Newman never converted to Catholicism

Newman went deep into church history and discovered that he couldn't find Roman Catholicism in the first few centuries of the church, so he redefined Catholicism by inventing the theory of development. He didn't convert to Catholicism; rather, he converted Catholicism to himself.

St. John Cardinal Newman

Cardinal Newman has been canonized. He may well be the most theologically influential convert to Catholicism. 

Newman was a man of many parts. He has interesting things to say about the nature of miracles. And his illative sense made an important contribution to religious epistemology. He stressed the value of tacit knowledge. He objected to armchair epistemologies. He was interested in how people actually come to believe what they do, and the kinds of evidence that contribute to belief formation. An often unconscious process with a cumulative effect.  

Newman was an original and independent thinker. Because he converted to Catholicism, he had a different approach than if he'd been a trained Catholic theologian. His center of gravity was patristic theology rather than Scholastic theology. And he represents an offshoot of British Empiricism. 

There's nothing distinctive Catholic about the illative sense. That can be incorporated into a Protestant epistemology or secular epistemology. 

As Benjamin King has documented in Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, Newman is apt to use the church fathers as a mirror, where he's gazing at his own reflection. Newman resembles Luther inasmuch as both developed one-man belief-systems to resolve their personal religious quest. These are answers to their questions, which arise from their individual struggles. 

Newman's primary impact on Catholic theology lies in his theory of development. Historically, Catholicism takes the position that the era of public revelation terminated with the death of the Apostles. They left behind the deposit of faith. That's static. You can appeal to ancient tradition as a witness to the deposit of faith. But you can't add to the deposit of faith and you can't change dogma.

The theory of development was necessitated by the increasing strain between the appeal to tradition and innovations in Catholic theology. Innovations that lacked a documentable pedigree in primitive tradition. 

Newman replaced the static concept of tradition with a fluid concept. No longer grounded in primitive tradition but "living" tradition. This would have remained an idiosyncratic curiosity except that it was adopted by Vatican II. 

The increasing strain between tradition and innovation was like metastatic cancer. The theory of development was like cancer therapy. But there's a catch. Sometimes cancer therapy prevents a patient from dying of cancer: instead, the patient dies from complications due to cancer therapy. The therapy does so much damage that the cure kills the patient.

The theory of development solved one problem by creating another problem. It severed Catholic theology from any traditional moorings. Catholic theology is now adrift. It has no fixed center or boundaries. Catholic theology is now the theology of whoever the current pope happens to be. Like a chameleon, Catholic theology changes colors to match the shade of the current pope. 

John Henry Cardinal Alfred E Newman

First published September 4, 2011; republished in honor of Newman’s canonization as a Roman Catholic saint.

Alister McGrath’s Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Third Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ©2005), doesn’t end at the Reformation. He continues to review developments in the various doctrines of justification as they proceeded through the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican schools of thought.

McGrath writes about the “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” historical and theological analyses that John Henry Cardinal Newman did of Luther’s doctrine of Justification. That assessment — “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” — is based on his review of Newman’s 1837 Lectures on Justification.

Newman, now a Roman Catholic saint, is a hero to many of today’s generation of militant Roman Catholics. Newman’s theory of “the development of doctrine” provides the underpinning for the modern (Vatican II) version of Roman Catholic doctrine. Of course, Roman Catholics expect that Newman was right, or substantially right, about most of the things he said.

But on the contrary, Newman’s Lectures were “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” in many respects, and McGrath documents this thoroughly.

McGrath says of Newman:

To be deep into Catholicism is to cease to be Catholic

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/10/catholicism-made-me-protestant

The "deep into history" trope

Somehow a Catholic propaganda site (Reformation Apologetics @HolyCatholicFaith) wormed itself into my Facebook feed. I could unfollow it but for now I'm using it for target practice. The latest exchange:

Hays

Protestant patrologists and Protestant church historians are just as deep into church history as their Catholic academic counterparts. They see the same evidence, but draw a contrary conclusion. For that matter, modern-day Catholic church historians concede that the traditional narrative of the papacy is a historical fiction.

