Gospel Reflection for The 15th day of June in the year of Our Lord, 2025
John 16:12-15
12 I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak; and the things that are to come, he shall shew you. 14 He shall glorify me; because he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you. 15 All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine. Therefore I said, that he shall receive of mine, and shew it to you.
The Douay Rheims again makes an essential point:
"Teach you all things": Here the Holy Ghost is promised to the apostles and their successors, particularly, in order to teach them all truth, and to preserve them from error.
As I have mentioned before, it is not Catholic teaching that anyone can open the Bible and fully understand it, guided by the Holy Spirit. The Bible, in fact, says the opposite when the eunuch answers that he cannot understand the scriptures and asks the apostle, Saint Philip, to explain them. However, this is the foundation of Protestant teaching - “Sola Scriptura” or the Bible alone, as the sole authority. On its face, this false doctrine is ridiculous. For nearly 400 years, Christians had no Bible. They had the Old Testament, although most could not read it. But more importantly, they had the teaching of the Apostles. Sacred Tradition was the sole authority and the only Christian teaching. But, beyond even that, Protestants make an incredible mistake in thinking that the words of the Bible are directed to each individual who reads it.
As I have discussed before, Jesus was speaking to His Apostles. He was speaking to individual men. He did not promise that the Holy Spirit would teach all truth to anyone, in any era who reads His words. Honestly, I am confounded by this illogical and presumptive Protestant doctrine. If I said to a friend or relative, “Bob, I will give you $1,000 on the 29th of the month,” and someone wrote it down.... how much sense would it make for someone to pick up the page upon which those words were written some 2,000 year prior and assume that I intended to give them $1,000? It would be even more ridiculous to assume that I would give this stranger, so many centuries after the words were written, $1,000 each month on the 29th. Yet, this is the presumption of Protestants. They fail to realized that Jesus was speaking to 12 individual men, 2,000 years ago. Many of His words were for them, not you or I now. He gave to them alone that promise. He also gave them the “power to bind and loose” so that individual men that they consecrated as their successors could share in this promise. He did not give this power to anyone else on earth and certainly not to anyone who just picks up a Bible and reads it.
From the very establishment of the Christianity, Jesus gave to one small group of men who were His Apostles the authority to interpret and write Holy Scripture and the authority to teach. He gave this to no one else. To think otherwise is presumption. Presumption is a sin against the Holy Spirit. Sins against the Holy Spirit are unforgivable because, in this instance, one who believes their own opinions over the one institution guaranteed by God to be guided by the Holy Spirit and without error, will not see the error of his ways due to the nature of their error. Presumption is a sin based on both arrogance and ignorance, and an arrogant person will not listen to correction. There is hope for the merely ignorant. I must state, with absolutely no pleasure, that all Protestant doctrine that differs with Catholic teaching is founded upon the mortal sin of presumption and must be rejected.
Judson Carroll is the author of several books, including his newest, A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings July-December, 2025 It is Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5BHFZ7X
and
Confirmation, an Autobiography of Faith. It is also Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNK
His podcast is The Uncensored Catholic https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-uncensored-catholic