So there are literally hundreds of stories out there about Pope Benedict XVI launching a marathon Bible reading this week. And the vast majority have the Who (The Pope), the What (marathon Bible reading session), the Where (the Vatican) and the When (right now). This Agence France-Presse story is representative. This Telegraph story was a bit better, but just touched on it.
But it took me some searching to find the Why. The Los Angeles Times had a good report. After explaining the basics — all the books of the Bible, broadcast live on state television, lasting seven days and six nights, 1,300 readers (including former Italian presidents, current Cabinet ministers, soccer stars, foreign diplomats, cardinals, intellectuals, actors, opera singers and ordinary citizens, and 6 Muslims and 15 Jews):
Organizers wanted to make it clear, the Vatican said in a statement, that “the Bible belongs to everyone without any discrimination or cultural or ideological barrier.” The message was underscored by the pope’s decision to take part, as the pontiff explained in comments to the faithful after Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
“In this way the word of God can enter homes to accompany lives of families and individuals,” Benedict said. “A seed that if well received will not fail to bring abundant fruits.”
Although the pope tends to have a quiet, reserved style, he liked the idea of making the Bible accessible, Vatican officials said. Moreover, the timing was good because Sunday marked the start of the bishops synod, an assembly of bishops from around the world.
“The reason the pope has agreed is to give his support to a program intended to bring the listening and reading of the Bible to a wider public of every age and condition,” said Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, in an interview. “The church encourages the faithful to read and understand the Holy Scriptures… . The pope, therefore, intends to give a personal example … at a moment when the entire Catholic Church is reflecting and praying on the centrality of the Holy Scriptures in its life.”
The BBC adds a bit from the Pope’s address to the synod of cardinals and bishops. Such a simple thing, but telling readers why the Pope is doing this makes all the difference in the world.
To that end, the Religion News Service explained what was going on and managed to be the most interesting while doing so:
Catholics over the age of 50 are old enough to remember when the church discouraged non-clergy from acquainting themselves with Scripture, apart from selections quoted in their catechisms or read aloud at Mass. But that traditional attitude has shifted amid the many dramatic changes in Catholicism that began in the 1960s… .
A survey commissioned in preparation for the Synod showed Bible-reading in traditionally Catholic European countries to be markedly less common than in the United States. Only 38 percent of Poles, 27 percent of Italians, and 20 percent of Spaniards had read even one passage of Scripture over the previous year, the study found, compared to 75 percent of Americans.
Of equal concern to the bishops is how Catholics understand Scripture when and if they read it. The Synod’s official agenda notes the increasing popularity of “fundamentalism,” which it says “takes refuge in literalism and refuses to take into consideration the historical dimension of biblical revelation.”
Earlier this month, Benedict himself stated that a proper understanding of the Bible “excludes by its nature everything that today is known as fundamentalism,” and insisted that the “word of God can never simply be equated with the letter of the text.”
See, isn’t that interesting? The example of reading the Bible might seem self-evident but not only does it need to be explained, the particularly Catholic approach here needs to be explained. Only RNS did that.
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Comments (17) |
October 7, 2008, at 10:26 am
Interesting, thanks.
October 7, 2008, at 10:52 am
I’m 64 and I remember a drive by my parish while in grade school to get every family to buy a Bible. My family already had a small New Testament and my father talked with us about St Paul at the dinner table. So soon after WWII, buying expensive books was not so common. People went to libraries. I remember how beautiful the Bible was & I know that we paid for it on time. I bought a Bible as a wedding present for my husband a year or two after Vatican II when the average person was much better off financially.
The “discouragement” is an old shibboleth. True, it wasn’t pushed in the 1950s, but that’s beans to say it was discouraged. I knew all the Bible stories and parables from classes in 1950s grade school. I couldn’t have told you the chapter and verse numbers or recite much from heart, but I knew about Daniel in the lions’ den and the travels of St Paul and the Sermon on the Mount. While in high school, I had a small Book of the Hours that I read faithfully every day; it’s like a priest’s breviary, mostly with assigned psalms in a cycle. Catholics don’t believe everything in the Bible as literally true, but that doesn’t mean we don’t revere it as the inspired word of God.
BTW In your remarks you don’t mention that the very subject of the Synod going on right now in Rome is Scripture and its relationship to the mission of the church. This is not made clear in the LA story either, unless it was snipped. This Synod on Scripture is why the Bible reading is occurring now. Many of the readers from all over the world are also participants in the Synod. One of the first Synod speakers was the head rabbi of Haifa, Israel. Others will include Orthodox patriarchs and, presumably, some Protestants, as well as Catholics.
October 7, 2008, at 11:28 am
Mollie, thanks for the great report and specifically highlighting the one service, RNS, that filled in something I had been wondering about myself.
October 7, 2008, at 1:14 pm
What!?
