Page:AManualOfCatholicTheology.djvu/127

 therefore it is lawful to no man to interpret the said Sacred Scripture against this sense or even against the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” Hence, according to the explanation given by the Vatican Council, the meaning of the Tridentine decree is that the Church has the right to give a judicial decision on the sense of Holy Scripture in matters of Faith and morals; that is, to give an interpretation authentic, infallible, universally binding, not only indirectly and negatively, but also directly and positively. To oppose such a decision is unlawful, because to do so would be a denial of the true sense of Scripture and not merely an act of disobedience. Moreover, the unanimous interpretation of the Fathers, whose writings reproduce the authentic teaching of the Church, has a similar value.

A very little thought will convince any one that the Catholic rule of Scriptural interpretation does not clash with a reasonable liberty and the development of scientific exegesis. On the contrary, the period subsequent to the Council of Trent produced the most famous Biblical commentators (see supra, Introd., p. xxxi.), while the principle of private judgment has produced nothing but errors and destructive criticism.

Stapleton, Princ. Fid. Demonstr., 11. x. et xi.; Franzelin, De Script., sect. iii.; Vacant, Etudes Theol. sur le Concile du Vatican, t. i. p. 405, sqq.

The Protestant rejection of a permanent Teaching Apostolate while, as we have seen, injurious to the Written Word, destroys the very existence of Oral Tradition. The Catholic doctrine, on the other hand, maintains that the preaching of the Apostles, unwritten as well as written, is an independent and trustworthy Source of Faith, and is, like the Holy Scriptures, an essential part of the Apostolic Deposit. The Council of Trent “seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even