Reading the Bible...

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Annunciata:
Yes! My point is that is his excuse for not picking up the Bible and just plain reading it! Meditating prayerfully, etc. We need to do that…especially if we are going to defend the Faith…we need to know who, what, and where we are speaking of…Don’t you think? Annunciata:)
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I do agree with you Annunciata, To defend our faith we need to know scripture and the Churches teaching, but I do respect a faithful Catholic who has a blind faith, loves our Lord, and does not need to be bothered with the problems non-catholics bring to the table. Both my Mother and Father pray the Rosary and go to Mass everyday, it is there life. They get fed scripture and the host everyday, they do not memorize it… they live it!

We of course grew up with a family bible in the house we were never discouraged to read it. I’m thinking of a passage in the bible which of course I can not remember the exact words or passage but it dealt with Timothys need to touch Christs wounds in order to believe. We don’t have to touch his wounds in order to believe some - not all - can follow Christ with the heart only and not he mind!

Thank you for reading,
God Bless
 
I was born in 1935 and remember the black Duoay-Rheims version on my mothers book shelf when I was about 6 years old. It wasn’t ragged. but definetly used although I don’t remember anyone reading it. In Catholic School we had Baltimore Catechism and in High School text books which as I recall were narrative forms of some parts of the Bible. I took a Scripture Course in the early 50’s at a Catholic College and we had notes printed by the prof, but never once cracked open a real Bible. I don’t remember being discoraged from reading it. It just seemed that nobody I knew did. I never personally owned a Bible until I was about 28 or 29 years old. Just before Vatican II happened. 🙂 🙂
 
I was born in 1975. I wasn’t of the faith and converted when I was 19, confirmed when I was 21. I was encouraged to read the bible during RCIA. It was said that St. Jerome, commenting on Phillipiams 3:8 (I beleive) said that,

**Ignorance of the Scriptures, is Ignorance of Christ! :amen: **

We are all called to know the Word! Praise be to God.
 
I went to Catholic parochial school and Jesuit high school. The nuns in grammar school didn’t stress the bible, but the Jesuits really drummed into us the importance of studying both the Old and New Testaments. We had theology classes twice a week, and it was very scripture oriented. I wish I had paid more attention back then. :o

But my bible training came mostly from my dad, who used to read to us from the bible most evenings. He is quite the scriptorian and taught bible study until his advanced age prevented it.
Paul
 
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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.
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Well, I was never discouraged by my parents or peers from reading the Bible, so what you’ve been told isn’t true. What Catholics should not engage in is unguided private interpretation of scripture in opposition to official Church teaching.

Gerry 🙂
 
Never heard in my life that Catholics should not read the Bible. When I heard it for the first time, I said “What!” and before I knew it I had to defend the fact that it was absolutely “nonsense.”
 
I was raised catholic and went to catholic schools all my life and I was not aware of bible reading until high school. During religion classes we were given sheets of paper explaining gospel truths but I did not know they were from the bible only the teacher. We had a family bible at home but it was only opened to add a baptism, marriage, death in the center. I was taught prayer, the rosary, church every sunday and holy day but never the bible. It was not discouraged but not encouraged either. The schools taught that good works and church on sunday got you into heaven. I did not know any other way until high school when I started exploring it myself.
 
I’m sick of fundies who say we don’t read the Bible, the only reason why they have a Bible is because of us… Read it as often as you can, just look up how the church interprets certain things. Peace out!
 
A priest gave me a bible, when I was 22 and told to read it daily. I have obey. It has been a blessing. The bible was written by catholics for catholics.
Code: 
  I remember my first attempt at bible study with protestants. They voted out **Catholic Tradition** and then said they we would study the book of **Romans**.
  
  I said the New Testament is **Catholic Tradition**, therefore we can only study the **Old Testement**. They wavered but had to agree. If they wanted to study the New Testament they would have to recind the rule.
I was born in 1946 and now I am an instructor at Bible study in our parish. This year we are studing the book of Revelations.
 
Who voted that Catholics aren’t allowed to read the Bible?

I didn’t know Jack Chick was a regular on the board :rotfl:
 
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amarkich:
Asquared, the Old Mass is actually more replete with Scripture. .
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if you are referring to the Tridentine Mass, I would also refer you to Fr. Peter Stravinskas whose pamphlet on the bible and the Mass has been carried over to his book the Catholic church and the Bible, and refers virtually every prayer of the Mass (of Pope Paul VI) to its biblical origins. the biblical readings have been greatly expanded in the new lectionary.

when my mom died I found my old confraternity version bible from parochial school, and judging by the underlining and marginal notes, I must have used it quite extensively.
 
