On December 19th, 1981, a month after I came home
to live with my mom as a recently baptized Bible believer,
I went to the local Catholic Bible bookstore
and bought one of their Bibles.
You see, I had some Roman Catholic friends.
One was right next door.
She had her rosary on her Bible, or with it,
and it had special indulgences for kissing her Bible
and saying certain words.
I asked her if she read it on her own.
She said basically the same thing as another Catholic
one of my friends had talked to.
So it's not unique with her.
"Oh, no!
I can't read the Bible on my own!
It causes me problems!"
"Oh?
What kind of problems?"
"Well, when I read the Bible, and I read my Catechism,
they don't say the same thing.
That causes me problems."
"So what do you do?"
I hoped she'd trust the Bible over the Catechism.
"I just go to my priest and ask him.
He tells me a bunch of stuff.
It's complicated.
But he knows what he's saying.
So I just believe whatever he says.
Then I don't have a problem."
"So you don't believe your Bible, but you believe your priest?"
"Well, yeah.
He's closer to God than I am.
So he should know."
Wow.
This lady can see that the Bible does not include:
Mary's ascending into heaven (called the Assumption of Mary),
Mary being prayed to or even lifted up.
And there is nothing on popes or New Testament priests,
or purgatory, or holy orders, or extreme unction,
confession to a priest, none of it.
The Bible even talks against making people abstain from foods
or forbidding marriage, like they do with priests and nuns.
But she'll talk to a priest and trust him to have it all figured out,
because "he's closer to God" than she is?
I had to see what was happening for myself.
What's the secret behind these Catholic Bibles?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
So I bought my own Catholic Bible, the New American Bible
(the official English Catholic Bible), St. Joseph Medium size edition.
Listen here on page 11:
"But the task of authentically interpreting
the word of God, whether written or handed on,
has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office
of the Church, whose authority is exercised
in the name of Jesus Christ..."
That means if you want to interpret what God said,
you have to trust priests that the Catholic church
tells you to trust.
In the next paragraph it says this:
"It is clear therefore, that sacred tradition,
Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority
of the Church, in accord with God's most wise design,
are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand
without the others, and that all together ...
contribute effectively to the salvation of souls."
So two Roman Catholic inventions, tradition and Catholic authority (Magisterium),
are pitted against the Bible.
That's two against one.
If you want to be saved, you need all three, though.
And only a priest can figure out how that works.
One page 12 I found this:
"For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting scripture
is subject finally to the judgment of the Church,
which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding
and interpreting the word of God."
They're saying "Trust the Roman Catholic teachers.
They're charged with guarding and interpreting the Bible --not you."
When talking about Genesis on page 19, for example, it says
"The Bible does not teach science; it teaches religious values.
It uses these folktales to teach a lesson."
When talking about Psalms on page 20, it says, "The feeling, the thought,
the total poem is inspired (guided) by God,
though it is not necessarily revealed truth!
Read some psalms!"
No kidding. It actually says that.
On page 22 it says about the Gospels: "Until recently they thought
that the Gospel writers wanted to present us with
a biography of Jesus.
After much research, Bible scholars agree now
that the Gospel writers wanted to write catechisms or digests
of Christian teaching concerning the risen Lord Jesus."
They're saying the Gospels aren't history, aren't they?
Next paragraph, please!
"What did the authors of the Gospels do?
... they found scores of narratives
about Jesus, the beloved Founder of the Christian faith.
The writers took those narratives and frequently even remolded them
and refashioned them to bring out the lesson
they wanted to teach."
So the New American Bible, the official English Catholic Bible,
says that the Bible writers didn't actually write facts at all.
They wrote "folktales," "feelings," "catechisms" of Christian teaching,
and "remolded" or "refashioned" narratives about Jesus,
that may have happened, to bring out a moral lesson
they wanted to teach.
Wow.
Just wow.
You see it right here.
I even highlighted it in red.
It really amazed me.
Okay, that was then.
This is now.
That was a 1970 edition.
Surely it's changed now, right?
On March 3rd, 2005, I got the updated New American Bible,
"The New Catholic Translation," "Catholic Study Edition."
It has all new notes.
And look: It's printed by "Catholic Bible Press,
a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers,"
the same people who make the New King James!
I jumped to the section called "Interpreting the Bible."
Here are a few snippets:
From page xii, "...interpreting the Bible,
understanding what it has to say, is not a simple task.
Even these highly trained scholars have difficulty in knowing exactly
what the original authors meant to say."
So if the great Catholic scholars don't know what
the original authors meant to say, what chance is there for little ol' me?
You see what they're doing?
From page xiii, at the end, for once they stated things simply.
"The Church produced the Scriptures; the Church recognized
the extent of the scriptures; the Church interprets the scriptures."
People have disputed my book, Did the Catholic Church
Give Us the Bible?: "The Catholic Church
never claimed they gave us the Bible!"
Oh yes, they did.
And you just heard it for yourself.
Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur
You don't think you need a priest to interpret the scriptures, for you, do you?
Or do you?
In modern Bibles, including Thomas Nelson's
New King James, are notes saying in essence,
"the best manuscripts do not contain these verses,"
"the oldest manuscripts do not contain these verses,"
or something else, and you are left not knowing
which text to choose.
So what do you do?
"Well, I just ask my pastor..."
"Well, I just ask my professor..."
"Well I just ask the scholars..."
So are they really your professor, or pastor ... or priest?
What's the difference?
God bless you and have a wonderful day.