It's kind of amusing to watch people try to imprison the entirety of salvation to Scripture that didn't exist for decades after Christ's death. All things in Scripture are infallible, yet they are not the only things that are infallible. If they are the only things that are infallible, and the Apostles were teaching a Gospel without the aid of Scripture, then their errors could have been manifold. If you say, "no", the preaching of the Gospel was infallible by protection of the Holy Spirit, then there is nothing in Scripture which indicates that the Holy Spirit put an end to the efficacy of oral tradition.
Is that why Catholics don't read the bible very much and honor it so little? The bible is just weak isn't it? It doesn't define itself and it doesn't say what you want it to say about Mary. It's incomplete and it's interpretation can only be done by a select few people that abstain from sex. I am starting to understand why discussing Scripture with RC's always seems so pointless and always leaves me trying to defend my faith in the Word of God.
We're commanded by the Church to read from it at every Mass. These take place every single day across the world, so I'm not sure where you get the impression Catholics don't read the Bible.
The bible is just weak isn't it?
The Bible isn't weak. It also doesn't interpret itself. All interpretation is an employment of tradition, whether it's Peter, Luther, John Calvin or Al Sharpton. Those who reject Tradition can't even impower themselves to interpret it.
and it doesn't say what you want it to say about Mary.
It doesn't matter what I want it to say. What it does say guides the interpretation which Tradition embraces, expounds upon, and passes along to future generations.
It's incomplete and it's interpretation can only be done by a select few people that abstain from sex.
Like Jesus?
I am starting to understand why discussing Scripture with RC's always seems so pointless and always leaves me trying to defend my faith in the Word of God.
What faith? Without works, your faith is dead - at least that's what Scripture says...
It also doesn't say what the sola scriptura gang want it to say about, well, sola scriptura. But somehow THAT tradition is okay.
It also is so far from saying man is saved by faith alone that as has been said here a bazillion times the one time "faith alone" appears in Scripture is when James writes that man is NOT saved by "faith alone". Yet, the sola scriptura gang is also, usually, the sola fide gang, while at the same time claiming to diss any interpretation that is informed by tradition rather than by the Bible alone.
With the above points in mind, then I read:
I am starting to understand why discussing Scripture with RC's always seems so pointless and always leaves me trying to defend my faith in the Word of God.I think maybe in this thread you were one of those bringing up the Bible as an argument about what we teach about Mary. (As in,"You won't find THAT in the Bible.") If you bring it up, the traditional interpretation of the sola scripura proponents seem to be to be fair game.
You have a tradition. By that tradition, no Christian should be required to believe what cannot be "proved" by Scripture and nothing which (in the judgment of whom, one asks) contradicts Scripture should be believed.
But the Scriptures describe the Church as the pillar and bulwark of truth and say man is not saved by faith alone and, especially in the letters of Paul, commend as authoritative oral as well as written tradition. Further Baptism is described as salvific in the plain meaning of Scripture.
But the sola Scriptura party usually says man is saved by faith alone, the pillar and bulwark of truth is (a)invisible and (b) not the church anyway but the Bible, and Baptism does not save, and yet they maintain with a straight face that traditions outside Scripture are traditions of men and contrary to the will of God!