An anti-Catholic canard counts as good journalism now?
Pope Benedict XV in his 1920 encylical Spiritus Paraclitus:
October 7, 2008, at 1:47 pm
It is not uncommon for myths about Catholicism to be reported as fact in the newspaper. The particular myth that Catholics were discouraged from reading the Bible stems, I believe, from the centuries old Protestant claim that Catholics received their beliefs exclusively from the clergy by means of a liturgy that was celebrated in a language — Latin — that they did not understand. Still, one wonders what, according to the myth, was done in the 1950s to discourage people from reading the Bible. Perhaps if word got out that a Catholic was sneaking some Bible reading, the Church saw to it that the rack was wheeled past that Catholic’s home so as to send the message?
October 7, 2008, at 1:53 pm
Re-thinking this passage. The reporter must have gotten his information only from Catholics of the “Spirit of Vatican II” persuasion who think everything before Vatican II was just awful. The info from the survey doesn’t say there was more reading of the Bible after VII; it’s all about how few people are reading it today, long after Vatican II. And, of course, any Protestants interviewed would have learned in their Sunday School classes about Catholics being forbidden to read the Bible. I know my Presbyterian mom did and so did my UCC law partner.
October 7, 2008, at 3:08 pm
[…] Also, check out GetReligion for some more commentary on why this is important. […]
October 7, 2008, at 4:41 pm
Re-thinking this passage. The reporter must have gotten his information only from Catholics of the “Spirit of Vatican II†persuasion who think everything before Vatican II was just awful.
Actually, I’ve heard something similar from my cradle Catholic mother-in-law. I get the impression that it was the easy-way-out response to the fact that Protestants emphasized Bible study heavily, always from their own doctrinal perspective of course, and that it was often used to make Catholics doubt their faith.
The better course for the clergy to take would have been to build up Catholics’ knowledge from within a Catholic framework, but instead it seems they simply discouraged Catholics from getting into such debates in the first place.
October 7, 2008, at 5:54 pm
The Protestants I knew just called us “cat lickers” and didn’t bother trying to convert us. But seriously, Protestants rely more on “proof-texting”. Catholics are more into philosophical-systemic theology. My dad was a state apologetics champion - Protestants don’t go in for that kind of thing. When there was so much prejudice against Catholics, apologetics was for defending your faith when challenged, not for evangelizing. It was Protestants who were expected to go out and proselytize. We sat around the table discussing the logical implications of things; there were no points received for knowing chapter and verse.
We’re talking apples and oranges. The thinking was: why get into debates when the sides can’t even agree on the debate rules? or how to decide who won?
The Pope is promoting reading the Bible for its own sake not so Catholics can successfully throw chapter and verse at Protestants. Catholics just aren’t into that.
If you want to see how Catholics perceive Scripture, get a recent copy of Jerome’s - the latest compilation of scholarly commentary on Scripture. That’s what an educated Catholic will argue - the meaning of those words in Scripture and what they signify. But Catholics also recognize 2,000 years of Tradition, which is outside the purview of most Protestants and would be rejected by them as illegitimate in any debate.
As to Joel’s mother-in-law:
I don’t think most Protestants were or are now really up to a serious debate about religion, anyway. Anybody who would challenge your religion, did it a lot and had a lot of practice. Her priest was giving her the same kind of advice as you would give about dealing with Mormons at your door: Don’t get into it with them. Additionally, Catholics’ sources of authority go beyond the Scripture that is the sole source for most Protestants; so what would be the point?
October 8, 2008, at 12:24 am
[…] On the one hand, it may be possible to accomplish public reading of Scripture in a very direct way. Direct applications of public reading of Scripture might include reading the Bible to any and all who may listen (or even to those who do not) in public settings (e.g., on the street corner, over the radio waves, at the bus-stop, on the steps of Parliament, or who knows where and how else creative minds may accomplish this). Some evangelical mission organizations, like HCJB, have included public Bible reading as part of their ministry for years. Interestingly enough, Bob Seale (a good friend and theological father to me), pointed out to me today that in the coming week, the entire Bible will be read continuously over Italian state radio at the prompting of Pope Benedict XVI and at the outset of a synod of 200 bishops to discuss the place of Scripture in the world today. (Read more about it here and here and here.) Talk about taking the directive to being devoted to the public reading of Scripture! […]
October 8, 2008, at 6:55 am
I have had older Catholics, who were teens or young adults before the Council tell me they certainly had gotten the impression that Bible reading was not “ok”.
One woman actually told me of going to Confession to acknowledge that she had read the Old Testament, which she regarded as a sin. She said that her confessor’s response was “Did you learn anything?”
If we were to compare pre-Vatican II Catholic lay culture (which must be distinguished always from the Church’s official teaching) in this area against the attitude of the fundamentalist world I grew up in, there would be no contest. The number of pre-Vat Catholics raised “no Bible, no breakfast” as many fundamentalist children were raised is beyond miniscule.
