back to the early Church fathers.
- 12:11There's nothing new under the sun, as I think ecclesiasts. He says,
- 12:15they already dealt with it, they already knocked it down, they already
- 12:16showed that it was wrong. And that's what iron Ais does in the first
- 12:22two books. But then he gets into a very interesting subject to his third
- 12:26book, and the third book he shows that the beliefs of the NaSTA heretics
- 12:35are incompatible with both the Bible and the teachings of the Church. This is
- 12:43a great defense of sacred tradition. These people were taking the Bible and reading
- 12:50it out of context and coming up with supposed secret teachings given to them by
- 12:54the Holy Spirit. Right, that's actually what a lot of churches are founded
- 13:01on, just as the Gnostics were in the two hundreds. So when he
- 13:05brings up sacred tradition and explains it, this is just as salient an argument
- 13:13against the errors of Protestantism in the year twenty twenty three as it was in
- 13:18the year two hundred fifty, two hundred and seventy. Whenever he wrote this,
- 13:22he said, we have learned from and like I said, I'm not
- 13:28going to read the whole thing to you. I'm going to take a you
- 13:30know, a chapter here, a chapter there, and I hope it doesn't
- 13:33take more than one show, but it might if you want to read the
- 13:37full thing in context, which I always recommend, always read original sources and
- 13:43always read them in context. This is from the anti anti Nicean the fathers,
- 13:50the Church fathers who wrote before the Nicean Creed. The Nicean Creed was
- 13:54actually necessitated to refute heretics such as the Gnostics, so this is very much
- 14:00leading up to that. And it's the Apostolic fathers with Justin Martyr and Ironais.
- 14:05This sexually starts with Popes Saint Clement and goes all the way through Ironais.
- 14:09So very long book, could six hundred pages, but not actually that
- 14:16hard to read, a very informant You've got Saint Justin Martyr, you've got
- 14:18Polycarp, They're all in there. It's fantastic. He says, we have
- 14:24learned from none others the plan of our salvation than from those through whom the
- 14:28Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaiming public
- 14:33and at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to
- 14:35us in scriptures to be the ground and pillar of our faith. Bible actually
- 14:41says the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth. That's what the
- 14:46church is. It's the teachings of the Apostles, whether by word or written
- 14:52in the Bible. You have to remember early Christians didn't have a Bible.
- 14:58If it's the Bible alone, then there was no such thing as a Christian
- 15:01church for the first couple hundred years, not really until Saint Jerome translated everything
- 15:07from mostly Greek and some Aramaic and some Hebrew into Latin. Was there a
- 15:11Christian church? And I mean, was there a Bible? And if the
- 15:16Bible was necessary and the only authority, you couldn't have had a Christian church
- 15:22for a period longer than America has even existed. America found in seventeen seventy
- 15:26six, has been around a little over two hundred years. For the first
- 15:30about three hundred years, Christians didn't have a Bible, at least not an
- 15:35intact Bible. They may have had one or two Gospels. They didn't have
- 15:39what we have now, and therefore the Protestant argument is false on its face.
- 15:43But we'll get back into this, and Saint Ironius actually makes this point
- 15:48of how a pagan lands there are people who are more faithful and better Christians
- 15:54who have never read the Bible because they don't speak the language, have understood
- 16:00the teachings of the Apostles. You know, the Bible was a very new
- 16:03thing in Saint Irenaeus's time, and most people were illiterate, and even if
- 16:08they weren't illiterate, they couldn't read Greek, and if they did read Greek,
- 16:12they couldn't read Aramaic or Hebrew. I mean, it was a big
- 16:15problem until you know, Saint Jerome put together the Biblious sacrival Godda or the
- 16:22Bible in the language of the common people, which was Latin. And we
- 16:26should still be reading the Bible in Latin to make sure that our modern translations
- 16:33are accurate. Anyway, For as unlawful to assert that they preached before they
- 16:40possessed perfect knowledge, as do as some even do ventures say, boasting themselves
- 16:45as improvers of the Apostles. For after our Lord rose from the dead,
- 16:49the apostles were invested with powerful on high. When the Holy Spirit came down
- 16:55upon them and filled from all his gifts, and filled them from all his
- 16:59skills, and had perfect knowledge, they departed to the ends of the earth,
- 17:03preaching the glad tidings of good things sent to us, sent from God
- 17:07to us, and proclaiming the peace of Heaven to men who indeed do all
- 17:11equally and individually possessed the Gospel of God. You know, recently I had
- 17:15to debate with a Protestant who said the Church had no authority to make the
- 17:21Christian Sabbath Sunday. I said, well, yeah, actually, they were
- 17:25given all authority by Jesus. He said, those who hear you hear me.
