Dr. Mary Healy: A Life-long Catholic - The Journey Home (7-13-2009)

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program now this episode of the journey home is our monthly open line first Monday on it's not the first Monday this month because of the holiday but but we have this episode specifically so that you can call us with more of your questions we try to use your phone calls and emails as soon as you want to call and of course your calls and emails are for our guests and so you might want to wait a little bit but sometimes it's hard to get through I know because we get a lot of phone calls a lot of emails but you're in a very important part of tonight's program our guest tonight is dr. Mary Healy she's a lifelong Catholic though she'll talk in a moment about her journey of faith and if you'd like to give us a call do so at 1-800 to two one nine four six o or outside North America particularly you can call us at 2:05 two seven one twenty nine eighty or you can send us an email at journey home at ewtn.com Mary welcome to the journey home thank you to see you thank you it's um it's been a pleasure to have you recently as a part of our st. Paul conference in Columbus Ohio and I want to take that second just to plug that if any of you didn't get to the st. Paul conference go to the CH network.org website you can listen to the tapes because they were superb and I was really just glad you were there as a partner I was so glad to be there was a great experience it was a fun conference and I know that a main focus of your work and life right now in Scripture and we talked about st. Paul but really was looking at the whole concept of how he understood Scripture and I would you didn't see the church through the light of st. Paul but it was a wonderful experience what I usually do is start the program though by asking the guests to give us a little snippet of their spiritual journey your life Catholic right so no conversion or anything right no I'm a lifelong Catholic I never left the church but I'm a convert daily convert because every morning I wake up basically thinking I'm gonna live my own life be my own God fulfill my own agenda and I have to convert again and I have to remember I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ I'm here on earth to serve Him so in order to remember that I have to evangelize myself every day I have to read scripture and remember I am in need of a savior and I have a savior I've been saved by him and I need to enter into that with my whole life through the sacraments through prayer etc so I really do consider myself a convert in fact it's probably more than once a day many times in my family I would say when I became a Catholic and I was a Protestant once my life at a Protestant minister and loved Scripture Scriptures the foundation I was taught for my daily devotions to go to the Bible and I didn't know it was called something like Lexi o Divina but that's what I was taught when I became Catholic it took a while actually for me to discover that that was alright because it seemed that most Catholics I ran into the idea of opening the Bible in the morning and prayerfully reading that meditating on the Bible on the Scriptures without some other aid they didn't seem to think that that was the norm no it's certainly not a familiar idea to Catholics oddly enough because the church has been saying for many generations now that all Catholics must read scripture in fact as you know st. jerome said and his famous quote ignorant of scripture is ignorant of christ and the recent Popes have been emphasizing that more and more saying Lexia Divina is an absolutely crucial practice for every Catholic we need to go to the word on a daily basis and immerse ourselves in it become familiar with it now it doesn't mean we read it all by ourselves we don't read it as if we're totally independent yeah let me push on that a little bit because I know from my pre anti Catholic background we presumed that the church had told Catholics to not read the Bible it's hard to know where that rumor got started I know there have been and there Catholics I think that to them yes there are many Catholics and there have been priest who discouraged Catholics from reading the Bible unfortunately they thought they might be led astray by false doctrines they thought they wouldn't understand what they were reading but in reality the church the highest authority of the church has for a very long time encouraged Catholics to read scripture I'm wondering if if you say a few priests would discourage Catholics from reading Scripture and in discussions you and I have had and we realized that there was a time at least when the Catholic seminaries in their scripture programs emphasized maybe a bit too much higher criticism and a negative attitude toward Scripture I wonder if that may have influenced priests to discourage laity to get into it because of what they were afraid they would find I think you hit the nail on the head there I think if we look back at the last couple of generations at least in seminary formation we find that priests have been tor seminarians were taught very much a historical-critical only approach to scripture I'm saying not saying it's every seminary that did that but many seminaries did that and they learned a lot of the technical issues that preoccupy scholars but in May cases they did not learn how to interpret scripture for faith and for Christian life or for living your daily life as a Catholic so they never learned to really do expository preaching to break open the bread of the Word of God so often you'll see as kind of an outcome of this kind of inadequate formation a priest will in his homily he will take the readings from the lectionary the mass readings and he'll use them as a springboard to a categorical topic or a moral topic but not really delve into what was the biblical author saying and what does that mean for us