"Nothing may be taken away, or added."
Ecclesiasticus 18: 5
Some important quotes from the Bible and the saints to understand more about the Catholic Tradition and the Faith:
"For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this Book: if any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this Book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the Book, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life and out of the Holy City."
Apocalypse 22: 18-19
"You shall not add to the word that I speak to you, neither shall you take away from it."
Deuteronomy 4: 2
"To the Testament once confirmed, no one adds anything further. Shall another writing change God's writing?"
St. Pacian
"It is unlawful to add anything to the words of Holy Scripture regarding the sense".
St. Thomas Aquinas
"Speak all the words I have commanded you . . . Do not leave out one word!"
Jeremias 26: 2
"Nothing can ever pass away from the words of Christ, nor can anything be changed in the doctrine which the Catholic Church received from Christ to guard, protect, and preach."
Ven. Pope Pius IX
"It is therefore necessary to receive these Divine oracles integrally, in the same sense in which they have been kept, and are still being kept, by this Roman Chair of Blessed Peter. Mother and Mistress of all the churches, She has always kept whole and inviolate, and taught to the faithful, the faith given by the Lord Jesus Christ, showing all the faithful the way of salvation and the doctrine of uncorrupted truth."
Ven. Pope Pius IX
"The Church must persist in the teaching transmitted to her by Christ."
Pope John Paul II
"Our teaching may contain nothing impious, nothing diluted."
St. Gregory Nazianzen
"I cannot sufficiently be astonished that such is the insanity of some men, such the impiety of their blinded understanding, such, finally, their lust after error, that they will not be content with the rule of faith delivered once and for all from antiquity, but must daily seek after something new, and even newer still, and are always longing to add something to religion, or to change it, or to subtract from it!"
St. Vincent of Lerins
"The nature of the Catholic faith is such that nothing can be added to it, nothing taken away. Either it is held in its entirety or it is rejected totally. This is the Catholic faith which, unless a man believes faithfully ann firmly, he cannot be saved."
Pope Benedict XV
"Fly to the Catholic Church! Adhere to the only faith which continues to exist from the beginning, that faith which was preached by Paul and is upheld by the Chair of Peter."
St. Hippolytus of Rome
"This Apostolic Church never turned from the way of truth nor held any kind of error. It is imperative that nothing of the truths which have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but that they be preserved intact in word and meaning. This is the true rule of faith."
Pope St. Agatho the Wonderworker
"And I hold it not with the understanding that a thing can be held which seems better and more suited to the culture of a certain age, but in such a way that nothing else is to be believed than by the words; and I hold that this absolute and unchangeable truth preached by the Apostles from the earliest times is to be understood in no way other than by the words."
Oath Against Modernism
"Diabolical error decks itself out with ease in lying colors with some appearance of truth, so that the force of pronouncement is corrupted by a very brief addition or change, and the confession of faith which should have resulted in salvation, by a subtle transition leads to death!"
Pope Clement XIII
"With the Father of Lights, there is no change nor shadow of alteration."
St. James 1: 17
"God's Word is one and the same, and, as it is written, "The Word of God endures forever" unchanged, not before or after another, but existing the same always."
St. Athanasius
"My words that I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever."
Isaias 59: 21
"Add not anything to His words, lest you be reproved and be found a liar."
Proverbs 30: 6
"The present or "current" teaching of the Church does not admit of a development that is either a reversal or a contradiction."
Pope John Paul II
"For it is not now that the canons and statutes have been given to the churches; on the contrary, they have been well-transmitted and steadfastly handed down from our fathers. Neither is it now that the faith has begun, but it has come down to us from the Lord through His disciples."
St. Athanasius
"Let us regard the tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a tradition? Seek no further!"
St. John Chrysostom
"Change nothing; be content with tradition."
St. Cyprian
"The preaching of the Church truly continues without change and is everywhere the same. It has the testimony of the Prophets and Apostles and all their disciples."
St. Irenaeus of Lyons
"Therefore, no one is allowed to profess or to write up or compose or devise or teach a different faith."
Council of Chalcedon
"God forbid we should falsify our faith!"
