How Do Catholics Read the Bible?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

Growing up, I attended Catholic schools for sixteen years. During that time, I don’t recall ever reading the bible directly. Even in college, the course I had on the bible actually involved reading a textbook about the bible, not the bible itself. It was as if the bible was too sacred a text for the uninitiated, such as myself, to make sense of except as explained by those in authority and knowledgeable about it. There’s a history to Catholicism and bible reading. It’s important to remember that books and reading in general were rare until after the invention of the printing press. Before that time, the bible was communicated nonverbally, such as through stained-glass windows and the mysteries of the rosary that reminded Christians of events from the gospels. Once Gutenberg invented the press in the mid-fifteenth century, printing presses started showing up in all major cities of Europe. Not surprisingly, his first printed book was the bible in Latin translation. Before the time of Martin Luther in the 1500s, no one could call for people to read the bible themselves—except for in some monasteries and churches books simply did not exist. After Luther, especially after he made his masterful translation of the New Testament into highly readable German, people could read the bible themselves in printed form. Leaders of the Catholic Church at the time were wary of such a free-wheeling approach to reading and interpreting scripture. Protestants were finding bible passages that led them away from the one true church.

There’s something to be said for a cautious approach to bible reading. Interpretation of a text can never be separated from a text itself. A few years ago, I heard Cardinal Donald Wuerl talk about discussing the bible with a Protestant woman he met on a plane. She told him that she based her faith solely on scripture. He drew her attention to the passage in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus says to the apostle Peter: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” He claimed that this passage was Jesus appointing Peter to be the first pope, and therefore, all bible-believing Christians should be members of the one, true church under the leadership of the pope. I doubt that the woman was converted to Catholicism immediately after her conversation with Wuerl, but I heard what the archbishop said as laced with his own interpretation of the text. Jesus spoke those words to Peter after Peter had expressed his faith in Jesus. Perhaps Jesus saw Peter as “the rock” because of his faith, not because he proposed that Peter would begin a long succession of leaders who serve as bishop of Rome. Thus, Protestants interpret the passage to mean that Peter is the model for all people of faith. The Catholic Church itself points out that bible passages such as this one cannot be read in isolation from the Tradition that is found in the Catholic community and its leaders analyzing and explaining what a text means—text plus interpretation of text.

Any written text calls for interpretation. Think about the controversies swirling around interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Do citizens have a constitutional right to bring semi-automatic guns with them into their local Starbucks? A text as ancient and nuanced as the bible is should be approached with humble recognition that simple explanations are not easily arrived at. For example, the passage from Leviticus stating that “a man should not lie with another male as he would with a woman” has been appealed to as a clear-cut condemnation of homosexual relationships. Those who read that line solely on a literal level see it as clear-cut and unambiguous, disregarding the cultural context in which it was written perhaps three thousand years ago in a highly patriarchal society. In Catholic circles, discussion about this passage is not done separate from the tradition of interpretation about the topic of homosexuality, especially the natural-law tradition that Christianity adopted from ancient Greek philosophers.

Catholicism agrees with other Christian communities: the bible is the word of God. It should be read and should be viewed as a sacred text. However, the Catholic Church makes clear that the bible is the word of God through the words of human beings. Those human beings wrote at particular times and places. Deciphering what those words mean requires the painstaking work of ongoing study and analysis. Text can never be separated from the context in which it was written. And in the end fidelity to the text means seeking to arrive at the most reasonable interpretation possible, while also recognizing that the search for meaning is never-ending.