Quotes from the Saint concerning Tradition
Pope Saint Felix III
"...Not to oppose error is to approve it, and not to defend truth is to suppress it. And indeed to neglect to confound evil men, is no less a sin than to encourage them."
Saint Athanasius, died 373 A.D.
"You are fortunate, you have remained in the Church through your faith. You hold fast to the foundations of the faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition...In the present crisis, it is they who have broken away from it."
Pope Saint Stephen I, Third Century
"Let them innovate in nothing, but keep the traditions."
Second Council of Nicea, Second Century
"If anyone rejects all ecclesiastical tradition, whether written or unwritten, let him be anathema."
Catechism of the Council of Trent, Sixteenth Century
"The true Church is also to be known from her origin, which she derives under the law of grace from the Apostles; for her doctrines are neither novel nor of recent origin, but were delivered of old by the Apostles and disseminated throughout the world."
Saint Athanasius
"No one, my beloved brethen, will ever prevail against your Faith. And we are confident that God will one day return our churches to us."
Saint Vincent de Lerins, died ca 445 A.D.
"What then shall the Catholic do if some portion of the Church detaches itself from communion of the universal Faith? What other choice can he make-and if some new contagion attempts to poison, no longer a small part of the Church, but the whole Church at once, then his great concern will be to attach himself to antiquity which can no longer be led astray by any lying novelty."
G. K. Chesterton, Twentieth Century
"The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns."
G. K. Chesterton
"When Christianity comes to terms with the world-it will be the end of Christianity."
Saint Jerome, Letters, 4th Century
"The best advice I can give you is this. Church traditions-especially when they do not run counter to the Faith-are to be observed in the form in which previous generations have handed them down..."
Saint Thomas Aquinas
"Hold firmly that our Faith is identical with that of the Ancients. Deny this and you dissolve the unity of the Church."
Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (8 Sept. 1907)
"Undoubtedly, were anyone to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the Faith and to concentrate into one sap and substance of them all, he could not succeed in doing so better than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have gone farther than this, for...their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion."
Saint Isidore, Etymologies, (7th Century)
"Therefore, heresy is from the Greek word meaning "choice"...but we are not permitted to believe whatever we choose, nor to choose whatever someone else has believed. We have the Apostles of God as authorities who did not choose what they would believe but faithfully transmitted the teachings of Christ. So, even if an angel from heaven should preach otherwise, he shall be called anathema."
Pope Pius XII, a few days before his death.
"The day the Church abandons Her universal tounge will be the day before She returns to the Catacombs."
Saint Vincent de Lerins, Commonitoria (5th Century)
"The Church of Chirst, zealous and cautious guardian of the dogmas deposited with it, never changes any phase of them. It does not diminish them or add to them; it neither trims what seems necessary nor grafts things superfluous...but it devotes all its diligence to one aim: to treat Tradition faithfully and wisely; to consolidate and to strengthen what already was clear, and to guard what already was confirmed and defined."
Saint Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition, (3rd Century)
"And now, through the love which He had for all the saints, having come to our most important topic we turn to the subject of the tradition which is proper for the churches, in order that those who have been rightly instructed may hold fast to the tradition which has continued until now, and fully understanding it...may stand the more firmly therein..."
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