“Mom,” my 8-year-old says as she comes in the door, “Andrea says
we’re not Bible Christians because we’re Catholic.”
I look up from my computer and smile at the irony. For the last
nine months, I’ve been writing Scripture studies nearly fulltime. At least this
matter will be easier to explain than when my little boy came in from the
backyard and wanted to know why our neighbor child was insisting that there are
seven gods and none of them was named Jesus.
I told Sarah that Catholics are Christians who definitely believe
in the Bible. Her friend believes that the Bible is the only authority for a
Christian. We differ there. I asked her to think about Jesus’ friends after He
died, to imagine St. Paul as he wrote his letters from prison. Way back before
people identified themselves by the names of many different denominations. Were
those people of the early Church Christians?
She agreed that of course they were. “But they didn’t even have a
Bible,” I reminded her. “Those letters St. Paul was writing became a part of
the Bible.” Her eyes grew wide with understanding and then they twinkled a
little mischievously. “I can tell Andrea that.” I nodded.
“Also, in the Bible it doesn’t say that we have to only believe
in the Bible. Jesus gave us the Church, too. So, you could tell her that
Christians didn’t always have a Bible, but still they were Christian, and you
can tell her that we have the Bible and read the Bible and pray with the Bible
at every Mass. You can tell her that you love the Bible and you are Christian
and you belong to a Church that teaches the truth of the Bible.”
Off she went to set the record straight.
The reality is that her friend’s perception of Catholics
is not so different from many Catholics’ perception of Catholics. My cousin Ellie writes about her own childhood growing
up in a big Italian family, “A bible the size of
Utah sat upon a marble table in our living room but no one was allowed to touch
it ... There was an awareness of the existence of
God—but not the experience of God. Religion came up from time to time —
ours was right and everyone else’s was wrong.” It is not unusual to find a
Catholic who doesn’t read the Bible personally on a regular basis.
That never seemed quite right to me. I’ve always deeply believed
that having a relationship with God that only exists in the physical — just
showing up at Mass and consuming the Eucharist — is like being married and
skipping conversation. Jesus wants to have words with us. He wants to engage in
dialogue. He gave us this richness of conversation and if we never open the book,
it’s like ignoring our spouses when they try to talk to us.
Catholic liturgy is steeped in scripture, but a lot of Catholics
don’t really listen carefully to it when they hear it.
And many Catholic women don’t know how to get started, and they
don’t know where to find resources to keep them going. We need to change
that scenario. We need for our children to be so familiar with the Bibles open
in their homes that when someone tells them they aren’t Bible Christians they
know that can’t possibly be right. We need to take to heart the story of St.
Augustine, who was indisputably Catholic. In Confessions, he describes how
powerfully he was impacted by the Word of God. He was sitting in the yard one
day, totally at the end of himself, in utter despair. He flung himself to the
ground and wept — he describes sobs in big, gushing wails — and he asked God
how long he’d be alienated by His anger.
Suddenly, Augustine heard voices chanting “take up and read” over
and over again. So, he went to the Bible and read the first passage it fell
open to. It was Romans 13:13 — all about turning away from a life of sin.
And His whole life changed in that moment.
Ours can, too. Today is a really good day for Catholics to take
up and read.
Foss is the founder of Take Up and Read, a ministry
dedicated to encouraging women to read, to ponder, and to respond to the Word
of the Lord every day. You can find her at takeupandread.org.