For example nobody claims that banks want to prevent people from using pens since they often put chains on them to prevent people from taking them. They chain pens up so that people can use them. In the ages before the printing press when Bibles were hand written often by Catholic monks they were quite valuable so it is no surprise that steps were taken to keep people from taking a copy that might have taken a year or more to produce. In fact it was those same Catholic monks who made copies of Bibles over the years and created those beautifully illuminated manuscripts that we even have complete copies of the Bible to this day.
While it might be currently true that Protestant churches have much more emphasis on scripture study than the average Catholic parish has; Catholics certainly are encouraged to read scripture.  In fact the Church offers an indulgences (a topic for another day) to encourage such practices.  Catholics have long been studying and commenting on sacred scripture a millennium before Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation came on the scene and their are now plenty of new Bible Study apostolates growing in the Church.

One of the problems most people see with the Catholic Church and the Bible is that they don’t realize they have things backwards. The Church existed before one word of the New Testament was written down. Sola Scriptura would have been a really hard doctrine to follow in the year 33 A.D! Early Christians didn’t just go to their local Christian book store and buy themselves a Bible. The truth is that in the first four centuries of Christianity there was much discussion on what writings actually belonged to the New Testament. The Holy Spirit did not inspire anyone to write a table of contents for us to go by. Sometimes Catholics can take awhile before getting around to defining something and it was the Church that decided on the 27 books of the New Testament that we are all familiar with today during the Councils of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) and later dogmatically defined during the Council of Trent. Books such as the book of 1 Clement were held as inspired by many while some did not accept the Book of Revelation. It was the Church that decided the matter for the canon that all accept today when it comes to the New Testament. The Holy Spirit guided the Church in her discernment. St. Augustine who was quite active in this period of history where the canon was defined once said “I would not believe the Gospels if it were not for the Church.”

The Church has always taken her stewardship of the scriptures seriously, which is why Catholics have approved versions of the Bible. Catholics may read any version of the scriptures that they want to, but the Church in her prudence approves certain translations for liturgical and other use to protect us from error. This is done not to keep the Bible from Catholics, but to make sure that they have a translation free from outright error. Most Protestants certainly would have a problem with the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation which is a very poor translation with an agenda.

But you ask “Hey if Catholics like the Bible so much how come they don’t carry them with them to their Mass?” Well some Catholics do exactly that, but the reality is the Catholic Mass is chock full of scripture from beginning to end. The first half of the Mass is the Liturgy of the Word where on Sundays we get three readings from the Old and New Testament and specifically one from the Gospels. The narratives used during the Eucharist are also straight from scripture and pretty much everything from the beginning of Mass to the end of it you are being immersed in scripture. If you just go to Mass on Sundays you will experience almost all of scripture during the three year cycle of readings that are used in the lectionary and those who go to daily Mass will experience all of scripture within a two year cycle of readings.

The Liturgy of the Hours which is required reading for all priests and religious each day and is strongly recommended for also the laity is also chock full of scripture. Each day as we go through the Office of Readings, Morning and Evening Prayer, and other readings we encounter Holy Scripture throughout – especially the Psalms.  Many of the prayers the Church uses are straight from scripture and the first half of the Hail Mary prayer comes from Luke 1:28.  Pretty much everywhere you turn in the documents of the Church whether it is the Catechism, encyclicals, or other Church letters you will come into contact with scripture constantly.

So if Catholics don’t like scripture than they have done a real lousy job by totally saturating everything with it.  In fact by preserving scripture Catholics have made it available for everyone and so if you are a Protestant next time you go to a Wednesday night Bible Study thank a Catholic.

