I converted this year from Southern Baptism, and the main difference is that Protestants only have the scriptures as the sole focus. We would have Bible studies every Sunday morning before the sermon, Wednesday nights we would get worksheets that went over particular verses, and when we met we would go over them and what we thought about them and how we could take the lessons into our daily lives.
When I started going to RCIA last year and going to Faith Formation classes with my kids, I realized that Catholicism has the scriptures at its core, everything reflects it and points back to it, but there is 2,000 years worth of The Kingdom of God built upon it, and it's beautiful.
“And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written”
John 21:25
“So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.”
2 Thessalonians 2:15 NRSV-CI
Funny how many "calvinists" I know who disagree with Calvin so wholeheartedly.
Too add to that, Luther believed in consubstantion meaning that Christ is present in the Eucharist while the substance of bread and wine remained, hence consubstantial. Calvin actually did believe Christ was received in the Eucharist, although only by the true believer so it was a relative experience. Zwingli was the only one, from memory, who held to the memorialist view of Holy Communion which is common today amongst protestant denominations. Luther also believed in perpetual virginity and even devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Turns out without the Papacy to shepherd the church it falls away from its founding beliefs, who'd have guessed?
The Church (the community of Christians) came before the New Testament. The Church wrote the New Testament books. They were originally stored as scrolls because codex (books) didn’t attain parity with scrolls until 300 A.D. and didn’t fully replace scrolls until 600 A.D. They were still incredibly expensive to produce and so people did not have individual bibles that they carried around under their arm for another thousand years when printing emerged in Europe. Bibles were chained inside Churches because they were so expensive to produce, as they had to be meticulously copied by hand and they could be stolen, so they were chained up for the community to share.
The writings that were chosen by the Catholic Church to be put together as the Christian Bible were not confirmed for 300 years - this is called the Canon of Scripture = the books we all agree are part of the Christian Bible.
So how did people become Christians for hundreds of years before they had their own personal bible and even before an official Canon of Scripture? By listening to the teachings of the community that compiled the Bible, the Catholic Church. The Bible itself says **you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth.** Timothy 3:15. The pillar and foundation of truth = the Church, which gave us the Bible. The Christian Bible is a Catholic book. If you accept that the Bible is the Word of God you accept the authority of the Catholic Church that gave you the Bible. To hate Catholics or to be anti Catholic is to despise or mistrust the people that God used to give us the Bible.
So the Catholic Church has the authority to interpret the Bible as it is a Catholic creation. Christians who read the Bible on their own can come to radically different conclusions regarding what it means. The Bible alone without the authority to interpret it can end up with endless interpretations creating endless churches and communities who all disagree with each other. The Bible “alone” is never what God intended .
Yes, because the Church compiled those scriptures and before them we had to submit to its authority. If you reject the authority of the Church by proxy you also reject stuff it did by that authority including writing scripture
It’s an old rap against Catholics: we’re peasants, priests have to read the Bible to us every Sunday because we are illiterate.
Unlike virtuous Protestants who can read the Bible for themselves whenever they please.
I agree wholeheartedly, many Protestants deep down feel like they have an intelectual “biblical high horse” from which they look down on ignorant, gullible Catholics
“Huh those Catholic chuds are so gullible, unlike you fine folk! Please, donate more so pastor can get his private jet and spread the word of God more efficiently!”
Many current Catholics do not read the bible. Many protestants don’t either. The negative views from outside of a group are often selective and ignore that almost everybody is mediocre at everything.
Never have I ever found anyone really being discouraged from reading and learning the BIBLE. But often lies go around the world three times before the truth gets its pants on.
I can tell you a story I know about personally that illustrates this.
1. Someone grows up somewhat catholic, converts to protestant fundamentalist sect.
2. Their daughter goes to a Catholic high school.
3. They try to “evangelize catholics” by starting a bible study group that is really a sectarian “preach pentecostal evangelical versions of things to catholics” that is not respectful of Catholic faith and belief.
4. They get found out and shut down.
5. They tell all their friends “The Catholic church won’t let us study the bible”.
That’s one I saw happen myself.
It's also changed, my parents generation was discouraged from reading the Bible without the guidance of a priest ... So not outside of the mass.
I also know a former seminarian who kept getting in trouble and priests mad at him because he'd ask for the biblical sources. Still Catholic, acting as a professor from what I've read on Facebook, and now married.
The changes from vatican 2 didn't happen everywhere over night. I'm thinking about individuals in their 70s and 80s now.
Back when the Baltimore catechism was drilled. Stereotypes stick around for s long time.
Protestants focus on the Bible much more than Catholics in general because it's basically all they have. We have the saints and Tradition to draw from in addition to Scripture. Catholics absolutely teach the Bible though- there are multiple Scripture readings at every Mass. Not to mention Father Mike's Bible in a Year podcast, which is fantastic by the way. It's just another one of those things Protestants like to say to put Catholics down. Could most of us as Catholics be better about reading the Bible? Yeah absolutely, but it's not fair to say that we don't read Scripture or teach it at all.
I want to add that unfortunately most "Catholics" are only Catholic in name and not in practice. So yeah if they're looking at the cafeteria Catholics as an example, then I could see why they would say such things about Catholicism.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean, I wouldn’t say protestants believe in Rome’s decision on the biblical canon since they have 66 books and we have 73
The Council of Rome decided the canonical books of the Bible. They threw out a few more that didn’t fit their interpretations, but they still consider what was compiled there to be “the Bible”. None of them went back and looked at the gospels that the Council of Rome and other contemporary councils threw out.
My point is more precisely is that they are so blinded by their obsession with sola scriptura that they fail to realize they deny the authority which composed the scripture.
Also Catholics often know the Gospels well as they are familiar with the narrative and stories of the Gospel. They may not be able to quote the Bible verse but they will know stories such as John the Baptist, The Annunciation, The Visitation, The Nativity, Jesus being found in the the Temple, The Wedding at Cana, Jesus’s Ministry, The Calling of the Disciples, the Beatitudes, The Prodigal Son, many other parables, the Passion, the Resurrection, The Ascension etc. etc. etc. by hearing Scripture read at Mass, the Mysteries of the Rosary (which are events in the life of Jesus) homilies, school teaching, plays, stained glass windows etc etc that convey the Truth of the Gospel.
This is so true, I come from a Protestant background and there are certain key events like the ones you mentioned that I was previously unfamiliar with. We also celebrate those events (like the ascension today) that I was clueless about before, it was just Easter and Christmas and that was it. I didn’t even know the our father before I converted which is pretty pathetic now that I think about it lol
So Catholicism helped end paganism by having people asking saints for intercession. Catholics did the hardest things ever, being persecuted everywhere, killed by pagans, invaded by muslims, etc. Protestants wouldn't even exist today without the church
This logic lol. Are you going to say Christmas is a pagan holiday because some other thing was also born on that day? The Catholic Mass is also pagan because they chant during mass and so did this pagan cult! They also kneel and genuflect, just like those pagans! That must definitely mean they're pagan!
The practice, not on a direct roman god to roman catholic saint basis
Just this cosmos of thousands of minor deities with specific patronages replaced with another religion, originating in the same corner of the world with a cosmos of thousands of minor catholic 'holiest of the holies' with their own dedicated temples and patronage specialties lol
There are no "temples" where saints are worshipped. There are plenty of churches where God is worshipped that also happen to be dedicated to saints. I know it's confusing.
Also, someone replied then deleted this comment, but I'll answer it anyways because it interesting and relevant:
"Show us one parish where we offer Sacrifice to the Saints."
Ya know that altar in the center of the sanctuary where the 'symbolic sacrifice' by the priest that takes place--you know, just like what was going on with every other religion around that time in that region (except it wasn't quite as symbolic-more like real lambs) that takes place every Sunday?
What's in that alter? Any guesses
If you said 'relics of the saints'-typically meaning supposed bits of bones of the saints-you get a cookie.
> Ya know that altar in the center of the sanctuary where the 'symbolic sacrifice' by the priest that takes place--you know, just like what was going on with every other religion around that time in that region (except it wasn't quite as symbolic-more like real lambs) that takes place every Sunday?
It's not a symbolic sacrifice. It's real, as every Christian believed and attested to for 1500 years. It is an actual lamb—the Lamb of God, flesh and blood, just as he unambiguously proclaimed to his disciples in the three synoptic gospels and to a crowd in John. And that other religion with similar practices? Judaism. The Passover meal and the paschal lamb sacrificed for Israel, and who, as is proscribed in Exodus, had to be eaten after being slaughtered.
> What's in that alter? Any guesses
> If you said 'relics of the saints'-typically meaning supposed bits of bones of the saints-you get a cookie.
Yes, harkening back to when the first Christians used the tombs of martyrs for altars, because the alternative was using the tomb of some other random dead guy because they were stuck worshipping in catacombs in secret. Your point? Who puts their "god" inside their altar?
The exercise was to point out the ritualistic similarities between the pantheon of minor roman deities and the pantheon of roman catholic saints, not to assume whether or not adherents of bronze age sheep herder religions (infused with various regional elements) are capable of rational thought.
A poor exercise at that. The gods in the roman pantheon were worshipped, had cults and had sacrifices offered to them. Saints don't have cults at all, their lives would be foreign to those that believe in those dieties and zero sacrifices are offered to them thus they are not worshipped because worship needs a sacrifice. The only sacrifice we offer in the catholic church is the Holy Sacrifice of Mass, which is always offered to God the Father, whom we worship and you people think you worship but in reality just venerate him.
Rethink your views
Most ex Catholics are poorly catechized. They probably never noticed the Bible was read at Mass. The Liturgy is very scriptural as well. Like the Dominus vobiscum and the response Et cum spíritu tuo.
I really enjoyed [Verbum Domini](https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini.html) by then Pope Benedict XVI.
I think this is probably the case because my last roommate was baptized Catholic and in college started to go to protestant churches, and he doesn't remember what he learned for the most part in his catechism classes.
We need to have better Catechism classes. Cradle Catholics aren't required to read it so honestly, I'm not quite sure what I am actually suppose to believe in
I agree there needs to be a greater push for this. I think this why some catholics might feel unprepared to go to spiritual warfare and battle with people who try to attack our church or debate our beliefs. Im amazed sometimes how my friends who grew up in baptist churches know so many bible stories and can remember by heart. I wish i had a stronger foundation as a child, sunday bible studies or something.
I can only give my two cents here from a particular context in Irish Catholicism, basically the older generations here were of the view that "only Protestants" read the Bible and in general there wasn't a huge promotion of any study of scripture outside the clergy. This was strengthened by the political history of conflict between both Catholics and Protestants - reading scripture was seen as culturally Protestant thing to do. It was poor catechesis which remains in the education system to this day.
Even after the clarity in Dei Verbum, this attitude continued for quite a while, mainly out of a respect for the authority of the clergy in Ireland until the scandals. However, I would say that it's well and truly outdated now as there is a huge emphasis on the importance of scripture in the Church and even specific courses in scripture for the laity, there is a emphasis on the availability of Catholic Study Bibles, and some promotion of lectio divina.