today and how has the living tradition of the church interpreted that that's what needs to happen and there is a turnaround that's beginning to happen in seminaries I will say that that is a crime that it can be laid only at the doorstep of CAP priests because in my Protestant background often were we're using the phrase that's what the Bible says or the Bible says and then we'll say something but we were often blind to the fact that we were handing on a tradition either that we accepted as the true in understanding of Scripture whether it was an Armenian Methodist Wesleyan perspective or in Calvinist Presbyterian Covenant Baptist Pentecostal you know these are all traditions that are laid on Scripture through which they're then interpreted and laid out there is this is what the Bible says yes you're right I think what you're getting at is you cannot approach scripture or interpret Scripture without bringing your perspective to it from the beginning if you don't have a Catholic tradition or Catholic perspective you have a different perspective and and philosophy recognizes that today that there's no such thing as approaching a text with total neutral objectivity that we approach the text from a whole background of understanding so what better way could there be to approach the Word of God than from the understanding of the church that gave birth to this Word of God from within the whole living tradition of the church and and in tune with an in line with all of the saints and the scholars and the pastors and the holy men and women who have been reading this word for 2,000 years and and deepening the understanding of it within the heart of the church just to make sure the audience knows that available on the ewtn website in the in the bookstore is Mary Haley's the Gospel of Mark and this is a part of a wider series that's in the process right this is this was the first I think of yes they're two of the Catholic common Terry on sacred scripture you mentioned earlier the quote by Jerome mmm-hmm ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ yes I want you to flesh that out because in some ways that defines what you do yes your lies I teach scripture not just so that I can give people more information about what's contained between the two covers of the Bible the whole point of teaching Scripture is to teach knowledge of Jesus Christ so what what we are meant to have what God desires for us to have the reason he gave us this gift of his word is that we would come to know him as a living person that we would really encounter him particularly in reading the Gospels but in reading every other part of scripture that we would enter into a relationship with Jesus where we recognize ourselves in the characters the the people with whom he's relating in the Gospels we would see ourselves as for instance the demoniac who needs to be delivered from all the effects of evil who needs to be set free and be sitting and clothed and in his right mind after jesus heals or that we would see ourselves as the woman with the alabaster jar who pours out her most precious gift at the feet of Jesus and some of the people around are saying why this waste they couldn't she could have used this money and giving it to the poor and Jesus said let her alone she's done a beautiful thing for me so the more we read those stories in the Gospels the more we understand the Heart of Jesus the more we actually come into an encounter with him and we meet him face to face so you know Catholics have always emphasized especially since the Middle Ages we've emphasized the the immense gift that we have in the body and blood of the Lord in the Eucharist and the Blessed Sacrament of the reserved Blessed Sacrament but we've neglected the other gift that God has given us which is also in a certain sense the flesh of Christ and that's the Bible there's a game that all of us have seen when we were kids right it's this little game where you I think it's called shoot the moon or something where you got these two bars and you've got a ball on it you're trying to balance the ball it's like a teeter totter and you get so far then it goes all the way over then you get some points all the way back and it and that always has given me an image of what often happens with the balance of things in our theology you know you're really interested in also we're over here and we've left behind this other we did that for so long with the father and the son well where's the Holy Spirit right absolutely the neglected person of the holy so when you're calling people to scripture you're not calling them to an a Bible only perspective leaving the church behind which is sadly what the Reformers did right it's these are absolutely both necessary yes that pendulum tendency is such a part of human nature it's hard to get over that you know I think of it this way when when the Reformation happened Catholics kind of in reaction to Bible only Christianity neglected the Bible and emphasized the Holy Eucharist I mean rightly so to emphasize this precious gift that we have where we can see the Lord we can see him himself present in this host of course we see him with the eyes of faith but we've become a little deaf to hearing the word of God in Scripture and in a certain way Protestants who don't have this tremendous gift of being able to gaze on the Lord in the Eucharistic host they in at least in many cases have better ears to hear the word of the Lord in Scripture we need both at the end of John 20 John says now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book and that's an allusion to tradition mm-hmm I mean really that's gonna be but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that believing you may have life in his name so they weren't written to be studied like a a piece of literature absolutely that is really that's what how we go about Bayes right yes absolutely I mean that's the whole purpose for which the