- 17:27Those who refuse to hear you refuse the one who sent me. That's
- 17:32essentially what Saint Irenaeus is saying right there, that the power he invested them
- 17:38with on high, he gave them that power to bind and loose, to
- 17:45make clear all doctrine, all matters of morals and doctrine. This person said
- 17:51that, you know, the Church had no such authority. Well, of
- 17:53course they would say that they were Protestant, but they say their reading of
- 17:57the Bible, as says, shows that Jesus actually said this, And well
- 18:03that's what he's saying. Those who would improve upon the teachings of the apostles
- 18:06cannot be done if it did. Jesus is a liar, and if Jesus
- 18:11is a liar, Jesus is not God. So you have no have nothing
- 18:15on which to hang your faith if you deny both the truth of the scriptures
- 18:22and the authority of the Church who wrote those scriptures. Matthew also issued a
- 18:30written gospel among the Hebrews and their own dialect, why Peter and Paul were
- 18:34preaching in Rome. Many Protestants deny that Peter and Paul were ever in Rome.
- 18:37By the way, well Peter, at least they will admit that Paul
- 18:41was there. Yes, he was there. He was crucified upside down,
- 18:44martyred and buried, and now on his grave is where the basilicas Saint Peter's
- 18:51basilica is. He literally is the stone on which the church is built.
- 19:00And he says what Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and laying the foundations
- 19:03of the church of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple
- 19:07interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been
- 19:11preached by Peter. Luke, also the companion of Paul, recorded in a
- 19:15book of the gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of
- 19:21the Lord, who had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a gospel
- 19:25during his residence as Ephesus in Asia. These have all declared us. There's
- 19:30one God, creator of heaven earth, announced by the law and the prophets,
- 19:33and one christis son of God. If anyone does not agree to these
- 19:37truths, he despises the companions of the Lord. Nay more, he despises
- 19:41Christ himself, the Lord. Yea, he despises the Father also and stands
- 19:48self condemned, resisting and opposing his own salvation. As is the case with
- 19:52all heretics, he continues, when however, they are confuted from scriptures,
- 19:59they turn around and accuse these same scriptures as if they are not correct.
- 20:03That's what I was saying about the lady who said that, you know,
- 20:07the Church had no authority to make Sunday our day of worship when Jesus said
- 20:11the son of Man as the Lord of the Sabbath, when the Church was
- 20:15given all authority to bind and loose as if they were not correct nor of
- 20:21authority, and assert that they are ambiguous and that the truth cannot be extracted
- 20:26from them who are ignorant of tradition. So that's an argument many modern Christians
- 20:30make today that the Bible is open to many interpretations. Well, what these
- 20:37heretics are saying is that you can't understand the Bible, and therefore you only
- 20:40can rely on tradition. But they have a different tradition than that of the
- 20:44Church. As Jesus said, those who are his sheep know his name,
- 20:51his voice, and he knows them by name. And the Church is the
- 20:56one he instructed to teach. He told his disciples to go out and teach.
