The Teaching Authority of the Catholic Church

In recent discussions that my wife and I have had with others concerning the Catholic Faith, the question has arisen of why do Catholics look to the Church to give them the true interpretation of the Scriptures instead of interpreting the Bible for themselves? Well, besides the fact that the Bible itself calls the Church the "pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15), below I will quickly share the Biblical foundation and support for why Catholics look to the teaching authority of the Church (called the Magisterium) to teach and guide them into all truth.

First, one of the first things I learned about Biblical interpretation was that we are to seek to understand the Bible within the historical and cultural context in which it was written. That includes understanding words and phrases in the same way that the original writers and readers would have understood them. For example, if you were reading a book written in the 1920's, and it said that the people were having a "gay time," would you understand the author to be saying that the people were having a homosexual time? Of course not. You would understand the author to be saying that the people were having a happy and joyful time, since that is what the word "gay" meant in the historical and cultural context of the 1920's. We should do the same thing in reading the Bible. You will see below why I am saying this, and why it is important.