Gospels were written they weren't written just to commemorate our founder of Christianity and tell us what he was like way back then they were written to put us in touch with the Lord who's alive and risen from the dead and in fact the whole tradition of the church has looked at scripture especially the stories in the Gospels as mysteries because as the Catechism tells us they lead us in - the mystery of his divine sonship and his saving mission so there's a depth there in these especially the stories in the Gospels but in everywhere in Scripture there's a depth that leads us into the mystery of who Jesus is we have an email which actually is perfect because I was gonna ask you the question this kind of gets there anyway this comes from Alicia from Rockford Illinois Marcus and dr. Healy I have an adult daughter who is a religious studies major at the University of Oregon do you have any books that you would recommend for her on how to read understand and defend Scripture Thank You Alicia and my questions could be where is a Catholic to begin and here you have one in the midst of very likely not a really conservative biblical program - oh yes right it's it's difficult actually at this point to recommend Catholic resources because if we need more there are some out there there's a series of commentaries that I'm editing but we only have two volumes out so far there's a beautiful new book on Lexi o Divina by Tim gray oh sure and I don't remember the title of it but it's on Lexi o Divina and it's by Tim gray excellent I want to get it myself yes yes I'm writing something and I've been looking for resources for the excellent excellent excellent the I'm wondering is one of the reasons it's a problem is you can go into any use book internet site and find lots of biblical commentaries in English that'll span the last 300 years or so but the few of them are in Catholic because up until the 50s most Catholic solid commentaries were in Latin right I mean is a problem for us yes and and even today the vast majority of commentaries are written on a scholarly level so they're really directed toward those who are studying Scripture academically and they get into some very technical questions about manuscript evidence and about the historical background of the text and things like that and then you have a very popular level Bible status but not a whole lot that's in between the two and that's what we need more often I mean my comment was of course a bit of a caricature because there were certainly books in English during the time but that I found as I've gone back I find I've even found Catholic wonderful things and I'm reading through and then when they give the answer all of a sudden they turn to Latin because they're presuming that it's written for the scholar but we live in a day where the majority of people do not know Latin and Greek yes good resources Tim great book is called praying scripture for a change that's an intro to lectio Divina so no agree we recommend it yes there's another book I'd really recommend by mark Shea called making senses out of Scripture he's not a biblical scholar but I think he's really put his finger on what the church has always understood by the spiritual sense of Scripture when we read the Old Testament how does it speak of Christ how does the crossing of the Red Sea for foreshadow and prefigure baptism how does the manna in the desert prefigure the Eucharist and today most biblical commentaries most biblical scholars really don't address those questions at all but that was at the heart of how the church is always read scripture so Mark Shea really does an excellent job of showing how to read scripture in the way the church has always read it understanding the spiritual sense maybe I should ask how again how should a Catholic begin let's say someone's watching and I mean they might even own a Bible because there are Catholics that just they hear it every Sunday maybe they hear it every day in Mass and they've got a st. Joseph mass book mm-hmm but would they begin good question I would say first make an appointment with God make an unbreakable appointment with God the morning is the best time set aside a time don't make it an inordinate amount of time you know - I say two hours and then you give up after the second day a reasonable amount of time and then decide you're going to begin reading one book of the Bible I would recommend reading Luke and then axé the two-volume work by saint-luc even though I wrote on st. mark and I love the Gospel of Mark Luke is a really great way to start because he gives you the life of Jesus from his infancy all the way to the resurrection and then he gives you the early church and I would say just read a short paragraph a day look at the footnotes get a good edition of the Bible I'd recommend the Ignatius Study Bible a Study Bible is a Bible that has very good footnotes and other study tools that so you can look up any cross references you can often any difficult questions about the text will be answered there and read it slowly and prayerfully and talk to the Lord as you're reading that's what Pope Benedict has been recommending lexie Oh Davina is a conversation so you read a little bit that's the Lord talking to you because it's his word and then you talk to him and if there's something that strikes you you pause over it you just let it sink in a little bit think about it pray about it ask the Lord what he wants to teach you through it and then go on don't you know don't rush through a passage but but Mull it over and I would say three little steps that I think are really helpful for for anybody whether a beginner or an expert in scripture is to look at the interconnections in other words look up cross references if you see a keyword like you're reading about the wedding at Cana for instance then you see wine wine is an important element in that story look up where else does a wine appear in