Catholics Don't Read Their Bibles!

[MikeMaturenMDiv]

We can’t get most Catholics to attend Church regularly…why would we expect them to do something like read the Bible regularly?

This is the area where we Catholics have fallen flat on our faces. If more of us actually READ the Bible, we would see where our Catholic faith IS Scriptural…and fewer of us would leave the Church for the fundamentalist/evangelical/Protestant churches…

After spending nearly 18 years as an anti-Catholic preacher, I learned how to study Scripture. Since my return to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church three years ago, it has been my ministry to teach Catholics to do the same.

My speaking ministry takes me all over the country, and I teach on discipleship (which includes Scripture study). I am also focusing on lighting a fire under the lukewarm Catholics.

If your parish or diocese would like me to come and share my story and my heart with you, please visit my website and contact me from there.

May God’s blessings be with you.

Mike Maturen, MDiv

It’s been 45 years since Dei Verbum, for goodness sake! How long does it take?

 

[Mystophilus]

Catholic Dude:

The truth is the Bible is the hardest book to read of all time. How many people in history have read the whole Bible before? I would guess most who have were/are in religious life.

Reading the Bible is easy! Compared with James Joyce’s Ulysses, it’s a walk in the park! The Russian formalists’ works are far harder, and as for Henry James, well, let’s just say that a man who can string one sentence for a page and a half ought to have a serious talk with his editor.

I have read the Protestant-canon Bible through, Genesis to Revelation, twice, and have read various individual books of it I know not how many times. I have also read various Buddhist sutras, some of the Mahabharata, the Dao de Jing, the Confucian Classics, and am currently forcing my way through the Qu’ran. I would describe the Bible as the second-easiest of those texts to read, after the Dao de Jing, and the Qu’ran as by far the hardest, because of its endless repetitiveness and its singularly declamatory style.

The mentality of just me and my Bible was never in the game plan of Sacred Scripture. It was mostly to be read at sacred gatherings (eg Mass, synagogue) read out loud with leaders guiding the people through it.

The problem with making generalisations about such a text is that it is not a homogeneous unit. The Bible is a collection of books, including letters, historical records, prophecies, love poetry, songs and proverbs. Some parts in the New Testament certainly were meant for public dissemination, while others (e.g., Luke’s Gospel account and the Acts of the Apostles, and the letters to Titus, Timothy and Philemon), were actually addressed to individuals. As for the OT, certain parts were often deemed unfit for public consumption, most notably the Song of Songs.

The thing that usually happens nowdays is protestants come at catholics with a few verses in mind and make the catholics look bad, but the truth is most of those protestants havnt even read the Bible, or did so with a strong bias so that they missed or ignored key passages.

While I will not disagree with your comment about bias (because we are all biased), you severely underestimate Protestant reading habits. Because the Bible is the only text for the Protestants, they read it a lot. In all of the Protestant churches which I have attended, not having read all of the Bible at least once was a source of individual shame. While no one would actually condemn you for the failure, the act of reading God’s Word is valorised to such an extent that not reading it almost becomes a sin.

As some have said some protestants who accuse catholics of “blindly” following the Church’s interpretation at the same time those protestants look ONLY to commentaries by people like Calvin without second thought of his agenda or basic reasoning skills of his “interpretations”.

Absolutely true, although it tends to be Selwyn Hughes, James Dobson, Philip Yancey and Rick Warren who are read. Most Protestants only have a vague idea about who Calvin was.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Lisa_Marie-

I had to smile when I read this thread, esp. the above post. The Bible is so easy to read a child can do it! And most people I knew as protestants read the entire Bible repeatedly. Even teenagers can follow reading plans that take you through the Bible in one year. : )

A child will have a hard time reading the Bible, especially the whole thing in one year. I have read the whole Bible before and its not something you can speed read through, there were many passages I didnt understand or had a hard time understanding, and a lot of time was spent pausing and thinking. The Bible is not a novel, the greatest minds of all time have been put in their place by the Bible. The wisdom and depth is so great volumes and volumes of commentary have been written. When I say the Bible is the hardest book to read thats the simple truth. To take it to the next level I doubt that that high of a percentage of Bible owners have actually read the whole Bible.

By the time I was out of first grade, I was reading complete gospels on my own. My non-denominational school had monthly memorization of around 10 verses a month for the little kids. By the time you reached High School, you were memorizing whole chapters. I and others I know have memorized complete books.