Can you name anything that Catholics can claim as their own since, say, the 1600’s? Let’s take a look at the list:

• Bible covers. If you are Protestant you can find a cover that fits your personality, lifestyle, weather, outfit color, Bible size and probably even your perfume if you look hard enough. And you don’t really have to look that hard. Go into any Christian store and the selection of Bible covers is probably only overshadowed by the variety of Bible translations. Leather cover with a “Heaven’s Angels” motorcycle on the front? No problem. A stone-washed, lightly bleached, pre-worn, acid-baked with fake jewels denim cover? What color do you want that in? A plush Noah’s Ark cover for your kid’s Bible so your children can always keep the almost total annihilation of mankind at the forefront of their minds? You bet. How about a cover that has so many pockets and pen holders that a Trapper Keeper would turn green with envy. Oh, yeah.This market has been so dominated by the Protestants that I’m not aware of any Catholic company that has even tried to enter the business. But can you really blame Catholics for staying out? For the most part Catholics don’t need Bible covers since the Bible is usually still in the box they got it in as a Confirmation gift. And I don’t know anyone who makes a cover big enough for a Family Bible.
• Clever T-shirts. It was probably the Lord’s Gym “Bench Press This” t-shirt that really got the whole Christian t-shirt craze started. Now there are numerous companies on that bandwagon producing everything from clever take-offs of company logos and mottos to the “I want to look like I’m in a gang” shirts. This industry has been around for so long that one t-shirt company is celebrating its 25th anniversary. So where are the Catholics in all this? How about 20 years behind. Right now there are several companies that make Catholic t-shirts but none of them is anywhere near the size of its Protestant counterpart. There is a Protestant store here in town that has a t-shirt section that is bigger than some entire Catholic stores! Still, there are some good companies out there including Nelson Wood (and tshirts, and mugs, and bumper stickers, and polo shirts and posters and Christmas ornaments) craft and Lionheart Apparel which was started by a fired contestant from the Apprentice.
• Trendy worship music. Not being Protestant, I’m not really sure how long they have been producing hip music for their services but it has got to be longer than Catholics. The Catholic Church didn’t really get into trendy music until the 1960’s when the Vatican II document on the Sacred Liturgy was intensely debated,  solemnly promulgated and promptly tossed in the trash can by “expert” liturgists who new better. The result? Fifty years of the St. Louis – we’re not all priests anymore  -  Jesuits, GIA and Oregon Catholic Press producing trite, doctrinally questionable hymns that have stood the test of time – If you think we are still in the 1960’s.Unfortunately, even when many of the hymns in Catholic hymnals are written by Protestants, we just can’t seem to produce music on the same professional level as that found at Protestant services. Can you imagine anything that you sing, or don’t sing, at Mass actually being played on the light rock radio station in your town? Somehow, and this may have been a nefarious plot, the Protestants gave us all the Protestant songs that they don’t sing at their own services.I’m not saying that we should be playing Jars of Clay and Casting Crowns at Mass; it just seems that if we are going to try and copy Protestant worship music, we might as well do a good job of it.
• Bible variations. As with Bible covers, Protestants have the corner on Bible variations. Variations can include the cover, intended audience, translation, size, red letter, concordance, indexed, with maps or with apocrypha (those are the books Luther removed from the Bible hundreds of years after the Bible was finalized). In the Protestant world there is a Bible for every possible market nitch – teens, women, couples, grandparents, the girl next door and I’ll bet someone out there has produced one for pets. How many are there in the Catholic world? Four. Yep, that’s it. Just four different Bibles like that. One for women, one for couples and two for teens.Catholics are also far behind in their variety of translations. There are really only seven translations in Catholic circles – New American, Revised Standard, Jerusalem, Douay Rheims, New Revised Standard, New Jerusalem and Good News.  In the Protestant realm there are at least two hundred thousand.

The only thing I can think of that Catholics have been the first to the scene on since the Reformation is Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. You know that there is something going on when Protestants like Dr. James Dobson have the evangelist of TOB, Christopher West, come to Focus on the Family to speak. I’ve even had a couple of Lutheran pastors come into my store and ask if I thought they could get Christopher West to speak at their parishes!

So there you have it, Catholics are playing catch-up with Protestants and have been since Protestants first existed. It is even now in vogue for Catholics to protest the Faith but instead of doing the sensible thing like their Reformation counterparts – leaving, they stick around and start looking really foolish.