Jayson

You mean different people have different opinions on the truth? What exactly does that prove other than people have different opinions? And as for your claim about catholic scholars, I hope you make the same claim about “Protestant scholars” and the deity of Christ, etc.

Hays

It proves that the maxim "to be deep into church history" doesn't select for Catholicism. Next question?

As for making the same claim about Protestant scholars, you fail to grasp the dialectic. I'm simply responding to the Newmanesque appeal on its own grounds. That doesn't mean I share his assumptions. So your attempted parallel fails.

Jayson

Newman’s appeal was simply a claim couched in rhetorical flourish. It is either true or false on the basis of its claims, not anything else. If you really think his claim was that “once you read a lot of history books you automatically become Roman Catholic” then you’re certainly more obtuse than you let on. His point was that it’s a deeper look into the historical data that makes it obvious that Protestantism is false. That there are so called catholic scholars that deny the historicity of the papacy is both irrelevant to Newman’s point and irrelevant to whether or not Protestantism is reasonable once delving deeply into history.

Hays 

Quoting Newman is a Catholic convert trope. "I used to be a Protestant who knew nothing about the church fathers, but once I began go read them the scales fell from my eyes"–as if that automatically validates the traditional claims of Rome. That's the point of the comparison with Protestant patrologists and church historians. 

And I'm always amused by lay nobodies and one-man magisteria who presume to say mainstream Catholic scholars aren't real Catholics. The hierarchy doesn't share your assessment. You don't count. You don't have a vote. Get over yourself. Submit to your bishop and shut up.

The development of ecclesiastical doctrine

The Development of Ecclesiastical Doctrine
Anthony Kenny

The development of doctrine is not itself a doctrine of the Catholic Church. From the beginning, the Church has taught, not that its dogmas develop, but that its faith is immutable. St Paul told the Galatians: 'Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed' (Galatians, 1, 8). Quoting those words 400 years later, Pope Simplicius wrote 'One and the same norm of apostolic doctrine continues in the apostles' successors'. The Council of Trent, in its preamble, asserted that the Gospel truth is to be found in the written books, and unwritten traditions, which were received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ, or dictated to them by the Holy Spirit; which have been handed down to us and preserved by continuous succession in the Catholic Church. Pius IX, writing against Günther in 1857, spoke of the 'perennial immutability of the faith' which he contrasted with 'philosophy and human sciences which are neither self-consistent nor free from errors of many kinds'. The Syllabus of 1864 condemned the view that divine revelation was imperfect and might progress in step with the progress of human reason. The Vatican Council repeated this. 'The doctrine of faith which God has revealed is not, like a philosophical theory, something for human ingenuity to perfect; but rather divine deposit from Christ to his bride, to be faithfully preserved and infallibly explained.' The immutability of dogma is not a matter of words only but of meaning also: 'That sense is always to be given to sacred dogmas which holy mother Church has once explained; it is never to be given up under the pretext of a more profound understanding.'¹

To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant

To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant

Cardinal Newman's catchy one-liner is a popular slogan among Catholic apologists and evangelical converts to Rome. But I'd like to consider that slogan in context.

1. The oft-quoted slogan comes from his celebrated Essay On the Development of Christian Doctrine. That, however, was issued in two different editions (1845; 1878), 33 years apart. Newman revised his original essay, and it can be instructive to compare the two different editions. It would be a useful exercise for someone to display both editions in parallel columns, to facilitate comparison. For instance, unless I missed it, the slogan doesn't appear in the original edition of Newman's essay, but only in the revised edition. 

C.S. Lewis: “Newman makes my blood run cold ...”

In his introduction to the work, “Roman but Not Catholic”, co-author Jerry Walls writes, “We have heard from lots of people who have read John Henry Newman’s famous essay on doctrinal development and found his arguments compelling. I thought it might be helpful to hear from persons who have read Newman but found his arguments deeply confused and his conclusions badly overstated.”