St. Aithalas
"Heretical teachers pervert Scripture and try to get into Heaven with a false key, for they have formed their human assemblies later than the Catholic Church. From this previously-existing and most true Church, it is very clear that these later heresies, and others which have come into being since then, are counterfeit and novel inventions."
Pope St. Clement I
"Let nothing novel be introduced!"
Pope Pius XII
"Avoid the profane novelty of words," St. Paul says (1 Timothy 6: 20) . . . For if novelty is to be avoided, antiquity is to be held tight to; and if novelty is profane, antiquity is sacred."
St. Vincent of Lerins
"The ancient doctrines must be confirmed, but novel and absurd inventions must be condemned and cast aside."
St. Cyril of Alexandria
"Why cast yourself over a cliff, deciding in your writings about things of which you are ignorant? Why do you not keep to what you have received from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church? You introduce novelties!"
St. Eusebius of Caesaria
"The devil is always discovering something novel against the truth."
Pope St. Leo the Great
"To announce, therefore, to Catholic Christians anything besides that which they have received has never been lawful, is lawful nowhere, and never will be lawful; and to anathematize those who announce anything besides that which has been once received has always been necessary. This being the case, is there anyone of such audacity as to teach other than that which has already been taught in the Church, or anyone of such levity as to receive anything besides that which he has once received from the Church? St. Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, cries aloud, and he cries out loud again and again, to all men, to all times, and to all places that, if anyone announces a new dogma, let him be anathematized!"
St. Vincent of Lerins
"Wherefore, by the authority of Apostolic power, We declare inventors of novel notions, which as the Apostle Paul has said are of no edification, but rather are practiced to beget most foolish questions, are to be deprived of the communion of the Church."
Pope St. Innocent I
"I have neither permitted, nor shall I permit, the things which have been settled by the holy fathers to be violated by any innovation."
Pope St. Leo the Great
"This custom has always prevailed in the Church: that, the more religious a man was, the more promptly did he withstand novel inventions."
St. Vincent of Lerins
"We do not innovate anything . . . How is it that novelties are introduced which were never even thought of by our predecessors?"
St. Ambrose
"All novelty in faith is a sure mark of heresy."
St. Vincent of Lerins
"It is impossible that I sanction any novelty against the faith."
St. Germanus of Constantinople
"Any innovation in matters of faith is extremely pernicious and utterly damnable!"
St. John Eudes
"New revelations regarding faith or morals . . . have always been abhorred and challenged in the Church . . . Hence, the Sovereign Pontiffs, the Councils, and the Fathers have been most careful to reject all novelties or new doctrines on matters of faith which differed from those already received."
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori
"Let nothing new be introduced, but only what has been handed down."
Pope Benedict XV
"Nothing new is to be accepted except what has been handed down by tradition."
St. Vincent of Lerins
"Let whoever attempts to disseminate anything other than what we have received be anathema. Let no approach be open to the pernicious plans of undermining, let no pledge of revising any of the old definitions be granted, for what has deserved to be cut away . . . is clearly destined to eternal fire."
Pope St. Simplicius
"Whoever does not always and everywhere keep to and hold fast as a sure protection the confession which we recorded at our first admission constitutes himself a stranger from the promises of God."
St. Basil the Great
"I am fully resolved in all things touching my faith, which faith I acknowledge to be the same Jesus Christ left to His Apostles, and they to their successors from time to time, and is taught in the Catholic Church through all Christendom, and promised to remain with her unto world's end, and Hell-gates shall not prevail against it; and by God's assistance I mean to live and die in the same faith; for if an Angel come from Heaven and preach any other doctrine than we have received, the Apostle biddeth us not believe him. My faith is already stayed, and I purpose not to seek for any new doctrines."
St. Margaret Clitherow
"Wherefore, as touching our faith, if there be revealed to us anything new or different, we must in no way give our consent to it, not even though we had evidence that it was spoken by an Angel from Heaven."
St. John of the Cross
"But though we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach a Gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you: let him be anathema!"
Galatians 1: 8
"Take and hold only that faith which is now delivered to you by the Church and defended out of all the Scriptures . . . Besides this faith, never receive any other; not even if we ourselves, having changed, should contradict what we now teach-----not even if an opposing Angel, transformed into an Angel of light, should wish to lead you astray."
