Reading the Bible...

[itsjustdave1988]

Steven Merten,

The next time someone insists that Sacred Scripture ought not to be read, you can tell them what the constant teaching of the Catholic Church has been …

St. John Chrysostom (344/354 -407 AD)

“To become adult Christians you must learn familiarity with the scriptures” (Letter to Ephesians)

“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.” (Homily on Matthew)

St. Jerome, *Against Vigilantius, *AD 406:

Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.

Pope St. Gregory I (died 604 AD)

“The Emperor of heaven, the Lord of men and of angels, has sent you His epistles for your life’s advantage—and yet you neglect to read them eagerly. Study them, I beg you, and meditate daily on the words of your Creator. Learn the heart of God in the words of God, that you may sigh more eagerly for things eternal, that your soul may be kindled with greater longings for heavenly joys.” (Letters, 5, 46)

St. Isidore (560-636 AD)

"Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us… If a man wants to be always in God’s company, he must pray regularly and read regularly. When we pray, we talk to God; when we read, God talks to us.

All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection. By reading we learn what we did not know; by reflection we retain what we have learned.

**Reading the holy Scriptures (the Bible) confers two benefits. It trains the mind to understand them; it turns man’s attention from the follies of the world and leads him to the love of God. **

Two kinds of study are called for here. We must first learn how the Scriptures are to be understood, and then see how to expound them with profit and in a manner worthy of them. A man must first be eager to understand what he is reading before he is fit to proclaim what he has learned.

The conscientious reader will be more concerned to carry out what he has read than merely to acquire knowledge of it… Learning unsupported by grace may get into our ears; it never reaches the heart. It makes a great noise outside but serves no inner purpose. But when God’s grace touches our innermost minds to bring understanding, his word which has been received by the ear sinks deep into the heart." (Lib.3,8-10: PL 83,679-682)

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153 AD)

“The person who thirsts for God eagerly studies and meditates on the inspired Word, knowing that there, he is certain to find the One for whom he thirsts.” (Commentary on the Song of Songs, Sermon 23:3)

St. Bonaventure (1221-1274 AD):

In his day, only the wealthy learned to read.** He composed a copy of “Biblia Pauperum” which means the “Bible of the poor.”** It contained a collection of pictures illustrating the important events of the Old Testament. It also contained parallel scenes in the New Testament and it showed how the Old Testament prefigured and was fulfilled in the Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. This helped the people to learn God’s Word by showing them the important stories of both the Old and New Testament.

 

[metal1633]

joegrabowski:

I’ve heard from many pre-Gen X. Catholics that they were told growing up (either by parents, teachers in Catholic school, or by priests and nuns) that Catholics were not allowed to read the Bible.

I’m just curious about how common this trend was, and also in what age-groups and demographics it was most prevalent. I’m a 21 year-old Catholic male, and while my Catholic school studies were never very Bible-intensive, I was never actively discouraged from reading God’s Word. Scott Hahn’s advice for being “Bible-Christians” as Catholics is, I think, an important part of being a good apologist, so this is kind of a disturbing concept for me.

I have been told by Fallen Away Catholics that Bible Reading was forbidden. I have never been told that by a Practicing Catholic.

 

[jordan]

I was born in 1958 and went to a paroquial school and to a Catholic high school. My parents (who were married in 1955) had a large Catholic Bible with some great color artwork. We also had an old Benziger Brothers Bible History book. Throughout my school years, reading passages from the Bible was a part of our catechesis. I still have a copy of the same Baltimore Catechism we used in preparing for First Communion, etc. Each of the 37 chapters has quotations from the Bible with extra passages for self-study on lesson-related readings. Since the Baltimore Catechism was the official text for teaching kids for many years, I have a hard time with anyone who says that the pre-Gen X Church officially discouraged Bible reading.

The Mass is filled with Sacred Scripture. Perhaps in some places, some pastors felt people might be inclined to mis-interpret Scriptures without guidance. If you take a look around at all the weird interpretations, particularly regarding “end times” prophecies and the like, it’s not hard to see how some can feel that way.

If you marry Scripture to Tradition, and default to the God-given authority of the Bishop of Rome and the Magisterium of the Church, you can and should read the Bible as much as possible with no worries.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

continued …

It says at the end of a Koberger Vulgate of 1477:

The Holy Scriptures excel all the learning of the world . . . All believers should

watch zealously and exert themselves unremittingly to understand the contents of these most useful and exalted writings, and to retain them in the memory. Holy Scripture is that beautiful garden of Paradise in which the leaves of the commandments grow green, the branches of evangelical counsel sprout . . .