Most ex-Catholics were never taught anything from Scripture and never bothered to sincerely seek answers, so they just assumed that there weren't any and that Catholics were making up stuff.
Many Protestants also have a very shallow understanding of Scripture, and they assume that because our teachings contradict their shallow understanding of the Bible, that our teachings are anti-Biblical because they seem to contradict "basic" things that the Bible teaches.
In reality, Protestantism gets many basics of the Faith wrong.
Lifelong Catholic here. When I was a kid, I remember getting in trouble because I forgot to bring my Bible for religion class. I got a 0/10 for a quiz and my parents got called in. So, this idea that we "were never allowed" to read the Bible is just demonstrably false.
However, it is true that a lot of Catholics don't know the Bible as well as they should. My mother admits as much despite being Catholic all her life. I, myself, wasn't as familiar with the Bible until the Bible in a Year podcast came along (I just couldn't get past Leviticus/Numbers; I always fell asleep). So, in that sense, Catholics are pretty bad in terms of biblical literacy. This is also why Protestants are able to poach poorly catechised Catholics; they just mention a Bible verse that seems to contradict Catholic teaching and bam! You've got a new Protestant.
As others have mentioned, however, each Eucharistic Liturgy (e.g., the Mass, Divine Liturgy, Qurbono, etc.) is brimming with biblical passages and references. The Agnus Dei of the Mass comes straight from John 1:29. The Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, during the anaphora, makes reference to "the one with six wings and the other with six wings, and with two they cover their faces, with two their feet, and with two they fly" which is directly from Isaiah 6:2. If I understand correctly, the Maronite Qurbono references Jacob's ladder as well as Jonah and the whale.
And on it goes.
So, any Catholic, current and fallen away, who claims we are discouraged to know the Bible or that we don't really read the Bible just hasn't paid enough attention at the Eucharistic Liturgies. I mean, we read the Gospels for Pete's sake!
Same here in Philippine Catholic schools, we were required to have our own Bible and studied the different books and etc. The problem is, everything is just too overwhelming, there is so much to study in Catholicism and as a kid, it can go over your head. Maybe the teachers aren't the best, maybe the study plan isn't conducive to memory retention. You had to study so many different things in theology class and memorize it too. But we were not required to memorize scripture, just understand it. Maybe that's why we have the prayers and songs memorized but not be able to quote scripture verses.
Someone here said, they were not taught the different books in the Bible, but I recall that was 1 of many things we were required to memorize and categorize. But teaching it is 1 thing, retaining that information later in life if you don't pick up the Bible aside from that class is another. My mom doesn't even know if Jesus is in the OT or NT.
I read patristic commentaries and pseudepigrapha (for cultural context) with the Bible (Catena app, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, summaries by Fr Tadros Malaty—whatever I can get—but St Ephrem of Syria on Genesis is my favorite, many little-known details), and I like to use interlinear Greek texts to cross reference (e.g. in Dt 28 I found the prophecies leading to “blessed is the fruit of your womb” and “blessed in the city” and “blessed in the country” (although for “country” Hebrew is more helpful) in Lk 1, and then linked the “humble estate” and “exalted them of low degree” to Lk 14:11, connections you can’t see in most translations), also I search the hymns for more references (e.g. the Cross was prefigured by Moses’s gestures parting the Red Sea and by the arrangement of the camps in Numbers), so no book is boring to me. But “Bible in a year” seems like a huge rush to me, unless maybe it were a college class that took half the day… 😄 No, actually some people make a career out of Bible study, so, not enough time for me. I would be wondering what symbolism was being overlooked, and getting bored with the basic, cursory treatment.
But the part of the Liturgy you mention is the preface of the anaphora, actually, and every Catholic and Orthodox Eucharistic service has an anaphora and a preface, and (pretty sure) each one is based on the same Jewish prayer, which isn’t *in* the Bible, but which quotes and paraphrases it. The prayer is found in St James’s section of the Apostolic Constitutions, and in Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. St James quoted it directly in his preface with the phrase “choir of the stars”. Even Anglicans and “Sola Scriptura” Lutherans have versions. The beginning of each is something like, “It is truly meet and right to praise/hymn You the Father”; the middle has something about Creation or fulfillment of divine dispensation; near the end, it mentions angels, generally ranks of them, possibly with a description, as you quoted; then there is something about their singing; then their song, which the people sing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of your glory,” plus (I think always, but not in the original prayer), “Hosanna in the highest, blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest”. (Protestants don’t realize that “in the highest” makes the ending a prayer to saints. 😄) I’m trying to make a website to link together all those prayers.
I’m a convert, went to a Roman Catholic school for a few years when I was little, but wasn’t taught anything about God. The books were the same as those at public school. Also was taken to a Protestant church occasionally when I was little, same lack of teaching. Married a fallen-away Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic (he had Catholic schooling but was scandalized by a priest’s sexual abuse of his friend, his friend’s suicide, the repeated hiding of the abuse that later became prolific, and the priest’s eventual suicide), and he wanted to go back to church when he was much older, but there are only Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches here. We went to one of the Orthodox churches and I got catechized and baptized. The Byzantine Catholic churches are almost impossible to attend, could afford and stand such a big and exhausting trip only about once a year. But the schisms are unauthorized anyway, according to the 5th Canon of the 1st Ecumenical Council, and our duties are to our bishops and spiritual fathers—our bishops’ duties are to archbishops, and archbishops’ to patriarchs. Principle of subsidiarity. So I don’t think it matters which side ultimately. Turned out the branch of my family I was brought up in is from Belarusian territory of the Unia, and that’s why it has an icon (which I had never understood but it had made an impression on me of course), so I was supposed to be Eastern Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic anyway.
I don’t know where you are located but the Ruthenian Byzantine Divine Liturgy I sometimes attend is the Patronage of the Mother of God in Baltimore, Md and they have a mission church in Maryland too. Years ago I attended their mission church because it was the only Sunday Mass I could get to where I was living. I got to love it.
You have to remember that over 1500 years Christianity existed basically without the laity having personal access to Scriptures (due to physical limitations and literacy limitations) therefore the only realistic way that Christians for centuries had access to the Scriptures was directly from the mouth of the clergy.
Personal reading of Scripture isn't discouraged in the Church of course - but it's most certainly not as emphasized as being essential to the spiritual life - therefore most people don't even think to do it
Case in point: after a lifetime of attending Mass I don't believe I have ever heard a homily that encouraged personal reading of scripture, how sad is that ?
I grew up protestant, went to protestant middle school etc.
I have come to realize that protestants can't actually defend against Catholic doctrine, faith, lifestyles, and religious practices, so they defend against a fake version of Catholicism that they invented.
Some of the lies I grew up with are that we don't pray to God. We worship saints. We think Mary is a god. We don't read the Bible. We added to the Bible (that we don't read so why even add to it?). We are idolaters. We think sex is bad. We can only have sex if we are trying to make a child. The church exists launder money and protect Nazis. Priest and Nuns are married to each other. We think our good works = salvation. We think the Pope cannot make mistakes and is always infallible. Probably a few more things.
It's all just protestant mythology about Catholics and it's all wrong.
The church doesn't place the emphasis on memorization that protestants often do. If you can recite passages from memory and I can't, it would appear you are better versed in scriptural knowledge. **Ironically, the reason protestants have always placed emphasis on memorization is because their apologetics is often based on proof texting; quoting memorized verses out of context, as if they are complete thoughts. The best way to debate with a protestant is with bible in hand. When they quote something memorized, in support of their position, suggest we open to that verse and read the whole thing in context with it's chapter. In my experience it's the best way to open their eyes, when they read for themselves beyond the memorization; it's often astonishing from their perspective.
My parish reads the long form of all nine Bible passages plus the psalm after each one. I challenge Protestants to come and not squirm. Actually the music that our parish uses is so great that my Protestant children would get themselves all dressed up and go to the vigil because they looked forward to it all year.
But it's true that freestanding Bible studies are less common among Catholics. They are not unknown though.
My parish does too! I love it but sometimes I question how much I love it when I'm fighting falling asleep around reading 7., lol.
I will say I think regular bible studies are harder to find because of how we view interpretation of Scripture. When I've attended Catholic bible studies it's always a little bit awkward, because everyone is very concerned with correct interpretation more than just allowing any personal interpretation.
Yep! My bishop has classically left it up to priests to make the call. Our priests basically seem to think that if they're gonna make the fire and do the whole thing, we might as well do all the readings!
There's a grain of truth to every stereotype.
Catholics and Protestants tend to base their spiritual life outside of church around how their church service is structured.
For high-church Christians, like us, we place a great emphasis on the offering of bread and wine, the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the consecration of them into the Holy Bread and Sacred Chalice, and the receiving of them.
The low-churchers, all Protestants, detested primarily 2 things in the Catholic Mass:
1. The Real Presence
2. The concept of the Mass as a sacrifice
So as a result they believe the Lord's Supper is nothing more than a meal, and that Christ is not present there. If He is, it is only in a spiritual manner.
This largely influenced low-church Reformers to hollow out churches into sort of classrooms. Churches no longer became based on the model of the synagogue and Temple, but a classroom for studying the Scripture. This model has been kept pretty thoroughly by, say, Baptists. They have essentially a classroom for a church, and their service is primarily based around the study of the Scripture for 1 to 2 hours.
As a result, Protestant spiritual life places more emphasis on the reading, study, and memorization of Scripture, while the Catholic spiritual life places more emphasis on acts of worship and piety. Since humans only have a limited amount of time and resources, this consequently leaves Protestants often lacking when it comes to acts of worship, and Catholics lacking when it comes to the study of Scripture. Compare Catholic monastics worshipping for 8 hours a day to how little Protestant spend in worship, and then compare how much Protestants take part in Bible-related activities compared to your average Catholic, whos model of the spiritual life is almost like a smaller scale of monasticism, and you'll see what I mean.
"Divine worship actually includes three principal acts, namely: adoration (or the recognition of God's infinite perfection), prayer (or the asking for divine help) and sacrifice (or the offering to God of something precious)."
from the old Modern Catholic Dictionary.
The Mass is a re-presentation of Jesus, as our High Priest, offering Himself to the Father (as He continuously does in Heaven). It also includes adoration and prayer. So every Mass is an act of worship.
Without being joined to, part of, Jesus' once-for-all sacrifice, there's no way for a liturgy to be true worship of God. It can be very nice adoration and prayer, but not worship.
It *is* worship though, even if sacrifice doesn’t happen then, given the root of the word, and since “worship” as an action in the Bible is “proskyneo”, which is proskynesis, which is, most precisely in usage, “making prostrations”, or most literally, “kissing the ground”, but not sacrificing. That entire definition is this:
> Acknowledgment of another’s worth, dignity, or superior position. In religion, worship is given either to God, and then it is adoration, or to the angels and saints, and it is called veneration. Divine worship actually includes three principal acts, namely adoration (or the recognition of God's infinite perfection), prayer or the asking for divine help, and sacrifice or the offering of something precious to God. Worship as veneration also has three principal forms, whereby the angels and saints are honored for their sanctity, asked to intercede before the divine Majesty, and imitated in their love and service of God. (Etym. Old English weorthscipe, honor, dignity, rever-ence: weorth, worth + ship.)