Scripture what how is it being used what is it symbolized well can we learn about what Jesus was doing when he changed water into wine so that's the first thing interconnect secondly imagine imagine yourself as one of the people in the story so again taking the wedding at Cana imagine yourself as one of those servants and after Mary speaks to Jesus she says they have no more wine Jesus says to her what is this between you and me my hours not you come and she says to the servants do whatever he tells you picture yourself there what's going through your mind as you have to go to the well and haul up buckets of water it's Jesus tells you to the jars of what well you know think about how much work that would have been done that would have meant why am I doing this why did he tell he they're out of wine they didn't run out of water and you can think of such interesting things you can come up with deep insights as you picture yourself as a character in in this scene there with Jesus and see how you relate to him and how he relates so then the third step is to inquire meaning ask questions and it's good to ask questions of biblical scholars and good authors of commentaries but the best person to ask questions of is Jesus he's the word he's the author of the word so in prayer say Lord why did you do this why did you call your mother a woman there's a profound meaning there and then listen and prayer and see what the Lord tells you so those three things interconnect think imagine and inquire as you're reading scripture every day I think are helpful ways of entering and we live at a blessed time were the comment of the Catechism that we now have has a wonderful reference index to scripture so if you're looking and you're going through these three stage yes and you come up with something you wonder is this what the Church teaches you go to the back of the Catechism and look up that verse right right and it's wonderful what the new catechism does for that very thing yes because then you can find almost every verse in Scripture is treated in the catechism somewhere and you can find what Catholic teaching is this the basis of what does the church say about it how do we apply it in our lives let's take our first caller George from Connecticut hello George what's your question for us I market and hide dr. Mary Lourdes that I jump too quick are you there I'm here I'm here Marcus little George I I'm here oh great what's your question pastor that question is I was a cradle Catholic for many years and then I left the church and went to the Pentecostal church for many years I was in the Catholic Church originally I didn't really know the ocean it wasn't encouraged at all when I became a Pentecostal I really tremendously I actually taught for many years in adult Bible study and now that I'm back in the Catholic Church for about a year I'm really burdened so many Catholics I think don't understand Scripture they don't really can relate to it I've gotten a fullness back in the Catholic Church because I I think I've learnt scriptures so much how can we is he a guest how can we as Catholics who really understand Scripture get involved and teach this out what can we do to get involved to teach other Catholics of Scripture because it's so fulfilling and so it's a blessing alright George thank you and and welcome back and we're glad that your witness yourself to the power of Scripture to help you appreciate the fullness of your Catholic faith yes great question and I hear that question so often from people who are hungry you know they sense this famine for the word of God that Amos talks about and they want to know how now can I feed myself on this word of God how can I drink from this living water that God gives us well there are really good resources out there if you're in a position to start a Bible study in your church it would be a fantastic thing to do it's not that hard you don't have to be an expert you don't have to have a degree I would highly recommend Jeff Cavins Bible timeline series i also recommend the catholic scripture study international for beginners for those who want to go deeper there's this commentary series i'm working on the catholic commentary on Sacred Scripture and I think if you talk from the heart about the Word of God just share with people on a personal level this is what God showed me today as I was reading the Gospel of Matthew or this is the passage in st. Paul that just sets my heart on fire if you talk that way you'll you'll begin to stir up people's faith I'm gonna add something to just what you said and this is something that I believe very very strongly about this and think about how much sense this makes let's don't talk about the Bible first let's talk about our calendars to keeping track of our things we got to do right well if you got three calendars one in your office a computer one in your purse you know one on your refrigerator and then one with sticky notes all of your car you know in the end you're gonna miss appointments all over and every time management person ever exists is the only way to get control of your time is one calendar it's all gotta go in one spot and my reason for emphasizing is that in need one Bible you should have a Bible this is your Bible whatever it is whatever translates on record record but that Bible is the one you should read you should read it in the morning and you don't go to another Bible tomorrow and another Bible the next day you should have one Bible and write in it that's any but writing in their Bibles I don't know if Catholics advanced it oh yeah I think a lot of people are hesitant you know it's a sacred object so you don't want to mess it up the words are this you know the the word the words that are sacred right not the page in the paper or the leather you know you you've you find something I don't have mine with me tonight because I it's done in my offices the one I used to the show but you'll