Sacred Tradition is not like cultural traditions – the annual potluck, the town softball game, etc. These are purely man made traditions, which, although valuable for certain purposes, cannot legitimately claim to have any authority to command other groups that they must adhere to their precise practices, because there is no objectively correct way to, for example, have a community gathering on July 4th. Since these lowercase “t” traditions are purely man made, they are subjective, meaning they rely on people to exist, and thus they do not exist apart from their practitioners.
Sacred Tradition, however, is objective. It exists and has authority, regardless of our actions. Sacred Tradition, as we said earlier, may be best understood as the oral transmission of the Gospel message. At the end of his gospel, St John says that “there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25). Clearly, then, the Lord’s teaching is not limited to the words in scripture. It makes sense, therefore, that there would exist many teachings which Christ taught orally, through His closest followers and confidants, the apostles, which those apostles in turn taught to other Christians, who handed down that teaching, etc., even though these teachings were never written in scripture. We rely on Christ through Tradition. “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess 2:15).
But we cannot live out Tradition properly on our own. We need someone or some institution to interpret Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. But no group of people would be able to correctly interpret every verse of scripture and live out Sacred Tradition perfectly… unless they received tremendous grace from God. The Lord gives this grace to the Church, and God the Holy Spirit has continually guided the Church from the beginning, meaning that He protects her from error. How do we know this? Because Christ said so.
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Mt 18:15-17). Christ indicates that the Church is the principal authority which Christians must go to in order to settle a dispute, the Church has the final say. Christ clearly intended for there to exist a visible Church that could settle disputes. Christ does not say that if someone does not listen to scripture, he should be treated as a Gentile and a tax collector, but to the Church. Scripture should play a role in the steps taken before you “tell it to the Church,” but God has given His authority chiefly to the Church not to scripture alone. If someone does not listen to the Church, he is to be treated as “a Gentile and a tax collector,” as someone outside the fold. Christ does not mean that they should be abandoned, in fact, He means that they must be evangelized by the Church’s members, to bring them back into the one fold.
“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Lk 10:16). Christ is here speaking to His disciples, but primarily to His apostles whom He gave special authority. If anyone rejects the average Catholic trying to evangelize, he rejects Christ because of his lack of charity, but this would apply for anyone the person rejected, not just a Christian. However, if someone rejected authentic Catholic teaching that a person was relating to them, whether that relater be Catholic or not, he rejects Christ, and thus rejects the Father. By rejecting Catholic teaching, he rejects the bishops’ authority to teach the Faith.
Some will say that Luke 10:16 applies to all Christians, so it does not support the existence of a Church. But as Christians grew in number after Pentecost, there quickly arose dissensions among them (cf. Gal 2, Acts 15, Rom 2-3). If two Christians disagreed with each other on a theological matter, who could settle their issue? They may reject each other’s teaching, but which one has Christ’s authentic teaching? Imagine this confrontation on a large scale, and soon you will get numerous factions claiming they have the authentic teaching of Christ. It makes logical sense, then, for Christ to establish one Church which protects the true Deposit of Faith the Lord gave to mankind. If someone rejects this Church’s authority to correctly interpret the word of God, he rejects the Word Himself.
Protestantism inevitably errs because it does not accept the Catholic Church, and consequently interprets the need (or lack of a need) for a Church differently. According to some Protestant denominations, there exists no true Church. Rather, everyone ought to belong to the Church which suits him best. But with many denominations contradicting each other in fundamental matters, this relativist approach cannot be true. Unitarianism’s denial of the Trinity, and Southern Baptist’s affirmation that God is Trinity cannot both be true. Other denominations claim that they are the only true, or the truest, denomination. But who can decide this besides the denominations themselves? Who can validate their claims? These denominations have no authority which can validate their claims, because they cannot trace their lineage back to anyone or anything beyond their founder, someone during or after the first reformers. Because Protestantism receives its authority from men, God does not guide it. But the Catholic Church receives her authority from God, and He has promised to guide her. Christ founded one Church, which He promised to remain with until the end of time (see Mt 6:53, 16:18, 28:19-20, etc.).