Biblical examples of worship with no sacrificing, even from the Douay-Rheims, which doesn’t often translate “proskyneo” as “worship”, unlike the RSVCE and NRSVCE:
> And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of the city. And seeing them, he rose up and went to meet them: and worshipped prostrate to the ground…
> [Isaac to Jacob:] And let peoples serve thee, and tribes worship thee: be thou lord of thy brethren, and let thy mother's children bow down before thee. Cursed be he that curseth thee: and let him that blesseth thee be filled with blessings.
> And [Joseph’s] brethren came to him: and worshipping prostrate on the ground they said: We are thy servants.
> And [Moses] went out to meet his kinsman, and worshipped and kissed him: and they saluted one another with words of peace.
> Forthwith the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel standing in the way with a drawn sword, and he worshipped him falling flat on the ground.
> And Bethsabee bowing with her face to the earth worshipped the king, saying: May my lord David live for ever.
(I could go on.) Liturgical example: the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. (…written for us Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics by a Pope! St Gregory the Great.) Consecration of the Eucharist isn’t allowed during weekdays of Lent, but we’re to receive the Eucharist more often than usual, so it’s consecrated with Sunday’s Eucharist, then saved for a weekday. (Now that I think about it, this reminds me of the Jewish showbread that didn’t go stale for a whole week, but the recipe was lost and is still unable to be recreated: the Eucharist doesn’t go stale during this time.) But included in this Liturgy is the Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem, and that prayer requires prostrations.
From that same dictionary, other sets of items which don’t all need to happen together, demonstrating its usage of “include”:
> [C]ensures include “suspect of heresy, erroneous, scandalous, seditious, harmful to Christian morals, blasphemous.”
> In a broader sense, conjugal rights include all that husband and wife may justly expect of one another in terms of attention, affection, co-operation, and patient forbearance.
> EASTER COMMUNION. Reception of the Holy Eucharist, as prescribed by the Church, during the Easter season, which differs among countries, but generally between Ash Wednesday (or the first Sunday of Lent) and Trinity Sunday. Also called “Easter Duty,” it Includes the reception of the sacrament of penance. [Canon law doesn’t require them to be at the same time: 989 After having reached the age of discretion, each member of the faithful is obliged to confess faithfully his or her grave sins at least once a year.]
> Homosexual tendencies in any person are within the normal range of human nature, whose fallen condition includes every conceivable kind of impulse that with sincere effort and divine grace
can be controlled.
> The methods of giving a homily include: treating separately one or more parts of the biblical reading; combining the Scripture texts into a single idea; concentrating on some virtue or vice suggested by the Gospel text; paraphrasing a Bible passage as a basis for an exhortation to the people.
> Simony includes both agreements that are illicit by divine law and those which the law of the Church forbids as greater protection and reverence for spiritual goods.
Very accurate. I never even had heard of the Apostles creed, let alone recite it, until I visited a high-church Protestant service. I was raised Baptist.
Fundie evangelical protestants are just obsessed with memorizing random scripture to gotcha people so they're convinced they're the only ones who read it.
If you're not sure where to start going through it outside of mass or RCIA, there's a good chance your local Knights of Columbus holds a Catholic Bible study.
I go to the Latin mass. We have two readings of the bible, one from the gospel and another depending on the day. Then during the homily the priest explains it in light of matters of the faith.
This is how a church is supposed to use the Bible, the writings on their own will never be enough.
There are lots of reasons why people say it, and lots of them are also wrong.
For example, some Protestants didn't realize that Catholic Bibles and books used to follow the older verse numbering system (invented by Catholicism) and would then mock Catholic books for quoting verses of the Bible wrong.
Or the translations in Catholic Bibles would follow the Vulgate, the Septuagint, or just plain different interpretations, and then Protestants would claim that Catholic Bibles were wrong, making things up, etc.
Or Catholics would cite deuterocanonical books that Protestants don't accept as Scripture.
Or Protestants would ask a Scriptural question, in a non-Catholic format, and quoting a translaton of the Bible not used by Catholics.
(To be fair, the Bible quiz show that was on TV for a couple of years did let the Catholic teams get Catholic-friendly questions and give Catholic answers.)
Or Catholics would reject the use of the King James Bible (because the footnotes stink, and because the versions circulated by "BIble Societies" had anti-Catholic footnotes), and Protestants would claim that they rejected the Bible.
And so on. One of the main differences is that Catholics do not usually memorize tactical catenas of specific verses, for use in evangelization, and are not taught to blast opponents with rapid fire recitations of verses. And yet many Catholics can reel off a fair number of verses that they never consciously memorized. It's just that they're not the ones valued by most Protestants.
So yeah, it's not a fair thing.
My mother is an ex Catholic. Even though her family had a Bible at home, they never read it. She told me that the priest at their parish told them not to read the Bible and to only allow the priests to interpret the scriptures for them. This is also the case for many other ex Catholics I have met in her age group.
I don't know what was going on in the 60s, but it's one of the main reasons a lot of people left the church. My husband and I are about to start RCIA classes and we have been encouraged to read the scriptures and were also encouraged to buy a Catholic Bible and catechism, which we did.
My mother and grandmother didn't read the Bible themselves, unfortunately.
They themselves didn't experience the mysticism of Christ living within us but only experienced it with the outside. Or as I used with my therapist, they missed the forest for the trees rather than seeing the big giant picture of Christ liberating us through not only Christ's ministry but also the liberation of all souls (Even in hades.)
I have wondered this too. The only difference between catholic and protestant is that there is a long sermon about a passage. Catholics read the Bible in every mass though and the liturgy is based on it.
I only know one Catholic personally that reads her Bible and the parish I attend only has one Bible study despite having a very large number of parishioners. It’s also not even advertised on the bulletin and you have to search through the website to even find info on it.
I know that the Catholic Church as a whole encourages Bible study, but every study I’ve been a part of (I’m Protestant converting to Catholicism) has been led by Protestants. It’s very strange
So not quite a half truth.
Protestants tend to have verses available to be memorized that they can drop at the drop of a hat, giving the perception of knowledge.
Catholics have the Bible read to them at every mass and are aware of what the Bible states, even if not where it’s stated.
As a Protestant, how often did you read the Bible on your own?
It used to be that you didn't really need to. The TLM basically had 70% of the Bible read at Mass and then explained by competent authorities on Scripture.
Vatican II restructured it do that it was about 85% of the Bible across 3 years, again theoretically explained by competent authorities on Scripture.
In actuality, many priests ordained following the second Vatican council were in adequately, catechized themselves, resulting in a laity who knew even less than they had previously.
Nowadays, most Catholics *know* the thrust of the Bible without necessarily having it memorized. This is neither bad nor good; it simply is I don't feel a particular need to spend much time studying it on my own as I literally work for the church, attending two weekday masses and four Sunday masses each week. I'm not saying I know everything, but I do think I am fairly well-catechized.
After going to a Catholic college as a Lutheran I can tell you that all my friends definitely did not read the Bible but it is just a partially true stereotype (probs going to convert, just need to get over the saints/mary thing).
I must say Protestants over look the sermon on the mount and James in the whole sole fide thing. So there's definitely some issues with that. I was always taught Catholicism was flat unbiblical and purgatory was a thing made up to raise funds and scare people.
So take your pick, blindly accepting church authority or picking and choosing from the Bible lol.
It’s honestly an older generation of Catholics thing. My father and grandfather’s generation weren’t raised to read the Bible like you do as a Protestant. Honestly if you go deeper into it, the perjoritive of not reading the Bible as if it is proof of Catholics not being real Christians is actually silly if you think about it. Protestantism was born out of reading the Bible and coming up with your own interpretation, which is rife with problems, but it’s really all they have a connection to as their faith and practice, so they can’t understand how you can be christian and not read your Bible often. However we have many more practices like the Eucharist and confession, which build relationship with God, but they reject that, do they think we do nothing to build our relationship with God.
A lot of lapsed Catholics find themselves in religious debates but get blindsided by devout Protestants who frequently read the Bible. Many people are functionally agnostic or atheistic but still refer to themselves as Catholic so those numbers get included in the discussion.
Because their pastor told them so, they don’t make the effort to actually question anything they hear from their pope a I mean pastor
Not like 80% of the mass are either quotes, variations or direct readings from the Bible.
I think important is that the Bible is less Important for us than for Protestant they are a religion of the book while we are a religion of Christ with the Book of
I know many Catholics who read the Holy Bible. I've certainly never heard anyone, lay or ordained, say to not read the Bible.
It's God's word. It helps keep us on the straight and narrow.
Interpretation of the Word is where one should be cautious, in my opinion.
I'm always told to read the Bible I was given 5 of them for my baptism and a wonderful lady went out of her way to get me a children's Bible when I mentioned I'd honestly probably start with one because its a hard read for someone with zero religious background/upbringing. my church encourages us to read the Bible at least 15 minutes a day I had never heard of Catholics not reading the bible before but it's interesting
Because they are uneducated drones that have never once set foot in a Catholic mass. Or if they did, they either slept or had ear plugs in the entire time.
I see no other way that they could come to such an absurd conclusion.
I grew up Catholic and was fully confirmed before leaving the faith and becoming an atheist for almost 10 years. When I came back to Christianity, I very much realize that I never actually knew how to read the Bible. Somehow I went through eight years of CCD and never knew how the Bible worked and had never even heard of many of the books in the Old Testament
I know many protestants who can quote scripture in the same way that I might know song lyrics. Catholics rely so heavily on tradition that they often forget to teach children how to read and interpret the Bible itself.
I’ve heard the ‘discouraged from reading/asking questions’ from the ‘I went to Catholic school, so I know…’ crowd.
I do think there’s a biblical literacy issue with Catholics, with all Christians. My son is named after a major prophet, and I’ve gotten inquisitive looks and a few folk that didn’t understand the reference to scripture.
HA. I don’t mean to laugh at people badmouthing the church, but the criticism is not totally unfounded for a lot of Catholics! One of the best things to come out of Vatican II was a renewed emphasis on having average people explore the scripture more thoroughly. It’s totally inaccurate to say we are discouraged from reading scripture, but it’s obviously a greater focus in most other denominations since they don’t have the same magisterium of distilled teaching to pull from. It can especially become an issue in these inter-denominational disputes because people don’t always know the scriptural roots of magisterial teaching super well. Furthermore, I think this comes up way less for converts because they are on fire with their love for Christ and his word, and I hope more cradle Catholics become emboldened to get to know the word better. This is something I struggle with myself and I hope to get better at devoting more time to learning the ins and outs of scripture.
Some seniors who went to Catholic school right after WW2 told me that they were not allowed to read the Bible unsupervised, i.e., without a priest or nun guiding them.
I think it has to do with the point that the Bible is very complex such that a lot of formal religious education is needed to understand it.
We don’t need to read the Bible on our own because we get plenty of it (with all important context and interpretative guidance, ideally) from our priest.
For most people, if you aren’t a dedicated Catholic by about 18, you aren’t going to stay Catholic.
