Do Catholics or Protestants follow the Bible more closely?

The New Testament of the Bible is written by Catholic Christians and it is about the Catholic Church. The Bible obviously follows the Church. Contrasted to the Protestant churches use the Bible to support their man-made doctrines and practices without considering its broader contextual teaching. What results is cobbled together theology that supports preconceived conclusions. The Catholic Church has a different approach and that is to go to the Bible to learn instead. We do not need a book to base our beliefs on as we have our founder Christ a we represent His teaching in practice. We are His promises of an enduring Church that is free from apostasy because of the teaching authority He left on earth that remains through apostolic succession. Sometimes one has to study for things to make sense but study is much like when a athlete practices. His practice must be perfect for the athlete to become perfected. Practicing to do something incorrectly just makes one better at error. So too when you study you must use good source material otherwise you just get better at knowing what is false instead of the truth. Studying the Scriptures requires good teachers knowing sound doctrine. The Bible teaches us what happens to people who gather around them those teachers who satisfy our itching ears instead of those who teach the truth. It is through learning that we accept sound doctrine that is sometimes hard teaching as Jesus gave the example in the Synagogue in Capernaum in John 6 where almost all of His disciples left Him over His teaching to eat His Body and drink His blood. He said these hard teachings are not understood by reason or carnal and worldly knowledge but by faith through our spirit for those who are in Christ.

The Protestant churches are based on worldliness and secular humanist philosophy. Coming out of Scholasticism the world was prepared by Satan to receive false teaching. Many people found the Church repressive by demanding that to be in Christ we must be obedient to Christ in His Church. Out of pride they grew weary of a God and a Church that taught that our purpose was to serve God. They were susceptible to the teaching of a God that served man instead. This began the spread of schism and all kinds of false teaching. There are now well over 30,000 exponentially increasing schisms in the Church with each representing a wound to the Corpus Christi. We know that the Bible teaches us that we will know them by their fruits and the fruits of Protestantism is division and false teaching mixed with some truth.

So, in conclusion, The Catholic Church, Christ's own Church which inspired with the guidance of the Holy Spirit the New Testament Scriptures and canonized the entirety of the Christian Bible by all reason and scholarship must contradict the Bible the least of all. In this case the Church does not contradict the Bible in any sense but is the personification of the Bible and heaven on earth. God bless!

In Christ
Fr. Joseph