Our parish priest (ordained 1963) is a dud and he won’t allow what I call Bible reading and discussion in the parish.

He relented briefly, and the director of religious education herself organized a group study for a lectionary-oriented study and this died out in about six months.

(Nevertheless, the same priest has encouraged people to sign up for the regular casino bus trips that are sponsored in the parish. Someone out there may recognize me because this is my favorite thing to complain about.)

I have run into twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings in the Chicago area who say with emphasis that Catholics were told to NOT read the Bible. I never heard any such thing in my upbringing. although there was no Bible reading until I went to Catholic high school.
bible study groups are subject to all the ordinary group dynamic variables. Their success depends on leaders who are people-oriented as well as Bible-oriented.

I think it’s important to slow down, and cover one chapter of scripture a week, at most. The Little Rock Scripture Study is way too fast, zipping along at normal speeds of 3 to 5 chapters a week. That is simply too fast to plumb the depths of scripture. The first chapter of the book of Ruth, for example, covers a period of time of over twenty years. (It is thought by some that this book is actually not historical.) The whole book of Ruth totals just 78 verses, anyway. What’s the rush? The person Ruth comes across as a very beautiful person and a very inspiring pre-Christian.

When I lived in the Chicago area, I listened to an evangelical speaker by the name of Harold Camping (a severe anti-Catholic) who spent, if I recall correctly, over 200 half-hour programs unfolding all the meaning in the Book of Ruth.

My point is, Scripture is like a gourmet meal, not fast food. And, another thing, I have found that when a priest is present in a group discussion, everybody clams up and the priest always monopolizes the conversation. Hello – that’s not a “discussion” where people “think” about what they are reading. Like I said, you have to like people as well as Scripture to have a good study group.
 
In a group a few weeks ago one of the sisters related how, years ago, she had returned home to her parents for a short break. She took with her a Bible which she was often reading. On one occasion she left it on a table in the lounge (or dining room - detail not important). Her mother found it and was astounded and dismayed that anyone would be reading the Bible on their own.

Obviously in that Catholic home owning or reading a Bible had been frowned upon. I don’t know the history so don’t know how such attitudes came about. And obviously those attitudes didn’t come about in every location, only some locations.

Thankfully the parish here is very into encouraging the people to read Scripture regularly - no dud priest here! If that weren’t the case I honestly think there would be no chance whatsoever of me having come to the church and started RCIA.

Amen - to Jerome quoted in another post.

The sister by the way is being an example and inspiration to me in her love of the Scriptures, and her constant prayerfulness and mediation on the Scriptures - among other things. (don’t get the impression she is a scripture-only nun!)

Blessings

Asteroid
 
I have been encouraged to read the Bible. Not so much through formal religious instruction or by priests through homilies as part of a course or deliberate apporach, but when I asked on an individual level for explanations about Christian fundamentalist protestants’ interpretation of passages and allegations towards Catholic teaching as being unChristian, then I was advised to read the scripture.

I wish I was told directly how much the Bible helps with meditation and prayer life, but that was told to me more through reading about the Bible and for some reason my instinct (or rather the Holy Spirit) did not point that out to me early in life.

It’s funny, because I gave my mother a Bible for Christmas (I gave many Bibles away this Christmas, with the excuse that hey, even if you aren’t into reading it now, the time may come when you are seeking answers tha can best be found in here, so just keep it on your shelf…hoping it will call to them) and she said the only Bible she had was one she received for first communion. That she had always been too intimmidated by the thought of reading scriptures for herself.

No offense to the Douay Rheims support camp, but I think part of the problems was that reading is a difficult first impression to give a child. Now there are so many more accessible Catholic versions to give a beginner, and I think that the more you read any version, the more you want to know what other versions say.

Bible study for me is addictive. Once I got into the habit of reading it, or am in the middle of reading it to research a theme, I seek out many Catholic Bibles to look at different nuances and many commentaries to look at their interpretations. If I need help with reconciling different ideas then I contact a priest or other religious. It’s much easier to ask these questions with the internet too.

She also told me that she did not think it was “Catholic” to read the Bible; that it was somethign Bible churches did. But I suppsoe the difference between her and me is also that she grew up in a predominantly Catholic environment (Polish community in upsate NY) and she was not exposed to so many people telling her she was “unChristian,” because of what the Bible said. Vatican II occurred when she was near high school age.

She enver actively discouraged reading the Bible, but I never saw her as an example doing it, and if I had, I beleive that I would have done so sooner.