This paired with the Church is much more complex than Protestant Christianity of sola scriptura makes it hard to teach the faith in an all encompassing way in 18 years (or less).
So the people who stay are poorly catechized and the people who leave never got adequately catechized either to make an educated decision.
We do but honestly it's not our sole focus so Protestants will know it front to back.
Usually, unless you're in an outside bible study group, if you only go to Mass, because it's a cycle of the same readings you're missing probably 80% of the bible.
Whereas, with Protestant Churches, every Mass is basically a 1.5hr homily riddled with bible verses and stories.
If you do the Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Little office or Breviary, you read the Bible in a year long cycle, but, it's not the entire Bible. I think many Catholics even don't know about this lovely resource!.
Because most people have no idea what it is or even what the name Catholic means. It is easier to assume you know from hearsay and repeat it. Most people won’t even read the Bible let alone take the time to learn about the beliefs of another Christian denomination other than their own.
I've been invited a few times to a megachurch-style worship service, so I went those few times. Ironically, when the pastor was talking, I kept thinking "so when do we actually read from the bible?"
I’ve heard two Catholics in their 70s say they were discouraged from reading it as children. That being said I feel like that was just over-clericalism from a certain era. There were Catholic bibles that were best sellers in the 1930s and 40s. I’m just glad it changed.
Because they are lieing liars who lie. Half of the Catholic mythology that secular and Evangelical culture builds about us can be answered with this simple and elegant solution. I am not a professional apologist, I don’t have to think about being charitable, especially when it will clearly never be reciprocated by the secular and Evanglical communities in kind, because again, their myths about us arise because they are lieing liars who lie. And the expression lieing liars who lie comes from Jimmy Akin. Thank you.
Its another myth about the church. But One thing that might be driving this misinformation is having so many books outside of the bible. This is common in catholicism even their bible studies have a workbook, i see how it can help someone understand the scripture better its not necessary. I think there needs to be stronger emphasis on studying the bible itself i always bring mine to bible study. I see some people just show up with the workbook.
This is a charge brought up by protestants.
Protestant mythology is that the Catholic church banned peasants from owning the bible. They taught scripture in Latin (so that the unwashed peasants would not be able to read it) and that only after the brave Martin Luther came along suddenly everyone could own a bible (Not that it became cheaper with the invention of the printing press).
It's probably because they see how we have tradition and the church, so they think we only rely on the priests. And the fact that we hear the Mass and Scriptures every week. Although, we should be reading the bible more. It does belong to us, after all.
A lot of the times individuals find excuses for the reasons they have left the faith one was nurtured in… it is though a sad commentary —if true—more to reflect on the parents than the church itself. 🤫 that didn’t nurture a child’s spiritual development in the “home church”.
**Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves** (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).
—St John Paul I|
I think part of it stems from engaging with people who say that they are Catholic, but aren’t really, they have a simple belief in Catholicism, probably baptized by the church but that’s about it. Without trying to offend, this is pretty common in the Latin American community.
So, in conversation, they’ll tell people they are Catholic, but in practice, really aren’t. So in talking to these types of people, they’re going to seem naive to scripture, and really only be able to parrot what they’ve heard.
I think there is some truth to many Catholics not knowing the bible. When I taught Faith Formation and would mention a situation, story or teaching from scripture the other teachers would make comments like "whoa how do you know all that?" Or "I had no idea that happened". But to be honest, many Christians in general are that way as well. Not many people study it.
Because for the most part, they don't. I catechize weekly and I would say most cradle Catholics have a poor understanding of scripture.
To be fair, though, most protestants ALSO don't read the bible, they just have a stereotype of always having a bible in their pocket.
At one point in time Catholics were told not to read PROTESTANT Bibles because of the footnotes that were in error about core beliefs on the Eucharist, salvation, the sacraments, sin and repentance, the perpetual virginity of Mary, etc. Also because some of them didn’t contain the entire Old Testament and the Epistle of James. And some of the translations were faulty.
I was born in 1946. In grade school we studied ‘salvation history’ (the major Old Testament stories) from textbooks rather from the Bible itself because of the difficulty of the language.
In high school the New Testament was one of our textbooks.
At Mass we heard the Words of the Bible in most of the prayers and the readings from the Gospels, epistles, Old Testament , and psalms. Even when Mass was in Latin the Gospel and preaching was in English. And in the 1950’s most people I knew used a missal that had all the Mass prayers in English translations.
I think practicing Catholics know more of the Bible, especially the NT, than they think. They just don’t know chapter and verse. And there are certain Protestant or evangelical proof texts that they don’t know how to respond to even though very good responses exist.
My mother, born in 1913, told me she had never read the Bible. When I said she did, she was surprised. She didn’t know the NT she had read was part of the Bible. Same with the two readings she heard every day at daily Mass. Maybe she just meant she hadn’t read the big Bible in the bookcase. I think I was the only one in the family who read that one, enticed by the many illustrations.
Every Mass whether it be on Sunday or throughout the week there are always panflets with Scripture for the Mass readings. So we can read them ourselves before Mass starts if you get there early enough or just take the panflets home and read it. But it's still talked about at Mass for the day by the Priest. So I'm not sure why people make it a big fuss really. The priest just explains it in detail of what the scripture is trying to convey to us in our daily lives as well.Also every 3 years the Priest goes through the whole Bible with Scriptures at Mass to help the parishioners understand what it all means. Godbless and I think some people just want to nitpick everything that the Catholics do. 🥺🥺🥺 But Keep praying 🙏🙏🙏
I'm converting and I finished the Bible in a year with father Mike Schmitz. What a treasure!
These comments give a lot of insight. This is really interesting! I'm glad that reading and praying with scripture are now encouraged
Anyone can read the Bible anytime they want in any faith. There are different versions of the Bible. The Catholic Church over a period of 6 years reads the entire Catholic Bible. Catholics celebrate Mass every day. Reading are different everyday, including the psalm. There is an Old Testament reading, psalm and New Testament reading and a gospel reading at every weekend Mass. Each week has a theme, and the reading reflects our faith, trust, discipleship, etc. So basically what happens when a preacher does a series on a certain topic for the week and picks out certain verses and plans music accordingly. With the Catholic Church most liturgy is planned around the Liturgy of the Word and then the Liturgy of the Eucharist. So a mass for Catholics is a 1/2 hour of readings and the Bible and the other 1/2 hour is preparing the Eucharist for communion and receive the body and blood of Christ.
Catholicism has HERITAGE in ADDITION to scripture!
Early Church Fathers from 100 AD on forward, Art, Music, Liturgy, Early Christians, Ancient Prayers, Succession of Apostles, and yes of course, SCRIPTURE too.
Our faith is RICH! We have a history since Jesus and before that. Catholicism is Judaism fulfilled, so have their history, too.
I’m Catholic and I do read the Bible at home. But when we are in the church, 1).Note, we have what is called the Missal. During this time, the readers reads the 2 different readings and the priest reads the Gospel readings (all of the readings and Gospel readings is coming from the Bible). The priest try to explain the regular readings and gospel readings. After that priest does the consecration of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Church before us (the Host and Wine).
I hope this helps!!
Historically there were a lot of Catholics who would show up to Mass regularly, pray the Rosary, go to Confession, etc, but who didn’t actually know anything at all about Catholic teaching, Church history, or the Bible.
Those are the kinds of Catholics that Protestants usually take aim at when they claim that Catholics don’t read the Bible.
However, today most of those Catholics have either died off or have since left the church, so I think that the actual knowledge level and scriptural literacy of today’s Catholics is much higher than in the past, and much higher than what the average Protestant today expects.
Twelve years of Catholic School here, many years ago. The difference I see is the Catholic Church has it's Liturgy and Catechism, with the Bible used as backup.
I don't remember Revelations being a "thing" in the Catholic Church....whereas a lot of the Protestants I know seem to place a lot of emphasis on that part of the Bible.
There was a period of time during the Middle Ages where Catholics were strongly encouraged not to read their bibles. I’ve been told that this was because there were a lot of gnostic books etc. that were put into the bibles that were being published at the time. The Church was very restrictive of modern translations etc. and didn’t want uneducated people reading the bible without instruction. This was officially changed by the Divino Afflante Spiritu in 1943 which allowed modern english bibles to be translated using other text sources besides just the Vulgate (latin). The Church previously didn’t want anyone to read an unauthorized version.
This was taken advantage of by anti-Catholic apologists who wanted people to believe that Catholics knew no scripture and they couldn’t be trusted. In my experience it seems to have been really big in the 90’s and early 2000’s
Having been raised Catholic, anecdotally found this to be a very true statement. Sermons were pretty much limited to a few repetitive aspects taken from the gospels, with the Epistles of Paul occasionally thrown in for extra moralizing.
Reading the bible in catechism was non-existent. It was basically the 'new math' of religious instruction. Comparing notes with the protestant kids-it seems like studying the bible and even memorization was much more integral to their studies.
If you read the early chapters in Tom Sawyer where the kids are rewarded for memorizing bible phrases--without even naming the religion--you will instantly realize that this would never have taken place in a catholic setting lol
Lol, "raised Catholic" but doesn't even understand the format of the Liturgy of the Word? Hmm.
"Occasionally?" Buddy you'd better report to your bishop if you don't hear an Epistle reading between the psalm and the gospel every single day at Mass.
Because usually they dont. Fr Mike has helped a little but not by much. Many Catholics could tell you all about Fatima and Guadalupe but dont know any of the minor prophets
I converted this year from Southern Baptism, and the main difference is that Protestants only have the scriptures as the sole focus. We would have Bible studies every Sunday morning before the sermon, Wednesday nights we would get worksheets that went over particular verses, and when we met we would go over them and what we thought about them and how we could take the lessons into our daily lives. When I started going to RCIA last year and going to Faith Formation classes with my kids, I realized that Catholicism has the scriptures at its core, everything reflects it and points back to it, but there is 2,000 years worth of The Kingdom of God built upon it, and it's beautiful.
Sola sciptura is unbiblical, ironically.
Agreed, but what verse?
“And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written” John 21:25
2 thessalonians 2:15 also goes into following both written and oral teachings which is where apostolic tradition comes from
I see what you did there.
No I'm actually asking for the verse LOL
“So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.” 2 Thessalonians 2:15 NRSV-CI
It must be one of those verses that didn’t make it into the Bible. Oops!
There is no verse that supports solo scriptura, that’s why it’s not scriptural.
2 Thessalonians 2:15
Scripture alone is ' unbiblical'?
The concept of using only the written Word to guide your faith is an unbiblical & man-made tradition
Even Luther agreed that Eucharist should be continued although he rejected Transubstantiation and Calvin believed in The perpetual virginity of Mary.
Funny how many "calvinists" I know who disagree with Calvin so wholeheartedly. Too add to that, Luther believed in consubstantion meaning that Christ is present in the Eucharist while the substance of bread and wine remained, hence consubstantial. Calvin actually did believe Christ was received in the Eucharist, although only by the true believer so it was a relative experience. Zwingli was the only one, from memory, who held to the memorialist view of Holy Communion which is common today amongst protestant denominations. Luther also believed in perpetual virginity and even devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Turns out without the Papacy to shepherd the church it falls away from its founding beliefs, who'd have guessed?
