I am not directing anything at you. The Catholic religion though
has a lot of practices and beliefs that are not biblical but traditional.
There are a few that even go against biblical teaching.
The Pharisees and Sadducees did the same thing.
Who were the Sadducees and the Pharisees?
The article does a decent enough job, though it has the problem of attempting to frame the Pharisees and Sadducees from a specifically Evangelical perspective which, frankly, seems to skew things.
The Sadducees, largely from the aristocratic familes of Judea, had been the people of power since the days of the Hasmonean dynasty following the Maccabean revolt that overthrew the Seleucids and returned independence to the Jewish people, at least temporarily until Pompeii conquered the region for Julius Caesar. The Sadducees as a religious sect accepted only the Torah, the five books of Moses, and thus anything not directly contained therein was fruitless. Ergo they rejected writings largely accepted by other Jewish groups (notably the Pharisees) such as the Prophets and Psalms, and they also rejected the teachings of the rabbis and sages who relied on the Prophets and Psalms and who were responsible for what mainstream Judaism looked like by the first century AD.
It is impossible to comprehend Jesus except within the Jewish world of first century Judea. Jesus, as far as the Judaism He practiced, was distinctively Pharisaical.
Where Jesus is critical of the religious establishment His criticism is not that the Pharisees adhered to the "traditions of the elders", but when and where tradition or religious exercise became a matter of hypocrisy and used as a blunt weapon to harm and to hurt the "least of these". What does the Lord say about the Pharisees? He says to His disciples that they must do as the Pharisees say because they sit in Moses' seat. It isn't the preaching and the teaching of the Pharisees that is the problem, it is when people in religious authority take and use religion as a weapon. When becoming so focused on religious purity or religious piety that it becomes a self-justification for sin, for acting hypocritical, for being a jerk to others.
Jesus certainly doesn't condemn the Pharisees because they gather together in synagogues and follow a proscribed liturgy. Jesus never condemns the Pharisees for observing Hannukkah (and, in John's Gospel, we see Jesus in fact celebrating Hannukkah Himself).
It isn't that the Pharisees adhered to religious traditions received from their elders, the sages and rabbis that came before them, that Jesus is critical. It is that many of those in positions of religious authority abused that authority for selfish ends, using that authority to act self-righteous and hypocritical. To use religious as a weapon against the weak, the poor, and the outcast--the very people that, if we go back to the Prophets, God very clearly instructs His people to care for.
Jesus went to the lepers and chastised the religious establishment for mistreating them. Jesus went to tax collectors and prostitutes and said their sins were forgiven and that these could be friends of God. Jesus turned to Zaccheus and says, "Come down from that tree, let's go have supper." When Jesus comes into contact with the woman caught in adultery He says, "Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more."
Because for Jesus it isn't that all the religious things the Pharisees did were in and themselves wrong or a problem, it was that the religious establishment had forgotten that God said, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice", that they should not have forgotten the weightier matters of Torah--mercy and justice.
So if the only thing you're getting from the Gospels is "traditions are bad" then you've so completely missed the point that it isn't even remotely funny.
Here's the real point: When you spend all day so concerned with how pious and "holy" you are that you refuse to touch the sick or kneel down with the broken, you are nothing more than a white washed tomb, a sepulcher filled with dry, dead bones.
Or let's consider what the Apostle says:
"
If I could speak both the languages of men or angels, but have not love, I am but a sounding gong or a noisy cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries, and if I have the faith that can even move mountains but lack love I am nothing."
Our Lord tells a story about a tax collector and a Pharisee coming to the Temple. The Pharisee stands proud and bragging, loudly declaring his righteousness, and thanks God that he is not like all these other sinners--especially the tax collector. Then the tax collector dares not even look up to heaven, but merely beats his chest saying, "God have mercy on me, a sinner."
Who walked out of the temple justified that day?
If you do not understand that Jesus was condemning hypocrisy and the abuse of religion as a weapon against others, then you have completely failed to understand what Jesus is saying.
But I suppose it's a lot easier to go look at Christians who "act funny" in your imagination, and to say "Oh, they're just like the people Jesus condemned." Rather than going ahead, looking in the mirror, and finding that large log stuck about 2/3 into your eye socket. It's a lot easier than having to read our Lord say, "Woe to those who are rich." and "Woe to those who are full." Or to hear the Master say "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Love your enemy" and "God sends His rain upon the just and unjust alike" and "Be merciful even as your Father is merciful, for He is kind even to the thankless and the wicked." Or else, "Whatever you did not do to the least of these you did not do it unto Me. Depart from Me, I never knew you."
-CryptoLutheran