find places where I have put around a box you put it there that's there because you you memorize scripture both by the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want which is the King James Version how I memorize it many years ago but you can memorize it visually I know where John 15 is on that page exactly Bible I do that too as Catholics if we only learn Scripture from hearing it from the pulpit or from reading it in the missiles you will not quite remember it like you can when you have your Bible right you will not get the whole picture it's really crucial to get the whole storyline the grand narrative as some scholars call it from beginning to end that's why it's also a good thing to decide you're going to read the entire Bible I wouldn't say necessarily start with Genesis maybe start with Luke acts and then go to Genesis and read through the entire Bible because then you recognize you begin to see the whole picture of the great plan of salvation and you know that is the the storyline that for almost 2,000 years formed Western civilization all the music the art the architecture the literature everything was deeply imbued with a biblical worldview and when you have a biblical worldview you understand the story of your own life your little story within the great story of salvation you realize there's a beginning God created the world there's an end Jesus will come again in glory there's a climax at the center of God's plan which is the Incarnation and death and resurrection of his son and you recognize your own life is a part of that great story that God is doing and what happens when people lose a biblical worldview which is what we have in our culture today they become vulnerable to any number of competing secular worldviews many of which are very damaging to the dignity of the person many of which would say we can manipulate and redefine the meaning of person to the meaning of who we are as men and women the meaning of marriage family human life etc the only purpose in life is to acquire more possessions and avoid suffering you know all of those competing worldviews people imbibe because they don't understand the story of their life within the great the world view the biblical world view of salvation history and that's what you get when you really immerse your mind in the word it's really a healing of the mind and if you're if you're having one I mean literally one Bible that's your Bible that you read from whenever you read from the Bible even when you're using dr. Healy's book even though it has the cost of the quotes here which are good when you don't Bible with you but but be looking them up in your Bible to see that because you get a visual connection to this scripture take it to mass right why not instead of a look it up in the missile looking up in York you get connected to it I have often felt and again this comes more my Protestant background because of very much a part of my life but when Jesus says go into your closet you know and you pray well for us it wasn't into our into my Bible I mean this is like a rosary is for Catholics in a way that the scriptures are that you're connected to the Word of God and I when you hear something read from Leviticus from the pulpit where does that connect it fit right was it fit but when you go to your Bible and you find Leviticus then you know where it fits in yes if you read it in the context of Exodus and numbers in Deuteronomy you see how it I think that's one of the things that Catholic I can't I got the careful generalities there but a lot of kinds of laws yes because you know if you go to Mass every Sunday for the whole three years cycle of the lectionary you will hear approximately 14% of the Bible if you go to daily Mass for the two-year cycle of the daily lectionary and the Sunday Mass you will hear approximately 28 percent of the Bible so that still leaves 70% that you won't know unless you supplement what you hear at Mass with your own attentive reading alright we need to take a break so we'll come back and got a couple emails so we'll come back welcome back to the journey home dr. Mary Healy and I are are here looking at Scripture and talking about the necessity of it based on the Jerome quote ignorance of scriptures ignorance of Christ and that is so we go on that quote later we had an email that I'm gonna summarize a little bit but I'm gonna put a spin on it because something I've noticed it's just me maybe it's just me but I noticed this about myself that when I was on fire as a young Christian I ate up the word read it every day I still read it every morning write it every day but at some point something happened in my brain where I was no longer reading the scripture for me I was reading it for sermon material other words yeah wow this would preach or someone else should hear this you know I'm looking at it and I've often wondered whether that happens to scholars the pastor's even why many non Catholic ministers can't hear what it says about the Catholic Church because they're only reading it and how it will preach next Sunday I think that is a real danger and it's probably just as much or more so when you're teaching scripture several times a week to seminary Azure students or whoever they may be and you start reading for your class and it's a different kind of reading it's an intellectual reading or in your case it might be preaching or a melodic kind of reading but in reality if we're not being deeply challenged by the Word of God on a regular basis and and meeting Christ there we're not gonna have something to give you can't give what you don't have so I see that danger in myself I find myself reading Scripture in terms of what I'm gonna talk about in my next talk or my next class and it's not penetrating my own heart and mind and that that has to happen and I'm wondering if for Catholic priests who the one time they studied scripture in seminary was all very critical