Actually, around here, you’d be indeed hard pressed to find a bible lying around in a catholic church, since these things tend to be stolen.
Though an atheist, I’ve been brought up as a catholic. Reading the bible is definitely not discouraged, at the contrary.
However, I’ve the blurry feeling that catholics don’t pay as much attention to the Old Testament as protestants, on the overall. But I could be off base.
And that would be “catholic” in its original sense of “universal”.
Yes. No. Not if you look in the library or office. Portions of the Bible are read at almost every Mass.
Well, upon graduation from high school, I and all the other catholic students were presented with engraved bibles by our church. That was many years ago, but I believe that they are still doing this.
Sure doesn’t sound like “discouraged from reading it”!
Our parish presents high school seniors with Bibles. As mentioned previously, Scripture is read at every Mass:
1 Reading from Old Testament (replaced with reading from Acts during Easter season)
1 Repsonsorial Psalm
1 non-Gospel New Testament reading (generally a Pauline letter)
1 Gospel reading
The readings are on 3 year cycles, so in three years you’ll hear some (but my no means most) of the Old Testament, a good deal of the Pauline letters, most of the Gospels, and quite a few Psalms. I’ve never figured out why Psalms merits such coverage but what the hey.
In addition, many parishes have Bible study groups that you can join.
If I’m not mistaken, Kerry should have already been cut off from Communion because he is divorced and remarried and I do not believe his first marriage was annulled. That is an automatic cut off from Communion.
Many prominent Catholic politicians have gotten annulments (Richard Riordan, Rudy Giuliani, Ted Kennedy) and remarried, but Kerry did not get one.
His first wife is still alive isn’t she?
Kerry did get his first marriage annulled.
One thing I don’t think has been mentioned yet is that Catholics are the only denomination (IIRC) to still believe in transsubstantiation. That is, the liturgy of the Eucharist is not merely a symbolic reenactment of the last supper, but that the bread and wine in the hands of the priest literally become the body and blood of Christ.
I think her father is remembering the pre-Vatican II days. My mother (a Protestant) used to talk to a neighbor (a Catholic) about the Bible, and the other woman would have to go to her priest to get answers to the questions my mother had about her beliefs. When my mother would ask her to show her the answers from the Bible, she would say, “Oh our priest says that the lay person isn’t really capable of understanding or interpreting the Bible, so he doesn’t encourage us reading it.”
I heard the same thing from my Catholic friends in high school.
Post-Vatican II, I believe a number of things changed, the reading of the Bible became more common and encouraged, and Masses were changed to English (or the local language in other countries).
As far as her beliefs about Dennis Kucinich – :rolleyes:. I’ve lived in the Cleveland area most of my life: he was a Democratic city councilman, a Democratic mayor of Cleveland, a Democratic representative to Congress, and is now a Democratic candidate for President. (and will probably remain a Democratic representative after he loses in the convention).
Has Kerry ever stated that definitively. He has been very evasive on that issue, although I believe it is more out of respect for his ex-wife than any other nefarious reason.
Presumably, since he takes Communion, he did get one, but as recently as Feb 16, 2004, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the matter of Kerry’s first marriage was unclear.
Kerry’s first wife was Episcopalian. Teresa Heinz Kerry is Catholic.
Personal experience only. I doubt you’d be “hard-pressed” to find a bible…but when I’ve been to Catholic churches, Bibles are nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are in the Protestant churches I’ve visited.
The Bible is most certainly read during Mass (in fact, and please correct me if I’m wrong, there’s a system so that the entire Bible is read during mass every three years). But (and this is my experience), it is being read to the congregation that’s listening to the Bible. OTOH, generally speaking, in many protestant churches, there’s a Bible at every seat and a not-insignificant number of congregants have brought in their own Bibles, and they read along with the Bible reader. (But, there are parts that they’ve never read/heard because the pastor/minister doesn’t want to preach on them.)
In most cases, a Catholic might be prevented from receiving Communion if he or she openly and blatently disagress with the teachings of the church; that is, is practicing heresy or something that borders on heresy. A Catholic has a responsibility to be aware not just of the teachings of the bible, but the teachings on the church. If you wish to be a member of the church, you more of less have to follow the rules the church makes. If you want to belong to any organization, that holds true. There is a caveat for your conscience; if you sincerely feel something is wrong, after reflecting upon the bible and teachings of the church, you would be expected to follow your conscience. However, this is generally understood to be in cases where an action would be wrong - that is, if the pope went nuts and said Catholics should burn Buddhists at the stake. It is not meant as a free out for any inconvenient church teaching. My wife is a religious Catholic, but will not take Communion because she practices birth control. She believes that taking the pill should be allowed, but will not cross that particular line.
