Didn't Catholics slip extra books into the Bible to fit their doctrine?

🔥The question: “The Catholic Bible has more Old Testament books, so didn't you add them later?”

🛡️The Church's answer: Catholics did not insert new books after the Reformation to fit their doctrine. Alongside the Hebrew Scripture tradition of Judaism, the early Christians widely read the Greek Scriptures, which also included what is now the deuterocanon of the Catholic Old Testament. Over several centuries the Church received as canon the books that had been read in the liturgy and within apostolic tradition: 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. After the sixteenth-century Reformation, some communities followed a shorter Old Testament list, and that is when today's difference in the number of books became sharp. So saying only that “the Catholics quietly added them later” is an account that misses the historical order and the variety of scriptural traditions in the early Church.

🧐If they press further: “So does that mean the Church made the Bible?” — It doesn't mean the Church composed the word of God. It means that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Church recognized the inspired writings already handed on and read in the Church and settled them as the canon.

✨In one sentence: “The Church didn't invent Scripture; within apostolic tradition it discerned over a long time which writings were inspired Scripture, and received them.”