The Catholic Truth: Tradition Over the Bible

I've had a friendly discussion with a Born Again Christian pastor not so long ago. Of course, as an aspiring Augustinian Recollect priest, I had many questions and raised several topics which made the discourse last for nearly half an hour.

One of the two topics I liked the most in our discussion was about the Tradition and the Bible (the other was on salvation). He said that the Catholic church has "moved out" of the Biblical doctrines, giving strange terms and performing such extra-doctrinal rites. He added that the Baptist church sticks to "Bible over Tradition" while the Catholic Church does otherwise.

I've been living my life from that day thinking that what he said was wrong, until when I began to realize the truth in what the pastor said. Well, that is not because I'm giving up my faith.

Tradition, defined in the Catholic way, is the teaching authority (Magisterium) of the Holy Catholic Church (Mt. 16:18, Mt. 28:19-20). Before, there was no Bible to speak of. There were writings yes, but they were safeguarded by Christian communities who were hiding from the Romans thus, making the scriptures limited to the people. They weren't kept in caves or somewhere else which other "Christians" tell they were.

It's this: without the Catholic Tradition, we could not have availed of the Bible today. As you know, the word "Bible" comes from the Greek word "βιβλιος" which means "book." Mind you, the word "Bible" doesn't exist in any of the 73 books of the Bible. So, if the Catholic Tradition made it possible for a collection of divinely-inspired writings to be named as the "Bible", then the Tradition also made it possible to provide the name "Catholic" ("καθολικός": universal) for Christ's universal church (Mt. 28:19).

Also, it is because of Catholic tradition that we come to know the 73 books of the Holy Bible. And I know that the Catholic Bible has a seven-book "excess" over the Protestant, which has only 66. Before the Lutheran revolt in 1517, the Catholic Christian Bible (the Latin, or Vulgate edition, as compiled and translated by St. Jerome) has originally 73 books, and was later deducted by Luther. And in one of those seven books is where the concept "purgatory" can be found.

St. Jerome working on the Biblia Sacra Vulgata
(c) paintinghere.com 

It's because of the Protestant misconception and wrong definition of Tradition that makes the Catholic Church "very extra-Biblical," though normal human logic should make the former thankful to the latter.