I believe Kerry did get an annullment - his ex-wife complained about it. (Technically, although no one really cares, his children by the first wife would be considered illegitimate - a big deal in the middle ages, but not now. No one asks if you are a bastard when you move into a parish). I suspect that Kerry had one of his staff come up with a careful statement, something like “…before I wed Theresa, I sought an annulment, blah blah blah…” while the annullment process was going on (it can take a long time, no matter how much money you have). The statement was vague enough to cover him if the annullment was denied or approved. I think Kerry simply went back to the same vague typical politician like answer by reflex.
Catholics do read the bible, but typically if a Catholic wanted to quote something, they would say something like"… St Paul said in his first letter to whoever that blah blah blah…" Quoting exact chapter and verse is more of a Protestant thing, since there is much more of a reliance on the actual book itself than a combination of bible and teachings. Kerry quoted some chapter and verse recently, (and wrong at that) and it seemed odd coming from a Catholic. Probably it came from some staff flunkie.
The real problem Kerry has is wanting to compete with Bush in the religious south. So he emphasizes that he is a practicing Cahtolic - then runs into the problems of his definition of Catholic. He does not to me, appear to be particularly religious, or to be frank, sophisticated as to the particulars of his own religion. He should either simply say he is a Catholic, and leave it at that.
Catholics use missals or missalettes, instead. Are you sure all those protestants were using bibles, and not missals? I’ve seen some that were.
This is not true, according to my high school theology teachers (my parents are annuled, so this was a matter of curiosity to me). So long as the parents believe at the time that a valid marriage exists, the children are considered legitimate, even if the marriage is later annulled.
This is utterly incorrect.
The Church is strongly pro-life and pro-family. The very idea that a Church process would purport to create illegitimacy when the parents of the child believed themselves in a valid and licit marriage when they conceived the child is unbelievable. In fact, the declaration of nullity affects only the parties to the marriage; it makes no finding about the legitimacy of any children, nor may one be inferred.
An existing civil marriage is sufficient to preserve the legitimacy of children. The Code of Canon Law, Can. 1137, provides:
(Emphasis added).
- Rick
Ah, yes… definitely one of the old Tridentine school. But it’s not really an impugnation of the average person’s intelligence – just of their training and education. The idea was that to fully understand what the Bible really means you need some level of theological education so you can parse it in context, not merely having barely learned to read the literal text; by the time it got down to the parishes it had become the above quote. We gotta remember that throughout most of Christian history, the vast majority of the people in the pews, other than those aspiring to a career in the church, were at best semiliterate and not formally educated.
Those doctrines were founded in the Counter-Reformation in the 16th Century, and indeed at the time there was a huge concern that the uneducated masses would be easy prey for preachers throwing Bible verses at them. Even now, the Church holds that interpretation of Scripture is better left to trained professionals, and not open to whatever Joe Believer pulls out of his hat after looking up the long words. Then again, most Protestants and Fundamentalists, even as they directly read their Bibles, receive a professionally interpreted version of Scripture’s teachings anyway: sure they read the passages themselves, but the Preacher/Sunday-school teacher then sermons them on what it meant, doesn’t he?
In my Catholic school in the early 70s we were required to have at least a New Testament on us or within easy reach at all times.
Details: the familiar-to-folks-living-today version of this doctrine comes from the 16th-century Council of Trent – it had been knocking around for centuries before, of course.
In my Catholic school of the late 60s, we were required to go out and buy a copy of the New American Catholic Bible (so we’d all have the same edition and relevant passages would be on the same page, etc) for class.
Perhaps your friend’s dad meant that no Catholic church has a copy of the King James Version, which we consider to be lovely poetry in a not-particularly-divinely-inspired kind of way. (This really frustrated a Mormon missionary who was counting on my acceptance of the KJV and some specific passages therein to make some point.)
And most Catholics of my generation reject the Protestant emphasis on personal salvation, and believe that acts and a commitment to social jiustice are a lot more in line with Christ’s teachings.
Of course, the one thing we all have in common, Catholic and Protestant alike, is what Philip Roth delicately referred to as “beliefs that would embarrass a gorilla.”
Actually, as has already been mentioned in this thread, it is more accurate to say that low-church Protestants are (mostly) the only Christian groups to deny the Real Presence. The RP is the historical belief, and those who believe that the Eucharist is merely symbolic form a minority of Christians.
There’s a difference between Real Presence and transsubstantiation, at least as it was explained to me and I was trained to explain it to kids I led up to their first communion. Very subtle, though.