When Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church in the 16th Century, he based his criticisms of the Church and his new found beliefs on the concept of "sola scriptura," which is the belief that we should base our relationship and understanding of God on "the Bible alone."
Those Catholics who stood faithful to their Catholic Church, like Erasmus, rejected this idea of "the Bible alone," and instead based their faith on the belief that a proper relationship and understanding of God and his divine will could only come from both the Bible AND tradition.
But talk to a Catholic about their view of the Constitution, and they will often sound more like Martin Luther than Erasmus, especially about contemporary politically hot topics like same sex marriage or their right to "live by the sword," or, that is, their gun.
The "tradition" of Supreme Court decisions that are as necessary, and in a sense as "sacred," as their own Church's "tradition" of interpreting scripture, is suddenly null and void. Their own subjective view of what the Founding Fathers wanted and intended, suddenly becomes as infallible as their Pope's pontification on the Catholic Catechism.
Yet the fact that such Catholics (and indeed, not ALL Catholics do this, of course) are willing to pick and chose which "traditions" they feel they must follow and accept, and which they can simply chose to ignore for their own preferred interpretation, illustrates just how "subjective" their ideas about "objective truth" really are.
It also illustrates how much of a "tradition" it is for them to insist the Catholic Bible must be interpreted via their own Supreme Court called the Catholic Church (with it's final "decisions and rulings" being codified in it's Catechism and priests and apologists being essentially lawyers for the Lord or trained sophists for Christ) while simultaneously interpreting the U.S. Constitution as if they were a pope named Martin Luther.
Those Catholics who stood faithful to their Catholic Church, like Erasmus, rejected this idea of "the Bible alone," and instead based their faith on the belief that a proper relationship and understanding of God and his divine will could only come from both the Bible AND tradition.
But talk to a Catholic about their view of the Constitution, and they will often sound more like Martin Luther than Erasmus, especially about contemporary politically hot topics like same sex marriage or their right to "live by the sword," or, that is, their gun.
The "tradition" of Supreme Court decisions that are as necessary, and in a sense as "sacred," as their own Church's "tradition" of interpreting scripture, is suddenly null and void. Their own subjective view of what the Founding Fathers wanted and intended, suddenly becomes as infallible as their Pope's pontification on the Catholic Catechism.
Yet the fact that such Catholics (and indeed, not ALL Catholics do this, of course) are willing to pick and chose which "traditions" they feel they must follow and accept, and which they can simply chose to ignore for their own preferred interpretation, illustrates just how "subjective" their ideas about "objective truth" really are.
It also illustrates how much of a "tradition" it is for them to insist the Catholic Bible must be interpreted via their own Supreme Court called the Catholic Church (with it's final "decisions and rulings" being codified in it's Catechism and priests and apologists being essentially lawyers for the Lord or trained sophists for Christ) while simultaneously interpreting the U.S. Constitution as if they were a pope named Martin Luther.
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