Exiit qui seminar - Why Catholics Don't Know The Bible As Well As Other Protestants
As I promised in my homily this past weekend, there is an important reason why Catholics don’t know the Bible as well as our Protestant brothers and sisters. And it has everything to do with the study of Sacred Scripture and Scripture scholarship.
During the 19 century, Biblical scholarship made a shift towards the use of modern-day techniques, called the Historical Critical Method. These scholars used a better understanding of ancient languages and better methods of translating, as well as other cultural and intellectual approaches to understanding the Bible. Around that time, scholars started applying the theory of rationalism to the discernment of texts from Sacred Scripture. Rationalism, a method that arose in the 17 century, posited that opinions and beliefs should be grounded solely in reason and what could actually be proven and not based off of religious belief or an emotional response. Scholars applying rationalism would look at the Bible with a critical eye on whether, according to reason, the events depicted within were real or even possible.
These “rationalists” concluded that Sacred Scripture and the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation was an impossibility and caused many of these scholars to abandon their faith entirely (a very unreasonable act all in the name of reason). Called the “Rationalist Crisis”, the Church, in order to preserve the faith of believers, shut down Catholic scripture scholarship and purposefully dissuaded Catholics from studying the Bible, fearing that in their own pursuit of personal interpretation of the sacred texts they would end up abandoning the faith. From that point on the Church would put forth the “official” interpretation of the books of the Bible and the messages that are contained within them.
But that didn’t mean that the Catholic Church got out of the study of the Bible using the methods of the Church Fathers and modern-day exegesis. The Church created the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1901 to protect and defend the integrity of the Catholic Faith in Biblical matters, to further the progress of exposition of the Sacred Books, taking account of all recent discoveries, to decide controversies on grave questions which might arise among Catholic scholars, to give answers to Catholics throughout the world who may consult the Commission, to see that the Vatican Library was properly furnished with codices and necessary books, and to publish studies on Scripture as occasion might demand.
While the work of the Commission has changed greatly in the past 120 years, it was the start of the Church getting back in the game of serious Scripture scholarship and helping Catholics to better know the “Word of God in the words of man.” And now there are a lot of Catholic commentaries and study Bibles to help the faithful navigate the development of the Bible. We’ll have a list of some of my favorites in next week’s bulletin!
Sincerely yours in Christ (and read your Bible!),
Fr. Rob Sinatra
