----------------Why Tradition? Continued----------------

Section 3
THE DOGMAS OF FAITH ADMIT NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER
 

A great safeguard is the entire faith, the true faith, in which neither anything whatever can be added by anyone nor anything taken away; for, unless faith be one, it is not the faith.

Pope St. Leo the Great

We have not added, and we could not add, anything to the faith which the holy Fathers put forth; but we hold and will hold that same identical faith.

St. Gregory Nazianzen

Let nothing of the truths that have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but let them be preserved intact in word and in meaning.

Pope Gregory XVI

We declare that no one is permitted to introduce, or to describe, or to compare, or to study, or otherwise to teach another faith. Whoever presumes to introduce or teach or pass on another creed . . . or whoever presumes to introduce a novel doctrine . . . We declare to be anathematized.

Pope St. Agatho the Wonderworker

With tears I beg, entreat, and exhort you, by the dreadful Day of Judgment and by the awe-filled light of the coming of Christ, that you hold fast the Catholic faith . . . If you remain constant, no distance nor death shall separate us.

St. Eugene of Carthage

Eternal truth never changes.

Padre Pio

The truth of the Lord endures forever.

Psalm 116: 2

Dogmas of faith cannot be altered a single jot or tittle.

St. Basil the Great

The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed like a theory of philosophy, to be elaborated upon by the human understanding, but as a Divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared. Therefore, that sense of sacred dogmas is to be kept forever which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and it must never be deviated from on the specious pretext of a more profound understanding. Let intelligence and science and wisdom increase, but only according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same meaning . . . If anyone shall have said that there may ever be attributed to the doctrines proposed by the Church a sense . . . which is different from the sense the Church has once understood and does now understand: let him be anathema.

I Vatican Council

We cannot change the ancient traditions.

St. Nicephorus

Under no circumstances can we conceive of the possibility of change, of evolution, or of any modification in matters of faith. The Creed remains always the same.

Pope Paul VI

From the time the Christian religion began to be spread, she has held unchangeable and taught uncorrupted throughout the world the doctrines which she has received once and for all from her patron and founder, Saint Peter.

Pope St. Nicholas the Great

The proposition that the principal articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same meaning for the Christians of the earliest times as they have for Christians of our time is hereby condemned and proscribed as erroneous.

Pope St. Pius X

True Christianity today is not different from primitive Christianity . . . She remains what she has been since her foundation: always the same.

Pope Pius XII

Be not led away with various and strange doctrines . . . Jesus Christ yesterday, and today, and the same forever!

Hebrews 13: 9, 8

It is an error to believe that Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and to all men, but rather that He inaugurated a religious movement adapted, or to be adapted, to different times and different places.

Pope St. Pius X

Christ's commandment to hear the Church . . . is binding on all men, in every period, and every country.

Pope Pius XI

Why have precepts of the Old Law been preserved for the New Law? Because they constitute what is essential and absolutely obligatory concerning the conduct of every man, from the very fact that he is man. These moral precepts, then, have always been and always will be the same for all men? Yes, these moral precepts have always been and always will be the same for all men.

Catechism of the Summa

This teaching is for every man; for all men have the same afflictions, and for this reason . .  .the common remedies. This is the doing of the Divine Benevolence: that he who speaks and he who listens share the same nature and are subject to the same laws; so each one who offends against them is guilty alike.

St. John Chrysostom

 God ordained for every man one and the same means of salvation.

Pope St. Leo the Great

 There shall be all one law and judgment, both for you and for those who are strangers in the land.

Numbers 15: 15

All people and each individual man is called to come into the Church.

Pope Pius XII

Truth, which is simple and one, admits of no variety.

Pope St. Leo the Great

There is no other religion than this, and the rule of life is the same for everyone.

Bl. Theophanes Venard

There is in Sacred Scripture but one and the same rule of living and believing.

St. Bede the Venerable

Christ did not say: "I am the conventional thing," but "I am the Truth." You will not be judged according to the customs of Paris or Poitou, but according to the commandments of Christian law.

St. Benedict Joseph Labre

We are indeed little and lowly, but by God's grace we are always the same, and not molded by the changes of things. For, our faith is not different in Seleucia, different in Constantinople, different at Zelis, and different again at Lampsacus, and another faith at Rome, but always one and the same.

St. Basil the Great

By attempting to change the faith, which is unchangeable, faith is lost; heretics correct and amend, till, weary of all, they condemn everything.

St. Hilary of Poitiers

Beyond a doubt, they perish eternally who do not keep the Catholic faith entire and unchanged.

Pope Gregory XVI

It never was, is, or shall be lawful for Catholic Christians to teach any doctrine except that which they have received once and for all time; and it always was, is, and shall be their duty to condemn those who do . . . To detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they arise, and to continue whole and sound in the Catholic faith, we must, God help us, fortify our own belief in two ways: first, by the authority of Divine law, and then by the tradition of the Catholic Church . . . Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and more than sufficient of itself for everything, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church's interpretation? . . . For this reason: because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, not everyone accepts it in one and the same sense . . . Therefore, it is very necessary that the rule for the proper understanding of the Prophets and Apostles be framed in accordance with the standard of ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation. Moreover, in the Church itself, every possible care must be taken to hold fast to that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, and by everyone. For that is truly and in the strictest sense "Catholic" which comprehends all universality . . . He is a true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems Divine religion and the Catholic faith above everything: above the authority, the regard, the genius, the eloquence, the philosophy of every man whatsoever. He is a genuine Catholic who continues steadfast and well-founded in the faith, who resolves that he will believe those things-----and only those things-----which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient times . . . It is therefore an indispensable obligation for all Catholics who are eager to prove that they are true sons of Holy Mother the Church to adhere to the holy faith of the Fathers, to preserve it, to die for it, and, on the other hand, to detest the profane novelties of profane men, to dread them, to harass them, and to attack them.

St. Vincent of Lerins

As for you, let that which you have heard from the beginning abide in you. If that abides in you which you have heard from the beginning, you shall also abide in the Son.

1 St. John 2: 24

As long as you live, and have breath in you, let no man change you!

Ecclesiasticus 33: 21

The Catholic Church today possesses intact the living heritage of the original Apostolic tradition. We must instill the firm desire and resolution to guard this deposit about which Saint Paul speaks.

Pope Paul VI
 
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