The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-09-19
THE CHURCH AND BIBLE.
Continued from page ~

| you. (Matt. XVIII, ~ 10 We INTO tne Whol
world and preach the gospel to every creature.
(Mark xvi, 49, "I1e that hears you, hears me
and he that despises you, despises me-" (Luke X
16.) "He that will not hear the Church let him be
unto thee as the heathen." Matt xviii, ~ These
solemn words of the Divine Master prove that He
appointed His teaching Church. and not the Holy
Scriptures to be the rule of faith for all Christians
The Bible, for four hundred years, has been the
Rule of Faith for our separated brethren and as a
result endless divisions and warning sects have
filled the civilized world with doubts about the
pernatural character and divinity of Christianity
have supplied the infdel with plausible arguments
and have served to bring the religion of Christ into
unmerted contempt.
THE CHURCH AND TRADITION.
The Catholic Church is the custodian of Sacred
Tradition, as she is of the Holy Scriptures. What
do we understand by Tradition? By Tradition we
understand the transmission, by the teaching au-
thorty or office of the Church, of certain revealed
truths of salvation not explicitly contained in Holy
Writ; such traditions are known as oral; that is,
handed down from generation to generation either
through the Councils of the Church, Liturgcal
Books, the Acts of the Martyrs the writings of the
early fathers of the Church, or Inscriptions the
tombs and monuments of martyrs and confessors
of early days. The sanity and learned men faInil
iarly called the early Fathers" were nearly all
Bishops or Priests who fourished from the days of
the Apostles to the sixth century. The Fathers
were succeeded by holy and scholarly men known
to ecclesiastical history as Doctors of the Church
Now, where the testimony of the Fathers sustained
by the authority Of the Doctors proves that truth
is revealed and was taught by the early Church we
are satisfied that such a truth was and is an inte-
grail if not essential part of the Christian Faith
Such ecclesiastical tradition has always been en-
titled to the same veneration by the Church as the
Bible itself. Indeed, as a medium of transmitting
revealed truth, tradition from some aspects is
important and necessary than the Bible itself The
Church, whether in Mosaic Apostolic times.
antedates the Bible and is Independent of it. The
Church existed before the Bible and could exist
without it. But the Church never did and never
could exist without tradition. "Stand fast" writes
st. Paul to the early Christians "and hold the ira
ditions which you have learned whether by word or
by our epistle" (Thess. XII 40 Commenting on
these words, st. Chrysostom says: at is evident
that the Apostles did not communicate all in writ
ing, but much without writing. Both deserve equal
faith i. 1t is tradition, ask no more" Do
away with tradition and the authority of the Church
and the Sacred Scriptures themselves would be as
the Vedas of India, the Koran or the writings of
Confucius for neither their inspiration authentic
ity canoncity or, indeed their certain interpreta-
tion could be conclusively and authoritatively
proved 81 would not" writes ST. Augustine, "be-
eve the Gospel itself unless the authority of the
Catholic Church moved me to it"
CONFESSION, OR THE SACRAMENT OF
PENANCE
Those who believe in the Divinity of Jesus
Christ will, | am persuaded, agree with me in ad-
hitting that the Son of God came down from
heaven to destroy the power of Satan to overthrow
the reign of sin and TO establish purity, peace char
ity and justice. The purpose of his earthly mis-
sion and the object and suffering of His Divine Life
here on earth to save our from sin and its
dreadful consequences and to rescue mankind from
the horrors of eternal death But it was necessary
in the Divine Economy that man should cooperate
in the taken for his salvation. By sin vol
unfairly committed he estranged himself from God
and in order to be reconced to the Creator he in
suited, man must conform to certain conditions
submitted by his Redeemer. One of these obliga-
tons was that he should honestly repent of his sins
and confess them to some authorized to listen
to him and by the authority of God absolve him.
Now that the power of absolving sinners was
granted to the Apostles by Our Beloved Lord seems
irrefragible. When He said est. John XXX that He
sent them as His Father had sent Hm-that as hi
was the Apostle of the Father even so they were
be His Apostles; and that, in particular, they were
thereby and thenceforth invested with authority to
remit and to retain sins. It seemed hopeless to
conceive what the meaning of words could be, if
they did not involve all that was claimed for them
in regard to Absolution.
Moreover, it was evident that this Commission