- 21:02If they didn't, if there's a different truth then is contained in the
- 21:07Church and the Bible, then there is no such thing as Christianity. And
- 21:12he goes on and says, how they have perverse dispositions and deprave the system
- 21:18of the truth, and have no shame in precating a gospel other than what
- 21:25Jesus preached. And he says, but again we refer them to the tradition
- 21:29which originates from the apostles and is preserved by the means of succession of presbyters
- 21:33in the churches. They object to traditions, saying that they themselves are wiser,
- 21:37not merely than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, because they
- 21:41have discovered unadulterated truth. Yeah, I think that's about That's basically what Martin
- 21:48Luther said. That's what Calvin said, That's what Knox said, That's what
- 21:53Oh every cult leader, you know, like the Branch Davidians would say,
- 21:59Yeah, a little bit of similarity. They're actually for they maintain that the
- 22:04apostles intermingled the things of the law with the words of the Savior. That's
- 22:08what you're many, yes, many Protestants do say that, saying that basically
- 22:18the church has no authority. Well, Jesus gave the church all authority under
- 22:22heaven. Those were actually his words all authority. Well, I'll Skippy had
- 22:29a little bit more because he's speaking specifically of the Gnostics. Well, we
- 22:33actually do have several philosophies and heretical churches these days that are very nastic in
- 22:44nature, especially anything stemming from the Masonic Order. The Masonic Order founded in
- 22:48the seventeen hundreds, regardless of what they say, is essentially a gnostic church,
- 22:55a heretical church that has been a secular heretical church at that that has
- 23:00the teachings of which have been condemned from the very beginning of Christianity. He
- 23:07continues, it is within the power of all therefore, and every church who
- 23:11may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the Apostles
- 23:15manifested throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to reckon up
- 23:19those who were by the Apostles institute bishops and the churches, and to demonstrate
- 23:25the succession of these men to our own times those who neither taught nor knew
- 23:29of anything like what these heretics rave about. For if the Apostles had known
- 23:33hidden mysteries which they were in the habit of imparting to the perfect, as
- 23:37the heretics say, the Gnostics called themselves perfect in knowledge apart and privately from
- 23:44the rest, they would have delivered them, especially to those whom they were
- 23:47committing the churches themselves, For they were desirous that these men should be very
- 23:52perfect and blameless in all things, whom they were leaving behind as their successors,
- 23:56delivering up their own place of government to these men, which men,
- 24:00if they discharge their functions honestly, would be a great moon to the church.
- 24:03But if they should fall away, the direst calamity, Since, however,
- 24:08it would be very tedious in a volume as this, to reckon up
- 24:11a succession of all the churches. We do put to confusion all those who,
- 24:15in whatever matter, whether by evil self pleasing, by vainglory, or
- 24:19by blindness or perverse opinion, assemble and unauthorized meetings. We do this,
- 24:25I say, by indicating the tradition derived from the apostles of the very great,
- 24:29the very ancient and universally known Christian Church, organized at Rome by the
- 24:33two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. Remember, most anti Catholic Protestants
- 24:40absolutely deny Saint Peter's ever in run here we are two hundred fifty two seventy
- 24:47a d. And this was also said by earlier church fathers than Saint Ironis.
- 24:55I mean, going back to the very earliest writings of Christianity, that
- 25:00Peter was the Bishop of Rome and the authority the head of all the church,
- 25:07and the story of his martyrdom is very much a part of our sacred
- 25:10tradition. It has been passed down from the very people who witnessed it.
- 25:15It's as true as any contemporaneous report, if it had been written in a
- 25:19newspaper of the day. That's the equivalent. The Bible is not a newspaper.
- 25:26The Bible specifically says all that is written here is so that you may
- 25:29believe it doesn't have It's not a history book, and it's not a newspaper.
- 25:36So Peter and Paul has also by pointing out the faith preached to men,
- 25:40which comes down to our times by means of the succession of bishops.
- 25:44For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church
- 25:48on account of its pre eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere,
- 25:52inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those faithful men who exist
- 25:57everywhere. Again, of many prizes to deny that the Church in Rome,
- 26:03the Catholic Church in Rome, had any authority over the other church as well,
- 26:06Pope Saint Clement, writing I think about seventy eight, said it did.
- 26:11Polycarp Saint Justin Martyr Here's sat Iron as Saint Ignatius, the earliest writings
- 26:21of the Christian Church give full authority to the pope in run over the bishops
- 26:30that governed all the other churches throughout the world. No Christian church was in
- 26:36disagreement or separate from There was only one church, and that was Catholic until
- 26:41fourteen hundred and something, you know, mid fourteen hundreds, unless you count
- 26:47the breakaway of the Orthodox Church, which was never that. The Orthodox still
- 26:52believed basically the same thing the Catholic Church believes. There's just a disagreement that
- 26:59arose that it has tried to be reconciled several times over the years. The
- 27:03Russians are the main holdouts and eventually will be reconciled, but their teachings on
- 27:07the sacraments, on that they have a I mean it's the second okay,
- 27:15um, let's see the Blessed Apostles. Then, having founded and built up
- 27:22the church, committed into the hands of Lioness the office of the episcopate.
- 27:26Lioness was the first pope pope Lioness. He was ordained by Saint Peter.
