Courtney McGrailWorld of books
Recently a little book was sent to us for review. Written by an evangelical Anglican it is intended to encourage all Christians to make themselves better acquainted with the Bible. This is something which ought to be encouraged; ignorance is no real foundation for anyone’s faith, or lack of it. But I had hardly started on the book when I was struck by the phrase, “that Catholics were never encouraged to read the Bible”.
I would have thought that this ancient canard had been quite abandoned even in the most extreme of Protestant circles. So it was surprising to see it raising its tousled little head again.
For, of course, it isn’t true and never was. And the evidence that it was not true is before our eyes.
For the first 16 centuries of Christianity, most people could not read anything, let alone the Bible, whether in Hebrew or Greek. The mass of people depended for a knowledge of the Scriptures on stained glass images, wall paintings, and the festival floats that developed into the Mystery Plays. Legends drawn from apocryphal literature also flourished.
But with the invention of printing this began to change. Bibles, not merely in the Latin of St Jerome, but in other vernacular languages (we have to remember that Latin was once the common vernacular of Europe), were produced.
Much is made of the appearance of the ‘authorised’ King James Version of the Bible. This was in 1611, in the reign of James I. What is hardly ever mentioned in this context is that the Catholic English version of the Bible (what we used to call ‘The Douay Version’) had appeared already in two parts, the New Testament in 1582, and the Old Testament in 1609.
These books were circulated among the English and Irish émigrés in Europe; but their main purpose was to be smuggled into the British Isles and to be read as widely as possible.
We are always hearing about the King James Bible being composed when the English language had reached a peak of perfection; Shakespeare’s language and all that. But much the same language is used in The Douay Version, and in some circles was just as influential.
Indeed, The Douay Version was one of the books which were used by King James’s commission, who also drew on Wycliffe’s version, Henry VIII’s Great Bible, and the 1568 Bishop’s Bible from Queen Elizabeth’s day.
Puritan demands
It was the intention, in response to puritan demands, that the Bible be published without notes. And so it was, except for the very odd insertion in the margin of the date of creation in 4004 BC established by the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher – a note which seemed to the literal minded to be on a par with the inspired text itself.
But the Catholic view was that the Bible needed explication as it was read. Bishop Richard Challoner’s annotated revision of The Douay Version appeared between 1749 and 1752. It remains in print. Douay Bibles were often given to Catholic couples when they wed. If Catholics “were not allowed to read the Bible” one wonders what all this activity was for.
The Catholic Church was well aware, not so much of the devotional and evangelical effect of the King’s James Bible, which was immense; but also of the strange fundamentalisms that a literal reading of it gave rise to in unguided readers.
These days the clergy are usually only too happy to encourage everyone to read the Bible, whatever the effects, and not just those parts that familiarity and tradition have made well known through Christmas, Easter and the liturgy.
I have to admit though that some Catholics are now so fixated on what they see as “tradition”, they are not so keen on the Bible. They balk at quotes from the Gospels or Epistles. In one instance I recall mentioning St Paul’s contention that we should be “all things to all men”. I was told that “that might be Scripture”, but the matter under discussion was “real life”, which seemed to me an odd position for an adherent of Archbishop Lefebvre to take up.