and if that prevented them from an authentic lectio Divina yes I I heard of one seminary and I hope this is not representative but he said the seminary stole the Bible from me seminaries stole the Bible from me meaning I I lost my taste for it because I got so much critical analysis that did not really explain what it means for Christian life but only talked about the historical background of the text we've got to get out of that whole mentality and Pope Benedict to release is leading the way in that Wow I've got great questions that I'm wondering if if the issue really comes back to trusting the church because we the reason we have a New Testament Canon is because we trusted the church that it was invited by the Spirit and when we get into being critical of Scripture we're lifting ourselves up above how the spirit guide to the church aren't we I mean yes right yeah of course if we just think about it and look at the history it's very obvious that Scripture came from within the church there was a church before there was a New Testament and the New Testament was born from the preaching and the testifying to who Jesus is and what he had done so it's the church that gave us the scripture and it's the church in which the scripture lives to this day in fact really the scripture is most at home when it's read in the liturgy when we're encountering Jesus first in his word and secondly in the Eucharist just like the disciple is actually for the liturgy yes the Canon was for the liturgy it was those books that are to be read in the liturgy and as you know the Canon wasn't decided until the late fourth century I don't know if you heard recently but there was news made recently when the codex sinaiticus which is a very ancient manuscript one of the two most ancient complete well was complete manuscripts of the Bible we don't have all of it anymore we only have about half of it but it has now been made available online so that you can actually zoom in and see to the letter this ancient handwritten manuscript from about the mid 300s ad of the Bible and that this is a Bible that was used in the Christian churches now the interesting thing is that the Canon is slightly different from the Canon we have today there are a couple extra books in this is the case the Canon means that the index the list of the particular books are the old and the New Testament yes thank you so for instance there are a couple of books in the New Testament that we do not recognize as scriptural today it's called the Shepherd of hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas and the Old Testament slightly differs from the Old Testament that we have today so you see the cannon itself was not even settled in the mid 300s ad and it was the church that decided on the Canon it's it's it's the church that gives us the scripture you know that begs the question why would someone who denies the authority of the church based their faith on a collection of books that was defined by the church right because we believe that the church was guided by the spirit that's why we believe the Canon well if you don't believe the church is guided by the Spirit then why not the Shepherd of hermas or the gospel of Peter or the you know the Acts of Thomas you know then we have the the Vinci Code and all of that opening the can-of-worm and saying why not all these books well because we trust the teaching of the church yes and really all church teaching is nothing other than biblical interpretation within the living tradition of the church that's what church teaching is make sure we have a phone call I think it might be like this a call from Kathy from Ohio hello Kathy what's your question for us hi I'm Marcus this is not exactly a question it's a comment this goes back to the very beginning of your conversation yes Catholics not knowing the Bible I was born in the 30s and at that point you know for years what we were taught was Catholics were discouraged from reading the Bible so that they would not try to interpret them themselves and while my mom after the daily rosary and her other prayers we used to achieve munson of our readers the passage from the Bible but we didn't discuss it so consequently I never knew survival really until I started question B WGN 15 years ago Oh Cathy can I ask you a question did your priest specifically discourage you from reading the scripture in that in those days in the 30s no it wasn't it wasn't the priest it was what my what my parents had learned all right thank you thank you Cathy I mean there's a witness - yes this you know there's a tradition with a little tea that grew and discouraged Catholics a negative tradition yes it's really striking if you go back and read the writings of the fathers of the church or the great medieval theologians like Agustin like Aquinas and Bonaventure you see that their writings are saturated with Scripture they can hardly write two sentences without quoting scripture and it's not just a matter of quoting and certainly not proof texting it's a matter of having their whole minds formed by the Word of God their whole thinking is just imbued with the Word of God they think in biblical terms and and that used to be the way theology was taught it used to be the way religious life was lived it used to be common practice even in homes not necessarily reading because a written Bible was a very precious commodity in the ancient and medieval world but there was much more of a sense of how crucial knowledge of the Word of God is for the Christian life we also know that in the 1516 hundreds when the English translations were starting to come off presses all over the place but not Catholic sources that often they were coming off so quickly that they were done very well there were mistranslations sometimes a polemical some of them were polemical some the Denham purpose and so that was for a discouragement from Catholics that just read any English translation