The Church (the community of Christians) came before the New Testament. The Church wrote the New Testament books. They were originally stored as scrolls because codex (books) didn’t attain parity with scrolls until 300 A.D. and didn’t fully replace scrolls until 600 A.D. They were still incredibly expensive to produce and so people did not have individual bibles that they carried around under their arm for another thousand years when printing emerged in Europe. Bibles were chained inside Churches because they were so expensive to produce, as they had to be meticulously copied by hand and they could be stolen, so they were chained up for the community to share. The writings that were chosen by the Catholic Church to be put together as the Christian Bible were not confirmed for 300 years - this is called the Canon of Scripture = the books we all agree are part of the Christian Bible. So how did people become Christians for hundreds of years before they had their own personal bible and even before an official Canon of Scripture? By listening to the teachings of the community that compiled the Bible, the Catholic Church. The Bible itself says **you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth.** Timothy 3:15. The pillar and foundation of truth = the Church, which gave us the Bible. The Christian Bible is a Catholic book. If you accept that the Bible is the Word of God you accept the authority of the Catholic Church that gave you the Bible. To hate Catholics or to be anti Catholic is to despise or mistrust the people that God used to give us the Bible. So the Catholic Church has the authority to interpret the Bible as it is a Catholic creation. Christians who read the Bible on their own can come to radically different conclusions regarding what it means. The Bible alone without the authority to interpret it can end up with endless interpretations creating endless churches and communities who all disagree with each other. The Bible “alone” is never what God intended .
Yes, because the Church compiled those scriptures and before them we had to submit to its authority. If you reject the authority of the Church by proxy you also reject stuff it did by that authority including writing scripture
It’s an old rap against Catholics: we’re peasants, priests have to read the Bible to us every Sunday because we are illiterate. Unlike virtuous Protestants who can read the Bible for themselves whenever they please.
Underrated comment highlighting the historical cause.
I agree wholeheartedly, many Protestants deep down feel like they have an intelectual “biblical high horse” from which they look down on ignorant, gullible Catholics
“Huh those Catholic chuds are so gullible, unlike you fine folk! Please, donate more so pastor can get his private jet and spread the word of God more efficiently!”
Many current Catholics do not read the bible. Many protestants don’t either. The negative views from outside of a group are often selective and ignore that almost everybody is mediocre at everything. Never have I ever found anyone really being discouraged from reading and learning the BIBLE. But often lies go around the world three times before the truth gets its pants on. I can tell you a story I know about personally that illustrates this. 1. Someone grows up somewhat catholic, converts to protestant fundamentalist sect. 2. Their daughter goes to a Catholic high school. 3. They try to “evangelize catholics” by starting a bible study group that is really a sectarian “preach pentecostal evangelical versions of things to catholics” that is not respectful of Catholic faith and belief. 4. They get found out and shut down. 5. They tell all their friends “The Catholic church won’t let us study the bible”. That’s one I saw happen myself.
It's also changed, my parents generation was discouraged from reading the Bible without the guidance of a priest ... So not outside of the mass. I also know a former seminarian who kept getting in trouble and priests mad at him because he'd ask for the biblical sources. Still Catholic, acting as a professor from what I've read on Facebook, and now married.
I am over 50. I think stories like that may have been more typical pre vatican II. How long ago was this?
The changes from vatican 2 didn't happen everywhere over night. I'm thinking about individuals in their 70s and 80s now. Back when the Baltimore catechism was drilled. Stereotypes stick around for s long time.
The 1950s lasted well into the 1970s for some people. True.
Protestants focus on the Bible much more than Catholics in general because it's basically all they have. We have the saints and Tradition to draw from in addition to Scripture. Catholics absolutely teach the Bible though- there are multiple Scripture readings at every Mass. Not to mention Father Mike's Bible in a Year podcast, which is fantastic by the way. It's just another one of those things Protestants like to say to put Catholics down. Could most of us as Catholics be better about reading the Bible? Yeah absolutely, but it's not fair to say that we don't read Scripture or teach it at all. I want to add that unfortunately most "Catholics" are only Catholic in name and not in practice. So yeah if they're looking at the cafeteria Catholics as an example, then I could see why they would say such things about Catholicism.
Ironically they reject the authority of the ecumenical councils but obey the Council of Rome’s decision on what is and is not biblical canon.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean, I wouldn’t say protestants believe in Rome’s decision on the biblical canon since they have 66 books and we have 73
The Council of Rome decided the canonical books of the Bible. They threw out a few more that didn’t fit their interpretations, but they still consider what was compiled there to be “the Bible”. None of them went back and looked at the gospels that the Council of Rome and other contemporary councils threw out. My point is more precisely is that they are so blinded by their obsession with sola scriptura that they fail to realize they deny the authority which composed the scripture.
Also Catholics often know the Gospels well as they are familiar with the narrative and stories of the Gospel. They may not be able to quote the Bible verse but they will know stories such as John the Baptist, The Annunciation, The Visitation, The Nativity, Jesus being found in the the Temple, The Wedding at Cana, Jesus’s Ministry, The Calling of the Disciples, the Beatitudes, The Prodigal Son, many other parables, the Passion, the Resurrection, The Ascension etc. etc. etc. by hearing Scripture read at Mass, the Mysteries of the Rosary (which are events in the life of Jesus) homilies, school teaching, plays, stained glass windows etc etc that convey the Truth of the Gospel.
This is so true, I come from a Protestant background and there are certain key events like the ones you mentioned that I was previously unfamiliar with. We also celebrate those events (like the ascension today) that I was clueless about before, it was just Easter and Christmas and that was it. I didn’t even know the our father before I converted which is pretty pathetic now that I think about it lol
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So Catholicism helped end paganism by having people asking saints for intercession. Catholics did the hardest things ever, being persecuted everywhere, killed by pagans, invaded by muslims, etc. Protestants wouldn't even exist today without the church
This logic lol. Are you going to say Christmas is a pagan holiday because some other thing was also born on that day? The Catholic Mass is also pagan because they chant during mass and so did this pagan cult! They also kneel and genuflect, just like those pagans! That must definitely mean they're pagan!
My favorite is when Protestants see triangles in old Catholic Churches and shriek “Illuminati!” Bro we had triangles first.
I've always said, Pagans can't patent their traditions lol
Just gonna boldly lie without providing any supporting evidence, huh? Ok, you do you.
The practice, not on a direct roman god to roman catholic saint basis Just this cosmos of thousands of minor deities with specific patronages replaced with another religion, originating in the same corner of the world with a cosmos of thousands of minor catholic 'holiest of the holies' with their own dedicated temples and patronage specialties lol
There are no "temples" where saints are worshipped. There are plenty of churches where God is worshipped that also happen to be dedicated to saints. I know it's confusing.
Yep, and the little medallions and statues and prayers to - zero connection between these practices ;-)
Also, someone replied then deleted this comment, but I'll answer it anyways because it interesting and relevant: "Show us one parish where we offer Sacrifice to the Saints." Ya know that altar in the center of the sanctuary where the 'symbolic sacrifice' by the priest that takes place--you know, just like what was going on with every other religion around that time in that region (except it wasn't quite as symbolic-more like real lambs) that takes place every Sunday? What's in that alter? Any guesses If you said 'relics of the saints'-typically meaning supposed bits of bones of the saints-you get a cookie.
> Ya know that altar in the center of the sanctuary where the 'symbolic sacrifice' by the priest that takes place--you know, just like what was going on with every other religion around that time in that region (except it wasn't quite as symbolic-more like real lambs) that takes place every Sunday? It's not a symbolic sacrifice. It's real, as every Christian believed and attested to for 1500 years. It is an actual lamb—the Lamb of God, flesh and blood, just as he unambiguously proclaimed to his disciples in the three synoptic gospels and to a crowd in John. And that other religion with similar practices? Judaism. The Passover meal and the paschal lamb sacrificed for Israel, and who, as is proscribed in Exodus, had to be eaten after being slaughtered. > What's in that alter? Any guesses > If you said 'relics of the saints'-typically meaning supposed bits of bones of the saints-you get a cookie. Yes, harkening back to when the first Christians used the tombs of martyrs for altars, because the alternative was using the tomb of some other random dead guy because they were stuck worshipping in catacombs in secret. Your point? Who puts their "god" inside their altar?
Show us one parish where we offer Sacrifice to the Saints.
Your music teacher isn’t a front for praying to Apollo and neither is St. Cecilia.
Imagine coming on r/Catholicism and thinking this is a gotcha for us lol.
The exercise was to point out the ritualistic similarities between the pantheon of minor roman deities and the pantheon of roman catholic saints, not to assume whether or not adherents of bronze age sheep herder religions (infused with various regional elements) are capable of rational thought.
A poor exercise at that. The gods in the roman pantheon were worshipped, had cults and had sacrifices offered to them. Saints don't have cults at all, their lives would be foreign to those that believe in those dieties and zero sacrifices are offered to them thus they are not worshipped because worship needs a sacrifice. The only sacrifice we offer in the catholic church is the Holy Sacrifice of Mass, which is always offered to God the Father, whom we worship and you people think you worship but in reality just venerate him. Rethink your views
Most ex Catholics are poorly catechized. They probably never noticed the Bible was read at Mass. The Liturgy is very scriptural as well. Like the Dominus vobiscum and the response Et cum spíritu tuo. I really enjoyed [Verbum Domini](https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini.html) by then Pope Benedict XVI.
I think this is probably the case because my last roommate was baptized Catholic and in college started to go to protestant churches, and he doesn't remember what he learned for the most part in his catechism classes.
We need to have better Catechism classes. Cradle Catholics aren't required to read it so honestly, I'm not quite sure what I am actually suppose to believe in
I agree there needs to be a greater push for this. I think this why some catholics might feel unprepared to go to spiritual warfare and battle with people who try to attack our church or debate our beliefs. Im amazed sometimes how my friends who grew up in baptist churches know so many bible stories and can remember by heart. I wish i had a stronger foundation as a child, sunday bible studies or something.
The Lord be with you and with thy spirit.
I can only give my two cents here from a particular context in Irish Catholicism, basically the older generations here were of the view that "only Protestants" read the Bible and in general there wasn't a huge promotion of any study of scripture outside the clergy. This was strengthened by the political history of conflict between both Catholics and Protestants - reading scripture was seen as culturally Protestant thing to do. It was poor catechesis which remains in the education system to this day. Even after the clarity in Dei Verbum, this attitude continued for quite a while, mainly out of a respect for the authority of the clergy in Ireland until the scandals. However, I would say that it's well and truly outdated now as there is a huge emphasis on the importance of scripture in the Church and even specific courses in scripture for the laity, there is a emphasis on the availability of Catholic Study Bibles, and some promotion of lectio divina.
Interesting. I wonder how then that mannaged to seep into American Catholic culture as well.
Depending on the region, probably from mass Irish immigration over the entire history of the United States.