St. Cyril of Jerusalem
"Neither do we allow ourselves or anyone else to alter a word which has been set down, or even to omit one solitary syllable."
St. Cyril of Alexandria
"It is not lawful to differ even by a single word from the evangelical and apostolic doctrine, or to think otherwise than as the blessed Apostles and our fathers learned and taught concerning the Holy Scriptures."
Pope St. Leo the Great
"You know that men who wish to assert a dogma of any kind . . . obstinately force it by their own interpretation. But the word of the Apostle, forestalling this, brands it by saying: "If anyone shall preach to you something other than that which you have received, let him be anathema" (Galatians 1: 8-9); wherefore, after the things which were delivered by the Apostles once and for all, the followers of Christ must not receive anything else whatsoever beyond that."
Diodorus of Tarsus
"Nothing new is allowed, for nothing can be added to the old. Look for the faith of the elders, and do not let our faith be disturbed by a mixture of new doctrines."
Pope St. Sixtus III
"Let each one of you, holding fast to the faith received from the fathers, refuse to tolerate those who attempt to innovate in opposition to the faith."
St. Athanasius
"This being the state of the question, novelty should cease attacking antiquity!"
Pope St. Celestine I
"The rule of piety admits nothing new. All things are to be delivered to those who come after us with the same fidelity with which they were received by us. It is our duty to follow religion, not make religion follow us."
St. Vincent of Lerins
"God commands us to believe . . . an unchangeable faith."
Catechism of Trent
"Absolute truth must be unchangeable!"
Pope St. Pius X
"The true religion has always been one from the beginning, and will always be the same."
St. Augustine
"For whatever alters and changes, and has no stability in one and the same condition, how can it be true? . . . From where, then, did irreligious men draw forth their novelty? From their own heart, as from a seat of corruption, they vomited it forth!"
St. Athanasius
"We all have only one doctrine; this is the faith of the Doctors of the Church; this is the faith of the holy Apostles; this is the faith which has saved the world."
Council of Chalcedon
"One faith," St. Paul writes (Ephesians 4: 5). Hold most firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church . . . We must hold this for certain, namely: that the faith of the people at the present day is one with the faith of the people in past centuries. Were this not true, then we would be in a different Church than they were in and, literally, the Church would not be One."
St. Thomas Aquinas
"The Church of Christ, therefore, is one and the same forever."
Pope Leo XIII
"The true religion has always been one from the beginning, and will always be the same."
St. Augustine
"The truth of the Catholic Church is demonstrated by its constant uniformity of doctrine in the dogmas of faith, from its first foundation by Jesus Christ. It has been the same in all ages, so that the truths which we believe at the present day were believed in the first ages . . .The innovators call these truths of faith "errors," but how could these errors in matters of faith exist in the first ages of our Church which even the adversaries admit was then the true Church of Christ? . . . And how could God have permitted such enormous errors to reign in His Church from its origin until such time as the "new teachers"-----Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin-----came to dissipate them? No! This Church was the true Church from the beginning, and has always been the true Church . . . Oh, God! How does it happen that these new "masters of faith" came to dissipate them? No! This Church was the true Church from the beginning, and has always been the true Church . . . Oh, God! How does it happen that these new "masters of faith' do not see that, being separated from the Catholic Church and having lost obedience to her, they have also the Rule of Faith, so that at present they have no certain rule by which they can ascertain what is of faith and what is not!"
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori
"We are not, therefore, teachers of a doctrine drawn from human minds, but-----conscious of our charge-----we ought to embrace and follow that which Christ Our Lord taught and Whose teaching, by a solemn commandment, He committed to His Apostles and to their successors . . . Moreover, since We are very certain that this doctrine which we must safeguard in all its integrity is Divinely revealed, We repeat the words of the Apostle of the Nations: "But though we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach to you a Gospel besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema" (Galatians 1: 8)."
Pope Pius XII
"We anathematize those who presume to teach or explain any other creed."
Pope Vigilius
"We preserve the law of the Fathers; we anathematize those who add or subtract anything."
