"By doing nothing to practice his faith except attending Sunday weekly Mass (and the few Holy Days), in two years' time (after which the reading cycle ends), a Mass-attending Catholic will hear 3.7% of the Old Testament (932 verses), and in three years' time (after which the reading cycle ends) a Mass-attending Catholic will hear 40.8% of the New Testament (3247 verses). That all adds up to a total of 4179 out of 33001 verses mentioned in the chart, i.e. only 12.7% of the entire Bible (excluding Psalms) is heard by a weekly-Mass-attending Catholic....your own liturgy has been throwing out a majority of the inspired text from the Mass for nearly two millennia!
-- Alex Murphy, November 1, 2009
on the thread Lectionary Statistics - How much of the Bible is included in the Lectionary for Mass? (Popquiz!)
....while fewer believers know much about the Bible, one-third of Americans continue to believe that it is literally true, something organizers of the Synod on the Word of God called a dangerous form of fundamentalism that is “winning more and more adherents…even among Catholics.” Such literalism, the synod’s preparatory document said, “demands an unshakable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as the only source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research”....Get Cracking, Catholics! [article at the National Catholic Register]
....The flip side of this embarrassment is the presumption among many Catholics that they “get” the Bible at Mass, along with everything else they need for their spiritual lives. The postconciliar revolution in liturgy greatly expanded the readings, with a three-year cycle in the vernacular that for the first time included Old Testament passages. Given that exposure, many think they do not need anything else. As Mr. McMahon put it, “The majority still say you go to Mass, you get your ticket punched, and that’s it for the week.”
According to a study released in September by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, evangelical Protestants are a whopping eight times more likely than Catholics to read the Bible on a weekly basis. Of course, the survey only looked at private Bible reading; it did not take into account the Scripture passages Catholics take in at every Mass. Still, we tip our hats to our separated brothers and sisters in Christ for their zeal for the Word of God.Synod to Focus on Proper Use of Scripture [article from Catholic World News]
Synod: Christianity not a 'Religion of the Book' [article from National Catholic Reporter]
Yesterday saw...a forceful plea from a key papal advisor [Bishop Salvatore Fisichella, the rector of the Lateran University and President of the Pontifical Academy for Life] to reject the idea of Christianity as a “Religion of the Book.”
Cardinal Says Scripture Inseparably United to Tradition
"As we begin the work of this synodal assembly, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, let us turn our gaze to Christ, the light of the world and our only teacher," Cardinal Levada encouraged. The prelate's point was further developed when Cardinal Marc Ouellet, archbishop of Quebec, took the floor to affirm that the Word is much more than the Bible. He clarified that Christianity is not a religion of the Book.
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Calvin's preaching was of one kind from beginning to end: he preached steadily through book after book of the Bible. He never wavered from this approach to preaching for almost twenty-five years of ministry in St. Peter's church of Geneva - with the exception of a few high festivals and special occasions. "On Sunday he took always the New Testament, except for a few Psalms on Sunday afternoons. During the week . . . it was always the Old Testament". The records show fewer than half a dozen exceptions for the sake of the Christian year. He almost entirely ignored Christmas and Easter in the selection of his text.To give you some idea of the scope of the Calvin's pulpit, he began his series on the book of Acts on August 25, 1549, and ended it in March of 1554. After Acts he went on to the epistles to the Thessalonians (46 sermons), Corinthians (186 sermons), pastorals (86 sermons), Galatians (43 sermons), Ephesians (48 sermons) - till May 1558. Then there is a gap when he is ill. In the spring of 1559 he began the Harmony of the Gospels and was not finished when he died in May, 1564. During the week of that season he preached 159 sermons on Job, 200 on Deuteronomy, 353 on Isaiah, 123 on Genesis and so on.
One of the clearest illustrations that this was a self-conscious choice on Calvin's part was the fact that on Easter Day, 1538, after preaching, he left the pulpit of St. Peter's, banished by the City Council. He returned in September, 1541 - over three years later - and picked up the exposition in the next verse.
-- excerpted from John Piper's The Divine Majesty Of The Word