Those who are devoted to the interests of the Vatican....

I came across this nugget after a number of hours trying to track down a context to a Luther quote:

The venerable champions of Protestantism, the Rev. Joseph Mendham and the Rev. George Stanley Faber, repeatedly warn their readers to accept with the greatest reserve and caution any statement, theological or otherwise, of a startling nature from the pen of a Romanist, and to reject it until verified by a careful examination of the originals. But, as their testimony may be deemed partial, I will add the remarkable testimony given in the Translator's preface of Dr. Dollinger's "Fables respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages," a translation undertaken with the sanction of the author,—himself a Romanist. The charge of literary fraud indulged in by Roman Catholic writers is thus delicately expressed :—

"It is impossible to live long among those who are devoted to the interests of the Vatican, or to read much of the literature that is written in support of those interests, without feeling that the conception of truth entertained by those advocates is a saddening travesty of the sacred reality. In some cases the sense of truth, the love of truth for its own sake,— nay, even the very power of discriminating between truth and falsehood,—seems almost lost"!

source and primary source

By the way, the quote I was looking for turned out to be spurious. Of course, not every person in communion with Rome quotes sources poorly. However, in my Luther studies, more often than not, truth is slain in the street.

Quotes on Tradition (partim-partim)

Reason for these quotes outlined here.

"A rule of faith, or a competent guide to heaven, must be able to instruct in all the truths necessary for salvation. Now the Scriptures alone do not contain all the truths which a Christian is bound to believe, nor do they explicitly enjoin all the duties which he is obliged to practice. Not to mention other examples, is not every Christian obliged to sanctify Sunday and to abstain on that day from unnecessary servile work? Is not the observance of this law among the most prominent of our sacred duties? But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.

The Catholic Church correctly teaches that our Lord and His Apostles inculcated certain important duties of religion which are not recorded by the inspired writers.[See John xxi. 25; II. Thess. ii. 14.] For instance, most Christians pray to the Holy Ghost, a practice which is nowhere found in the Bible.

We must, therefore, conclude that the Scriptures alone cannot be a sufficient guide and rule of faith because they cannot, at any time, be within the reach of every inquirer; because they are not of themselves clear and intelligible even in matters of the highest importance, and because they do not contain all the truths necessary for salvation."

-The Faith of Our Fathers

The Absurdity of Separated Brethren

Before Protestants were "separated brethren"...

Q. Does the Lord make use of apostate Catholics, such as Martin Luther, Calvin, John Knox, Henry VIII., King of England, to reform the manners of the people?

A. The thought is absurd. The lives of those men were evil, and it is only the devil that makes use of them to pervert the people still more. The Lord makes use of His saints, such as a St. Francis of Assisium, a St. Dominick, a St. Ignatius, a St. Alphonsus, to convert the people and reform their evil manners by explaining to them the truths of faith, the commandments, and the necessity of receiving the sacraments with proper dispositions, and by setting them in their own lives the loftiest example of faith, purity, and all Christian virtues.

Q. Are there any other reasons to show that heretics, or Protestants who die out of the Roman Catholic Church, are not saved?

A. There are several. They cannot be saved, because

1. They have no divine faith.

2. They make a liar of Jesus Christ, of the Holy Ghost, and of the Apostles.

3. They have no faith in Christ.

4. They fell away from the true Church of Christ.

5. They are too proud to submit to the Pope, the Vicar of Christ.

6. They cannot perform any good works whereby they can obtain heaven.

7. They do not receive the Body and Blood of Christ.

8. They die in their sins.

9. They ridicule and blaspheme the Mother of God and His saints.

10. They slander the spouse of Jesus Christ —:the Catholic Church.

Q. What is the act of faith of a Protestant?

A. O my God, I believe nothing except what my own private judgment tells me to believe; therefore I believe that I can interpret Thy written word—the Holy Scriptures —as I choose. I believe that the Pope is anti-Christ; that any man can be saved, provided he is an honest man; I believe that faith alone is sufficient for salvation; that good works, and works of penance, and the confession of sins are not necessary, etc.

Q. Have Protestants any faith in Christ?

A. They never had.

Q. Why not?

A. Because there never lived such a Christ as they imagine and believe in.

Q. In what kind of a Christ do they believe?

A. In such a one of whom they can make a liar, with impunity, whose doctrine they can interpret as they please, and who does not care about what a man believes, provided he be an honest man before the public.