The publisher of the Cologne Bible 1480] writes . . . :

All Christians should read the Bible with piety and reverence, praying the Holy Ghost, who is the inspirer of the Scriptures, to enable them to understand . . . The learned should make use of the Latin translation of St. Jerome; but the unlearned and simple folk, whether laymen or clergy . . . should read the German translations now supplied, and thus arm themselves against the enemy of our salvation.

Saint Teresa of Avila (1515 -1582 AD)

"all the harm that comes to the world comes from its not knowing the truths of Scripture in clarity and truth

; not one iota of Scripture will fall short.’ To me it seemed I had always believed this, and that all the faithful believed it. " (La Vida, ch. 40, #1)

Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903 AD)

"The solicitude of the apostolic office naturally urges and even compels us…to desire that this grand source of Catholic revelation (the Bible) should be made safely and abundantly accessible to the flock of Jesus Christ

"

“…For sacred Scripture is not like other books. Dictated by the Holy Ghost, it contains things of the deepest importance, which in many instances are most difficult and obscure. To understand and explain such things there is always required the ‘coming’ of the same Holy Ghost; that is to say, His light and His grace…It is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of holy Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred… and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration is not only essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.” (Providentissimus Deus, Nov. 18, 1893)
Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914 AD)

"Nothing would please us more than to see our beloved children form the habit of reading the Gospels - not merely from time to time, but every day.

"
Pope Pius XII, “Divino Afflante Spiritu,” 1943

"Our predecessors, when the opportunity occurred, recommended the study or preaching or in fine the pious reading and meditation of the sacred Scriptures.

…This author of salvation, Christ, will men more fully know, more ardently love and more faithfully imitate in proportion as they are more assiduously urged to know and meditate the Sacred Letters, especially the New Testament…"

 

[itsjustdave1988]

continued …

Pope Paul VI, “DEI VERBUM” 1965

The Church … unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s Word and of Christ’s Body. She has always maintained [Sacred Scritpure], and continues to do so, together with sacred tradition, as the supreme rule of faith, since, as inspired by God and committed once and for all to writing, they impart the Word of God Himself without change, and make the voice of the Holy Spirit resound in the words of the prophets and Apostles. Therefore, like the Christian religion itself, all the preaching of the Church must be nourished and regulated by sacred Scripture. For **in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life. **Consequently these words are perfectly applicable to sacred Scripture: “For the word of God is living and active” (Heb. 4:12) and “it has power to build you up and give you your heritage among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32; see 1 Thess. 2:13).

From a Protestant scholar …

It can no longer be said that the Vulgate alone was in use and that the laity consequently were ignorant of Scripture

. . . We must admit that the Middle Ages possessed a quite surprising and extremely praiseworthy knowledge of the Bible, such as might in many respects put our own age to shame.

{E. v. Dobschutz, Deutsche Rundschau, 101, 1900, pp. 61ff.}
And from the 1611 King James Version, the translators of the KJV state in their preface …

Much about that time [1360], even our King Richard the Second’s days, John Trevisa translated [Scritpure] into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age . . . So that, to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up . . . but hath been . . . put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation.

{Graham, Henry G., Where We Got the Bible, St. Louis: B. Herder, rev. 1939, pp. 98-101}

At the back of my New American Bible, a quote from *Dei Verbum, *the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation is provided:

**This sacred Synod [Vatican II] urges all the Christian faithful to learn by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures **the “excelling knowledge of Jesus Chrsit.” “For ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” …

Therefore, they should gladly put themselves in touch with the sacred text itself …

And let them remember that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that God and man may talk together; for "we speak to him when we pray; we hear him when we read the divine saying."

 

[Evan]

I went to a catholic school in eastern oregon in 1966 (7th grade) and Sister required that everyone in my class buy a bible for our religion class (the CCD version of the New American)

I always assumed it was to be read rather than used as a desk decoration in the classroom.

Vatican II ended the year before, but I don’t think that was the reason for the bible, it seems my older brothers purchased bibles in earlier years. We each had to have our own bible.

