See the whole article:
I think this is regrettably true. I know that it was historically true in my mother’s family. My grandparents were devout Catholics but uneducated formally (Grandpa had a 6th grade education and Grandma an 8th grade education. This was a common occurence for many rural farm families early in the last century. There aversion to reading the Bible was a fear they would misinterpret it and considered it a potential means for them to be misled. Upon reflection, I think their problem was their better educated Protestant neighbors/“friends” were quick to use the Bible as a weapon against their faith adn their lack of formal education made them intimidated to defend the faith on grounds they felt they were ill-prepared.
Maybe you want to save up for a Bible like this:
I can see how this would be true for the older generation, but for people our age (I see you’re three years younger than me) and younger, there isn’t much excuse except, as far as I can tell, laziness on our part, and a lack of commitment in the Catholic catechesis community --clerical and lay–as a whole to stress the value of the Scriptures to the average Catholic (there are, of course, exceptions). It’s part of a vicious circle – we haven’t learned the Scriptures because Protestants beat us up over our lack of knowledge of them, then we get beat up by Protestants because we haven’t learned the Scriptures!
That’s a good point and I would tend to agree with this. By all reports, the US is a much more religious place, overall, than Europe.
I’m in my early 40s, and growing up, going to CCD, we hardly touched a Bible. The most scripture I got was at Mass, and I started becoming more familiar with some of the verses (they repeat in a 3 year cycle).
Don’t forget the South and Central Americans: Brazil is majority Catholic.
While this is most probably true, I think it might be useful to consider “quality” of reading at this point. For all that the ‘sola scriptura’ idea is promoted by and within Protestant churches, many individual Protestants lack the motivation to acquire the knowledge to read the text in a more-than-superficial manner. As a result, they rely upon reading guides produced by ‘great men’, usually pastors of large churches (because popularity must demonstrate worth, mustn’t it?). Thus, their reading is so heavily inflected by other people’s ideas as to render to the ‘sola’ false. This is not true of all Protestants, but it is true of too many.
Identity by opposition: a powerful motivator.
On average, they are. On average, evangelicals, who can be found within both mainstream and pentecostal churches, are more into everything. Unfortunately, they are often less resistant to the ‘great men’, hence the common occurrence of the pentecostal church which grows rapidly under a charismatic leader, only to collapse when he falls from grace.
Judging by what I see in these fora, I would have to agree that there is a general trend, among Catholics, of not reading the Bible enough. For Protestants, it is the only official text, and so they tend to read it more. Catholics have the advantage of a larger corpus of texts, but few take that advantage.
It depends on how you define the group “Protestant”. If you are referring to the original reformation churches, I believe we get along pretty well today. However, if you are referring to Baptists and other collections of people known as the evangelicals and/or fundamentalists, you see a pretty big continuum of opinions on Catholics. These will range from tolerance/respect to “great whore of babylon” labels for our church. My experience is that slander against Catholics, in today’s world, come from the smaller, non-denom fundamentalists primarily. Examples of Catholic prejudice can be found at our “friends” Cutting Edge Ministries and Jack T. Chick to name but a few. Google them if you like, but all you will find are straw men labeled as “Catholic Doctrine/Beliefs”. In other words, you will not find what Catholocism is really about. To do that, you should visit such sites as Catholic Answers, USCCB, Holy See, and others.
Hi,
First of all, let me apologise for allowing you to think that I meant that only Protestants are prejudiced. Everyone has prejudices: they come from our preconceptions, without which we would be incapable of psychological functioning in the world. Preconceptions allow us to make assumptions about the data which we encounter in our everyday lives, freeing us from the necessity of reprocessing every new piece of information. Your understanding of these very words depends upon your preconceptions of their meaning.
I’ve tried to get my pastor to start a scripture reading and discussion group in the parish and he is totally against it.