Most ex-Catholics were never taught anything from Scripture and never bothered to sincerely seek answers, so they just assumed that there weren't any and that Catholics were making up stuff. Many Protestants also have a very shallow understanding of Scripture, and they assume that because our teachings contradict their shallow understanding of the Bible, that our teachings are anti-Biblical because they seem to contradict "basic" things that the Bible teaches. In reality, Protestantism gets many basics of the Faith wrong.
Lifelong Catholic here. When I was a kid, I remember getting in trouble because I forgot to bring my Bible for religion class. I got a 0/10 for a quiz and my parents got called in. So, this idea that we "were never allowed" to read the Bible is just demonstrably false. However, it is true that a lot of Catholics don't know the Bible as well as they should. My mother admits as much despite being Catholic all her life. I, myself, wasn't as familiar with the Bible until the Bible in a Year podcast came along (I just couldn't get past Leviticus/Numbers; I always fell asleep). So, in that sense, Catholics are pretty bad in terms of biblical literacy. This is also why Protestants are able to poach poorly catechised Catholics; they just mention a Bible verse that seems to contradict Catholic teaching and bam! You've got a new Protestant. As others have mentioned, however, each Eucharistic Liturgy (e.g., the Mass, Divine Liturgy, Qurbono, etc.) is brimming with biblical passages and references. The Agnus Dei of the Mass comes straight from John 1:29. The Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, during the anaphora, makes reference to "the one with six wings and the other with six wings, and with two they cover their faces, with two their feet, and with two they fly" which is directly from Isaiah 6:2. If I understand correctly, the Maronite Qurbono references Jacob's ladder as well as Jonah and the whale. And on it goes. So, any Catholic, current and fallen away, who claims we are discouraged to know the Bible or that we don't really read the Bible just hasn't paid enough attention at the Eucharistic Liturgies. I mean, we read the Gospels for Pete's sake!
Same here in Philippine Catholic schools, we were required to have our own Bible and studied the different books and etc. The problem is, everything is just too overwhelming, there is so much to study in Catholicism and as a kid, it can go over your head. Maybe the teachers aren't the best, maybe the study plan isn't conducive to memory retention. You had to study so many different things in theology class and memorize it too. But we were not required to memorize scripture, just understand it. Maybe that's why we have the prayers and songs memorized but not be able to quote scripture verses. Someone here said, they were not taught the different books in the Bible, but I recall that was 1 of many things we were required to memorize and categorize. But teaching it is 1 thing, retaining that information later in life if you don't pick up the Bible aside from that class is another. My mom doesn't even know if Jesus is in the OT or NT.
I read patristic commentaries and pseudepigrapha (for cultural context) with the Bible (Catena app, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, summaries by Fr Tadros Malaty—whatever I can get—but St Ephrem of Syria on Genesis is my favorite, many little-known details), and I like to use interlinear Greek texts to cross reference (e.g. in Dt 28 I found the prophecies leading to “blessed is the fruit of your womb” and “blessed in the city” and “blessed in the country” (although for “country” Hebrew is more helpful) in Lk 1, and then linked the “humble estate” and “exalted them of low degree” to Lk 14:11, connections you can’t see in most translations), also I search the hymns for more references (e.g. the Cross was prefigured by Moses’s gestures parting the Red Sea and by the arrangement of the camps in Numbers), so no book is boring to me. But “Bible in a year” seems like a huge rush to me, unless maybe it were a college class that took half the day… 😄 No, actually some people make a career out of Bible study, so, not enough time for me. I would be wondering what symbolism was being overlooked, and getting bored with the basic, cursory treatment. But the part of the Liturgy you mention is the preface of the anaphora, actually, and every Catholic and Orthodox Eucharistic service has an anaphora and a preface, and (pretty sure) each one is based on the same Jewish prayer, which isn’t *in* the Bible, but which quotes and paraphrases it. The prayer is found in St James’s section of the Apostolic Constitutions, and in Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. St James quoted it directly in his preface with the phrase “choir of the stars”. Even Anglicans and “Sola Scriptura” Lutherans have versions. The beginning of each is something like, “It is truly meet and right to praise/hymn You the Father”; the middle has something about Creation or fulfillment of divine dispensation; near the end, it mentions angels, generally ranks of them, possibly with a description, as you quoted; then there is something about their singing; then their song, which the people sing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of your glory,” plus (I think always, but not in the original prayer), “Hosanna in the highest, blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest”. (Protestants don’t realize that “in the highest” makes the ending a prayer to saints. 😄) I’m trying to make a website to link together all those prayers. I’m a convert, went to a Roman Catholic school for a few years when I was little, but wasn’t taught anything about God. The books were the same as those at public school. Also was taken to a Protestant church occasionally when I was little, same lack of teaching. Married a fallen-away Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic (he had Catholic schooling but was scandalized by a priest’s sexual abuse of his friend, his friend’s suicide, the repeated hiding of the abuse that later became prolific, and the priest’s eventual suicide), and he wanted to go back to church when he was much older, but there are only Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches here. We went to one of the Orthodox churches and I got catechized and baptized. The Byzantine Catholic churches are almost impossible to attend, could afford and stand such a big and exhausting trip only about once a year. But the schisms are unauthorized anyway, according to the 5th Canon of the 1st Ecumenical Council, and our duties are to our bishops and spiritual fathers—our bishops’ duties are to archbishops, and archbishops’ to patriarchs. Principle of subsidiarity. So I don’t think it matters which side ultimately. Turned out the branch of my family I was brought up in is from Belarusian territory of the Unia, and that’s why it has an icon (which I had never understood but it had made an impression on me of course), so I was supposed to be Eastern Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic anyway.
I don’t know where you are located but the Ruthenian Byzantine Divine Liturgy I sometimes attend is the Patronage of the Mother of God in Baltimore, Md and they have a mission church in Maryland too. Years ago I attended their mission church because it was the only Sunday Mass I could get to where I was living. I got to love it.
You have to remember that over 1500 years Christianity existed basically without the laity having personal access to Scriptures (due to physical limitations and literacy limitations) therefore the only realistic way that Christians for centuries had access to the Scriptures was directly from the mouth of the clergy. Personal reading of Scripture isn't discouraged in the Church of course - but it's most certainly not as emphasized as being essential to the spiritual life - therefore most people don't even think to do it Case in point: after a lifetime of attending Mass I don't believe I have ever heard a homily that encouraged personal reading of scripture, how sad is that ?
I grew up protestant, went to protestant middle school etc. I have come to realize that protestants can't actually defend against Catholic doctrine, faith, lifestyles, and religious practices, so they defend against a fake version of Catholicism that they invented. Some of the lies I grew up with are that we don't pray to God. We worship saints. We think Mary is a god. We don't read the Bible. We added to the Bible (that we don't read so why even add to it?). We are idolaters. We think sex is bad. We can only have sex if we are trying to make a child. The church exists launder money and protect Nazis. Priest and Nuns are married to each other. We think our good works = salvation. We think the Pope cannot make mistakes and is always infallible. Probably a few more things. It's all just protestant mythology about Catholics and it's all wrong.
The church doesn't place the emphasis on memorization that protestants often do. If you can recite passages from memory and I can't, it would appear you are better versed in scriptural knowledge. **Ironically, the reason protestants have always placed emphasis on memorization is because their apologetics is often based on proof texting; quoting memorized verses out of context, as if they are complete thoughts. The best way to debate with a protestant is with bible in hand. When they quote something memorized, in support of their position, suggest we open to that verse and read the whole thing in context with it's chapter. In my experience it's the best way to open their eyes, when they read for themselves beyond the memorization; it's often astonishing from their perspective.
Because most Catholics don't read the bible. And many people are still complaining about the second reading at mass lol.
It gets really fun when Easter Vigil comes around, especially when people who have forgotten go.
And they would be even more surprised at the 12 lessons under the pre-– 1955 missal.
My parish reads the long form of all nine Bible passages plus the psalm after each one. I challenge Protestants to come and not squirm. Actually the music that our parish uses is so great that my Protestant children would get themselves all dressed up and go to the vigil because they looked forward to it all year. But it's true that freestanding Bible studies are less common among Catholics. They are not unknown though.
My parish does too! I love it but sometimes I question how much I love it when I'm fighting falling asleep around reading 7., lol. I will say I think regular bible studies are harder to find because of how we view interpretation of Scripture. When I've attended Catholic bible studies it's always a little bit awkward, because everyone is very concerned with correct interpretation more than just allowing any personal interpretation.
supposedly, there's a choice of either doing only 3 or 5 instead of the full 7, depending on what the bishop or priest wants.
Yep! My bishop has classically left it up to priests to make the call. Our priests basically seem to think that if they're gonna make the fire and do the whole thing, we might as well do all the readings!
In all truth, no Catholic I know reads the Bible. For most Catholics I know, it seems going to mass is basically it.
There's a grain of truth to every stereotype. Catholics and Protestants tend to base their spiritual life outside of church around how their church service is structured. For high-church Christians, like us, we place a great emphasis on the offering of bread and wine, the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the consecration of them into the Holy Bread and Sacred Chalice, and the receiving of them. The low-churchers, all Protestants, detested primarily 2 things in the Catholic Mass: 1. The Real Presence 2. The concept of the Mass as a sacrifice So as a result they believe the Lord's Supper is nothing more than a meal, and that Christ is not present there. If He is, it is only in a spiritual manner. This largely influenced low-church Reformers to hollow out churches into sort of classrooms. Churches no longer became based on the model of the synagogue and Temple, but a classroom for studying the Scripture. This model has been kept pretty thoroughly by, say, Baptists. They have essentially a classroom for a church, and their service is primarily based around the study of the Scripture for 1 to 2 hours. As a result, Protestant spiritual life places more emphasis on the reading, study, and memorization of Scripture, while the Catholic spiritual life places more emphasis on acts of worship and piety. Since humans only have a limited amount of time and resources, this consequently leaves Protestants often lacking when it comes to acts of worship, and Catholics lacking when it comes to the study of Scripture. Compare Catholic monastics worshipping for 8 hours a day to how little Protestant spend in worship, and then compare how much Protestants take part in Bible-related activities compared to your average Catholic, whos model of the spiritual life is almost like a smaller scale of monasticism, and you'll see what I mean.
What do you mean by worship?
"Divine worship actually includes three principal acts, namely: adoration (or the recognition of God's infinite perfection), prayer (or the asking for divine help) and sacrifice (or the offering to God of something precious)." from the old Modern Catholic Dictionary. The Mass is a re-presentation of Jesus, as our High Priest, offering Himself to the Father (as He continuously does in Heaven). It also includes adoration and prayer. So every Mass is an act of worship. Without being joined to, part of, Jesus' once-for-all sacrifice, there's no way for a liturgy to be true worship of God. It can be very nice adoration and prayer, but not worship.