Apparently, C.S. Lewis was one of those people.

C.S. Lewis: “Newman makes my blood run cold ...”

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm chpt. 6
HT: Steven Wedgeworth on Facebook.

Ghost Wars: A Battle of Unseen Churches

https://rationalityofaith.wordpress.com/2015/08/01/a-sufficiently-nuanced-high-church-ecclesiology-converges-to-the-protestant-doctrine-of-the-invisible-church/

Against the Pious Cant of Appealing to Tradition

https://rationalityofaith.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/against-the-pious-cant-of-appealing-to-tradition-in-deciding-trinitarian-controversies/

The anachronism behind Rome’s “Development of Doctrine”

A Facebook friend posted this meme this morning, and I think it illustrates perfectly the concept of how Rome’s (actually, John Henry Cardinal Alfred E Neuman’s) “Development of Doctrine” works:

The iPhone existed in “seed form”, in just the same way that the papacy, and indeed, the whole “Roman Catholic Church” existed in the earliest days of the church.

And yet Rome has the temerity to say with a straight face, “The sole Church of Christ [is that] which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter's pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the [Roman] Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him.”

Sure, there were cameras in Lincoln’s day, but to posit an iPhone in “seed form” at that point is just ludicrous. Similarly, the church existed at Pentecost, but to posit “the Roman Catholic Religion in seed form” is just ludicrous.

HT: Neil Hess

Quote-mining the church fathers

A popular tactic in Catholic apologetics is to quote-mine the church fathers for statements that coincide with Roman Catholic dogma. There are potential problems with this appeal even on its own grounds. There's the danger of reading later developments and later interpretations back into these early statements. The risk of recontextualizing the original in light of subsequent developments, where you transplant a statement into a different theological framework.

For instance, an apologist like Newman may treat these statements as seminal claims ripe for further development. The beginning of an ongoing process which will reach fruition centuries down the line. From acorn to oak. But why assume the church fathers viewed their positions as merely seminal? What if they never intended to take it any further than that? What if that's where their position begins and ends? What if that was their complete position? 

ii) But beyond that, there's another problem. To my knowledge, Benedict XVI and Archbishop Lefebvre share many theological positions in common. You could read pages of each and not see any difference. You could arrange their theological positions in parallel columns, where they match up on doctrine after doctrine.

But, of course, that would be deceptive, for despite their extensive theological commonalities, there was a major rift in their respective theological outlooks. Lefebvre became the leading dissident, on the right, of Vatican II. Their dissimilarities are at least as significant as their similarities. Despite having so much in common, Benedict XVI and Archbishop Lefebvre move further apart. They are ultimately defined by their theological divergence rather than convergence. They aren't moving toward a common destination, but in opposing destinations. 

In principle, Catholic Answers could quote-mine Lefebvre to attest Roman Catholic dogma, just like they quote-mine the church fathers, but that would be misleading and underhanded, because Lefebvre sharply diverged from official developments in Catholic theology in the 60s. Likewise, there's no reason to think church fathers, even those with "proto-Catholic" sympathies, would side with Pope Francis rather than Archbishop Lefebvre. 

The big Roman Catholic apologetic thumb on the scales

“See? We win. We have ‘the authority’”

This is going to be the most important thing I have ever said on this topic.

It is of course well known that there is an imbalance between the supposed “unity” that Rome offers, vs the seeming disarray that Protestants are in. However, the “unity” that Rome offers is merely an illusion, (and that illusion is not based on any truth or historical evidence), while Protestant “disunity”, while frayed around the edges, is truly based upon doctrinal unity, and as Steve Hays describes this process:

But what if catholicity is something we should achieve indirectly? Instead of aiming at catholicity, what if catholicity is the effect or end-result of something else? For instance, Christians have a duty to understand God's word, believe God's word, and live obey God's word. The more that more Christians live according to God's word, the more they converge.