- 27:32Maybe all the first like three popes if I remember correctly, were ordained by
- 27:37Saint Peter. Of course he didn't make them all pope, but he didn't
- 27:40make them priests and bishops. This Lioness Paul makes the epistles, and the
- 27:45epistle Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. So there's another way you
- 27:49can refute Protestant claims that, you know, the Church in Rome had no
- 27:53authority. The Bible does actually record uh Lioness in the Epistle of Timothy to
- 28:02him succeeded Aneclidus, and after him in the third place, from the apostles,
- 28:06Clement was a lot of the bishopric. Clement, Pope, Saint Clement
- 28:11of Rome is the first of the church followers fathers to really write, and
- 28:15I think it's about seventy eight. Dan's very could have even been earlier than
- 28:19that. Actually, this man, as he had seen the blessed Apostles and
- 28:25had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the
- 28:29Apostles still echoing in his ears, and their traditions before his eyes. Nor
- 28:34was he alone in this, for there were many still remaining who had received
- 28:37instruction from the Apostles in the time of this Clement. No small dissension having
- 28:42occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome dispatched the most powerful
- 28:47letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to exhorting them to make peace, renewing
- 28:52their faith and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles.
- 28:59Proclaimed the One God, omnipotent, the maker of heaven and earth, creator
- 29:03of man, who brought the deluge and called Abraham, who led the people
- 29:07from the land of Egypt, spake with Moses, set forth the law,
- 29:11set the prophets, and who had prepared fire for the devil and his angels.
- 29:15From this document, whosoever chooses to do may learn that he, the
- 29:18Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, was preached by the churches, and
- 29:22may also understand the apostolic tradition of the Church. Since the epistle is of
- 29:27older date than these men who are now propagating falsehood. Well, boy,
- 29:30hottie, in this day and time. The writings of the epistles or letters
- 29:36of Pope Saint Clement of Rome are nearly two thousand years old. They were
- 29:41written before the Bible was completed. The Bible was not even in its most
- 29:47basic form yet, so this is a letter. His letters do predate the
- 29:52Bible and had authority. Even Protestants will say the Bible alone has a thought
- 30:00already know his letters had the authority because he was the pope and he ruled
- 30:06all churches, as God instituted to this clement. There succeeded Everistus, I
- 30:12think he pronounced that name. Alexander followed Everistus, and then sixth from the
- 30:18apostles, Sixtus was appointed, after him tell Us for Us, who was
- 30:22gloriously martyred, then Hygienius, and after him Pious, and after him Anestus
- 30:30sodor having as succeeded Anestus Elitherius, I think it's Alitherius. I knew a
- 30:37man who had a Spanish version of that name. I never could pronounce hes
- 30:38either does now in the twelfth place, from the apostles hold the inheritance of
- 30:44the episcopate in this order, and by the succession of the ecclesiastical tradition from
- 30:48the apostles and the preaching of the truth have come down to us. And
- 30:52this most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith which has
- 30:56been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now and handed down in truth.
- 31:02So twelve essentially generations of popes before there was even a Bible. But
- 31:10polycarp also not only was also was not only instructed by the apostles. Saint
- 31:15Polycarp was a great martyr, and he wrote quite a bit about the authority
- 31:19of the Catholic Church, telling people to listen to their bishops, for the
- 31:23bishops listened to the Pope, and their words are to be to you as
- 31:26the word of God, because that's what Jesus said. Those who hear you
- 31:32hear me. And conversed with many who had seen Christ. But was also
- 31:38by apostles in Asia appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also
- 31:44saw in my early youth. For he tarried on earth a very long time,
- 31:48and when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom,
- 31:52departing this life having always taught the things which he learned from the apostles,
- 31:56and which the Church handed down, and which alone were true. Pocarp is
- 32:00said to have lived well over one hundred years old and willingly die to martyr.
