Sacred Tradition: Roman Catholicism’s convenient “wild card”

Several months ago, I wrote a post about one of my memories of growing up within Catholicism. When I was in grammar school, the nuns would periodically go to the blackboard and draw a three-legged stool as a symbol of the Catholic church. The idea was that the church was extremely well-supported by its three pillars of guidance and authority: Holy Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the magisterium (the pope and the bishops as teachers). All three legs were taught to be equal in authority. It was pointed out by the sisters that, in contrast, the poor Protestants had only one leg, Holy Scripture, supporting their stool, which of course made for a laughable and completely untrustworthy seating device.

In that previous post, I commented on how pope Francis’ controversial lifting of the ban on communion for remarried divorcees has exposed the baselessness of the claims regarding the divinely-led teaching authority of…