re: Much Needed Clarity Regarding the Pope and the Recent Document Regarding Blessings

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What about the biblical narrative?

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What biblical narrative are you talking about?

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Matthew and John reference Jesus' brothers and sisters. In Galatians 1:19, Paul refers to James as "the" Lord's brother (using the definite article).

Then there's the Jewish historian, Josephus, who mentions that James is the Lord's brother, too.

I'd say that's sufficient evidence that predates the later traditions of men.

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Only if you fail to understand the Greek in which Josephus and the gospel writers used.

This problem emerges in understanding the meaning of the word "brother." In the original text of the gospel, we find the Greek word adelphos, meaning "brothers," used. However, adelphos does not just mean blood brothers born of the same parents. Rather, adelphos was used to describe brothers not born of the same parents, like a half-brother or step-brother.

The confusion originates in Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of most of the original Old Testament texts and of Christ. In these languages, no special word existed for cousin, nephew or aunt, half-brother or half-sister, or step-brother or step-sister. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek and the New Testament written in Greek, the word adelphos was used to capture all of these meanings for male relatives.

Interestingly, the Orthodox Churches solve this problem over brothers and sisters by speculating that St. Joseph was a widower who had other children before he married Mary. These brothers and sisters would really then be half-brothers and half-sisters. Perhaps this notion is why St. Joseph sometimes appears elderly in paintings.

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Not according to the Bible.

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The above is more than adequate to prove your assertion wrong.

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Catholics look to Tradition as the supreme rule for the faith by using it to define and interpret everything else, including God's word, while Protestants look to the Bible as the final arbiter of truth.

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Wrong again, I'm afraid. The Catholic Church relies on THREE things as to its supreme rule of faith: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium. We look to Sacred Scripture for the Word of God, Sacred Tradition to see how the earliest Christians interpreted that Word, and the Magisterium to rule on doctrine and dogma based on Scripture and Tradition.

The main problem for Protestants is they rely on their own personal interpretation of Scripture (or their pastor's) and if they don't like what they're hearing they go off and form their own church based on their reading of a passage in scripture. It's probably why there are dozens of major Protestant dominations with hundreds (even thousands) of subsets all teaching something a little different and all claiming to be guided by the Holy Spirit.

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But more to your point: the reason why some of us are picking nits with the magisterium is precisely because we're trying to show a double standard. Catholics look at confusion, lack of clarity, and lack of unity in churches that subscribe to sola scriptura as an evidence that the doctrine is not true while substituting a different standard that also produces confusion, lack of clarity, and lack of unity in the RCC regarding doctrines.

I'd suggest not continuing to press disunity in Protestantism as a criticism against sola scriptura.

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I don't think you get to just suggest that Catholics stop pressing on the most glaring weakness of sola scriptura.

What you are calling "confusion, lack of clarity, and lack of unity in the RCC" (1) does not undermine Church's teaching authority as stated by the Church and (2 - more importantly) is absolutely minuscule when compared to confusion, lack of clarity, and lack of unity that exists among protestants who hold to sola scriptura. And it's very fair for Catholics to point it out. The only, logical end of sola scriptura is what we see in Protestantism today: disunity. Because, like it or not, scripture taken in a vacuum can and will be interpreted in many ways. Again, I point to modern adherents of sola scriptura as proof of this.

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.”
-Aristotle

Do you believe that the Bible as we know it is inspired and is 100% correct? If so, which English version do you consider correct and “the truth”? Just curious.

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an "extended" ending to the Gospel of Mark in some manuscripts.

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Ahh the ending of the snake handling wackos.

The women ran away in fear and told no one…
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And then they told everyone!

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However, there is nothing we have from those earliest manuscripts that would indicate major changes in the text. Certainly nothing that would impact theology.

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How do you react when you find things in scripture that contradict? Stories that tell the events in a way that cannot be reconciled? Doesn’t bother you? Do you think the original stories were all correct, and that they’ve been corrupted over time by copying?

ETA: there’s at least 5 different endings to the gospel of Mark out of the known manuscripts.

Jeremiah 8:8

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“How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.

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How do you react when you find things in scripture that contradict? Stories that tell the events in a way that cannot be reconciled?

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Because they don’t really contradict.
Example of a true story told by two diff people who both witnessed the event.

My version: last year my cousin shot an 8 point buck.

My cousins version.
This hunting season I shot a deer.
It had two broken shoulders but didn’t die. I had to drive to the store to buy more bullets.
Two hrs later it took two more shots to finish the deer.
It scored 135 Boone and Crocker as a 7 point.

Both stories are 100% true. But a casual reader who knows nothing about deer hunting would not think so.

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In the case of the gospels, yeah...there are contradictions in the sequence of events

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Quite refreshing that a believer would admit this. There’s too many kooks on this site that cannot form a logical argument because they claim there’s no contradictions.

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Eyewitness testimony will always have contradictions because human beings are not always 100% reliable in their recollection of events. Especially when those events are stress-inducing or life-altering. The human mind sometimes plays tricks on us.

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That’s true. I’d argue though that the gospels, even the whole Bible, is of the genre that does not include eyewitness testimony, though I understand that is probably what you believe. Take the gospel of Mark - the ending where the women run off and tell no one because they were afraid… if they didn’t tell anyone, who wrote the story about what happened? In my opinion the scriptures are not historical and they aren’t even written in the genre of a historical document.

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The only, logical end of sola scriptura is what we see in Protestantism today: disunity. Because, like it or not, scripture taken in a vacuum can and will be interpreted in many ways. Again, I point to modern adherents of sola scriptura as proof of this.

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Are you aware that it’s fallible men who deciphers and construct Catholic theology?!

You mis understand my point.
I am not a literalist

You seem to have invested a lot of time trying prove something wrong that Catholics never believed in. In the first place.
No Catholic would ever disagree with your point.
But your point doesn’t prove the Bible is not historical lol

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Are you aware that it’s fallible men who deciphers and construct Catholic theology?!

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Yes.

Fallible men *with Christ's teaching authority* to whom he promised the Holy Spirit would come.