So in first grade when you read about Mary Magdalan what did you think about? What about the topics on adultery and such? There are a lot of passages that are not exacly G of PG material in the Bible. Also memorizing whole chapters or verses doesnt mean anything if the person isnt understanding what he is memorizing and/or if they are ignoring passages when it comes time to decide what to believe in.

It was very common to read through the entire Bible each year, plus extra. That was considered NORMAL devotional reading. The minimum. If you weren’t reading Scripture at least 1/2 hour daily, (twice daily was even better!) you were considered seriously backslidden by most protestants I know. : )

I dont know what Church you grew up in then because I have never heard of people regularly reading the entire Bible each year. And your mention of 1/2 hour? To read the Protestant Bible in 1 year you would have to read about 3 chapters per day, if someone is putting away 3 chapters in 1/2 hour I would question how much they really retained and meditated on. If you were to read the complete Bible (ie Catholic) it would be about 4 chapters per day.

By the way, parents, if you want your children to love the Bible, you need to love it yourself. Let them see you reading it ~ often. Give them their own Bible. Make a BIG deal about how special it is, even before they can read it themselves. If you can afford it, give nice leather bibles for junior high and high school graduation presents. Before hand, challenge them to try out paperback versions to see which version they prefer to read.

One of my earliest memories is of my mom standing by the dishwasher reading the Our Father to me out of my new leather Bible. She even underlined it, so I could see exactly where she had read. And I was so excited at the thought of someday learning to read it for myself!

I thank God I had parents like mine. All those years of scripture soaked into me. Now it’s like a treasure trove. When I listen to EWTN, or read the Catechism, I get floods of remembered verses coming to my mind. I can see connections I never noticed before.
It’s so easy now to see how everything fits together into the Truth.

Im glad for you, reading the Bible is a good thing and it looks like you grew up in a good home.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Mystophilus-

Reading the Bible is easy! Compared with James Joyce’s Ulysses, it’s a walk in the park! The Russian formalists’ works are far harder, and as for Henry James, well, let’s just say that a man who can string one sentence for a page and a half ought to have a serious talk with his editor.

Ok, people are misunderstanding me here. Any 3rd grader could read just about any word in the Bible, but reading and understanding, thats not as easy as people claim. Just crack open Ecclesiasties or Job or something and tell me a first grader is just eating it up.

I have read the Protestant-canon Bible through, Genesis to Revelation, twice, and have read various individual books of it I know not how many times. I have also read various Buddhist sutras, some of the Mahabharata, the Dao de Jing, the Confucian Classics, and am currently forcing my way through the Qu’ran. I would describe the Bible as the second-easiest of those texts to read, after the Dao de Jing, and the Qu’ran as by far the hardest, because of its endless repetitiveness and its singularly declamatory style.

No offense, but I dont buy this story.

The problem with making generalisations about such a text is that it is not a homogeneous unit. The Bible is a collection of books, including letters, historical records, prophecies, love poetry, songs and proverbs. Some parts in the New Testament certainly were meant for public dissemination, while others (e.g., Luke’s Gospel account and the Acts of the Apostles, and the letters to Titus, Timothy and Philemon), were actually addressed to individuals. As for the OT, certain parts were often deemed unfit for public consumption, most notably the Song of Songs.

So by your own admission the mentality of me and my Bible was never in the game plan.

While I will not disagree with your comment about bias (because we are all biased), you severely underestimate Protestant reading habits. Because the Bible is the only text for the Protestants, they read it a lot. In all of the Protestant churches which I have attended, not having read all of the Bible at least once was a source of individual shame. While no one would actually condemn you for the failure, the act of reading God’s Word is valorised to such an extent that not reading it almost becomes a sin.

I dont misunderstand anything, there are a lot of good well read Protestant pastors out there. But the fact that they are protestant is the perfect example of ignoring and downplaying key passages. Just hang around these forums for a while and you will see they sling the same few passages all the time.

Absolutely true, although it tends to be Selwyn Hughes, James Dobson, Philip Yancey and Rick Warren who are read. Most Protestants only have a vague idea about who Calvin was.

So in total you are agreeing with me. They can read the Bible 100 times per year and memorize the whole thing in english and greek and at the end of the day they look to someone else for interpretations.