Keep this in mind as we discuss how “unity” works. The unity of Rome is a false unity. As Francis Turretin described it, it is based on one large, but false, and unprovable claim:

Puffing Newman

I'm curious as to why Ref21 would publish this hagiographic review of a biography on Cardinal Newman:

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/john-henry-newman-a-biography.php

I'm not saying Newman doesn't merit biographies. And I'm not saying Newman doesn't have some useful things to say. But the review is utterly one-sided. 

Let's not forget that Newman largely squandered his great gifts in defense of an unworthy cause. 

There's a place for Newman scholarship, but it needs to be discerning. To take a comparison:

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199548132.001.0001/acprof-9780199548132

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/catholic_historical_review/v097/97.2.strange.html

Rome, authority and argumentum ad infinitum

http://puritanreformed.blogspot.com/2014/12/rome-authority-and-argumentum-ad.html

The hermeneutic of the WCF vs the hermeneutic of Newman

http://reformation500.com/2014/07/30/the-hermeneutic-of-the-wcf-vs-the-hermeneutic-of-newman/

Here is my look at a comment that is instructive because it seeks to show how “Roman Catholics and Protestants do the same thing”, but where really, they are doing something completely different...

You are not arriving at your concept of “visible teaching church” from “all of Scripture”. You are beginning with the concept “visible teaching church” and then mining “the fathers” for kinds of proof texts that suit your needs.

Finding something “implicit in” is in no way “deducing by good and necessary consequence”.

Read more.

From Newman to Vatican II

http://nblo.gs/YuViF

Newman vs Leo. Or, “visible”, but in an “invisible” way. Or, “a new fiction”…

The gang at Called to Communion are fond of telling us that Christ founded a visible church. This article is featured as the lead article at their Papacy Roundup.

It’s all so clear to them now, -- the perspicuity of Roman dogma leaves no room for question.

But at the end of the 19th century, it was Leo vs Newman – there was a time when, after the publication of Newman’s “Theory”, which allowed for “difficulties”, that Leo hadn’t quite caught on.

Newman was saying, for example:

In course of time, first the power of the Bishop displayed itself, and then the power of the Pope. . . . St. Peter's prerogative would remain a mere letter, till the complication of ecclesiastical matters became the cause of ascertaining it. . . . When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops, and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes; and whether communion with the Pope was necessary for Catholicity would not and could not be debated till a suspension of that communion had actually occurred. It is not a greater difficulty that St. Ignatius does not write to the Asian Greeks about Popes, than that St. Paul does not write to the Corinthians about Bishops. And it is a less difficulty that the Papal supremacy was not formally acknowledged in the second century, than that there was no formal acknowledgment on the part of the Church of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity till the fourth. No doctrine is defined till it is violated.

Thus, according to Newman, while the earliest church was living in peace and joy and harmony, there were popes and bishops, it’s just that no one could see them because no one had defined the doctrines of popes and bishops. They were “a mere letter”.

[Remember 150 ad: the church at Rome is ruled by a plurality of presbyters who quarrel about status and honor. The Shepherd of Hermas says: “They had a certain jealousy of one another over questions of preeminence and about some kind of distinction. But they are all fools to be jealous of one another regarding preeminence.”]


Leo XIII: “Not Buying Into Newman”
Leo XIII, however, was not buying into this business. In his 1896 encyclical Satis Cognitum, he pronounced just precisely how “visible” all of this was:

It was consequently provided by God that the Magisterium instituted by Jesus Christ should not end with the life of the Apostles, but that it should be perpetuated. We see it [visible, and not “a mere letter”] in truth propagated, and, as it were, delivered from hand to hand. For the Apostles consecrated bishops, and each one appointed those who were to succeed them immediately “in the ministry of the word” (from Section 8)

Similarly Sections 11 and 12:

The Supreme Authority Founded by Christ

11. The nature of this supreme authority, which all Christians are bound to obey, can be ascertained only by finding out what was the evident and positive will of Christ. Certainly Christ is a King for ever; and though invisible, He continues unto the end of time to govern and guard His church from Heaven. But since He willed that His kingdom should be visible He was obliged, when He ascended into Heaven, to designate a vice-gerent on earth. "Should anyone say that Christ is the one head and the one shepherd, the one spouse of the one Church, he does not give an adequate reply. It is clear, indeed, that Christ is the author of grace in the Sacraments of the Church; it is Christ Himself who baptizes; it is He who forgives sins; it is He who is the true priest who bath offered Himself upon the altar of the cross, and it is by His power that His body is daily consecrated upon the altar; and still, because He was not to be visibly present to all the faithful, He made choice of ministers through whom the aforesaid Sacraments should be dispensed to the faithful as said above" (cap. 74). "For the same reason, therefore, because He was about to withdraw His visible presence from the Church, it was necessary that He should appoint someone in His place, to have the charge of the Universal Church. Hence before His Ascension He said to Peter: 'Feed my sheep' " (St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, lib. iv., cap. 76).

Jesus Christ, therefore, appointed Peter to be that head of the Church; and He also determined that the authority instituted in perpetuity for the salvation of all should be inherited by His successors, in whom the same permanent authority of Peter himself should continue. And so He made that remarkable promise to Peter and to no one else: "Thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. xvi., 18). "To Peter the Lord spoke: to one, therefore, that He might establish unity upon one" (S. Pacianus ad Sempronium, Ep. iii., n. 11). "Without any prelude He mentions St. Peter's name and that of his father (Blessed art thou Simon, son of John) and He does not wish Him to be called any more Simon; claiming him for Himself according to His divine authority He aptly names him Peter, from petra the rock, since upon him He was about to found His Church" (S. Cyrillus Alexandrinus, In Evang. Joan., lib. ii., in cap. i., v. 42).

The Universal Jurisdiction of St. Peter
12. From this text it is clear that by the will and command of God the Church rests upon St. Peter, just as a building rests on its foundation. Now the proper nature of a foundation is to be a principle of cohesion for the various parts of the building. It must be the necessary condition of stability and strength. Remove it and the whole building falls. It is consequently the office of St. Peter to support the Church, and to guard it in all its strength and indestructible unity. How could he fulfil this office without the power of commanding, forbidding, and judging, which is properly called jurisdiction? It is only by this power of jurisdiction that nations and commonwealths are held together. A primacy of honour and the shadowy right of giving advice and admonition, which is called direction, could never secure to any society of men unity or strength.

“Does she, or doesn’t she?” Roman Catholics today want it both ways. It is “visible” and “immediate” and “universal”, “the same permanent authority of Peter” and yet at the same time it must “lay dormant until it be ascertained”. That is very clearly talking out of both sides of your mouth whatever language you are speaking.


“Don’t Fluff Me Off”
The other alternative is to say "Papal encyclicals aren't “infallible”. But then, too, you have a later church “morphing” what it was that the earlier “church” meant at the time. Pius XII, who defined the Assumption of Mary dogma, wrote in Humani Generis 20 that popes don't write what they write intending that people will fluff it off:

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.

But in the last 50 years, you've got whole centuries-worth of Roman Catholics taught (as I was taught), that Peter was the first pope, Linus the second, Cletus the third, Clement the fourth (or second, depending upon whom you read), etc. – it’s a good thing that the generation who knew this is dying off, so that Rome can now begin to perpetuate a new fiction.

The Papacy: Neither Biblical Nor Historical

This month and next, we’ll all be treated in the media to the spectacle of another conclave to select another pope. The media will fail to understand the genuine historical roots of the papacy lie neither in the Bible, nor in the history of the earliest church, but rather were an exercise if self-admiration of the newly-rich bishops of Rome of the fourth and especially the fifth century.