 

[Steven_Merten]

itsjustdave1988:

Steven Merten,

The next time someone insists that Sacred Scripture ought not to be read, you can tell them what the constant teaching of the Catholic Church has been …

St. John Chrysostom (344/354 -407 AD)
St. Jerome, *Against Vigilantius, *AD 406:
Pope St. Gregory I (died 604 AD)
St. Isidore (560-636 AD)
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153 AD)
St. Bonaventure (1221-1274 AD):

In his day, only the wealthy learned to read.** He composed a copy of “Biblia Pauperum” which means the “Bible of the poor.”** It contained a collection of pictures illustrating the important events of the Old Testament. It also contained parallel scenes in the New Testament and it showed how the Old Testament prefigured and was fulfilled in the Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. This helped the people to learn God’s Word by showing them the important stories of both the Old and New Testament.

Hello Dave,

Thanks for the information. I really appreciate it when someone has done their homework. I will cut and past these posts to my computer memory. I will be prepared the next time I encounter a Catholic who does not think Catholics should read and discuss the bible.

Thanks again
Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com

 

[joegrabowski]

Tantum ergo:

I was born in 1956 and educated in Philadelphia catholic schools for 10 years (we moved when I was a sophomore in H.S.).

It is hard for me, with my background/ experience, to picture Catholics of the mid and late 20th century being “discouraged” from reading the Bible. If it DID take place, I’ve often wondered lately if they could have been from the same dioceses that NOW are–shall we say–a little more “creative” (i.e., Mahony’s California)? I certainly would love to be able to access diocesean records. Here’s a neat project for a budding seminarian or theologian–check the correlation between “bad doctrine of the 50s on” with “bad doctrine/ bad practices of the 90s on”. Makes me curious. . .

Actually, my Diocese (Allentown) would have been, during some of the time period I’m speaking of, under the great Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Allentown and Philly being what they are now, I too find it hard to believe!

 

[joegrabowski]

Thanks for all the replies! I feel a lot more assured (allbeit a little perplexed as to how I’ve met in the past so many people with the same complaints about their religious instruction). Thanks especially to it’sjustdave for your research. I’ll use that in the future. I certainly do not dispute that the Liturgy is rich with scripture (particularly the Old Mass) as well as tools like the Baltimore Catechism. It just amazes me that I’ve found so many people (from lukewarm Catholics to fervent Protestants) who seem to have this conception of the Church as it views the Bible. Maybe it’s based on stereotypes arising from the way secular historians describe the Church’s treatment of Catechumen throughout history. Haha. Who knows?

 

[Peace-bwu]

I fell in love with reading Scripture when I was 7 years old. I asked my mom for a Bible. I have wonderful memories of being “lost” in Scripture for hours and also looking at my cards of Saints and Christian art, which I inherited from a my great aunt. I think this contributed in a huge way to my current love for Scripture and the Catholic Church. Now my own 7 yr old daughter does the same thing.

I can remember my mother explaining that I should ask her to explain what certain passages meant, I had a healthy sense of knowing I had to take care not to take anything out of context, even at that young age. I do recall someone bringing a “watchtower” pamphlet and reading Revelations for the first time and asking my mom to help me understand it. That was a creepy read for a 7yr old, but I was fascinated.
I spent about a week of my summer vacation trying to learn the Greek, and Hebrew alphabets from our Childcraft Dictionary, so I could be a Biblical Archaeologist. Kids can be so funny, I was totally serious about it for a week!
I have **never **been discouraged from reading the Bible… and have always been blessed to have people around me to help me understand how to interpret it as a whole work, rather than taking bits and pieces out of context or interpreting a passage in a way that would conflict others.
In my experience, it is hard to believe people have actually been discouraged from reading the Bible. I have often wondered if it is a Catholic Urban legend. :confused: I know it is widely exaggerated, and it always annoys me when a well meaning Protestant assumes I have never read the Bible...

 

[Peace-bwu]

I think it is a vicious rumor started long ago by anti-Catholics as, yet, another reason to hate and bash Catholics and “prove” they are wrong. I think it has been successful in infecting people’s minds, and so people who dont know any better, assume it is true…like any urban legend. I have never heard a practicing Catholic say such a thing, but have read online former Catholics claiming they never read the Bible, were dicouraged to etc… I find it difficult to believe them. I always wonder whether they were practicing Catholics or came from a family who went to Mass only on Christmas and Easter. So when someone from a Protestant Church approached them and they actually started reading Scripture, they blamed the Catholic church for their lack of religion and credited Protestantism for their newfound love of Scripture… Where, if they had been practicing Catholics, they would never have had a lack of Scripture reading.
Isn’t it true that if a Catholic went to Mass every day for 4 years, they would read the entire Bible? What is the exact quote on this ?

 

[patg]

fix:

My point is that those who blame the pre VII Church should not blame the Church, but blame themselves.

