Remember when the query “Is the Pope Catholic?” was purely rhetorical?
Burn of the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
This whole episode brings to mind the Kierkegaard quote about how Christian scholarship was devised as a way for believers to defend themselves against Scripture.
I went to school awash in historical-critical scholarship and Jesus Seminar nonsense. Hooray Jesuits!
“Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear —- in the woods?”
when bears start using toilets, then we’ll really have to worry……
I’ve noticed an ever growing propensity of catholic media to ignore the elephant in the room.. this usually involves word salads and red herrings (diversion tactics).
Catholic Biblical scholarship has been unsatisfactory since the NAB translation was first developed and published under the reign of Pope Paul VI. With the notable exception of Scott Hahn’s Ignatius Catholic Study Bible in the RSV2CE (and of course Father George C. Haydock’s Duoay-Rheims Study Bible of 1859), almost all Catholic Study Bibles are worthy of the trash bin. One only needs to look at the study notes in the NABRE to see the obvious. It denies Moses wrote the Torah (instead, adhering to the flawed Documentary Hypothesis). It asserts that the miracle of Jonah and the Great Whale is a myth (regardless of what Jesus said to the contrary). It denies Daniel wrote all of Daniel and Isaiah all of Isaiah. It likewise ascribes the authorship of multiple epistles of Sts. Paul, Peter, and John to people other than them. And miracle after miracle, historical event after historical event it describes as mere moralistic fiction. One wonders if Catholic scholars then actually believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist as John chapter 6 explains.
Now I have a great variety of Study Bibles in my collection: Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. From these I have seen that while Protestant Evangelicals may get their interpretations wrong, the one thing that they believe in is the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture. A few weeks ago I bought another Catholic Study Bible, this one annotated by Father Robert Spritzer, SJ (those initials should have told me everything!) entitled “Science, Reason, and Faith.” Within its study notes Father specifically states that the Bible is NOT inerrant. I was so dismayed and disappointed. Yes, we know that parts of the Bible are poetry, others may be parables, others hyperbole, etc. The Bible is neither a history book nor a science book. But it IS inerrant. You simply must remain aware of what kind of literature you’re reading when you start to read a certain book. For example, there are certain historical anachronisms in Tobit and Judith, but likely the names of people and places were changed to protect both writers and readers. Remember that these were likely written when the Jews were being persecuted by the countries surrounding them (e.g., Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Seleucids; just like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, and Iran today; some things never change). That doesn’t mean Tobit and Judith are erroneous. Rather, they are real accounts to give us the story of God’s intervention in the lives of His people in order to instruct and encourage us. And given the terrorism against Israel nowdays (not to mention the Islamic persecution of Christians that Pope Leo XIV ignores), they are just as relevant in these post modern, neo pagan times as they were when they were written.
Therefore, I really despise the NABRE. It is a horrid and contemptible translation, imitating the Protestant NIV and having none of the majesty of either the Douay-Rheims or the KJV with Apocrypha. And it lacks the accuracy and precision of the ESVCE, RSV2CE, and NRSVCE. Even the paraphrase NLTCE is better. And as for Protestant translations like the NASB, NKJV, etc., they are far better though sadly they lack the Deuterocanonicals. I will tell you this: when I consult my John MacArthur LSB Study Bible, regardless of his vehement anti-Catholicism, unlike the Pope and his scholars, he really believed in the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture (though sadly, like John Calvin centuries before him, he sometimes comes to logical absurdities in his conclusions).
Hard to add anything to LCQ’s great post, but one last point. Dr. Levine lacks the one essential quality demanded for any valid bible study in all Church documents: faith in Christ. How can she understand that the Old Testament shows Jesus as Lord and Savior if she doesn’t believe it. Any of her interpretations will be lacking.
Just to add: the NABRE deserves all the contempt that it undergoes, a truly terrible translation. I was so disappointed to read this version after I converted that I went back to the KJV until I found the RSVCE.
I await the new translation of the Catholic American Bible with fear and trembling.
Starting in the last couple of years, I required the Didache Bible for my students, which is an RSV-CE. The NAB is so defective in its translations it felt akin to teaching heresy. And yet, it is what we hear at Mass every Sunday and day for that matter. LCQ and Matthew are both spot on.
The NAB was translated by 76 atheist bible scholars.