The Catholic Church and The Bible
I won’t say I’m speechless because I just know this one is gonna be long. In fact, you might want to just go get cup of your favorite beverage right now. (May I suggest some of this? It’s what I’m drinking at the moment. And if you get the bags instead of the full leaf, the tea-snob in me doesn’t want to hear about it.) I am however at a loss as to how to begin. Here is the comment by PURPLEGIRL in response to The Sin of Partial Obedience:
PURPLEGIRL: Although I appriciate your knowledge of the history of St. Innatius of someplace, I have noticed a theme throughout this blog. There are more references for what the saints say than there are scriptures from the bible. I don’t mean that in a rude way, but I think that maybe we aren’t going to see eye to eye because I base ALL of my decisions from the information found in the bible.
Even if I don’t count scriptures references when I don’t actually cite chapter and verse for (For example, I personally think using Nadab and Abihu as an illustrative example counts as citing scripture even if I don’t list the verses where they are spoken of and if you want to get technical it counts as three citations because they are mentioned at least three times.) I can scroll through my posts and spot lots and lots of the chapter and verse variety citations and I will leave it to those who care enough to keep score, to count those vs. citations from the Early Church Fathers. If I say that St. John the Baptist or St. Paul says and follow with the words recorded in the BIBLE does that somehow not count as scripture? And while I am using PURPLEGIRL’s words, I really don’t want to pick on her because she is only expressing a variation on a theme I hear repeatedly. “Catholics don’t teach the Bible. Catholics don’t know the Bible. Catholics are forbidden to read the Bible. There’s no Bible in the Catholic Mass. Catholics chained the Bible to keep anyone from reading it.” etc. And I would like to do what I can to set the record straight.
1. Catholics pray with Sacred Scripture. A lot. If a Catholic calls it the “Our Father” it doesn’t make it any less Matthew 6:9-13 or Luke 11:2-4, does it? The “Hail Mary” is not completely from Sacred Scripture but the bulk of that prayer is taken from Luke 1:30 and Luke 1:43. Many beloved Catholic prayers are just passages from Sacred Scripture, that we have memorized. Every morning my children and I recite Luke 1:46-45 and Luke 1:68-79 together as part of our morning prayers, but rather than call it by some numbers we call the first passage the “Magnificat” or the “Canticle of Mary” and the second one the “Canticle of Zechariah.” I encourage them to say them to say Luke 2:29-32 as a bedtime prayer but I call that passage of scripture the “Canticle of Simeon.” They are learning the “Misere” as well. You might know it by the name Psalm 51. The rosary is a mediation on the gospel and the plan of salvation. We recite scripture while meditating on such events as the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, the Baptism of Jesus, The Transfiguration, The Last Supper, and the Crucifixion. There are 20 such events (called mysteries and ALL of them are found in scripture…although to be fair most Protestants would quibble over 2 of them. The Assumption and The Crowning which Catholics believe are clearly pictured in Revelation and Protestants do not.) Then there is the Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) which is formal prayer throughout the day as mentioned in Psalm 119:164. In modern times this requirement has been abbreviated to five times daily, but for more years than not the Liturgy of the Hours was seven times daily. Ordained clergy and vowed religious men and women are REQUIRED to pray the Liturgy of the Hours which consists of large passages of scripture and you can see a sample of just how much scripture we are talking about here. (Link opens PDF file) That is a MINIMUM daily requirement for religious.
2. The Catholic Church strongly encourages ALL of the Catholic faithful to read and study Sacred Scripture. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
131 “And such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life.”109 Hence “access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful.”110
132 “Therefore, the study of the sacred page should be the very soul of sacred theology. The ministry of the Word, too - pastoral preaching, catechetics and all forms of Christian instruction, among which the liturgical homily should hold pride of place - is healthily nourished and thrives in holiness through the Word of Scripture.”111
133 The Church “forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful. . . to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.112
3. The Catholic Mass from beginning to end is taken almost directly from Sacred Scripture. Now, I have just made many Catholic readers of this blog mad at me. They are hopping up and down and wanting to remind me that the Mass is prayer and in fact it is the most important prayer of the Catholic Church and so all of this belongs in the above paragraph. To them I say, “Yes I know. I just think that the Mass deserves a separate category.” To the rest I say, please take a look at this post of mine. The words of the Mass are listed along with their references from Sacred Scripture. Then of course, we have the readings from Sacred Scripture itself. If a Catholic attends Mass regularly and/or reads the daily reading on-line (and they are printed in his/her bulletin and available in many publications) he/she will either read or hear the bible read-aloud (With the exception of some of the longer genealogies) once every three years and slightly more often if they attend daily Mass as well. Each Sunday Mass has at least three generous portions of Sacred Scripture read during the Liturgy of the Word. There is an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a New Testament reading, and a reading from the Gospel. Some Masses have even more. The Easter Vigil mass has 7 large portions of Sacred Scripture read.
