Catholics and the Bible

I just encountered again the strange idea that Catholics kept their Bibles dusty on shelves in their homes until some magic took place after the second Vatican council in the 1960s, and now Catholics read their Bibles. Aside from the obvious fact that not many Catholics use their Bibles even today (hence the decision of the bishops to have a Year of the Word), it is also clear that today, as ever before, the Bible is actually not the centre of the Faith and life of Catholics. The Mass has pride of place there. Hence the demolition of our communities in the last few months, as the churches were closed and the strange phenomenon of only watching Masses through online camera feeds was begun. 

But back to the Bible. As we are given it, in its present form, the Bible is the product of the Tradition of the Church, which pre-existed the Catholic Bible and already was powered centrally by the Mass and the Sacraments for generations before bound Bibles were available to the parishes. From the beginning, then, Catholics have not required their own copies of Scripture to live their lives. In the early decades and centuries, the Bible existed as isolated books, and different parishes and churches would have had their own combination of those books, which included the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek (aka. the Septuagint) and a combination of one or more Gospels and of the Apostolic letters (some of which are in our New Testament, but many of which were later discarded by the bishops). Even after the closed set of books of the Bible were decided upon, having a Bible would have been immensely costly until the arrival of printing in the fifteenth century. 

What I mean to say is that, although it's lovely to have printed Bibles for our homes, and although it is a gift that we are able to preserve the Word of God in so many ways, nowadays even in digital forms on our telephones and computers, Scripture was originally designed for reading in synagogue and church, and the many Catholics who could either not have a printed Bible or could not read, still heard and absorbed large portions of Scripture through their attendance at church and through being part of the community. Ours is a social religion. Even when Bibles are readily and cheaply available, many of us still remember Scripture through stories we have learned in school or through some form of multimedia product. I personally learn more from pictures and video than from layers of text. And in this way, Catholics learnt their Bibles for centuries before printing and, so also, for centuries after printing.

But the Vatican council of the 1960s did give an a new impetus to study of Scripture, through the dogmatic constitution, Dei Verbum, which is always worth a read. It's not a very long document. You need read only the sixth and final chapter to remember the place of Scripture in our lives.

Meanwhile, you could make use of commentaries on Scripture, and I don't mean those big, fat ones that are made for scholars at university. I mean those bright ones, full of pictures, that used to be produced by Readers Digest, and are still available sometimes in second-hand shops. I've got a good few myself from Mount Saint Bernard abbey shop, and I'm currently going through this one. It provides an excellent snapshot of first-century Judaism, still centred on the Temple (when the Temple was destroyed in AD 70, Judaism survived only as the present rabbinic Judaism in its various schools, and as the Christian Church), with the historical background that is required. I would attempt a cover-to-cover read, but it's better as a reference book.

Well, this article is long enough. At least keep that Bible by your side. You might feel inclined to read it. Click here for the best (free) Catholic mobile app I know, that could help. And I'm still reading through the Bible in a year.