Bible Verses Defined by the Catholic Church
I don’t know if the Church has ever provided a definitive list of verses it has definitively defined, or dogmatically interpreted. These are three lists that others have collected and I think it about covers it. If anyone finds more info on this, please let me know at sray@rc.net.
First List:
1. Romans 5:12 ("By one man sin entered into this world") refers to original sin.
2. I Corinthians 4:7 ("What hast thou that thou hast not received") proves divine grace to be a sheer gift of God.
3. Isaiah 7:14 ("Behold a virgin shall be with child, etc.") must be regarded as prophetic of a Redeemer to come.
4. Genesis 3:15 ("I will put enmity between thee and the woman"), and Luke 1:28 ("Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee") contain at least implicitly the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
5. Philippians 2:6 ("Christ Jesus, being in the form of God, did not prize being equal with God, etc.") refers to the existence of the person of Christ as the Second Divine Person of the Holy Trinity before He became man in the Incarnation.
6. Matthew 16:16-19 ("Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church") and John 21:15-17 ("Feed my lambs . . . Feed my sheep") contain the doctrine of Papal Supremacy.
7. Luke 22:32 ("I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not and do thou . . . confirm thy brethren") must be interpreted as providing a basis for the doctrine of Papal Infallibility.
8. John 3:5 ("Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter into the
9. Luke 22:19 and I Corinthians 11:24, recording our Lord's words at the Last Supper: "Do this for a commemoration of me", indicate the institution of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the apostles being ordained as priests to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass or Holy Eucharist.
10. Matthew 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20; I Corinthians 11:23-29, demand the literal and not merely a symbolical interpretation of our Lord's words at the Last Supper: "This is my body," "This is my blood," so that we must hold they teach the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist or Blessed Sacrament.
11. Malachi 1:11 ("From the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place there is sacrifice") is a prediction of the Sacrifice of the Mass.
12. John 6:54-57 ("unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood") does not require Communion in both kinds instead of under the form of bread only.
13. Matthew 18:18 ("Whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven") and John 20:23 ("Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them") prove the Sacrament of Penance and the power of priests to forgive sins in confession.
14. James 5:14 ("Is any man sick . . . let him bring in the priests of the Church . . . anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord") teaches the existence of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction.
15. Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37 ("Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and souls and mind and strength") do not require a love so spiritual and out of this world as to exclude all human emotional feelings and desires based on devotional sentiments.
(From "Questions People Ask About the Catholic Church" by Fr. Rumble p. 176-177).
Found here: https://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2005/12/incarnation_dur.html
Second List:
[John 3:5] Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the
[Luke 22:19] And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."
[1 Cor 11:24] and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."
[John 20:22-23] And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
[Rom 5:12] Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned –
[James 5:14-15] Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
Third List:
The Church's Interpretation of Scripture
The Church has officially defined the interpretation for several passages of Scripture, but most people, Catholic or no, don't realize it. When they do know this is the case, even a well-informed Catholic cannot normally tell you which passages were authoritatively interpreted or what those interpretations were. What follows are all the authoratative interpretations of the Church has made of Scripture, taken from Heinrich Denzinger's Sources of Catholic Dogma, nos. 789, 858, 874, 913, 926, 949, 1822. Remember that the word "anathema" does not mean "condemned to hell," it means "formally excommunicated," and is used in explicit statements of what the Church most emphatically does not believe. Remember also that the authoritative interpretations of these passages do not deny the possibility of additional, non-contradictory interpretations. It means only that the referenced passages certainly carry the defined meanings. Some also ask why the Church does not formally define the meaning and interpretation of every line of Scripture. The Church teaches what is necessary for understanding - what She says needs to be said, nor is any teaching more than is needful. Just as it will take an eternity to plumb the infinite depths of God, so would it take an eternity to plumb the depths of His Word. These passages were defined against pernicous heresies. Every heresy is traceable to a mis-understanding of some combinatinon of these passages.
Rom 5:12 - Council of
If anyone asserts that the transgression of Adam has harmed him alone and not his posterity, and that the sanctity and justice, received from God, which he lost, he has lost for himself alone and not for us also; or that he having been defiled by the sin of disobedience has transfused only death "and the punishments of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul," let him be anathema, since he contradicts the Apostle who says: "By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned. [Rom 5:12]"
Jn 3:5 - Council of Trent, March 3, 1547, "Canons on the Sacrament of Baptism," canon 2.
If anyone shall say that real and natural water is not necessary for baptism, and on that account those words of our Lord Jesus Christ: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit [John 3:5]" are distorted into some sort of metaphor: let him be anathema.
Mt 26:26 ff; Mk 14:22l; Lk 22:19 ff; 1 Cor 11:23 ff - Council of Trent, October 11, 1551, "The Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist", chapter 1
First of all the holy Synod teaches and openly and simply professes that in the nourishing sacrament of the Holy Eucharist after the consecration of the bread and wine our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially [canon 1] contained under the species of those sensible things. For these things are not mutally contradictory, that our Saviour Himself is always seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven according to the natural mode of existing, and yet that in many other places sacramentally He is present to us in His own substance by that manner of existence which, althogh we can scarcely express it in words, yet we can, however, by our understanding illumintated by faith, conceive to be possible to God, and which we ought most steadfastly to believe. For thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ, who have discussed this most holy sacrament, have most openly professed that our Redeemer instituted this so wonderful a sacrament at the Last Supper, when after the blessing of the bread and wine He testified in clear and definite words that He gave them His own body and His own blood; and those words which are recorded [Matthew 26:26ff; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19ff] by the holy Evangelists, and afterwards repeated by St. Paul [1 Cor 11:23 ff], since they contain within themselves that proper and very clear meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers, it is a most disgraceful thing for some contentious and wicked men to distort into fictitious and imaginary figures of speech, by which the real nature of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, recognizing with an ever grateful and recollecting mind this most excellent benefit of Christ, as the pillar and ground of truth [1 Tim 3:15], has detested these falsehoods, devised by impious men, as satanical.
Jn 20:22 ff - Council of Trent, October 25, 1551, "Canons on the Sacrament of Penance," canon 3
If anyone says that those words of the Lord Savior: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins ye shall retain, they are retained [John 20:22ff]", are not to be understood of the power of remitting and retaining sins in the sacrament of penance, as the Catholic Church has always understood from the beginning, but, contrary to the institution of this sacrament, distorts them to an authority for preaching the Gospel: let him be anathema.
James 5:14 - Council of Trent, October 25, 1551, "Canons on Anointing of the Sick," canon 1
If anyone says that anointing of the sick is not truly and properly a sacrament instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ [cf. Mark 6:13], and promulgated by blessed James the Apostle [James 5:14], but is only a rite accepted by the Fathers, or a human fiction: let him be anathema.
Lk 22:19, 1 Cor 11:24 - Council of Trent, September 17, 1562 "Canons on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass," canon 2
If anyone says that by these words: "Do this for a commemoration of me [Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24], Christ did not make the apostles priest, or did not ordain that they and other priests might offer His own body and blood: let him be anathema.
Mt 16:16; Jn 21:15 ff - Vatican I, July 18, 1870 "The Institution of Apostolic Primacy in Blessed Peter," chapter 1
[Against heretics and schismatics]. So we teach and declare that according to the testimonies of the Gospel and the primacy of jurisdiction over the entire
Fourth List:
This list is from Marcellino D’Abrosio’s website and he claims that there are only seven verses definitively defined by the Church. Here is his list.
When Jesus here says that we must be born of water and the Spirit, he implies that real water must be used for a valid baptism.
Luke 22:19 & I Cor. 11:24
When Jesus said to the apostles, “Do this in memory of me,” he meant to confer priestly ordination.
John 20:23
The power conferred on the apostles to bind and loose sins authorized them and their successors to forgive sins in God’s name in the sacrament of penance and reconciliation.
John 20:22
The sacrament of penance was instituted by Jesus who truly conveyed the Holy Spirit to the apostles on Easter Sunday afternoon.
Ro. 5:12
Adam’s sin truly caused all of his descendants to be born into a state of separation from God called Original Sin.
Jas. 5:14
Christ instituted the sacrament of the anointing of the sick.