Replies

This “requirement” that Catholics must hear the ENTIRE Bible when attending Mass is a big red herring. That's YOUR personal judgment, and you're entitled to it, I suppose, but there's no objective ground to assert that the Mass is required to contain the entire Bible in it's readings.

You're talking apples and oranges. The Mass is not primarily a Bible study, it's the re-presentation, in an unbloody manner, of the ONE true Sacrifice, once made for all on the Cross, and renewed daily on the altar.

By the way, I've been to non-Catholic services where the sermon (which can go for 45 minutes or more) is usually devoted to just a few verses from Scripture. The preacher will expound in depth on just those few verses. I'd still like to see some hard evidence of a church where the entire Bible is read out loud during the course of its Sunday services. There's not enough time to do that, unless each service were to go on for several hours. I suppose you could cover the entire Bible in the course of a couple of years if you did that. I'm not going to do the math right now, I think someone else has already posted that.

This “requirement” that Catholics must hear the ENTIRE Bible when attending Mass is a big red herring.

See That wasn't my claim - and for the record, I don't eat fish on Fridays. All I did was ask "what do you do, personally, to read the other parts?"

Post #3679: "Do you have a personal reading program, to make up for the missing 72.5% that you don't get in Mass?"

The counter-argument you're railing against was actually made by a Catholic, who claimed I was wrong about how much of the Bible is read during Mass:

Post 3681: "I've heard this bogus accusation that catholics don't get exposed to the entire bible with an adequate refresh cycle and reject it."

It's an attitude that is referenced in these articles from Catholic sources:

Synod to Focus on Proper Use of Scripture [article from Catholic World News]
The Church should combat widespread "Biblical illiteracy" among the Catholic faithful, Archbishop Eterovic said
A Literate Church: The state of Catholic Bible study today [article from America: The National Catholic Weekly]
....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.”

Get Cracking, Catholics![article at the National Catholic Register]
A formative, family-friendly factoid from a recent study or survey in the news.
November 19-25, 2006 Issue
Posted 11/16/06 at 8:00 AM
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.