A Catholic conundrum

Traditionally, Catholic apologists have tried to prooftext Catholicism from Scripture, church fathers, church councils, &c. However, that’s a double-edged sword. For Protestant apologists can cite the same sources to disprove Catholicism.

The point is not that Rome can’t find any support for some of her dogmas in the church fathers or church councils. The problem is that while these sources lend support for Rome in some respects, they undermine Rome in other respects. What they give with one hand they take with another.

As a result, Catholic apologists have to fall back on the Magisterium to sift and sort authoritative traditions from unauthoritative traditions. However, that raises the question of how Catholic apologists establish the authority of the Magisterium in the first place. You can’t cite tradition to ratify the Magisterium if the Magisterium must winnow authentic tradition from the chaff. So the appeal is viciously circular.

More recently, Bryan Cross and Michael Liccione have taken a different tack. When Protestant apologists quote Catholic sources or patristic sources against them, they say that begs the question. For that assumes you can interpret the sources apart from the Magisterium. That’s a “solo-Scriptura” methodology.

So they deny that you can directly prooftext the issue one way or the other. Rather, your prooftexting is only as good as your interpretive paradigm.

However, that maneuver comes at a cost. It means Liccione and Cross can’t directly prooftext their position either. Moreover, their tactic relocates the problem. Instead of furnishing evidence for Catholicism, they must now furnish evidence for their interpretive paradigm.

And they need evidence that’s independent of Catholic or patristic sources, for their interpretation of the sources is only as good as their interpretive paradigm. They can’t derive their paradigm from the sources if their interpretation of the sources is paradigm-dependent. So how do they establish their interpretive paradigm in the first place? How does the process ever get started?