 

[Mystophilus]

Catholic Dude:

No offense, but I dont buy this story.

You don’t buy which story? The fact that I have read those texts? Or the fact that the Bible is the second easiest to read? If you mean the latter, just read the others yourself, and you will see. If you mean the former, and you intend to disbelieve something so simple, then you and I will have little to discuss, I’m afraid.

So by your own admission the mentality of me and my Bible was never in the game plan.

Apart from the issue of the individually-addressed texts already mentioned, I would have to ask what ‘game plan’ you meant. After all, the Bible is a compilation of texts which were written separately.

Just hang around these forums for a while and you will see they sling the same few passages all the time.

Thus far, I have seen a lot of that from both Protestants and Catholics, typically those who are more interested in proving that they are right than in listening to and learning from others.

They can read the Bible 100 times per year and memorize the whole thing in english and greek and at the end of the day they look to someone else for interpretations.

What you say would be true if you separated the two groups. One is composed of those who memorise the text and learn to read it in Hebrew and Greek. The other is composed of those who look to others for their interpretations. Of course, these are really the ends of the cline, but it will give you an idea of what Protestants are like.

 

[sconea]

Catholics do not need to read the Bible. Unlike protestants who have nothing else, we have the Church to interpret their scriptures for us. While it is certainly commendable to read it, it must be done with a good understanding of Church teaching else you can go astray. It helps to remember that throughout history, until very recently few could read at all.

 

[Mystophilus]

sconea:

Catholics do not need to read the Bible. Unlike protestants who have nothing else, we have the Church to interpret their scriptures for us. While it is certainly commendable to read it, it must be done with a good understanding of Church teaching else you can go astray. It helps to remember that throughout history, until very recently few could read at all.

Do you think that it would be better if most people couldn’t read?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Um, could we stick to the topic instead of arguing over whether literacy is or isn’t a good thing, please?

 

[jdc1084]

Catholics do not need to read the Bible. Unlike protestants who have nothing else, we have the Church to interpret their scriptures for us. While it is certainly commendable to read it, it must be done with a good understanding of Church teaching else you can go astray. It helps to remember that throughout history, until very recently few could read at all.

Yes, that’s one reason we have pastors/priests in the first place is to hear what they say concerning the scripture–after all, they have been formally educated in it. But keep in mind that some quack could go and become ordained as a pastor or priest–such as those in the news that have molested children. Of course, this is an extreme example and a rare occurance thankfully. But since the Bible is so readily available for us to read these days, it would be good to be at least familiar with it so you won’t get blindly led down a stray path without knowing it. The message in the Bible is fairly straightfoward and although priests and pastors are there to help us understand the Bible, we still want to rely most on what God says and not what man says.

 

[Pug]

Lisa_Marie:

O

r you can follow another good reading method. Pick a book (shorter is good!) and read it 10 - 12 times IN A ROW. In one sitting, if possible. By the 8th or 9th time, you’ll start seeing the connections you missed before.

Welcome to my bandwagon! I’ve said similar things many times to people. I find the whole-book approach massively helpful, *especially *with St. Paul.

Mystophilus:

Compared with James Joyce’s Ulysses, it’s a walk in the park!

Yes! I shall rashly assume that if he went to purgatory, he spent much time reading a few books similar to his own. The bible is more felicitously phrased, and is filled with interesting vignettes.

I find that after quite a lot of time reading the bible, that even a simple phrase or verse can trigger many associations to think about. So much so that one hardly needs to constantly re-read the entire bible. I can’t imagine what I would do with so much (name removed by moderator)ut as all that! I find the spiritual journey and prayer very difficult. One simple phrase is enough for a day. Or maybe a picture that portrays the rich young man is enough.

 

[thistle]

Semper Fi:

Hi,

There’s lots of good Catholic Bibles to choose from. For a small list:

The New Jerusalem Bible
The RSV-CE (Ignatius Bible)
The New American Bible
The Douay-Rheims edited by Archbishop Richard Challoner (the norm for over four hundred years and the first English translation to comply with all Catholic doctrine and published before the KJV)

and there is a few others. I thought I would just give you a list to start with… Also, the Catholic Answers Bible (NAB, I think…) sold from catholic.com and published by Our Sunday Visitor is pretty good, too…

Check out ignatius.com, oursundayvisitor.com & getfed.com.

