 Tradition, if you actually look at the way the fathers of the church write it and the theologians throughout time, tradition is the totality. So there's a twofold distinction. It's the totality of what is passed on, which actually includes Scripture. In fact, tradition actually predates Scripture because originally stuff was passed on verbally and those things remained verbal for some time. Some of them, not the totality of them, were written down in Scripture and so the Scriptures then sometimes distinguish between what they instead of tradition in the broader sense, but tradition in the more restrictive sense, which is counter-distinguished from Scripture, that it's all those things that are not contained in Scripture, but tradition is just merely the totality of what's passed on in the church as part of the deposit of faith. So that's kind of the generic definition. So it would be the totality of what's being passed on and so that's how it's distinguished between Scripture and against Scripture. Obviously we know there's all sorts of things that are in Scripture or that are in tradition that are not contained in Scripture that we're still required to believe is Catholics, but also it just says it right in one of the last books, the last verses of John. He says, you know, and if we did not recount all the things that Christ had said and did and if we did it would be the violence would fill the world kind of thing. And so there's all sorts of stuff that never got written down that those things were passed on. The tradition includes not just the teachings, but it also includes what we call the elements of sanctification such as the sacraments, holy orders, the authority structure of the church, the power over the diabolic, all those things which Christ gave to because the deposit of faith isn't just teachings even though that is an integral part of it. It's the totality of everything that he passed on. Even the structure of the church, everything is what's passed on from tradition and will remain intact until he returns. Wow. Steve, I would say there's a lot of misunderstanding, not just with Protestants, but with Catholics about what sacred tradition is and is not. And there's even an open hostility towards the idea from many Protestants that we encounter. So Steve, could you explain what what would a Protestant think tradition is in the Catholic sense? And how do we refute that in debates? I think they just look at it as anything that we do really. I mean the praying of statues or sacramentals or going to mass, everything they just keep throwing at the, you know, don't hold up traditions of men as the scripture says, but they don't take that out of context where Christ isn't talking about that. He's talking about the Pharisees at the sense, but these guys talk about this and everything we do. So it's more like a generic thing. I don't even know they know what they're upset about. That's why I think you're the convert. You might know more about what you'll actually think. But every time I've experienced it in the Bible Belt here, quote unquote, where it's most anti-Catholic areas, Greenville, South Carolina, where Bob Jones is, they have no idea. I've asked them before they have no idea what they don't like. It's basically the tradition of the Pharisees, they hate what we don't, what we know, but they don't know why it's a blind obedience, I guess you could say to it. So I just don't think they even understand what we even do. Yeah, I would say most, I mean, I always took my faith very seriously from a very young age. I was always reading, you know, mostly apologetics type of stuff. Maybe you guys are familiar with names like William Lane Craig, Josh McDowell, Robbie Zacharias, who just passed away. Unfortunately, a bunch of scandal came out about him. So I always took my faith very seriously. I read the Bible a lot, read Luther, read Calvin. And for me, it was just recognizing that to even, I mean, this is a very common argument, but I think it's irrefutable that to even know what the books of scripture are. I needed something outside of scripture. It was a very syllogistic, irrefutable proposition that if scriptures are soul and fallible source of authority, then you can't even arrive at what the canon is. And this was actually, ironically, sealed for me by a Protestant, a very well known intellectual Protestant named R.C. Sproul. He died a few years ago. A reformed guy, and he has a ministry called Ligonier, Legionier, whatever. And a very anti-Catholic, you know, nice guy, but he gave a lecture on the canon. And he basically said, as far as classical Protestantism can go, to the extent that's not an oxymoron, you can only say that scripture is a fallible collection of infallible books. And he would also, yeah, it was a quite remarkable admission. And for me, that sealed the scripture issue. I was still studying, like, is there any Protestant way to get around this problem? Because if you can't even come up with the canon of scripture without tradition, that means you can't know the contents of the faith with certainty. And to me, it just struck me as absurd that if God is going to reveal something, it necessarily must be clear. Otherwise, there's no point in revealing it. God does not give us things just to be confusing. That's what the would-be God does, Satan. And so, yeah, the canon argument was huge for me in recognizing, even from the mouths of Protestants, that the absolute furthest they could go, without any notion of sacred binding tradition that was on par with scripture, they couldn't even come up with scripture. Wow. Father Rippager, you say in your forward to the Monsignor's book here that it is one of the best texts written in English on tradition. And rightly it is, but certainly there aren't many books like it. You can't point to many books about tradition that we have today to reference. So why do you think tradition seems to be as yet so unexamined by yet older Catholic and modern Catholic, really any Catholic author? Even by traditionalists. Which Steve and I have talked about that. But I think that it really just boils down to, you know, it's kind of hard to say. I think part of it has to do, it's a complex issue, but I think the primary issue has to do with the whole modernist problem. Because the modernist problem basically shifts the standard for what is true about what we believe from objective reality of which tradition is a part. It's an external standard to which we have to conform to basically the interior becomes imminent. That is, what my personal experience is constitutes the determination of what I'm going to actually believe. So that principle of eminence and modernism has caused people to just think that they don't really need to study. They don't need to know more about their faith because if it feels good, then it must be true. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And I think that that's made its way even into a lot of Catholics. So I think one of the observations I made in an article some years ago was the fact that modernism, I've actually come to the conclusion it's in. We're in the sixth stage. Originally I thought we were in the fifth. But the fifth stage is that the intellectual gaps ran out. So by the time you get to the 60s, 70s and 80s, the intellectual gas theological considerations and discussion of theological topics by modernists imploded. Because in the end there's no real rigor because what makes something rigorous academically or theologically philosophically is the fact that there's a reality to which you have to have very precise judgment and clarity about. That just all collapsed because it all just became amorphous in relationship to our personal experience. So I think that that's one of the primary reasons why you just don't see people even studying the tradition or anything like that. Whereas if you're not, if you're a realist and you realize that the philosophical underpinnings of modernism are just false and the church has already condemned it. Then you realize there has to be an external standard. And that's one of the reasons one of when I first came across a just book. I'm like this is perfect for your average layman to be able to read and get a sense of here's the external standard, the rule of faith that I need to conform to, at least as to the structure. So that I know what I have to conform to in order to know that my faith is right. So I think I think the reason you just don't see people reading or studying the tradition is simply because they just don't see the need to. Mary, do you mind if I add one comment off of what Father said? Because it is directly I mentioned earlier a quote of Calvin from St. Francis to Sales and the quote was about the canon. And it was quoting Calvin's French confession of faith. I think it's like 1559 somewhere in there and Calvin in the section on the canon appeals to the illuminate the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit. That's his exact phraseology. So it's, you know, I don't think many Protestants realize that that Protestantism as far as I would argue as far as a civilizational force, you know, something that's not, you know, some Gnostic sect here or heresy there, but as something that actually grab hold of a large chunk of Christian civilization is thoroughly modernist and even Gnostic. Because that, you know, the church, the church through councils couldn't be infallible. But but but the individual could in their perception of, you know, a very necessary datum of the faith. And so, Steve, I didn't I really didn't fully answer your previous question, but I would ultimately say it's the Protestant idea that there are these accretions through history, these barnacles on the ship, so to speak, that they presume to kind of know these aren't these are really these are man made things. But but when they're appealing to the inward illumination of Holy Spirit, there's no longer as father just said that external standard of truth. It's completely internalized. And ironically, someone like Calvin was very much against that he had a he appealed to it to get out of the church, but then he was ruthlessly against it against Protestant lay people, because he asserted late, didn't have the authority to interpret scripture. Late people didn't have the authority to make such claims he actually executed some of them. And so anyway, that would just be some details based off what father said that that Protestantism I would argue is the root civilizational force behind modernism. It started with Protestantism. Go ahead. See, I'm sorry. I was just going to say just the off that last question. They have their own traditions that it's basically though you have to you have to like their own. I mean, the Bible is a tradition. They got it back now. So if he saw the scripture is a tradition. So it's it's approved. It's kind of like you hear today approved conspiracy theories versus unapproved. The approved ones are get get on CNN and MSNBC. It's the unapproved ones and that's Protestant. They don't like the unapproved ones. They like the approved ones. Yeah, and it basically just boils down to Steve is that in the end, the Protestants can't argue that there's no such thing as tradition. We all agree there's a tradition because even they have one. The question is which traditions are going to be. That's the only real issue. And in something in relationship to what Joshua said, the principle of eminence, which came via the Catholic Church came via philosophical collapse. Whereas, but it was the same exact same principle as the Protestant illumination theory. It was the same thing. It just it got brought in through a different avenue because the Catholics wouldn't accept it unless it was given a different kind of flavor, so to speak. So would we say that tradition is the defining cat feature that distinguishes between Catholicism and Protestantism. Do the sacraments fall under that or above it? Where's the ranking of what is the one defining feature between Catholicism and Protestantism? Do we agree on that? I don't think it's well the sacraments are obviously part of that I would I think it ultimately boils down to the one distinguishing feature ultimately boils down to the authority. Ultimately, because it's the authority to whom the passing on of the tradition was given. It's the authority whose place it is to judge what is actually part of the tradition and what is not. It's the authority's place to make sure that everything that is understood in relationship to the tradition is accurate and that the actual perpetuation of the tradition ultimately boils down to the authority. So it's really the authority that Jesus Christ gave to the apostles and their successors, which is the primary thing through which the tradition is passed and through which we have its guarantee because ultimately it's because of the fact that I think It might even be an aegis. I know it's in Fronseline, but it ultimately boils down to the fact that it's because of the magisterium that is the authority of the church that tells us that this thing is to be believed. And then the reason it's to be believed is because it's an uninterrupted tradition from the time of Christ and it contains those things necessary for salvation. It's because they tell us is why we actually have to give ascent, which is ultimately why they that's why the authors end up talking about what happens if certain magisterial members start deviating from the tradition. And which is what we have to believe. They say well then ultimately you have to fall back to what the tradition itself which still contains the authority as it has been proposed throughout tradition or throughout history. So I mean for me it would be that the primary distinguishing factor is the authority, which is precisely why the tradition in Catholicism and the tradition in Protestantism is different because we actually think there is somebody who has authority and they may or may not.