II Council of Nicaea
"Is the hierarchy perhaps free to teach what they find most to their liking on matters of religion, or what they expect will be most pleasing to the proponents of certain current views opposed to all doctrine? Certainly not! The prime duty of the episcopate is to transmit strictly and faithfully the original message of Christ, the sum total of the truths which He revealed and confided to the Apostles as necessary for salvation."
Pope Paul VI
"The sacred deposit of truth must be safeguarded. It is absolutely vital that the Church never for an instant lose sight of the holy patrimony of truth inherited from the Fathers . . . This is the certain and unchangeable doctrine to which the faithful owe obedience."
Pope John XXIII
"I accept with sincere belief the doctrine of faith as handed down to us from the Apostles by the orthodox Fathers, always in the same sense and with the same interpretation."
Pope St. Pius X
"No one is allowed to offer, write, or compose any faith other than that which was defined by the holy Fathers . . . Whoever shall dare to compose another faith shall be subject to anathema."
Council of Ephesus
"For it is not allowable for anyone to change even one word, nor do we allow one syllable to be passed over, mindful of the saying: "Do not cross the limits placed by the Fathers."
St. Cyril of Alexandria
If anyone according to wicked heretics in any manner whatsoever, by any word whatsoever, at any time whatsoever, or in any place whatsoever illicitly removes the boundaries firmly established by the holy Fathers of the Catholic Church . . . in order to seek for novelties and expositions of another faith . . . and, briefly, if it is customary for the most impious heretics to do anything else, should anyone through diabolical operation crookedly and cunningly act contrary to the pious preachings of the orthodox teachers of the Catholic Church, that is, its papal and conciliar proclamations, to the destruction of sincere confession unto the Lord our God, and persist without repentance unto the end: let such a person be condemned forever, and let all the people say: So be it! So be it!
Pope St. Martin I
If it be God's will, let us die for the holy laws of our Fathers, in order that we may arrive at the eternal inheritance with them. Let us not be dumb dogs, sleeping sentinels, hirelings who fly at the sight of a wolf; but watchful and diligent pastors, preaching to the great and the small, to the rich and the poor, to every age and condition, in season and out of season.
St. Boniface
The preaching of the faith has lost nothing of its relevance in our times. The Church has a sacred duty to proclaim it without any whittling-down, just as Christ revealed it, and no consideration of time or circumstance can lessen the strictness of this obligation.
Pope Pius XII
"Progress" of dogmas is, in reality, nothing but corruption of dogmas . . . I absolutely reject the heretical doctrine of the evolution of dogma, as passing from one meaning to another, and different from the sense in which the Church originally held it. And likewise, I condemn every error by which philosophical inventions, or creations of the human mind, or products elaborated by human effort and destined to indefinite progress in the future are substituted for that Divine Deposit given by Christ to the faithful custody of the Church . . . Condemned and proscribed is the error that dogmas are nothing but interpretations and evolutions of Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected the little seed hidden in the Gospel.
Pope St. Pius X
"The faithful must shun the opinion that dogmatic formulas cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but only offer changeable approximations to it. Those who hold such an opinion do not escape dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church's infallibility concerning truth . . . Relativism, which justifies everything and treats all things as of equal value, assails the absoluteness of Christian principles. There is no doubt that the meaning of dogmas declared by the Church is determinate and unalterable!"
Pope Paul VI
Those wretches tainted with the error of Indifferentism and Modernism hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute, but relative: that is, that it must adapt itself to the varying necessities of the times and the varying dispositions of souls, since it is not contained in an unchangeable revelation, but is, by its very nature, meant to accommodate itself to the life of man.
Pope Pius XI
Whoever heard such things as these? From where or from whom have the supporters and hirelings of this heresy learned them? Whoever uttered such things to those who were under instruction?
St. Athanasius
"It is enough to give just this one answer to heretics: These things are not of the Catholic Church; neither did the Fathers think like this!"
St. Athanasius
"A great safeguard is the entire faith, the true faith, in which neither anything whatever can be added by anyone nor anything taken away; for, unless faith be one, it is not the faith."
Pope St. Leo the Great
"We have not added, and we could not add, anything to the faith which the holy Fathers put forth; but we hold and will hold that same identical faith."