It all depends upon what you consider to be the norm. If the norm is personal, daily Bible reading by the laity, then Catholics will always come in behind evangelicals. If the standard is exposure to Scripture through the Mass or the liturgy of the hours or official magisterial teaching, then the picture looks very different.
October 8, 2008, at 8:26 am
I am just stunned that any Catholic would say this. I have never met one.
Are these the “I was raised Catholic” folks who are now Evangelicals and are mis-remembering their Catholic youth? I know of few of them and read about their “memories” at Evangelical comboxes.
BTW I have never heard a Catholic describe their youth as “no Bible, no breakfast”. The only snide remarks similar to that I have ever heard come from ex-Catholics or the ones pushing for married and women priests who use that kind of thing to disparage the pre-Vatican II world they like to scare people with.
I want to hear this from a real current Catholic and not hearsay from people who are telling us this is what they hear from Catholics. I want to know what parish, when it happend and who it was who told them they shouldn’t read the Bible. After all, we are also hearing some serious BS about what the church teaches from some pretty famous Catholics these days - like Biden and Pelosi. They are misremembering what they were taught, too.
October 8, 2008, at 12:09 pm
You know, I think the problem with the line might be the word discouraged. Before I wrote this piece up, I ran it by a few older-than-50 Catholic clergy friends of mine and they had no problem with the line and even joked about it. One did say that a better phrase might be “didn’t encourage” rather than discouraged.
October 8, 2008, at 2:31 pm
Mollie:
I’ll accept a mild “didn’t encourage”.
Now that I know your source, however, it’s understandable that you think the church “discouraged” Bible reading - these priests joking about something like that says a lot. That age-group of priests are the exact ones who would say something really snide about pre-Vatican II.
Remember, unless they are really old, they weren’t priests yet before the Council, never learned to say the old Mass, don’t know much Latin and view the old days as antedeluvian. It was priests in that age group that got me to quit the church for 10 years. The nuns I know in that age range are even more dismissive of everything before the Council.
For the record, I haven’t been to a 1962 Mass since 1962 so I’m not just a cranky Traddie.
Thanks.
October 9, 2008, at 1:53 am
The reading of the bible was not discouraged prior to Vatican II…it was the personal interpretation of biblical passages that the Catholic church did not want its followers to fall into as these may vary from person to person and may give rise to many contentions.
While the faithful are encouraged to read the bible and apply its teachings in their lives,the interpretation of passages is given to the Magisterium of the Church. This Latin word simply means teaching authority of the bishops, successors of the apostles, who teach in union with the Pope, who is the successor of Peter. This is the way the church safeguards the faithful interpretation of scripture.
Lastly, there is a lot of scripture reading in the Mass itself. In the Liturgy of the Word, the first reading is taken from the Old Testament (mostly to emphasize a teaching that is part of the gospel of the Day or to show how someone prefigures another person in the new testament). There is also a reading of the Psalms (responsorial psalm), in which the congregation take an active part. The second reading which contains the epistles is also read to show how the early church practiced its Christian Faith. The highlight of the Liturgy of the Word are the texts taken from the gospels themselves.
The daily readings for each mass is the same in every part of the world wherein Mass is said. This is how the faithful and scripture are taken care of in the Catholic Church.
October 9, 2008, at 3:14 am
If anybody is still reading this thread, here’s a link to John Allen who is posting coverage of the daily doings at the Synod on the scripture that is going on in Rome. One of the first major speeches rejects the characterization of Christianity as a religion of the book. Of course, that’s the Catholic view.
http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2099
Scroll down to see links to other daily postings.
October 12, 2008, at 7:50 pm
I too am amazed that GetReligion missed the “Catholics over the age of 50 are old enough to remember when the church discouraged non-clergy from acquainting themselves with Scripture” canard. This is a protestant myth, and goes hand in hand with the “Luther was the first to make the Bible available to the laiety and that’s why the Church tried to silence him” myth. Makes you wonder how Gutenburg was able to print his Bible 60 or 70 years before the reformation.
Having said all this, it is true the Church has never emphasized solely the reading of scripture, and has quietly discouraged personal interpretation; particularly because the Bible is a complex compilation that is not easy to understand, and lends itself particularly to anyone who wishes to apply and legitimize their individual opinion. It may be fair to say that because of this there has been a recitance to encourage intividual Bible study and rote memorization in the style of the evangelical churches.
I know that my mother, who grew up in a Catholic household in Italy in the 1930s was never discouraged from reading the Bible, but was encouraged to consult with a priest for explanation. I also know that as I was brought up, my mother ensured that I always had a Bible, though she never pressured me to read it. In fact, I would say there was more recitance on the part of my Presbyterian father to my reading the Bible… go figure…