I agree if you are talking about reading the bible as an adult. However, my point is that if reading the bible is not actively encouraged and supported during one’s formative (pre-adult) years so that one grows up with the background for doing it, there is something missing from “the church” and plenty of blame to go around. It is not a 7 to 12 year old’s fault that they don’t develop an independent interest in the bible.

Pat

 

[Timidity]

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, our priest gave a homily on this very thing. He said it was disappointing that it seemed that Protestants were better at reciting scripture than Catholics. He told us we should all be studying the Bible.

Unfortunately, it was a weekday mass, so he was probably “preaching to the choir” as the cliche goes.

 

[fix]

patg:

I agree if you are talking about reading the bible as an adult. However, my point is that if reading the bible is not actively encouraged and supported during one’s formative (pre-adult) years so that one grows up with the background for doing it, there is something missing from “the church” and plenty of blame to go around. It is not a 7 to 12 year old’s fault that they don’t develop an independent interest in the bible.

Pat

We all agree bible reading should be encouraged. I do not think it was discouraged. For the last 40 or so years, our bishops have failed to catechize. Our priests and sisters have failed to catechize. We, as laity, know about baseball statistics going back to 1950, we know every aspect of computer tecnology, yet we hardly know the basics of our faith.

So, my point is that the Church never discouraged bible reading. That seems to be a canard. The Church, at least in recent decades, has failed to teach the faith and we have failed to use our talents to learn about God and His Church. We all will have much to answer for. God have mercy.

 

[aridite]

That the Bible was on the Index of Forbidden Books is one of the lies listed in Loraine Boettner’s work,* Roman Catholicism* (see the tract Anti-Catholic Bible on catholic.com). I think it did filter into the Church, too. I grew up in California in the 70’s and 80’s and I remember being told that in the middle ages, as well as after the reformation, Catholics were not allowed to read the Bible because they might interpret it for themselves and fall into heresy. One had to have training and permission to be able to read it, or so we were told. It was supposed to be something new and exciting, begun at Vatican II, that Catholics were now allowed and even encouraged to read the Bible on their own. My memory of that time, though, is that Bible reading did not become common. I know I didn’t do it much through high school, and that some of my friends and family became easy prey for fundamentalists.

I really appreciate the list of saints and popes who encouraged the reading of Scripture through the ages. More amo to combat those who maligne Holy Mother Church.

 

[pippin]

Peace-bwu:

I find it difficult to believe them. I always wonder whether they were practicing Catholics or came from a family who went to Mass only on Christmas and Easter. So when someone from a Protestant Church approached them and they actually started reading Scripture, they blamed the Catholic church for their lack of religion and credited Protestantism for their newfound love of Scripture… Where, if they had been practicing Catholics, they would never have had a lack of Scripture reading.
Isn’t it true that if a Catholic went to Mass every day for 4 years, they would read the entire Bible? What is the exact quote on this ?

I was born in 1954 and spent 3 years in a Catholic grade school around the time of Vatican II. My family moved a lot so I attended CCD in several parishes. I don’t remember being either encouraged or discouraged from reading the Bible. We only had one Bible at home, a large family Bible that was never read. We did have a children’s Bible Story Book so I knew most of the main Bible stories and incidents from the life of Christ.

As for the comment that the old mass was especially rich in scripture, I disagree. I remeber the Latin mass. There were only two readings on Sunday, an epistle and the Gospel. We almost never heard the OT. Also we were on a one year cycle back then so every Dec. (beg. of Advent) you started over. Now we are on a Three year cycle for Sundays and a two year cycle for weekdays, which is why in three years you will hear most of the scripture read if you attend mass every day.

I also wanted to mention that my family were pew potatos which is probably why when we were approached by protestants who introduced us to the Bible we all left the Church. To date, I am the only member of my family to return. Incidently, we now all have several well used copies of the Bible in our homes.

 

[joegrabowski]

pippin:

As for the comment that the old mass was especially rich in scripture, I disagree. I remeber the Latin mass. There were only two readings on Sunday, an epistle and the Gospel. We almost never heard the OT. Also we were on a one year cycle back then so every Dec. (beg. of Advent) you started over. Now we are on a Three year cycle for Sundays and a two year cycle for weekdays, which is why in three years you will hear most of the scripture read if you attend mass every day.

