What methodology does the Catholic Church teach?

Answer 1

Catholic Answer

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Below is the definition of Methodology from Fr. Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, which explains that is basic to Christianity in teaching Christians what they need to know to gain eternal life, in other words how to love God and their neighbors, how to live. The basic assumption that I have seen in protestant methodology is that they believe everything must be based on The Bible. As the Church did not approve and put together a New Testament canon until the very end of the fourth century (by Pope Damasus and the Council of Rome) and some of those books were not even written until two generations after Christ died, it would be vain to base your Christian beliefs on a set of books that didn't even exist when Christ taught His apostles how to live. If Our Blessed Lord had thought such a book was necessary, I'm very sure that before He allowed us to crucify Him, He would have given us the printing press and ensured universal literacy. We did not have the first until fifteen centuries after His crucifixion and ascension, and the we didn't have the second until nineteen centuries after, and still don't have it everywhere, so the basic methodology of the protestants is irredeemably flawed even before they begin. Catholic methodology is based on the teaching of Christ, what is called Sacred Tradition - part of which was later written down to form the New Testament, so yes the Bible is part of that Sacred Tradition. But it is the Sacred Tradition that is the forms the Methodology.

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from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

Methodology. Either a system of principles and procedures applied to a given study or discipline, or the underlying principles that govern a certain activity. Methodology is an essential part of the Christian religion, which not only teaches the faithful what they are to do to gain eternal life, but also tells them how and why they are to save their souls. .

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

Tradition: The sum of revealed doctrine which has not been committed to sacred Scripture (though it may have appeared in uninspired writing) but which has been handed down by a series of legitimate shepherds of the Church from age to age. As revelation is must have come to the Apostles directly from the lips of Christ or been handed down by the Apostles at the dictation of the Holy Ghost. More broadly the term is used for the sum of doctrine revealed either in Scripture or by word of mouth: so in 2 Thess. ii, 14: "Hold by the traditions you have learned, in word or in writing, from us."

from The Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, English translation 1994

81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit." (Dei Verbum 9)"And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound, and spread it aboard by their preaching.