Criticism of Catholicism's "Sacred Tradition"

You know, I've been spending some time going through the Catechism of the Catholic Church lately, and it's definitely getting me thinking about some foundational stuff. One thing that really stands out, and honestly, gives me pause, is how it talks about "Sacred Tradition."

The Catechism, right from the get-go, in paragraphs like 59 through 61 and then again around 80 to 82, makes it pretty clear that it sees Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture as two streams flowing from the same divine wellspring, both equally to be "accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence." They're presented as a "single sacred deposit of the Word of God."

Now, I get the historical argument. The apostles preached, they taught, and not everything they said or did was immediately written down in the books that became our New Testament. There was an oral phase, a living transmission of faith in the early communities. No one's really disputing that. But the leap from "apostles taught things" to "there's this ongoing, equally authoritative stream of divine revelation called Sacred Tradition that the Church (specifically the Magisterium) is the guardian and sole authentic interpreter of", that's a big leap, and one I find hard to square with what Scripture itself seems to indicate about its own sufficiency and finality.

My main hang-up is this: if we say that our certainty about "all revealed truths" doesn't come from the Holy Scriptures alone, as paragraph 61 explicitly states, where does that leave us? It seems to put the Church, or at least its teaching office, in a position of defining what constitutes this "Sacred Tradition" and then using that Tradition to interpret Scripture. It feels a bit like the Church is marking its own homework. If Tradition tells us how to read Scripture, and the Church tells us what Tradition is, then the Church's current understanding becomes the ultimate authority, practically speaking, even if it says it's the "servant" of the Word.

Paul told Timothy that "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Timothy 3:16-17 KJV). That sounds pretty comprehensive. If Scripture itself is "God-breathed" and can thoroughly furnish us for all good works and make the man of God perfect (or complete), what essential divine truth is left outside of it that we need from an unwritten Tradition for our faith and practice?

And then there's the practical side. Scripture is a fixed text. We can study it, analyze its languages, its historical context. It's there for all to examine. "Sacred Tradition," on the other hand, especially when it's presented as an unwritten body of truths passed down, feels more fluid, more susceptible to human development and, dare I say, accretion (addition) over centuries. How do we objectively test a "Tradition" if its content and interpretation are ultimately defined by an institution in the present day? Things like the Marian dogmas (Immaculate Conception, Assumption) are often cited as examples of truths known through Tradition that aren't explicitly spelled out in Scripture. But that's the point, if they're not clearly in Scripture, on what basis are they considered divinely revealed and binding for all believers?

It seems to me that the New Testament itself points to the writings of the apostles as the enduring record of their authoritative teaching. Paul exhorted the Thessalonians to "hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15 KJV). Yes, there was oral teaching initially, but the "faith which was once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3 KJV) was, I believe, fully and finally captured in what became the inspired New Testament. That written Word is the "sacred deposit" we're called to guard and transmit.

So, as I'm reading through the Catechism, this heavy reliance on Sacred Tradition as an equal partner to Scripture, and the claim that the Magisterium alone can authentically interpret both, is a significant point of concern. It feels like it shifts the ultimate foundation of our faith from the clear, written Word of God, accessible to all believers through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, to the pronouncements of a specific ecclesiastical (church-related) institution. And historically, that just hasn't always proven to be a reliable safeguard for pure, apostolic truth, especially when those truths concern the unique message of grace for the Body of Christ, which often got obscured by later traditions. It's definitely something that makes you want to go back and cleave even more tightly to what the Scriptures actually say, and how they say it.