I love the lectionary cycle, and do attend Mass everyday and love the way in which the Scriptural usage draws one into the life of Christ. I meant the prayers of the Old Mass when I referred to “richness in scripture.” Scott Hahn’s The Lamb’s Supper references the heavy usage of scriptural text and imagery in the Mass and comments on how we Catholics sometimes miss how much scripture is part of our vernacular.

In my own upbringing, I was never discouraged from reading the Bible, but the religious instruction that I recieved didn’t really promote the use of Scripture for entering into a deeper personal relationship with Christ. I think the problem is bound up with poor catechesis, and the roots of that issue are deep and quite tangled.

Most of the comments in this thread have been from fervent, practicing Catholics, but I guess the issue I was talking about really does rest more with the lukewarm and lazy faithful. I have never heard a daily Mass attendant complain of having been told not to read the Bible. It is the fallen away and lapsed Catholics who launch the complaint. My interest is in whether their current status is a symptom of the way in which the Bible and Catechesis were delivered to them in their youth.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

joegrabowski,

I believe the root cause has to to with the sin of sloth more than any catechetical methodology.

You ever watch Jay Leno when he asks really easy questions of college students in California, and they astonishingly don’t have a clue what the answer is? I think it’s the same problem. We’re too busy entertaining ourselves to pick up a book and read it.

 

[RBushlow]

pippin:

. . . . .
As for the comment that the old mass was especially rich in scripture, I disagree. I remeber the Latin mass. There were only two readings on Sunday, an epistle and the Gospel. We almost never heard the OT. . . .

Sorry, aren’t the epistles, psalms and Gospel from the Bible? All three synoptic Gospels plus John are covered every three years. So, If you had your ears on, you could memorize the Gospels. The Scripture was provided for you and handed to you at a minimum of 52 times a year (every day if you were sent to Catholic school). My point is, you can prepare the banquet, you can server the banquet, but you can’t eat it for them.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

I believe this contention that Catholics are not supposed to read Scritpure to be a misconception, not only among anti-Catholic myth-makers, but also among Catholic myth-makers. Observe,

THE ENCYCLICAL SPIRITUS PARACLITUS IN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT - Part II
by Rev. Brian W. Harrison, O.S., M.A., S.T.D.
rtforum.org/lt/lt61.html

One of the most egregious examples of this kind of myth-making is found in the widely-diffused ‘Abbott’ edition of the Vatican II documents. In commenting on the statement in Dei Verbum, 22, that "Easy access to sacred Scripture should be provided for all the Christian faithful," Fr. Roderick MacKenzie tells his readers, “This is perhaps the most novel section of the Constitution. Not since the early centuries of the Church has an official document urged the availability of the Scriptures for all.” 56 Fr. MacKenzie had evidently forgotten Spiritus Paraclitus, whose author not only enthusiastically recommended the widest possible diffusion of Scripture among the laity, but even sponsored the founding of an international society to further that aim! **Let Benedict XV speak for himself - over forty years before Vatican II:**Hence, as far as in us lies, we, Venerable Brethren, shall, with St. Jerome as our guide, never desist from urging the faithful to read daily the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles (numquam desinemus, ut [Christifideles omnes] … Evangelia, itemque Acta Apostolorum et Epistolas cotidiana lectione pervolutare … studeant), so as to gather thence food for their souls.

Our thoughts naturally turn just now to the Society of St. Jerome, which we ourselves were instrumental in founding; its success has gladdened us, and we trust that the future will see a great impulse given to it. The object of this Society is to put into the hands of as many people as possible the Gospels and Acts, so that every Christian family may have them and become accustomed to reading them. This we have much at heart, for we have seen how useful it is. We earnestly hope, then, that similar Societies will be founded in your dioceses and affiliated to the parent Society here. Commendation, too, is due to Catholics in other countries who have published the entire New Testament, as well as selected portions of the Old, in neat and simple form so as to popularize their use. Much again must accrue to the Church of God when numbers of people thus approach this table of heavenly instruction which the Lord provided through the ministry of his Prophets, Apostles and Doctors for the entire Christian world. 57

56. W.M. Abbott (ed.), The Documents of Vatican II (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967), pp. 125-126, n. 50. Fr. MacKenzie is not identified as the author of the comments on Dei Verbum in or near the conciliar text itself. However, his signature appears on the introductory essay preceding the text of the Dogmatic Constitution (ibid., p. 110), and an editorial note at the beginning of the book says that the unofficial notes to each conciliar document are the work of the scholar “whose name is at the end of the essay introducing the document” (ibid., p. xiv).

57. SP 43-44 (EB 477-478).