Great Catholic stores.

God bless,

I have the Douay-Rheims Bible which I like but the one I use most is The Catholic Study Bible (New American Bible) because it has lots of notes and commentary.

 

[Fidelis]

Catholics do not need to read the Bible.
Unlike protestants who have nothing else, we have the Church to interpret their scriptures for us. While it is certainly commendable to read it, it must be done with a good understanding of Church teaching else you can go astray.

“Ignorance of Scripture, is ignorance of Christ.” --St. Jerome

This is exactly the type of attitude that has led to the crisis in Catholic biblical illiteracy we have today. Is Bible reading objectively necessary for salvation, like baptism and the obedience of faith? No, but Scripture reading by Catholics accomplishes two important things:

1. Scripture reading actually provides many graces to enable one to to live a holy life. Apart from the lessons it provides, holy reading --like prayer and good works— builds one up in sanctification and strengthens one against temptation and a weakening of faith. This is why the Church has gone so far to attaching a partial indulgence to a half hours pious bible reading a day.
2. Reading sacred Scripture builds one up in the knowledge of Christ and the Faith, especially as when it is read with the mind of the Church. When one is familiar enough with the Scriptures to defend his own faith and the bolster the faith of others (like our children), one can be instrumental in preventing the losing of souls to secularism or non-Catholic religions which are always on the hunt for the lukewarm and ignorant in their faith.

In other words, for a Catholic to neglect to read the Scriptures, is to place in danger his own salvation, and that of others.

 

[La_Chiara]

Certainly, reading the Bible is a noble activity. But reading the Bible is very much a Protestant tradition, rather than a Catholic tradition. The Catholic tradition is an ORAL tradition–from the very first days of Christianity the writings (that later were codified as the New Testament) were proclaimed ( that is, shared orally). Educated and literate priests read the Holy Scriptures at Mass to the illiterate. In the Middle Ages, literate (and wealthy) people who could afford books (which were costly because they were done by hand) may have had Bibles but more likely, they had a “book of Hours” or prayer books.

So much of reading the Bible comes from the Protestant Reformation which occurred after the printing press was invented (so Bibles were available), in European countries that had a literate middle class. Furthermore, reading the Bible was key to the Protestant Reformation because Protestants rejected the authority of the Catholic Church.

I think it quite disingenuous for people to get upset that Catholics don’t read the Bible. It seems to me the criticism is coming from Protestants, or at least from a Protestant point of view. (Many of the people on this thread seem to be converts or reverts to Catholicism so have been exposed to the Protestant tradition of reading the Bible.)

I don’t know much about Judaism, but I imagine that Jews don’t have copies of the Hebrew Scriptures at home that they read. And if it is true that Jews don’t have such a tradition then I would speculate that the reason that Catholics don’t read the Bible is related to the fact that Catholicism (as the earliest Christian faith) followed the tradition of Judaism which maintained the Holy Scriptures in protected spaces and brought them out to be read at worship services.

 

[Cesaria]

I read my Bible daily as my mother and grandmother did before me.

 

[Pug]

I don’t know much about Judaism, but I imagine that Jews don’t have copies of the Hebrew Scriptures at home that they read.

I am not Jewish, but as I understand it, the study of the Torah and also sometimes the Talmud is VERY important. (Torah = Gen, Ex, Nu, Lev, Deu). They go to a special school to study (yeshiva?). Maybe it used to only be boys who could, though. Not my field of expertise. Read Psalm 119 with its love of the Law. There used to be a Jewish poster around here who could answer this.

I will meditate on your precepts, and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.

 

[sconea]

We don’t have and never have had a ‘crisis’ in biblical literacy. We have a crises in knowledge and understanding of the faith.

 

[Fidelis]

La Chiara:

Certainly, reading the Bible is a noble activity. But reading the Bible is very much a Protestant tradition, rather than a Catholic tradition. The Catholic tradition is an ORAL tradition–from the very first days of Christianity the writings (that later were codified as the New Testament) were proclaimed ( that is, shared orally). Educated and literate priests read the Holy Scriptures at Mass to the illiterate. In the Middle Ages, literate (and wealthy) people who could afford books (which were costly because they were done by hand) may have had Bibles but more likely, they had a “book of Hours” or prayer books.

