Too much to reply to, so I will simply relate my experience on this matter.
I was born and raised a Presbyterian. I am a Catholic Convert.
I married a Cradle Catholic. We raised our children in both churches. We attended either service randomly and the kids went all the religious programs available to each. As young adults, they chose confirmation as Catholics. When they had left home, I had no problem attending Catholic services with my wife.
Let me then state here categorically that NOBODY reads the Bible like Catholics do.
I grew up listening to preachers read the bible in church. I went to bible studies and in Sunday School I had to memorize 100 bible verses to win the “Coveted white Bible” (What an oxymoron that is!) I attended the Presbyterian youth group and we read the bible. I went on retreats and we read the bible. I was confident that I had a good biblical understanding of Christianity because for all my life I had been reading the Bible.
But after I was married and started to attend Catholic Mass, I discovered something that I was amazed at. Catholics read the bible at mass EVERY DAY! Not only that, but they read different parts of it EVERY DAY. Not the same thing over and over again. Suddenly I heard stuff I had never heard in a protestant sermon. There were parts of the Bible that I had not only never heard of, but passages that contradicted some of what I had been taught my whole life! Somebody told me that if I went to mass every day I would hear the entire Bible read in three years!
This was interesting. All my life I was taught that this scripture or that passage was proof that we should act in a certain way or believe a certain thing. Suddenly as I read further down the page I found that there was a further explanation of the thought, or a caveat that changed the whole meaning of the passage. WOW! Who knew? Well, the Catholics knew.
Catholics don’t read or understand the bible? Are you kidding? They WROTE it. Who better to understand it? Faith without works? Preposterous. Sola Scriptura? By what authority? All you need to do is read the bible to understand? Surely you could get a lot out of it that way, but how could you truly understand unless you have read the ancient manuscripts and studied the languages and what them meant at the time they were written? A man by himself can never accomplish what thousands of scholars over thousands of years have done and understand.
Was the church keeping people ignorant on purpose for its own good? Of course not! Christ himself told us to go out into the world and preach the gospel. Paul tells us that all Holy Scripture is good for teaching the word of God. It is in the basic best interest of the Church to continually spread the word as Crist taught us!
Then why weren’t the people allowed to have bibles in the early days? The only available written bibles at the time were hand lettered, hand drawn copies, laboriously worked on for months or years at a time and only the churches could afford to have one. There were not family bibles handed down from father to son with genealogies and pictures of Grandma in them. People simply had no access to a bible until Johannes Gutenberg devised a way to print them in mass. And that didn’t happen until fourteen hundred years after Christ. It was far from a Papal conspiracy, it was simple economics.
I converted at Easter Vigil in 2010. Here’s what I have discovered about Catholics in general:
Many cradle Catholics don’t completely understand their faith. Perhaps they are born into a very devout family that attends mass every Sunday and goes to Religious education classes but aren’t really told the meaning of things Many parents answer questions with “Because that’s the way we do it.” It’s not that they’re bad parents, but merely parents, trying to keep a child from misbehaving.
Religious education is taught by lay teachers, volunteer parents and people who are trying to teach a serious, important lesson while herding cats.
My wife often speaks about the “Rules of the church.” I speak of them as the “beautiful gifts” of the church. What is the difference? As a child, when you are told to do something it is a rule. There are rarely explanations, only instructions.
By itself, confession sounds pretty awful. But like putting scripture into its proper context, when confession is put into the context of reconciliation and preparedness for accepting the VERY BODY AND BLOOD of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is a beautiful gift that makes us worthy of accepting His sacrifice. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? Sometimes it is only as willing accepting adults that we can see that.
As an adult, who has grown and matured and is ready for the truth, you will hear it and accept it. And these converted Catholics are the zealots that keep the faith alive and vibrant, who understand that Catholicism springs from the Holy Scriptures, nurtured by the Church traditions, taught by the church fathers and EXPLAINED by the Catechism.
I believe that all misunderstandings about the Catholic Church stem merely from ignorance. The lack of knowledge about what Catholics do and why.
I teach the youth in our church: Question everything. Find the answers. Look it up. There is not a question that you can ask about the Catholic Church that doesn’t have 2000 years of study, observation, analysis and tradition to back it up. There is nothing superfluous, noting added and nothing taken away from the scriptures and the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If you have a question about the faith, the Catholic Church has the answer based on scripture. Even the traditions of the church have their basis in scripture. Who would know these things better than the very people who wrote them?
NOBODY reads the Bible like the Catholics.
Michael Hager
Some Thoughts
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