St. Gregory Nazianzen
"Let nothing of the truths that have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but let them be preserved intact in word and in meaning."
Pope Gregory XVI
We declare that no one is permitted to introduce, or to describe, or to compare, or to study, or otherwise to teach another faith. Whoever presumes to introduce or teach or pass on another creed . . . or whoever presumes to introduce a novel doctrine . . . We declare to be anathematized.
Pope St. Agatho the Wonderworker
With tears I beg, entreat, and exhort you, by the dreadful Day of Judgment and by the awe-filled light of the coming of Christ, that you hold fast the Catholic faith . . . If you remain constant, no distance nor death shall separate us.
St. Eugene of Carthage
Eternal truth never changes.
Padre Pio
The truth of the Lord endures forever.
Psalm 116: 2
Dogmas of faith cannot be altered a single jot or tittle.
St. Basil the Great
The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed like a theory of philosophy, to be elaborated upon by the human understanding, but as a Divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared. Therefore, that sense of sacred dogmas is to be kept forever which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and it must never be deviated from on the specious pretext of a more profound understanding. Let intelligence and science and wisdom increase, but only according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same meaning . . . If anyone shall have said that there may ever be attributed to the doctrines proposed by the Church a sense . . . which is different from the sense the Church has once understood and does now understand: let him be anathema.
I Vatican Council
We cannot change the ancient traditions.
St. Nicephorus
Under no circumstances can we conceive of the possibility of change, of evolution, or of any modification in matters of faith. The Creed remains always the same.
Pope Paul VI
From the time the Christian religion began to be spread, she has held unchangeable and taught uncorrupted throughout the world the doctrines which she has received once and for all from her patron and founder, Saint Peter.
Pope St. Nicholas the Great
The proposition that the principal articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same meaning for the Christians of the earliest times as they have for Christians of our time is hereby condemned and proscribed as erroneous.
Pope St. Pius X
True Christianity today is not different from primitive Christianity . . . She remains what she has been since her foundation: always the same.
Pope Pius XII
Be not led away with various and strange doctrines . . . Jesus Christ yesterday, and today, and the same forever!
Hebrews 13: 9, 8
It is an error to believe that Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and to all men, but rather that He inaugurated a religious movement adapted, or to be adapted, to different times and different places.
Pope St. Pius X
Christ's commandment to hear the Church . . . is binding on all men, in every period, and every country.
Pope Pius XI
Why have precepts of the Old Law been preserved for the New Law? Because they constitute what is essential and absolutely obligatory concerning the conduct of every man, from the very fact that he is man. These moral precepts, then, have always been and always will be the same for all men? Yes, these moral precepts have always been and always will be the same for all men.
Catechism of the Summa
This teaching is for every man; for all men have the same afflictions, and for this reason . . .the common remedies. This is the doing of the Divine Benevolence: that he who speaks and he who listens share the same nature and are subject to the same laws; so each one who offends against them is guilty alike.
St. John Chrysostom
God ordained for every man one and the same means of salvation.
Pope St. Leo the Great
There shall be all one law and judgment, both for you and for those who are strangers in the land.
Numbers 15: 15
All people and each individual man is called to come into the Church.
Pope Pius XII
Truth, which is simple and one, admits of no variety.
Pope St. Leo the Great
There is no other religion than this, and the rule of life is the same for everyone.
Bl. Theophanes Venard
There is in Sacred Scripture but one and the same rule of living and believing.
St. Bede the Venerable
Christ did not say: "I am the conventional thing," but "I am the Truth." You will not be judged according to the customs of Paris or Poitou, but according to the commandments of Christian law.
St. Benedict Joseph Labre
We are indeed little and lowly, but by God's grace we are always the same, and not molded by the changes of things. For, our faith is not different in Seleucia, different in Constantinople, different at Zelis, and different again at Lampsacus, and another faith at Rome, but always one and the same.
St. Basil the Great
By attempting to change the faith, which is unchangeable, faith is lost; heretics correct and amend, till, weary of all, they condemn everything.
St. Hilary of Poitiers
Beyond a doubt, they perish eternally who do not keep the Catholic faith entire and unchanged.
Pope Gregory XVI