So much of reading the Bible comes from the Protestant Reformation which occurred after the printing press was invented (so Bibles were available), in European countries that had a literate middle class. Furthermore, reading the Bible was key to the Protestant Reformation because Protestants rejected the authority of the Catholic Church.

Catholics have always read the Bible. St. Therese of Lisiuex read the Scriptures, especially the Gospels, everyday. In addition, the Church has always encouraged it’s reading:

members.aol.com/johnprh/reading.html

Here is one quote from St. John Chrysostom (344/354 -407 AD)
Doctor of the Church.
“But what is the answer to these charges? ‘I am not,’ you will say, ‘one of the monks, but I have both a wife and children, and the care of a household.’ This is what has ruined everything, your thinking that the reading of scripture is for monks only, when you need it more than they do. Those who are placed in the world, and who receive wounds every day have the most need of medicine. So, far worse even than not reading the scriptures is the idea that they are superfluous. Such things were invented by the devil.”

I think it quite disingenuous for people to get upset that Catholics don’t read the Bible. It seems to me the criticism is coming from Protestants, or at least from a Protestant point of view. (Many of the people on this thread seem to be converts or reverts to Catholicism so have been exposed to the Protestant tradition of reading the Bible.)

For one thing, I think you’re unclear on the meaning of the word “disengenuous”:

Disingenuous

1. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: “an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who … exemplified … the most disagreeable traits of his time” David Cannadine.
2. Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.
3. Usage Problem Unaware or uninformed; naive.

Nobody who elicits concern that Catholics don’t read the Bible is insincere or calculating, including the Vatican commission cited in the original post. I daresay the members of this commission are not “converts and reverts exposed to the Protestant tradition of reading the Bible.”

I don’t know much about Judaism, but I imagine that Jews don’t have copies of the Hebrew Scriptures at home that they read. And if it is true that Jews don’t have such a tradition then I would speculate that the reason that Catholics don’t read the Bible is related to the fact that Catholicism (as the earliest Christian faith) followed the tradition of Judaism which maintained the Holy Scriptures in protected spaces and brought them out to be read at worship services.

A) You speculation does not take into account the historical circumstances you related in the first part of your post and B) it is irrelevant what Jewish practice is in this regard. They do not accept the seven Deuterocanonical books or the New Testament --should we continue to follow them in this regard?

 

[Fidelis]

sconea:

We don’t have and never have had a ‘crisis’ in biblical literacy. We have a crises in knowledge and understanding of the faith.

Actually, we have both, and one is related to the other.

 

[Mystophilus]

Tantum ergo:

Um, could we stick to the topic instead of arguing over whether literacy is or isn’t a good thing, please?

We were sticking to the topic. Sconea asserted that Catholics do not need to read the Bible, and went on to mention low literacy rates in earlier times. I was simply wanting to know whether Sconea wished that the literate present were more like the illiterate past, and was thus stating a preference for Catholics not reading their Bibles.

 

[La_Chiara]

Catholics obviously do not have a tradition of reading the Bible, while Protestants have the tradition. (BTW, I’ll bet there are a lot of Protestants who don’t read Bibles either–and don’t regularly attend a “worship service”. But that is neither here nor there.)

The reasons individual Catholics don’t read the Bible (at home) is very much tied to our traditions as pointed out earlier. 1. Catholicism descended from Judaism–which didn’t and probably still doesn’t have a tradition of reading its Scriptures at home. 2. Many Catholics were not literate-- a fact that continues today in many parts of the world. 3. Bibles were hand written until the printing press. So for nearly 1500 of the last 2000 years, Bibles were not available to the faithful.

It is very difficult to change tradition–especially when that entails ADDING something. Traditions are more likely to be dropped, but adding traditions require something of people. So as the factors that caused Catholics not to read their Bibles early on changed, Catholics did not adopt a tradition to reading the Bible. It is not like it is a sin (that must be confessed) if we don’t read the Bible. It is encouraged–but then so are a lot of things that people don’t do (like get exercise, eat well, brush and floss, etc.)

And while we are on the subject, many adult Protestants I know have a Wednesday Bible study and often an adult Bible study on Sunday too. Shall we excorciate Catholics for not doing that as well?

Fidelis: Au contraire, I am not (and have not been) “unclear” on the meaning of disingenuous. I did not need to go to the dictionary (or have you look up the word) to know that it was precisely the term I intended! Thanks the same.:tiphat: