So what? Even if that claim were true, it doesn't go to follow that something that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago has any particular effect on any individual Catholic. It's not like present day Catholics in their individual daily lives by osmosis absorb some special ability to know Scripture because of some writing of it by someone who died ~2,000 years before they were born.
That's a totally bogus and irrelevant argument to use against the fact that the average Catholics has virtually no decent working knowledge of Scripture.
And where might that be found? Has the Catholic church published a commentary yet?
and lastly you are rebutted with Scripture by Catholics daily yet you persist in that like some kind of mantra or incantation.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Catholics rarely use Scripture. They use the *church fathers*, various and sundry popes, the prophet du jour that we're expected to acknowledge and accept as if there is some credence to their utterings, but RARELY do they use Scripture and in the times they do, they take a verse, or part of a verse, out of context and act as if they expect others to not see what they're doing.
And you know this how? I read the Bible every day, when I can't I listen to an audio bible both ways on my 45 minute commute. I attend Mass every day in which there are three Scripture reading and a homily that explains them. I teach RCIA weekly in which Scripture figures prominently and I attend classes for Diaconate formation which have entire semesters dedicated to the Scripture. I also read a lot of writings of the Doctors of the Church, the Early Church Fathers, the saints and Papal encyclicals. Collectively these are far more informative than commentaries compiled by amateurs and backwoods scholars. These practices bring me into regular contact with many similar Catholics. Most of the Catholics we encounter on Free Republic are far more familiar with Scripture than the so-called average Catholic you keep referencing.
I bring this up to point out that there is no such animal as an average Catholic. Your repeated attempts to characterize all Catholics as your mythical average Catholic would be laughable if they weren't intended to be so hurtful. You aren't hurting me with your slander and you can't hurt the Church either. But you can and are hurting yourself with your lack of charity and benignity.
"The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." - Galatians 5:19-25
“Has the Catholic church published a commentary yet?”
Not an infallible or papal one, or anything as comprehensive as evangelical classics such as by Matthew Henry, Keil & Delitzsch, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Barnes, Clarke, etc.
Various excuses are offered as to why it has not, but it has at least a few approved, if contradictory, commentaries on the whole Bible, and from the stamped notes in the official RC Bible for America, the New American Bible, (NAB, 1970) we learn that,
that Genesis 2 (Adam and Eve and creation details) and Gn. 3 (the story of the Fall), Gn. 4:1-16 (Cain and Abel), Gn. 6-8 (Noah and the Flood), and Gn. 11:1-9 (Tower of Babe are “folktales,” using allegory to teach a religious lesson.
the story of Balaam and the donkey and the angel (Num. 22:1-21; 22:36-38) was a fable, while the records of Gn. (chapters) 37-50 (Joseph), 12-36 (Abraham, Issaac, Jacob), Exodus, Judges 13-16 (Samson) 1Sam. 17 (David and Goliath) and that of the Exodus are stories which are “historical at their core,” but overall the author simply used “traditions” to teach a religious lesson.
For their understanding that “Inspiration is guidance” means that Scripture is “God’s word and man’s word.” What this means is that the NAB rejects such things as that the Bible’s attribution of Divine sanction to wars of conquest, “cannot be qualified as revelation from God,” and states,
Think of the ‘holy wars’ of total destruction, fought by the Hebrews when they invaded Palestine. The search for meaning in those wars centuries later was inspired, but the conclusions which attributed all those atrocities to the command of God were imperfect and provisional.” (4. “Inspiration and Revelation,” p. 18)
It also holds that such things as “cloud, angels (blasting trumpets), smoke, fire, earthquakes,lighting, thunder, war, calamities, lies and persecution are Biblical figures of speech.”
(Thus engendering doubt as to the torment of Hell being also literal, while if the suffering of purgatory, which may be something someone experiences but in a moment, (Ratzinger, Akin; www.ewtn.com/library/answers/how2purg.htm) is applied to Hell, then it drastically impugns the motivational effect of the Lord’s words in such texts as Mk. 9:43-48, right after warning against offending one of these little ones that believe in me.)
The footnotes regarding the Red Sea (Ex. 10:19) informs readers that what the Israelites crossed over was the Reed Sea, which was “probably a body of shallow water somewhat to the north of the present deep Red Sea.” Thus rendered, the miracle would have been Pharaoh’s army drowning in shallow waters!
It likewise explains as regards to the sons of heaven [God] having relations with the daughters of men, (Gen. 6:1-4) “This is apparently a fragment of an old legend that had borrowed much from ancient mythology.” The NAB footnotes go on to explain the “sons of heaven” are “the celestial beings of mythology.”
In addition, even the ages of the patriarchs after the flood are deemed to be “artificial and devoid of historical value.” (Genesis 11:10-26)
All of which impugns the overall literal nature the O.T. historical accounts, and as Scripture interprets Scripture, we see that the Holy Spirit refers to such stories as being literal historical events (Adam and Eve: Mt. 19:4; Abraham, Issac, Exodus and Moses: Acts 7; Rm. 4; Heb. 11; Jonah and the fish: Mt. 12:39-41; Balaam and the donkey: 2Pt. 2:15; Jude. 1:1; Rev. 2:14). Indeed “the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety” (2Cor. 11:3; Rev. 12:9), and if Jonah did not spend 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of the whale then neither did the Lord, while Israel’s history is always and inclusively treated as literal.
Regarding the Gospels, the NAB notes speculate that some of the miracle stories of Jesus in the New Testament (the fulfillment of of the Hebrew Bible) may be adaptations of similar ones in the Old Testament,” while He may not have actually been involved in the debates the gospel writers record He was in, and thinks that most of which Jesus is recorded as saying was probably theological elaboration by the writers.
It does allow that the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod, was “extremely probable,” and that people leaving Bethlehem to escape the massacre, is equally probable, but outside the historical background to this tradition, “the rest is interpretation.”
It additionally conveys such things as that Matthew placed Jesus in Egypt to convince his readers that Jesus was the real Israel, and may have only represented Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, to show that Jesus was like Moses who received the law on Mount Sinai.
The current edition will not use render “porneia” as “sexual immorality” or anything sexual in places such as 1Cor. 5:1; 6:13; 7:2; 10:8; 2Cor. 12:21; Eph. 5:3; Gal. 5:19; Col. 3:5; 1Thes. 4:3; but simply has “immorality,” even though in most cases it is in a sexual context.
It is true that the liberal scholarship who Rome abounds with causes angst among her more traditional sect, and who relegate such to being CINOS in their judgment, but as said, Rome counts and treats them as members in life and in death.
BINGO!!
Like this from NL..... Your scholarship pales in comparison to that of the Early Church Fathers, the doctors of the Church, the Episcopacy that forms the Magisterium, and the various saints and intellectual giants upon whose writings I have based my interpretation of Scripture.
Now, here's the tricky part:
To them, it IS in context. They have been steeped in this stew which includes "the *church fathers*, various and sundry popes, the prophet du jour"; not to mention ream upon ream of 'church law', documentaries, apologetics, and etcetera. This vast amalgam is encrusted around the holy precepts of the Bible to the point that the Bible literally cannot be found, or scarcely so.
But because of the 'stew', they can with good conscience find a handful of verses that take (as an instance) the humble maidservant Mary, and extrapolate a goddess, which is precisely what Mariology has done. They cannot see why we take such an offense to it, because to them, the encrustations are one part with the core, and they cannot decipher the difference.
This is the quintessential demonstration against heeding the doctrines of men - They blind men to the truth. The whole of Matt 23 speaks exactly about this, and delivers woe upon woe to the Pharisees, who had built their own encrustations around the Holy Word. That's right - The whole thing has happened before in almost an identical fashion in Jesus' time... Did you know the Pharisees claimed that TWO Torahs were transmitted at Sinai? One that Moses wrote down, and another 'passed down by oral tradition' through the priests and leaders of the assembly? Did you know that this oral tradition is precisely what Jesus was excoriating in Matt23? Did you know that every time He confronted the Pharisees He was denying one of their add-ons, and teaching that they made the true Word of YHWH null?
Look not at what He was doing to the Pharisees, but LOOK at what He is saying by way of it to the people who witnessed these public denials directed at these church leaders... In every case, He was pointing them back to the written Word... To the Torah. To the Tanakh. To the Covenant.This, in and of itself is the best defense of sola-scriptura - Just simply following what the Master instructed over and over again...
And heed the inherent warning: The Temple priests thought they had the power and the right to do what they were doing - But they were sorely mistaken. And the people who followed them, followed them blindly - Because they were taught to do so. And understand these people: To them, exactly as in this case, their belief was thought to be true, because their 'context' included all these similar encrustations made up of the doctrines of men.
Mat 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
(e-sword:KJV)
Don't look at the Pharisee in the above quote... Look to the remark about the people they were influencing: "[...] neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in."
It is easy, in our anger about the false doctrine to project that anger at those who think they are being served by this religion (when in fact, they are serving it). But this should be pitied. It is pitiful. All the more so since history already shows us the outcome.