4. Chaining the Bible in Catholic Churches was a GOOD THING. Time and again, I see the accusation “Catholics CHAINED Bibles in churches.” As this is somehow proof-positive that the Catholic faithful were not allowed near a Bible. Yes, the Catholic Church DID chain Bibles in Churches. Unfortunately, the wrong conclusion is drawn from this historical fact. My bank chains pens to the counter too. Is that so I can’t use the pen? Or so it will be available when I need it? Before the advent of the printing press and even for many years after that, books were very valuable. The Catholic Church could have simply kept these very expensive treaures under lock and key and prohibited access to them at all. That certainly would have been safer. But because they wanted the faithful to have access to the Sacred Scriptures they chained it to a stationary object. To prevent theft.
5. Catholics translated the Bible into English first. And German. And Italian. And lots of other languages. (Chapter 11 in Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church also available on-line.) Back up and read that last bit again slowly. I’m Catholic. I am no slouch when it comes to reading dull boring books and I didn’t know that until a year ago. Here is a sample:
To anyone that has investigated the real facts of the case, this fondly-cherished notion must seem truly ridiculous; it is not only absolutely false, but stupidly so, inasmuch as it admits of such easy disproof; one wonders that nowadays any lecturer or writer should have the temerity to advance it. Now, observe I am speaking of the days before the printingpress was invented; I am speaking of England; and concerning a Church which did not, and does not, admit the necessity of Bible-reading for salvation; and concerning an age when the production of the Scriptures was a most costly business, and far beyond the means of nearly everybody. Yet we may safely assert, and we can prove, that there were actually in existence among the people many copies of the Scriptures in the English tongue of that day. To begin far back, we have a copy of the work of Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, in the end of the seventh century, consisting of great portions of the Bible in the common tongue. In the next century we have the well-known translations of Venerable Bede, a monk of Jarrow, who died whilst busy with the Gospel of St. John. In the same (eighth) century we have the copies of Eadhelm, Bishop of Sherborne; of Guthlac, a hermit near Peterborough; and of Egbert, Bishop of Holy Island; these were all in Saxon, the language understood and spoken by the Christians of that time. Coming down a little later, we have the free translations of King Alfred the Great who was working at the Psalms when he died, and of Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury; as well as popular renderings of Holy Scripture like the Book of Durham, and the Rushworth Gloss and others that have survived the wreck of ages. After the Norman conquest in 1066, Anglo-Norman or Middle-English became the language of England, and consequently the next translations of the Bible we meet with are in that tongue. There are several specimens still known, such as the paraphrase of Orm (about 1150) and the Salus Animae (1050), the translations of William Shoreham and Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole (died 1349). I say advisedly ’specimens’ for those that have come down to us are merely indications of a much greater number that once existed, but afterwards perished. We have proof of this in the words of Blessed Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII who says: ‘The whole Bible long before Wycliff’s day was by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read’ (Dialogues III). Again, ‘The clergy keep no Bibles from the laity but such translations as be either not yet approved for good, or such as be already reproved for naught (i.e., bad, naughty) as Wycliff’s was. For, as for old ones that were before Wycliff’s days, they remain lawful and be in some folks’ hand. I myself have seen, and can show you, Bibles, fair and old which have been known and seen by the Bishop of the Diocese, and left in laymen’s hands and women’s too, such as he knew for good and Catholic folk, that used them with soberness and devotion.’ (2) But you will say, that is the witness of a Roman Catholic. Well, I shall advance Protestant testimony also.
6. The Deutero-canon has been part of Sacred Scripture since the formal adoption of the entire canon in 397. The same authority that set the New Testament canon also included Sirach, Tobit, First and Second Maccabees, etc. It was the Protestant “Reformers” who REMOVED those books and parts of Esther and Daniel. The Catholic Church did not add them. I’m sorry but I must ask, but what authority other than their “own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5 has something to say about that) did the Protestant “Reformers” take this unprecedented action?
Six is enough for today. The Catholic Church treasures Sacred Scripture despite the repeated assertions to the contrary. She compiled and protected the canon. She protected the books themselves through all manner of social upsets and upheavals in the last 2,000 years. Monks labored lifetimes to make copies of Sacred Scripture for the faithful. She encourages the reading and memorization of Sacred Scripture. She encourages praying with it. Catholic teaching is inseperably tied to Sacred Scripture. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (at the time…He’s Pope Benedict XVI at present) wrote “[Catholic] Dogma is by definition nothing other than the interpretation of Scripture.”
Edited to add: In the event that you followed a direct link to this post, you may be interested in this follow-up