My father was raised Baptist but converted to Catholicsm when I was in fourth grade. The onyl time I remember him reading the Bible was when he was goign through a rought time at work (and now I could say it was serious nervous break down time for him, but this observation is through the power of retrospect as I was about 7 or 8 at the time) and he would rock on the porch for ages in the dark reading revelation by a very dim light. When I would ask him about what he was reading, he woudl quote passages about beasts and other apocalyptic scenarios, whcih distrubed me and made me think that the Bible was not something comprehendable to young people.

My parents complain that her children don’t go to church regulally on Sunday or aren’t too concerned about religion or belonging to some community of faith, but religion was barely in the house growing up. It wasn’t something demonstrated as a normal aspect of every day life, or as refuge from trouble or a place to find answers, but something you did for an hour on Sunday once an week and never questioned why anything was said or done. The unfortunate impression was that if you thought about religion seriously or outside of mass, then maybe you were mentally unstable.
 
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RobedWithLight:
Well, I was never discouraged by my parents or peers from reading the Bible, so what you’ve been told isn’t true. What Catholics should not engage in is unguided private interpretation of scripture in opposition to official Church teaching.

Gerry 🙂
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Note the protestants and California Catholics who say Catholics were told not to read the bible, and those who say they were told not to read the bible and interpret it privately. Typical distortion…

We are strongly encouraged to read and know the bible - not necessarily the same thing.
 
Catholics think they were told not to read the bible because of the power of suggestion. They have been told so often that this is the case, that they just believe it to be true. “I didn’t read the bible when I was a kid because we were told not to.”

Actually the reality was that you and your family chose not to read that big white coffee table bible, and all those Evangelicals out there convinced you that it wasn’t your fault, but the Church’s. It’s pathetic. Take responsibility for your own lack of interest in God’s Word and stop blaming the Church.
 
I am 55 and we read the bible in Catholic school, a bible was on our coffee table at home and we entered all important dates in it in the front. My dad read the bible to us We were never discouraged from reading it. I think that we did rely on our religious to do a lot of the explaining to us, and perhaps we got lazy. Not so now, we all are joining bible studies at our church. My son take a bible to school every day in his Catholic school.

There are many misconceptions out there (Catholics don’t know the bible), and this in one of them.
 
Go for it!

If you are lucky enough to attend Church every day you will hear just about all the Bible every three years, there alone.

CCC seems to encourage us reading and understanding the Bible, don’t you think?

105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. "The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."69

"For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself."70

106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more."71

[107](javascript:openWindow(‘cr/107.htm’)😉 The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."72

108 Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living”.73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures."74

III. THE HOLY SPIRIT, INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTURE

109 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.75

110 In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."76

111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. "Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written."77

The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it.78

[112](javascript:openWindow(‘cr/112.htm’)😉 1. Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole Scripture”. Different as the books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover.79
The phrase “heart of Christ” can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure. But the Scripture has been opened since the Passion; since those who from then on have understood it, consider and discern in what way the prophecies must be interpreted.80

[113](javascript:openWindow(‘cr/113.htm’)😉 2. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”. According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"81). [114](javascript:openWindow(‘cr/114.htm’)😉 3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith.82 By “analogy of faith” we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.
 
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty certain that the cycle for daily readings is 2 years. The Sunday reading cycle is 3 years.

CARose

P.S. I love reading my bible, although I still haven’t gotten around to going at it cover to cover. I want to do that one of these days!
 
Council of Toulouse 1229 A.D.

Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.

:rolleyes:
POPE CLEMENT XI ON READING SCRIPTURE

The following statements are condemned as being error:
  1. **It is useful and necessary at all times, in all places, and for every kind of person, to study and to know the spirit, the piety, and the mysteries of Sacred Scripture.
    **80. The reading of Sacred Scripture is for all.
  2. **The sacred obscurity of the Word of God is no reason for the laity to dispense themselves from reading it.
    **82. The Lord’s Day ought to be sanctified by Christians with readings of pious works and above all of the Holy Scriptures. It is harmful for a Christian to wish to withdraw from this reading.
  3. It is an illusion to persuade oneself that knowledge of the mysteries of religion should not be communicated to women by the reading of Sacred Scriptures. Not from the simplicity of women, but from the proud knowledge of men has arisen the abuse of the Scriptures and have heresies been born.
  4. To snatch away from the hands of Christians the New Testament, or to hold it closed against them by taking away from them the means of understanding it, is to close for them the mouth of Christ.
  5. To forbid Christians to read Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospels, is to forbid the use of light to the sons of light, and to cause them to suffer a kind of excommunication.
Eh! These statements are condemned as being error.:rolleyes:
 
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