Dec 19, 2009

I knew that!

The canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke &...
The Church has always taught that the Bible should be read as a whole. The chief reason, the Bible is salvation history and a part of the Liturgy. It was always to be read at Mass and can be truly understood in that context. This differs from the Protestant view of "sola scriptura" or the bible alone. The bible is recognized as a catechism; if this is true, one key question must be asked:
How do we know which books of the Bible are inspired? It is necessary to have an authority appointed by God to decide which books are inspired. We know for a fact that this process took hundreds of years to complete. The books chosen were those the early Christians were using as a part of the Liturgy. The canon of the Bible was formalized by the Church at the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D. The Catholic Church is the answer to that question and therefore, all Bible believing Christians, aware of it or not, should accept the fact that they recognize the authority of the Catholic Church in regards to there catechism. JMJ. Mick