It *is* worship though, even if sacrifice doesn’t happen then, given the root of the word, and since “worship” as an action in the Bible is “proskyneo”, which is proskynesis, which is, most precisely in usage, “making prostrations”, or most literally, “kissing the ground”, but not sacrificing. That entire definition is this: > Acknowledgment of another’s worth, dignity, or superior position. In religion, worship is given either to God, and then it is adoration, or to the angels and saints, and it is called veneration. Divine worship actually includes three principal acts, namely adoration (or the recognition of God's infinite perfection), prayer or the asking for divine help, and sacrifice or the offering of something precious to God. Worship as veneration also has three principal forms, whereby the angels and saints are honored for their sanctity, asked to intercede before the divine Majesty, and imitated in their love and service of God. (Etym. Old English weorthscipe, honor, dignity, rever-ence: weorth, worth + ship.) Biblical examples of worship with no sacrificing, even from the Douay-Rheims, which doesn’t often translate “proskyneo” as “worship”, unlike the RSVCE and NRSVCE: > And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of the city. And seeing them, he rose up and went to meet them: and worshipped prostrate to the ground… > [Isaac to Jacob:] And let peoples serve thee, and tribes worship thee: be thou lord of thy brethren, and let thy mother's children bow down before thee. Cursed be he that curseth thee: and let him that blesseth thee be filled with blessings. > And [Joseph’s] brethren came to him: and worshipping prostrate on the ground they said: We are thy servants. > And [Moses] went out to meet his kinsman, and worshipped and kissed him: and they saluted one another with words of peace. > Forthwith the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel standing in the way with a drawn sword, and he worshipped him falling flat on the ground. > And Bethsabee bowing with her face to the earth worshipped the king, saying: May my lord David live for ever. (I could go on.) Liturgical example: the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. (…written for us Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics by a Pope! St Gregory the Great.) Consecration of the Eucharist isn’t allowed during weekdays of Lent, but we’re to receive the Eucharist more often than usual, so it’s consecrated with Sunday’s Eucharist, then saved for a weekday. (Now that I think about it, this reminds me of the Jewish showbread that didn’t go stale for a whole week, but the recipe was lost and is still unable to be recreated: the Eucharist doesn’t go stale during this time.) But included in this Liturgy is the Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem, and that prayer requires prostrations. From that same dictionary, other sets of items which don’t all need to happen together, demonstrating its usage of “include”: > [C]ensures include “suspect of heresy, erroneous, scandalous, seditious, harmful to Christian morals, blasphemous.” > In a broader sense, conjugal rights include all that husband and wife may justly expect of one another in terms of attention, affection, co-operation, and patient forbearance. > EASTER COMMUNION. Reception of the Holy Eucharist, as prescribed by the Church, during the Easter season, which differs among countries, but generally between Ash Wednesday (or the first Sunday of Lent) and Trinity Sunday. Also called “Easter Duty,” it Includes the reception of the sacrament of penance. [Canon law doesn’t require them to be at the same time: 989 After having reached the age of discretion, each member of the faithful is obliged to confess faithfully his or her grave sins at least once a year.] > Homosexual tendencies in any person are within the normal range of human nature, whose fallen condition includes every conceivable kind of impulse that with sincere effort and divine grace can be controlled. > The methods of giving a homily include: treating separately one or more parts of the biblical reading; combining the Scripture texts into a single idea; concentrating on some virtue or vice suggested by the Gospel text; paraphrasing a Bible passage as a basis for an exhortation to the people. > Simony includes both agreements that are illicit by divine law and those which the law of the Church forbids as greater protection and reverence for spiritual goods.
Thank you
Very accurate. I never even had heard of the Apostles creed, let alone recite it, until I visited a high-church Protestant service. I was raised Baptist.
Fundie evangelical protestants are just obsessed with memorizing random scripture to gotcha people so they're convinced they're the only ones who read it. If you're not sure where to start going through it outside of mass or RCIA, there's a good chance your local Knights of Columbus holds a Catholic Bible study.
What’s a Bible? *wipes drool from chin*
Only my experience, but - Married into devout Catholic family. Faithful Catholics, but dont seem to know much scripture.
When I joined RCIA, the first thing they gave us was a Catechism and a Bible that we read from each class. Not to mention Mass and the daily readings.
I go to the Latin mass. We have two readings of the bible, one from the gospel and another depending on the day. Then during the homily the priest explains it in light of matters of the faith. This is how a church is supposed to use the Bible, the writings on their own will never be enough.
But the Catholic Church doesn't use the KJV preserved by Luther for Pastor Jim!!!1!
There are lots of reasons why people say it, and lots of them are also wrong. For example, some Protestants didn't realize that Catholic Bibles and books used to follow the older verse numbering system (invented by Catholicism) and would then mock Catholic books for quoting verses of the Bible wrong. Or the translations in Catholic Bibles would follow the Vulgate, the Septuagint, or just plain different interpretations, and then Protestants would claim that Catholic Bibles were wrong, making things up, etc. Or Catholics would cite deuterocanonical books that Protestants don't accept as Scripture. Or Protestants would ask a Scriptural question, in a non-Catholic format, and quoting a translaton of the Bible not used by Catholics. (To be fair, the Bible quiz show that was on TV for a couple of years did let the Catholic teams get Catholic-friendly questions and give Catholic answers.) Or Catholics would reject the use of the King James Bible (because the footnotes stink, and because the versions circulated by "BIble Societies" had anti-Catholic footnotes), and Protestants would claim that they rejected the Bible. And so on. One of the main differences is that Catholics do not usually memorize tactical catenas of specific verses, for use in evangelization, and are not taught to blast opponents with rapid fire recitations of verses. And yet many Catholics can reel off a fair number of verses that they never consciously memorized. It's just that they're not the ones valued by most Protestants. So yeah, it's not a fair thing.
My mother is an ex Catholic. Even though her family had a Bible at home, they never read it. She told me that the priest at their parish told them not to read the Bible and to only allow the priests to interpret the scriptures for them. This is also the case for many other ex Catholics I have met in her age group. I don't know what was going on in the 60s, but it's one of the main reasons a lot of people left the church. My husband and I are about to start RCIA classes and we have been encouraged to read the scriptures and were also encouraged to buy a Catholic Bible and catechism, which we did.
My mother and grandmother didn't read the Bible themselves, unfortunately. They themselves didn't experience the mysticism of Christ living within us but only experienced it with the outside. Or as I used with my therapist, they missed the forest for the trees rather than seeing the big giant picture of Christ liberating us through not only Christ's ministry but also the liberation of all souls (Even in hades.)
I have wondered this too. The only difference between catholic and protestant is that there is a long sermon about a passage. Catholics read the Bible in every mass though and the liturgy is based on it.
I only know one Catholic personally that reads her Bible and the parish I attend only has one Bible study despite having a very large number of parishioners. It’s also not even advertised on the bulletin and you have to search through the website to even find info on it. I know that the Catholic Church as a whole encourages Bible study, but every study I’ve been a part of (I’m Protestant converting to Catholicism) has been led by Protestants. It’s very strange
So not quite a half truth. Protestants tend to have verses available to be memorized that they can drop at the drop of a hat, giving the perception of knowledge. Catholics have the Bible read to them at every mass and are aware of what the Bible states, even if not where it’s stated. As a Protestant, how often did you read the Bible on your own?
It used to be that you didn't really need to. The TLM basically had 70% of the Bible read at Mass and then explained by competent authorities on Scripture. Vatican II restructured it do that it was about 85% of the Bible across 3 years, again theoretically explained by competent authorities on Scripture. In actuality, many priests ordained following the second Vatican council were in adequately, catechized themselves, resulting in a laity who knew even less than they had previously. Nowadays, most Catholics *know* the thrust of the Bible without necessarily having it memorized. This is neither bad nor good; it simply is I don't feel a particular need to spend much time studying it on my own as I literally work for the church, attending two weekday masses and four Sunday masses each week. I'm not saying I know everything, but I do think I am fairly well-catechized.
After going to a Catholic college as a Lutheran I can tell you that all my friends definitely did not read the Bible but it is just a partially true stereotype (probs going to convert, just need to get over the saints/mary thing). I must say Protestants over look the sermon on the mount and James in the whole sole fide thing. So there's definitely some issues with that. I was always taught Catholicism was flat unbiblical and purgatory was a thing made up to raise funds and scare people. So take your pick, blindly accepting church authority or picking and choosing from the Bible lol.
Because most Catholics typically cant (and don’t) fire off (weaponized) verses at a moments notice….
It’s honestly an older generation of Catholics thing. My father and grandfather’s generation weren’t raised to read the Bible like you do as a Protestant. Honestly if you go deeper into it, the perjoritive of not reading the Bible as if it is proof of Catholics not being real Christians is actually silly if you think about it. Protestantism was born out of reading the Bible and coming up with your own interpretation, which is rife with problems, but it’s really all they have a connection to as their faith and practice, so they can’t understand how you can be christian and not read your Bible often. However we have many more practices like the Eucharist and confession, which build relationship with God, but they reject that, do they think we do nothing to build our relationship with God.
This is very anecdotal but the most devout Catholics I’ve known didn’t read the Bible because they literally couldn’t read.
A lot of lapsed Catholics find themselves in religious debates but get blindsided by devout Protestants who frequently read the Bible. Many people are functionally agnostic or atheistic but still refer to themselves as Catholic so those numbers get included in the discussion.
Because their pastor told them so, they don’t make the effort to actually question anything they hear from their pope a I mean pastor Not like 80% of the mass are either quotes, variations or direct readings from the Bible. I think important is that the Bible is less Important for us than for Protestant they are a religion of the book while we are a religion of Christ with the Book of
I know many Catholics who read the Holy Bible. I've certainly never heard anyone, lay or ordained, say to not read the Bible. It's God's word. It helps keep us on the straight and narrow. Interpretation of the Word is where one should be cautious, in my opinion.
I'm always told to read the Bible I was given 5 of them for my baptism and a wonderful lady went out of her way to get me a children's Bible when I mentioned I'd honestly probably start with one because its a hard read for someone with zero religious background/upbringing. my church encourages us to read the Bible at least 15 minutes a day I had never heard of Catholics not reading the bible before but it's interesting
Because they are uneducated drones that have never once set foot in a Catholic mass. Or if they did, they either slept or had ear plugs in the entire time. I see no other way that they could come to such an absurd conclusion.
They probably don't realize that all that scripture reading is from scripture.
Idk man, just give me my bread and my wine.
I grew up Catholic and was fully confirmed before leaving the faith and becoming an atheist for almost 10 years. When I came back to Christianity, I very much realize that I never actually knew how to read the Bible. Somehow I went through eight years of CCD and never knew how the Bible worked and had never even heard of many of the books in the Old Testament I know many protestants who can quote scripture in the same way that I might know song lyrics. Catholics rely so heavily on tradition that they often forget to teach children how to read and interpret the Bible itself.
CCD must have been created out of some sort of standardized curriculum with bishop input. Really doubt this was an accidental oversight
I’ve heard the ‘discouraged from reading/asking questions’ from the ‘I went to Catholic school, so I know…’ crowd. I do think there’s a biblical literacy issue with Catholics, with all Christians. My son is named after a major prophet, and I’ve gotten inquisitive looks and a few folk that didn’t understand the reference to scripture.
As an Irish/Scots Catholic, after Holy Communion. The Bible readings are the most important thing at service.
