Why Tradition?
Part 3
----------------Why Tradition? Continued----------------
Section 2
THE DOGMAS OF FAITH ADMIT NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER
The faith by which we live shall never vary in any age . . . for one is the faith which sanctifies the Just of all ages.
Pope St. Leo the Great
The true religion has always been one from the beginning, and will always be the same.
St. Augustine
For whatever alters and changes, and has no stability in one and the same condition, how can it be true? . . . From where, then, did irreligious men draw forth their novelty? From their own heart, as from a seat of corruption, they vomited it forth!
St. Athanasius
We all have only one doctrine; this is the faith of the Doctors of the Church; this is the faith of the holy Apostles; this is the faith which has saved the world.
Council of Chalcedon
"One faith," St. Paul writes (Ephesians 4: 5). Hold most firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church . . . We must hold this for certain, namely: that the faith of the people at the present day is one with the faith of the people in past centuries. Were this not true, then we would be in a different Church than they were in and, literally, the Church would not be One.
St. Thomas Aquinas
The Church of Christ, therefore, is one and the same forever.
Pope Leo XIII
The true religion has always been one from the beginning, and will always be the same.
St. Augustine
The truth of the Catholic Church is demonstrated by its constant uniformity of doctrine in the dogmas of faith, from its first foundation by Jesus Christ. It has been the same in all ages, so that the truths which we believe at the present day were believed in the first ages . . .The innovators call these truths of faith "errors," but how could these errors in matters of faith exist in the first ages of our Church which even the adversaries admit was then the true Church of Christ? . . . And how could God have permitted such enormous errors to reign in His Church from its origin until such time as the "new teachers"-----Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin-----came to dissipate them? No! This Church was the true Church from the beginning, and has always been the true Church . . . Oh, God! How does it happen that these new "masters of faith" came to dissipate them? No! This Church was the true Church from the beginning, and has always been the true Church . . . Oh, God! How does it happen that these new "masters of faith' do not see that, being separated from the Catholic Church and having lost obedience to her, they have also the Rule of Faith, so that at present they have no certain rule by which they can ascertain what is of faith and what is not!
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori
. . . We are not, therefore, teachers of a doctrine drawn from human minds, but-----conscious of our charge-----we ought to embrace and follow that which Christ Our Lord taught and Whose teaching, by a solemn commandment, He committed to His Apostles and to their successors . . . Moreover, since We are very certain that this doctrine which we must safeguard in all its integrity is Divinely revealed, We repeat the words of the Apostle of the Nations: "But though we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach to you a Gospel besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema" (Galatians 1: 8).
Pope Pius XII
We anathematize those who presume to teach or explain any other creed.
Pope Vigilius
We preserve the law of the Fathers; we anathematize those who add or subtract anything.
II Council of Nicaea
Is the hierarchy perhaps free to teach what they find most to their liking on matters of religion, or what they expect will be most pleasing to the proponents of certain current views opposed to all doctrine? Certainly not! The prime duty of the episcopate is to transmit strictly and faithfully the original message of Christ, the sum total of the truths which He revealed and confided to the Apostles as necessary for salvation.
Pope Paul VI
The sacred deposit of truth must be safeguarded. It is absolutely vital that the Church never for an instant lose sight of the holy patrimony of truth inherited from the Fathers . . . This is the certain and unchangeable doctrine to which the faithful owe obedience.
Pope John XXIII
I accept with sincere belief the doctrine of faith as handed down to us from the Apostles by the orthodox Fathers, always in the same sense and with the same interpretation.
Pope St. Pius X
No one is allowed to offer, write, or compose any faith other than that which was defined by the holy Fathers . . . Whoever shall dare to compose another faith shall be subject to anathema.
Council of Ephesus
For it is not allowable for anyone to change even one word, nor do we allow one syllable to be passed over, mindful of the saying: "Do not cross the limits placed by the Fathers."
St. Cyril of Alexandria
If anyone according to wicked heretics in any manner whatsoever, by any word whatsoever, at any time whatsoever, or in any place whatsoever illicitly removes the boundaries firmly established by the holy Fathers of the Catholic Church . . . in order to seek for novelties and expositions of another faith . . . and, briefly, if it is customary for the most impious heretics to do anything else, should anyone through diabolical operation crookedly and cunningly act contrary to the pious preachings of the orthodox teachers of the Catholic Church, that is, its papal and conciliar proclamations, to the destruction of sincere confession unto the Lord our God, and persist without repentance unto the end: let such a person be condemned forever, and let all the people say: So be it! So be it!
Pope St. Martin I
If it be God's will, let us die for the holy laws of our Fathers, in order that we may arrive at the eternal inheritance with them. Let us not be dumb dogs, sleeping sentinels, hirelings who fly at the sight of a wolf; but watchful and diligent pastors, preaching to the great and the small, to the rich and the poor, to every age and condition, in season and out of season.
St. Boniface
The preaching of the faith has lost nothing of its relevance in our times. The Church has a sacred duty to proclaim it without any whittling-down, just as Christ revealed it, and no consideration of time or circumstance can lessen the strictness of this obligation.
Pope Pius XII
"Progress" of dogmas is, in reality, nothing but corruption of dogmas . . . I absolutely reject the heretical doctrine of the evolution of dogma, as passing from one meaning to another, and different from the sense in which the Church originally held it. And likewise, I condemn every error by which philosophical inventions, or creations of the human mind, or products elaborated by human effort and destined to indefinite progress in the future are substituted for that Divine Deposit given by Christ to the faithful custody of the Church . . . Condemned and proscribed is the error that dogmas are nothing but interpretations and evolutions of Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected the little seed hidden in the Gospel.
Pope St. Pius X
The faithful must shun the opinion that dogmatic formulas cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but only offer changeable approximations to it. Those who hold such an opinion do not escape dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church's infallibility concerning truth . . . Relativism, which justifies everything and treats all things as of equal value, assails the absoluteness of Christian principles. There is no doubt that the meaning of dogmas declared by the Church is determinate and unalterable!
Pope Paul VI
Those wretches tainted with the error of Indifferentism and Modernism hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute, but relative: that is, that it must adapt itself to the varying necessities of the times and the varying dispositions of souls, since it is not contained in an unchangeable revelation, but is, by its very nature, meant to accommodate itself to the life of man.
Pope Pius XI
Whoever heard such things as these? From where or from whom have the supporters and hirelings of this heresy learned them? Whoever uttered such things to those who were under instruction?
St. Athanasius
It is enough to give just this one answer to heretics: These things are not of the Catholic Church; neither did the Fathers think like this!
St. Athanasius
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