Sometimes people simply make mistakes. Don’t blow it out of proportion.
I wonder what sections or verses were omitted. Were the verses about genealogy or all of the details about building the temple? Or was it parts that are repeated in multiple Gospels? Or was it other sections?
Can we clarify who “they” is for purposes of this question? I don’t think this issue is a mistake or a deliberate omission by a reader, but rather the choice of a particular lection by the compilers of the Lectionary. For example, the second reading for the upcoming Sunday is Galatians 5: 1, 13-18. It’s not the reader who will be omitting verses 2-12.
The lectionary has at times “longer versions” and “shorter versions” so that may be what your experiencing.
I’m pretty sure John 8: 1-11 (the woman taken in adultery) is covered once a year. John 8: 12 (“I am the light of the world”) is also used as a Gospel acclamation. I need to look up and see if there’s more; this is from memory.
The Mass is not a Bible study. The readings are not meant to instruct but to preach. So, if you are asking if the Church deliberately omits some verses in order to deprive her faithful of God’s word, that’s simply not true. Anyone who wishes to read more of the Bible is encouraged to do so, but the Mass is not meant for that–it’s about corporate worship of God–that’s the focus of the Mass.
Perhaps certain topics/Scriptures weren’t appropriate to discuss with children? Lessons are geared for children for each age group, after all. Besides, no one can cover every topic in a school setting. We are supposed to continue our religious education as adults when we are old enough to grasp concepts that we were too young to understand as children, yes?
For what it’s worth I also find this practice a little annoying, and I usually go back and read the whole chapter in my Bible to see the context, and study it more.
God’s word may be Perfect; after all, he became incarnate and rose from the dead.
There were quite a few things I did not learn about until much later in life, when I finally got around to getting back into the catholic faith, one of them was ‘the Nephilim’, I had never even heard this word until I was in my 30s. although I can understand why we were not taught about this as very young kids, but not sure why they skipped it and other (more strange) bible parts as we became older.
Good point. Look at this Sunday’s reading for an example of this. See 1 Kings 19:16b, 19–21. And read v. 17-18 and you will see why they were not mentioned. Then read the gospel reading and you will see why those verses were chosen to focus on (rather than the side story).For what it’s worth I also find this practice a little annoying, and I usually go back and read the whole chapter in my Bible to see the context, and study it more.
Sometimes the pastoral reason for omitting the verses becomes clear when you do that.
The Nephilim are interesting, to be sure, and pop culture and fiction have made much of them, but ultimately they are mentioned once in the canonical Scriptures and their significance to Jewish or Christian people living today is obscure at best. All we really know without looking at extra-canonical sources is that large, powerful “men of renown” are said to have existed at some point and to have been the offspring of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” (the currently favored explanation being that they were descendants of the line of Cain mingling with the line of Seth, the fun one being that they were descendants of angels and humans). Even the idea that the production of the Nephilim had something to do with God sending the Flood requires sources like the book of Enoch; in Genesis they’re just mysteriously mentioned as existing before the Flood (“and also afterward”!) but nothing is said of why it’s important to talk about them right then.