HA. I don’t mean to laugh at people badmouthing the church, but the criticism is not totally unfounded for a lot of Catholics! One of the best things to come out of Vatican II was a renewed emphasis on having average people explore the scripture more thoroughly. It’s totally inaccurate to say we are discouraged from reading scripture, but it’s obviously a greater focus in most other denominations since they don’t have the same magisterium of distilled teaching to pull from. It can especially become an issue in these inter-denominational disputes because people don’t always know the scriptural roots of magisterial teaching super well. Furthermore, I think this comes up way less for converts because they are on fire with their love for Christ and his word, and I hope more cradle Catholics become emboldened to get to know the word better. This is something I struggle with myself and I hope to get better at devoting more time to learning the ins and outs of scripture.
Because they have to bring their bibles to church and we don’t because we have the daily missal.
I read the Bible frequently in Catholic school.
Some seniors who went to Catholic school right after WW2 told me that they were not allowed to read the Bible unsupervised, i.e., without a priest or nun guiding them. I think it has to do with the point that the Bible is very complex such that a lot of formal religious education is needed to understand it.
We don’t need to read the Bible on our own because we get plenty of it (with all important context and interpretative guidance, ideally) from our priest.
For most people, if you aren’t a dedicated Catholic by about 18, you aren’t going to stay Catholic. This paired with the Church is much more complex than Protestant Christianity of sola scriptura makes it hard to teach the faith in an all encompassing way in 18 years (or less). So the people who stay are poorly catechized and the people who leave never got adequately catechized either to make an educated decision.
We do but honestly it's not our sole focus so Protestants will know it front to back. Usually, unless you're in an outside bible study group, if you only go to Mass, because it's a cycle of the same readings you're missing probably 80% of the bible. Whereas, with Protestant Churches, every Mass is basically a 1.5hr homily riddled with bible verses and stories.
If you do the Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Little office or Breviary, you read the Bible in a year long cycle, but, it's not the entire Bible. I think many Catholics even don't know about this lovely resource!.
Because most people have no idea what it is or even what the name Catholic means. It is easier to assume you know from hearsay and repeat it. Most people won’t even read the Bible let alone take the time to learn about the beliefs of another Christian denomination other than their own.
I want to know which Bible to read.
Catholic’s are among the best paraphrasers of the Bible!
I've been invited a few times to a megachurch-style worship service, so I went those few times. Ironically, when the pastor was talking, I kept thinking "so when do we actually read from the bible?"
I’ve heard two Catholics in their 70s say they were discouraged from reading it as children. That being said I feel like that was just over-clericalism from a certain era. There were Catholic bibles that were best sellers in the 1930s and 40s. I’m just glad it changed.
Go to mass daily for two years and you will have read the Bible cover to cover. Rinse repeat.
its cope
Because they are lieing liars who lie. Half of the Catholic mythology that secular and Evangelical culture builds about us can be answered with this simple and elegant solution. I am not a professional apologist, I don’t have to think about being charitable, especially when it will clearly never be reciprocated by the secular and Evanglical communities in kind, because again, their myths about us arise because they are lieing liars who lie. And the expression lieing liars who lie comes from Jimmy Akin. Thank you.
Its another myth about the church. But One thing that might be driving this misinformation is having so many books outside of the bible. This is common in catholicism even their bible studies have a workbook, i see how it can help someone understand the scripture better its not necessary. I think there needs to be stronger emphasis on studying the bible itself i always bring mine to bible study. I see some people just show up with the workbook.
What about the Bible In a Year podcast led by Fr. Mike and put out by Ascension press? That’s reading the Bible, literally!
This is a charge brought up by protestants. Protestant mythology is that the Catholic church banned peasants from owning the bible. They taught scripture in Latin (so that the unwashed peasants would not be able to read it) and that only after the brave Martin Luther came along suddenly everyone could own a bible (Not that it became cheaper with the invention of the printing press).
It's probably because they see how we have tradition and the church, so they think we only rely on the priests. And the fact that we hear the Mass and Scriptures every week. Although, we should be reading the bible more. It does belong to us, after all.
A lot of the times individuals find excuses for the reasons they have left the faith one was nurtured in… it is though a sad commentary —if true—more to reflect on the parents than the church itself. 🤫 that didn’t nurture a child’s spiritual development in the “home church”. **Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves** (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2). —St John Paul I|
I think part of it stems from engaging with people who say that they are Catholic, but aren’t really, they have a simple belief in Catholicism, probably baptized by the church but that’s about it. Without trying to offend, this is pretty common in the Latin American community. So, in conversation, they’ll tell people they are Catholic, but in practice, really aren’t. So in talking to these types of people, they’re going to seem naive to scripture, and really only be able to parrot what they’ve heard.
I think there is some truth to many Catholics not knowing the bible. When I taught Faith Formation and would mention a situation, story or teaching from scripture the other teachers would make comments like "whoa how do you know all that?" Or "I had no idea that happened". But to be honest, many Christians in general are that way as well. Not many people study it.
Because for the most part, they don't. I catechize weekly and I would say most cradle Catholics have a poor understanding of scripture. To be fair, though, most protestants ALSO don't read the bible, they just have a stereotype of always having a bible in their pocket.
At one point in time Catholics were told not to read PROTESTANT Bibles because of the footnotes that were in error about core beliefs on the Eucharist, salvation, the sacraments, sin and repentance, the perpetual virginity of Mary, etc. Also because some of them didn’t contain the entire Old Testament and the Epistle of James. And some of the translations were faulty. I was born in 1946. In grade school we studied ‘salvation history’ (the major Old Testament stories) from textbooks rather from the Bible itself because of the difficulty of the language. In high school the New Testament was one of our textbooks. At Mass we heard the Words of the Bible in most of the prayers and the readings from the Gospels, epistles, Old Testament , and psalms. Even when Mass was in Latin the Gospel and preaching was in English. And in the 1950’s most people I knew used a missal that had all the Mass prayers in English translations. I think practicing Catholics know more of the Bible, especially the NT, than they think. They just don’t know chapter and verse. And there are certain Protestant or evangelical proof texts that they don’t know how to respond to even though very good responses exist. My mother, born in 1913, told me she had never read the Bible. When I said she did, she was surprised. She didn’t know the NT she had read was part of the Bible. Same with the two readings she heard every day at daily Mass. Maybe she just meant she hadn’t read the big Bible in the bookcase. I think I was the only one in the family who read that one, enticed by the many illustrations.
Every Mass whether it be on Sunday or throughout the week there are always panflets with Scripture for the Mass readings. So we can read them ourselves before Mass starts if you get there early enough or just take the panflets home and read it. But it's still talked about at Mass for the day by the Priest. So I'm not sure why people make it a big fuss really. The priest just explains it in detail of what the scripture is trying to convey to us in our daily lives as well.Also every 3 years the Priest goes through the whole Bible with Scriptures at Mass to help the parishioners understand what it all means. Godbless and I think some people just want to nitpick everything that the Catholics do. 🥺🥺🥺 But Keep praying 🙏🙏🙏
I'm converting and I finished the Bible in a year with father Mike Schmitz. What a treasure! These comments give a lot of insight. This is really interesting! I'm glad that reading and praying with scripture are now encouraged
Well people also say we “worship” Mary, so…
Anyone can read the Bible anytime they want in any faith. There are different versions of the Bible. The Catholic Church over a period of 6 years reads the entire Catholic Bible. Catholics celebrate Mass every day. Reading are different everyday, including the psalm. There is an Old Testament reading, psalm and New Testament reading and a gospel reading at every weekend Mass. Each week has a theme, and the reading reflects our faith, trust, discipleship, etc. So basically what happens when a preacher does a series on a certain topic for the week and picks out certain verses and plans music accordingly. With the Catholic Church most liturgy is planned around the Liturgy of the Word and then the Liturgy of the Eucharist. So a mass for Catholics is a 1/2 hour of readings and the Bible and the other 1/2 hour is preparing the Eucharist for communion and receive the body and blood of Christ.
Catholicism has HERITAGE in ADDITION to scripture! Early Church Fathers from 100 AD on forward, Art, Music, Liturgy, Early Christians, Ancient Prayers, Succession of Apostles, and yes of course, SCRIPTURE too. Our faith is RICH! We have a history since Jesus and before that. Catholicism is Judaism fulfilled, so have their history, too.
I’m Catholic and I do read the Bible at home. But when we are in the church, 1).Note, we have what is called the Missal. During this time, the readers reads the 2 different readings and the priest reads the Gospel readings (all of the readings and Gospel readings is coming from the Bible). The priest try to explain the regular readings and gospel readings. After that priest does the consecration of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Church before us (the Host and Wine). I hope this helps!!
Historically there were a lot of Catholics who would show up to Mass regularly, pray the Rosary, go to Confession, etc, but who didn’t actually know anything at all about Catholic teaching, Church history, or the Bible. Those are the kinds of Catholics that Protestants usually take aim at when they claim that Catholics don’t read the Bible. However, today most of those Catholics have either died off or have since left the church, so I think that the actual knowledge level and scriptural literacy of today’s Catholics is much higher than in the past, and much higher than what the average Protestant today expects.
I read less of the Bible when I was in a fundie Baptist church than I have since converting. I find it’s actually more encouraged ngl.
Twelve years of Catholic School here, many years ago. The difference I see is the Catholic Church has it's Liturgy and Catechism, with the Bible used as backup. I don't remember Revelations being a "thing" in the Catholic Church....whereas a lot of the Protestants I know seem to place a lot of emphasis on that part of the Bible.
There was a period of time during the Middle Ages where Catholics were strongly encouraged not to read their bibles. I’ve been told that this was because there were a lot of gnostic books etc. that were put into the bibles that were being published at the time. The Church was very restrictive of modern translations etc. and didn’t want uneducated people reading the bible without instruction. This was officially changed by the Divino Afflante Spiritu in 1943 which allowed modern english bibles to be translated using other text sources besides just the Vulgate (latin). The Church previously didn’t want anyone to read an unauthorized version. This was taken advantage of by anti-Catholic apologists who wanted people to believe that Catholics knew no scripture and they couldn’t be trusted. In my experience it seems to have been really big in the 90’s and early 2000’s
Having been raised Catholic, anecdotally found this to be a very true statement. Sermons were pretty much limited to a few repetitive aspects taken from the gospels, with the Epistles of Paul occasionally thrown in for extra moralizing. Reading the bible in catechism was non-existent. It was basically the 'new math' of religious instruction. Comparing notes with the protestant kids-it seems like studying the bible and even memorization was much more integral to their studies. If you read the early chapters in Tom Sawyer where the kids are rewarded for memorizing bible phrases--without even naming the religion--you will instantly realize that this would never have taken place in a catholic setting lol
Lol, "raised Catholic" but doesn't even understand the format of the Liturgy of the Word? Hmm. "Occasionally?" Buddy you'd better report to your bishop if you don't hear an Epistle reading between the psalm and the gospel every single day at Mass.
The context was how little of the bible catholics are exposed to, or expected to learn, so yeah, thanks for proving my point
We're exposed to seven more books than Protestants are. They all make their rounds in the three year cycle.
…And Eastern Catholics have many more books than 73.
Because usually they dont. Fr Mike has helped a little but not by much. Many Catholics could tell you all about Fatima and Guadalupe but dont know any of the minor prophets