Leonardo de Chirico, who wrote what Lane Keister called The Best Book On Roman Catholicism I Have Read, has posted Some Brief Thoughts from Rome on Benedict’s Resignation:

Vatican I (1870) sort of divinized the papacy by making the pope "infallible" when he exercises his teaching role. Now, Ratzinger's resignation "humanizes" it by showing that this office is like any other human responsibility, i.e. temporary and subject to human weakness. The hope is that this move will cause many Catholics to reflect on the nature of the Papacy beyond traditional dogmatic assertions. Is the Papacy a de iure divino (i.e. divine law) office or is it more of a historical institution? Is it a condition for Christian unity or rather an obstacle to it? And more radically: is it biblical at all?

Starting that last question, “is it biblical at all”, after an extensive discussion of the Biblical texts, Robert Reymond said:

Rome’s exegesis of Matthew 16 and its historically developed claim to authoritative primacy in the Christian world simply cannot be demonstrated and sustained from Scripture itself. This claim is surely one of the great hoaxes foisted upon professing Christendom, upon which false base rests the whole papal sacerdotal system. (“A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith,” pg 818).

Today’s media certainly has been fooled, and is passing along the hoax, unless some enterprising reporter would dare to investigate the latest scholarship on the papacy.

Is the Papacy a de iure divino (i.e. divine law) office or is it more of a historical institution? If it’s not biblical at all, then it’s certainly not “a de iure divino (i.e. divine law) office”.

But is it historical?

The last century-and-a-half of even Roman Catholic scholarship denies that it is “historical” (before the fourth and fifth centuries).

With his “theory of development”, Newman makes this important historical concession:

While Apostles were on earth, there was the display neither of Bishop nor Pope; their power had no prominence, as being exercised by Apostles. In course of time, first the power of the Bishop displayed itself, and then the power of the Pope. . . . St. Peter's prerogative would remain a mere letter, till the complication of ecclesiastical matters became the cause of ascertaining it. . . . When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops, and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes; and whether communion with the Pope was necessary for Catholicity would not and could not be debated till a suspension of that communion had actually occurred.... (Essay on the Development of Doctrine, Notre Dame edition, pg 151).

This “prerogative” that he speaks of remains “a mere letter” during the most critical, foundational centuries of the Christian church – if Newman is going to assert that it remained “a mere letter”, then where was the “letter”?

And Newman himself concedes that it had not been “ascertained” until “ecumenical disturbance” (one would think he’s talking about the Arian matters of the fourth century – this is the first time that the “mere letter” first became “ascertained”.

But where was the “letter”? If this existed, certainly it is incumbent upon Roman Catholics to show it.

But they can’t, and so they don’t. They merely continue to assert something that was never there.

I would hope, with de Chirico, that “this move will cause many Catholics to reflect on the nature of the Papacy beyond traditional dogmatic assertions.”

Jesus said to his disciples, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave”.

The papacy and its efforts to dominate Christianity and the world are a fourth- and fifth-century imposition by the “nouveau-riche” bishops of Rome upon the rest of Christianity. It is not a unifying factor; rather, it has been the most harmful and divisive institution in the history of the world. Its boastful yet vacuous claims of global domination have divided Christianity and damaged the witness of Christ in the world. It is my hope that the passing of the Wojtyla/Ratzinger era will represent another step towards oblivion for this selfish and un-Christlike institution.

The Epistemological Foundation for “The Roman Catholic System”

Before I begin to discuss Möhler’s work, I thought it would be better to provide some epistemological background, so to speak, on the concept of “development”. Paul Helm’s small work, “The Divine Revelation” (London, UK: Marshall Morgan & Scott ©1982) contains a “critical examination” of what it means for something to be “God’s revelation” [from the Editor’s Preface].

As you know, the Roman Catholic Church holds to an account that “Tradition” is what has “transmitted” “the entirety of the Word of God”. Here we see that “system” or “worldview” of Roman Catholicism displayed (according to De Chirico), especially with respect to what he calls “the self-understanding of the [Roman Catholic] Church”.

81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."

"And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching."

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."

Thus “[Holy] Tradition” is the conduit by which “the Church” [through the process of “apostolic succession”] supposedly has “handed on” “all that she herself is” “to all generations” [including our own].

“The Church” itself is “part of the divine revelation that was handed on”.