If modern-day Catholics have so much information available to show them that many of their beliefs are not in the Bible, why don’t they change their traditions?

This topic boils down to one issue: source of authority. We ALL have a “source of authority”, that is, we all have something from which we draw our beliefs. It can be a book (Bible, Book of Mormon, Koran), church teaching, or even your opinion. The question is: is your source of authority reliable? For example, those who draw their source of authority from their own opinion, I have to ask, “Has your opinion ever been wrong?”

For the Catholic Church, they draw their source of authority from two things: the Bible and church tradition (the latter includes councils, pope decrees, etc). Both hold the weight of authority. And unfortunately, if the church tradition seems to contradict the Bible, the tradition trumps God’s Word. I have discussed such matters with Catholic priests, and the response is simply, “That is what the Catholic church believes.”