Who wrote these gospels?

If you're a fan of 60 minutes, you've obviously heard Andy Rooney say, "Did you ever wonder why..."

Well, I wonder why I continue hearing these teachers at various religious ed classes continue to feed us this line about the community authorship of gospels or certainty about non-Apostolic authorship. Without delving into the Gospel origin issue (which can take awhile), it is interesting to note what Vatican II says about this subject. In Dei Verbum, paragraph 18, it reads, "The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four gospels are of apostolic origin. For what the apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterward they themselves AND apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, handed on to us in writing: the foundation of faith, namely, the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."

It seems that certain bishops disliked "AND" and wished to substitute "OR" in order to keep this dubious theory afloat that Matthew and John didn't really write their gospels. Sorry...rejected!

Part II tomorrow...