Is scripture reading absolutely necessary?

[JOE_OBERR]

First of all, I am the Friendly Neighborhood Methodist,
I really don’t know the answers to a lot of what you are asking. I just think you need to keep praying & reading the Gospels, …God bless.

Zooey, very good advice to keep praying & reading the Gospels. We all have to do that as we “work out our salvation in fear & trembling” as St Paul said. As far as “I really don’t know the answers to a lot of what you are asking”, that is because, not being a Catholic, you are not aware of what the Apostles learned from Jesus & the Holy Spirit & then preached & taught as commanded by Jesus himself in Mk 16:15-16.

Jesus taught his Gospel orally, he didn’t hand out copies of the Torah, the Prophetic books and the Psalms and tell everybody to “Read these books, have faith in me and accept me as your personal lord & saviour & you will be saved”. No, he taught orally just as the Scribes, Pharisees, and prophets had been doing for well over a thousand years.

He spent three years teaching his apostles this Gospel and revealed to them, and to them alone, secrets of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 13:11). So unless we know the Gospel as preached by the apostles & their successor bishops who lead the Church, “the pillar and foundation of truth” (1Tim3:15), then we can’t possibly know what Jesus taught the apostles and what they preached.

To know what they preached is essential for salvation for we must hear this gospel, believe it, be baptized and then we will be saved (Mk16:15-16). And since the bible does not claim anywhere to summarize this Gospel, as preached by the Apostles, which is required for salvation, we must learn it from Jesus’ Church. We can learn it from the Magisterium, and read it in the Roman Catechism (1566) as well as the new Catechism (1992).

This preached Gospel is simply the Catholic faith; summarized as the creed, sacraments, commandments and prayer. Any pagan or atheist can discover that simply by reading the early Christians’ writings from the first thru seventh/eight centuries. The doctrine & practice they wrote about, including obeying the Pope, conforms to only one religion today, the Catholic faith. No other church/denomination can make this claim and back it up with historical evidence the like Catholic Church can.

Its great to read Scripture as it is a narrative of salvation history, it teaches us about Jesus, how he loves us, how he lived his life, how he died for us but it does NOT teach us how to get to heaven. Nowhere does the bible say that if you are saved you are going to heaven or if you are not saved your are going to hell.

That’s why Jesus founded a Church. So his Gospel could be transmitted from generation to generation for 2,000 years now, regardless of whether one can read or even possess a bible.

 

[JesuXPIPassio]

Joe Oberr has a good point. Perhaps we shouldn’t view Scripture as burdensome.

About us having the undiluted version of Scripture, protestants criticise us for having more books in the Bible than they do. The really silly thing is that those books had been canonical ever since we had a canon. It took a big group effort with all the Church leaders who truly wrestled with which books can make it in. Yet Luther came in, 1200 years later, and decided to just cut some books out. It’s so stupid – why does this one man think his opinion is better than the decisions that had been intitially made? Why does he think he’s superior than the fifteen centuries of saints, bishops and popes that came before him?

Also, in ages past, people were desperate to get in touch with God. People made up hocus pocus religions because they all were born with a need for some Divine Presence.

Now God returned our call – us, and only us. It seems shameless not to answer it, and we would do right by responding. Otherwise, I think we deserve damnation.