To my Catholic friends.

The Church received the Scriptures. It didn't write the Old Testament at all... Israel had it in hand centuries before there was a church, and Paul says “unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2). Jesus quoted those Scriptures and held men accountable to them without any council signing off first (Luke 24:44), and the apostles' letters were read in the churches as the word of God from the day they arrived. A council coming along later and listing them is like a son recognizing his father's handwriting on a letter. He didn't write it.

And look at who got praised for checking. When Paul preached in Berea, the people went home and checked him against the Scriptures, and the Bible calls them noble for it:

“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”Acts 17:11

If they could check an apostle, you can check a bishop. You can check me too.

Yup, it did. It put them in a section by themselves between the Testaments, with the heading Apocrypha across the top, and the Church of England's own Articles from 1571 said the Church reads them “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” Good for reading, in other words... not for building doctrine on.

That wasn't something Protestants dreamed up, either. Jerome, the man who translated your Church's Latin Vulgate, wrote that Wisdom, Sirach, Judith and Tobias “are not in the canon,” and the old Catholic Encyclopedia admits he “cast his weighty suffrage on the side unfavourable to the disputed books.” It was Trent, in 1546, that made them Scripture by decree and put an anathema on anyone who wouldn't accept them.

You can let one of them speak for itself, though. Here's how the writer of 2 Maccabees signs off his own book:

I've never read a prophet of God apologizing for what he wrote.

Read Peter's own letter and see who he says the stone is:

“To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious ... Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.”1 Peter 2:4–6

Paul says the same thing twice: “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11), and “that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). Peter never once called himself head of the church. He called himself “also an elder” (1 Peter 5:1). He had a wife (Matthew 8:14), and when he got it wrong at Antioch, Paul “withstood him to the face” (Galatians 2:11) in front of everybody. Peter was a great apostle, and the church is built on the Christ he confessed.

Read the whole chapter and let Jesus explain Himself, because He does, earlier in that same sermon:

“And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”John 6:35

Coming to Him is the eating, believing on Him is the drinking, and that's why a dozen verses later He can promise everlasting life without mentioning a meal at all: “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47). When His own disciples choked on the literal meaning, He told them straight: “the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63).

At the Last Supper He said “this do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19), and Paul says that every time we eat it “ye do shew the Lord's death till he come” (1 Corinthians 11:26). You remember a death that already happened.

It is, and I'd say so to anybody. The question is what the works are for. James is talking about faith you can see: “shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” (James 2:18).

Then look at his own example. James says Abraham was justified by works “when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar” (James 2:21), but Abraham had already been counted righteous for simply believing God back in Genesis 15 (Romans 4:3), years before Isaac was even born. The faith is what saved him. The altar is where you could see it.

Paul puts the works right where they belong, after the saving:

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”Ephesians 2:10

Two things. 2 Maccabees is one of the books Jerome kept out of the canon (question II), and the book itself tells you why those soldiers died:

They died with idols tucked under their coats. That's a thin place to hang a doctrine... a book outside the canon, about men who fell in battle carrying what the law forbade. Hebrews, on the other hand, says this:

“For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”Hebrews 10:14

I believe you mean that. But read what the prayers actually say. The Hail, Holy Queen calls her “our life, our sweetness and our hope,” and the Book gives those titles to Christ: “Christ, who is our life” (Colossians 3:4), and “Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope” (1 Timothy 1:1). The Catechism calls her Advocate (969). John says “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

Once a woman in the crowd shouted out a blessing on His mother, and here's how Jesus answered her:

“But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.”Luke 11:28

Mary would send you to her Son. Everything the Book says about her points that way.