Recently I was lucky enough to get away for a few days holiday to Rome, the seat of our Holy Father. One of the intriguing things about getting abroad is that you’re able to catch a lead a brief glimpse of life in another Church. You can how they handle, in their particular way, the challenges of the modern world. By looking at where they are, where they have been, where they are going you can learn so, so much. The Church in Southern Europe is somewhat different from our own. They never really experienced the trauma of the reformation and the division of Christianity, they never really suffered the scourge of sectarianism. But what they have faced, what they have dealt with is rampant, pernicious secularism. They have experience in dealing with governments who have no time for organised religion, they’ve been through all the anti-clericalism, all the civil strife. Time and time they’ve dealt with authorities who have little interest in Christianity of any variety. They’ve been there,
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Scripture and Tradition in the Catholic Church In the first years of the seventeenth century, my fellow Scot, John Colville (1542-1605) attempted to somewhat colourfully elucidate and elaborate the Catholic understanding of the relationship between Scripture and the Church: “It cannot be denied that the Church is to Scripture as the pilot to the rudder, the mason to the line, the magistrate to the laws…..Even so, the rudder and compass, the line and square of Holy Scripture and laws contained therein, except they have the Church to be their steerman, mason and judge, they of themselves ever pacify parties contending in faith and religion, more nor the compass alone guide the ship, or the line build the house” [1] . Underlying Colville’s rather creative use of analogy was a profound appreciation of the mutual interdependence and co-penetration of Scripture and the Church. For Colvile, Scripture and Tradition, far from being two sections of the deposit of revelation, constitute one singl