Q. Will such a faith in such a Christ save Protestants?

A. No sensible man will assert such an absurdity.

Familiar Explanation of Christian Doctrine
For the Family and More Advanced Students in Catholic Schools (1875)
(pgs 70, 91-93, 97-98; with imprimatur)

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"One particular area of theological study is joint study of the Bible and the Qur'an. We need to read our scriptures together and, let me suggest, we need to bring our scholars together for sessions of joint exegesis. By interpreting our scriptures together, we gain valuable insight not only into the message of the scriptures but how the scriptures themselves have been lived by the generations. Common themes will be found, and differences in teachings and beliefs will be noted. We will also learn from one another how we approach the diversity of texts in Scripture and how Scripture relates to that body of literature we call, for want of a better term, Tradition. We can open for one another classical methods of interpretation and commentary on Scripture and modern methods too. The benefits could be enormous, not only for mutual understanding but also for broadening our own views and growing in our respect for the ways that God continues to work among all of us."

-United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

28 Q: Is the reading of the Bible necessary to all Christians?
A: The reading of the Bible is not necessary to all Christians since they are instructed by the Church; however its reading is very useful and recommended to all.

32 Q: What should a Christian do who has been given a Bible by a Protestant or by an agent of the Protestants?
A: A Christian to whom a Bible has been offered by a Protestant or an agent of the Protestants should reject it with disgust, because it is forbidden by the Church. If it was accepted by inadvertence, it must be burnt as soon as possible or handed in to the Parish Priest.

33 Q: Why does the Church forbid Protestant Bibles?
A: The Church forbids Protestant Bibles because, either they have been altered and contain errors, or not having her approbation and footnotes explaining the obscure meanings, they may be harmful to the Faith. It is for that same reason that the Church even forbids translations of the Holy Scriptures already approved by her which have been reprinted without the footnotes approved by her.

-Catechism of St. Pius

Catholic Co-Redeemers

“In order truly to venerate the Cross, however, we need to do more than just kiss it. We need to EMBRACE it as a way of life. That’s what Jesus clearly WANTS us to do and CALLS us to do. He never said to us, “I’m taking up the Cross so that you don’t have to.” Rather he said, “If you wish to be my disciple, you must deny yourself, pick up your Cross every day, and follow me” and “whoever does not pick up the Cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” We’re here because we want to be the disciples of the Lord, we want to follow him all the way to heaven. But to do this, we need to follow him to Calvary, we need to walk the Way of the Cross. To be a disciple, as Archbishop O’Malley stressed in his installation homily a month ago in Boston, means to embrace the Cross. Many Catholics when they hear this command think that embracing the Cross means “offering up” their hardships, their difficulties, their pain, bearing with peaceful resignation the contradictions of the day. That is part of it, but, actually, a small part of it. To embrace the Cross means to kiss Christ’s love and to imitate it. Jesus said, in the greatest of all commandments, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Picking up our Cross and following the Lord means following him down the path of self-giving sacrificial love. Jesus, in fact, gives us the Cross so that we, like him, might DIE on it, die to ourselves for others, so that he might live fully in us...The most beautiful reality is that when we do this, we not only abide in Christ and he in us — and share in the fullness of salvation — but we become co-redeemers with Christ. St. Paul experienced this reality as well, when he said, “In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross — which saved the world — always intended to be united to our sacrifices united with him on the Cross. That’s what occurs when we are his disciples, picking up our Crosses every day, dying to ourselves on them, so that he might live in us and we may co-redeem with him.” source

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"Individual interpretation of the Bible—the most sublime but also the most difficult Book ever penned—can never bring satisfaction, can never give infallible certainty, can never place a man in possession of that great objective body of truth which Our Blessed Lord taught, and which it is necessary to salvation that all should believe. The experience of many centuries proves it. It can not do so because it was never meant to do so. It produces not unity, but division; not peace, but strife. Only listening to those to whom Jesus Christ said, 'He that heareth you heareth Me,' only sinking his own fads and fancies and submitting with childlike confidence to those whom the Redeemer sent out to teach in His Name and with His authority—only this, I say, will satisfy a man, and give to his intellect repose, and to his soul a 'peace that surpasseth all understanding'. Then no longer will he be tormented with contentious disputings about this passage of the Bible and that, no longer racked and rent and 'tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine', changing with the changing years. He will, on the contrary, experience a joy and comfort and certainty that nothing can shake in being able to say, 'O my God, I believe whatever Thy Holy Catholic Church believes and teaches, because Thou hast revealed it Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived.' God grant that many Bible-readers and Bible-lovers may obtain the grace to make this act of faith, and pass from an unreasoning subservience to a Book to reasonable obedience and submission to its maker and defender—the Catholic and Roman Church."

-Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church

Catholic Quotable

"Again, it is illogical to base faith upon the private interpretation of a book. For faith consists in submitting; private interpretation consists in judging. In faith by hearing, the last word rests with the teacher; in private judgment it rests with the reader, who submits the dead text of Scripture to a kind of post-mortem examination and delivers a verdict without appeal: he believes in himself rather than in any higher authority."

-Catholic Encyclopedia