- 32:08To these things all the Asiatic churches testify, as do all these men
- 32:13who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time. A man who was of
- 32:17much greater weight and more steadfast witnessed of the truth than Valentineous Marcion and all
- 32:22the rest of these heretics. He it was who, coming to Rome at
- 32:27the time of Antistis, caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics to
- 32:30the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth
- 32:35from the Apostles, that namely which is handed down by the Truth. There
- 32:39is also a very powerful epistle of Polycarp written to the Philippians, from which
- 32:45those who choose to do so and are anxious about their salvation can learn the
- 32:47character of his faith and the preaching of the truth. Then again, the
- 32:52church in ethesis, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently
- 32:57until the times of Trajan, is the true witness of the tradition of the
- 33:00Apostles. So what he's saying is, you know, during his time,
- 33:07those who knew the apostles were still alive and were preaching with the authority granted
- 33:12to them by Jesus Christ personal interpretations of the Bible, which was newly put
- 33:19together at the time of Ironaus and not had by any Christians for the first
- 33:25couple hundred years. They only had the tradition of the Apostles and their personal
- 33:32writings, you know, which would later be compiled into the Bible. These
- 33:38people knew the apostles, and he's saying that the faith has been handed on,
- 33:44pure and intact to us, and absolutely reject anyone who says their personal
- 33:52interpretation of the Bible is more valid than the teachings of the church. Holy
- 33:57tradition, sacred tradition is what's important in this paragraph that kind of skimmed over.
- 34:02He even says that Polycarp, even as an old man, would so
- 34:08totally reject people who spoke who taught a heretical doctrine, something that conflicted with
- 34:15the Church. He would just get up and run away from He would stop
- 34:19his ears and say he wouldn't listen to the words of the devil. That's
- 34:22what the early Church believe. Trust me, Trust me, the early Church
- 34:25would not have been big on Martin Luther or you know the founder of your
- 34:32street corner storefront church down the street that has ideas that are in complete opposition
- 34:39of the Catholic Church. There's a lot more to say, but I've gone
- 34:45on thirty six minutes, and I was shooting for thirty, so I guess
- 34:47we're going to pick this up tomorrow. Actually did cover a lot of ground
- 34:52but there's a lot more to say on this subject. It's very important to
- 34:57remember that our faith is Catholics, our doctrine, our teachings have been handed
- 35:04on from the very first time Jesus gave his authority to Saint Peter and the
- 35:08apostles. We can trace every single pope to the very first one. We
- 35:15can trace every Catholic Church to the one who founded it, to the one
- 35:17who founded it, to the one who founded it, bishops and cardinals in
- 35:22succession, all the way back to the apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ.
- 35:27And that our truth, the teaching of the Catholic Church is intact, is
- 35:32complete, is unchanged. Developments and doctrine have only come about, well,
- 35:38like when Saint Irenaeus had to argue against the Gnostics and things had to be
- 35:46further defined, they had to look into things more. But it's absolutely unchanged
- 35:51from day one, and in many ways, the authority of the sacred tradition
- 35:58in the Catholic Church surpasses that of the Bible. And that is because only
- 36:05the Catholic Church can give you an accurate, guaranteed by God interpretation of the
- 36:13meaning of the words of the Bible. Any teaching that differs from that of
- 36:19the Catholic Church is false and of the devil. And that's a that's it.
- 36:23Well, yeah, we'll pick their back up on this tomorrow. It's
- 36:27the Early Church Fathers. It's a well that has just keeps. I mean,
- 36:30it's a wealth of knowledge that's so deep and wide. I will probably
- 36:36reach the end of my life before I've even scratched the surface reading all the
- 36:42writings of the saints and doctors of the Church. I mean, it's taken
- 36:45me a good year just to read the very first volume of the Early Church
- 36:51Fathers. And I've read I've read bits and pieces of the first five hundred
- 36:54years or so for you know, over the past almost twenty years now,
- 36:59but eating them from beginning to end in their entirety, starting with the first
- 37:04writing of Pope Saint Clement of Rome and on and on through. I'm just
- 37:09now getting to about halfway through Ironaius, and I started reading this book about
- 37:16this time last year. You want to take the stuff in, you know,
- 37:20a chapter at a time, in small enough amounts that you know you
- 37:23can fully comprehend it. And yeah, it's it's the fullness of the truth
- 37:29contained in the Catholic Church is voluminous, voluminous, I think way to quietas
- 37:37write over a hundred books. Just started his own. Or was that Augustine?
- 37:40I cannot, I cannot remember, but I mean, just to dig
- 37:44into one saint's writing can be a life's work actually, So anyway, y'all
- 37:51have a great evening, have a great day. I'll talk to you,
- 37:53Mr. Remember the words of Saint Padre Pio, pray, hope and don't
- 37:58worry. Talk to you next time.