We can even see the effects of God’s guidance in modern times. Currently, the Church is going through a crisis. Only 30% of Church-going Catholics believe that Christ is really, truly, and substantially present in the Eucharist, a fundamental Catholic dogma (Pew Research Center 8/5/19). The sexual abuse crisis has hurt thousands of victims, most of whom are among the most innocent of the sheep. The release of all this scandal has tarnished the Church’s reputation tremendously. A trend of fewer priests and religious, as well as fewer faithful, means that many parishes now cover several churches. But amidst this evil and trial, the Church remains steady. Throughout her existence, she has been buffeted by serious blows, and yet has always persevered through. Truly, only Divine intervention is capable of accomplishing such a feat. When Napoleon swore to Cardinal Ercole Consalvi that he would destroy the Catholic Church, the Cardinal responded: “Your Majesty, we Catholic clergy have done our best to destroy the Church for the last eighteen hundred years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”
Furthermore, the Catholic Church remains the last consistent arbiter of good morals. Essentially all Protestant denominations support artificial contraception, and some even now support abortion. These Protestant churches, who once held abortion and artificial contraception to be immoral, caved to societal pressure in the 20th century. But the Catholic Church, despite what some detractors may claim, has not done so.
The Church does not allow women to be priests for good reason, as we will address later. Throughout the 20th century, however, the culture sought to coerce the Church to “modernize.” Yet even on such a taboo teaching as not allowing women priests, she stood firm. Simultaneously, however, most, if not all, Protestant denominations ordained women to Holy Orders (even though no one ordained in Protestant denominations is a priest, as we will also touch on later). On these and many other issues, the Church has turned to God in time of trial, while Protestant denominations have turned to men.
Since Martin Luther defied the Catholic Church in 1517 at the Diet of Worms, Protestantism has split off to the point that no one really knows how many denominations there are. There is Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Baptistism, many other offshoots within these umbrella groups, and many other denominations which have been started in recent decades. Again, through it all, the Church has remained united.
We have a tendency to resist authority, particularly authority commanding us to believe certain things. It is in this spirit of rebellion that many Protestant founders have broken away from the Church, often by claiming that they have the correct interpretation of scripture and that the Church reads the scriptures in a flawed manner. But this perspective assumes that we can trust ourselves to interpret God’s word correctly. How can we, fallible human beings, interpret scripture correctly in its entirety? We cannot. Even the Church, after two thousand years, has not yet definitively interpreted all of scripture. In fact, she leaves some parts of scripture up to Catholics to interpret it as they see fit. But we still need an external teaching source to guide us to true doctrine. If we do not, we get myriad groups claiming that they have the correct interpretation of Holy Writ.
Moreover, we get ambiguities on fundamental questions of truth. For example, within Calvinism, there are many different interpretations of how many sacraments there are (two or seven). If they cannot agree on such a fundamental question as this, what authority do they have to claim right religion? In the early Church, Christians believed there were seven sacraments. The form (in this case meaning how they were celebrated) of some of these sacraments changed significantly over time, but the essence of the sacrament has been the same since Christ founded His Church. Baptism of infants was practiced from the earliest days of the Church, as we read in the book of Acts (16:31-33). The first Christians also believed in the Most Holy Eucharist, produced in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, not a symbol but as true a Jesus as Jesus on the Cross, as we read in the Book of Acts, from St. Paul’s letters, and from numerous extra-biblical testimonies of early Christians (Acts 2:42, 1 Cor 10:16-21, 1 Cor 11:27-30, Letter of Ignatius to the Romans 7:3, Letter of St. Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 7:1, First Apology 66, Letters 63:4, etc.). Christians practiced confession from early on as well, though in the form of a public forgiveness of sins, rather than a one on one confession to a priest. Christians believed that all the sins they were truly sorry for and confessed were forgiven (Didache 4:14, 14:1, Repentance 10:1, The Lapsed 15:1-3, 28, Letters 9:2, Letters to the Philadelphians 3, 8). Confirmation’s earlier forms are seen from the first days of the Church.
One cannot interpret all of Holy Writ correctly, because his mind and heart do not have the wisdom nor the charity to do so. For example, the Arian heresy, which lasted from the late third century to the seventh century, based its belief primarily on one short passage from the book of Proverbs. If the Church battles one of its most formidable heresies for centuries, based mostly on one passage of scripture, then we cannot reasonably claim to have interpreted all scripture correctly in our short lifetimes. Only by the Holy Spirit’s intercession can a person or group always reach the right conclusion about truth. It makes sense, then, that God would found a Church to guide His people to Heaven. He loves us more than we can love ourselves, and so He wants what is best for us more than we want it for ourselves. He does not leave us to our own devices, but protects us as a father does his children, showing us the right way. All He asks of us is at every moment, to death, to live that “yes” to His will. We deserve Hell, and yet He offers us Heaven. “He…did not spare His own Son” (Rom 8:32). “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that all who believe in Him may not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). We ought to give Him everything in return.