that happened to be there and that probably was part of the the fed the fire of don't touch any of them when in fact the church was trying to make sure the douay-rheims and then when there was eventually you know the Challenger translation of that in late seventeen hundreds so we see the church always providing scriptures for the landing mm-hmm so just in the fact that it did is proof that the churches was not discouraging Catholics just make sure you get a good translation yes there were very good reasons to discourage them from reading bad translations but actually we see that something now is available that really was never available until the age of the printing press and and now is even more widespread which is that everybody can have his or her own personal copy of the Bible now you can really pore through it and of course there's so many tools available to study it in detail you can look up the cross references so there's something that we can have that would be even more than what the early Christians had if we would avail ourselves of it but often we don't we have an email from Deborah from Charlotte North Carolina Marcus and dr. Mary I'm currently in our CI a and my mother a seventh-day adventists continues to defend the importance of keeping the Sabbath and following Scripture alone what is the best way to explain that Christians are no longer bound by the first commandment or Sabbath keeping laws she is having a difficult time accepting my conversion and will use Scripture to show that the Sabbath was instituted at creation thank you in advance for your response god bless you Deborah from Charlotte what's your thoughts in that document okay well she's talking about the Sabbath and of course seventh-day Adventists still hold that Saturday the Sabbath is the holy day that should be kept but from the early days of the church Christians always held that the eighth day the first day of the new creation the day when Jesus rose from the dead is the new Sabbath so it's not that we break the third commandment it's not that we set aside or ignore the the Sabbath commandment but it's that it has a new fullness of meaning Jesus says in the Gospels I am the Lord the son of man is the lord of the Sabbath so it's the beginning of the new creation that he inaugurated at his resurrection that we now honor God by celebrating with the weekly Liturgy on Sunday once again this gets back to to trusting that Jesus established a church that guided by the Holy Spirit as Jesus says in John 14 15 and 16 that the spirit would guide them into truth and the like when was easier to be celebrated that was about ready to the church and a lot of things you know whether you know all male babies had to be circumcised for them to be Christian or an 80 year old convert to the church had to be circumcised what do you do well the early church had the authority and there's evidence from early in the second century that Christians were celebrating the liturgy on the Lord's Day which is the first day of the week also if you look in the book of Revelation John the seer has his great vision of heaven the heavenly liturgy on the Lord's Day Sunday the first day of the week and and all of the book of Revelation is on a symbolic level the heavenly liturgy which the earthly liturgy is a participation in so that's why we we celebrate our great weekly liturgy on Sunday but then she I think she also asked about the commandment against graven images and that to the church actually had to go through many controversies in the early centuries regarding icons and whether they were listed and appropriate and the church finally came down with the definitive decision now that God has appeared in human flesh he has revealed himself to us he has given us his image in the face of Christ so there now that he has made himself flesh and come among us now there is no prohibition against making images because our images are to lead us to him and of course we don't worship images themselves they're a way of deepening our faith giving us a window into the heavenly real realities yeah the I mean the number of groups in history that have broken away from everybody else to live the Bible the way they understood it I mean it's if you could stand back and just look at the historical reality of the different groups they didn't agree with one another on what they believe was the literal interpretation it's good they couldn't get along and very where these groups have to always isolate themselves away from everybody else yes they get smaller and smaller as they define their position more and more narrowly based on this particular verses that they choose and there's so many questions that are really not settled in scripture you know should infants be baptized well there's certainly clear indications that infants were baptized in the early church but no absolute pronouncement the church itself had to make that decision and you know what do you do with you know polygamy right there's no there's no prohibition of it in Scripture yeah I mean there you go so what so that's why you have all these little groups are focusing and then they decide for themselves well we don't do this anymore but why do you decide you don't do that verse anymore when you're building your whole stack of cards on this other verse I mean it that's why God gave us the church by the spirit yes we need an authoritative interpreter of Scripture but the interesting thing is I think people don't always realize that it's really relatively few scriptures where the church has made a definitive pronouncement this is a wrong way to interpret it the vast majority of scriptures the church leaves open because there's such a fullness there the scripture is inexhaustible and you know I've heard people say well why can't the church just give us one definitive commentary in Scripture and that would you know case closed because that would close up the wealth of riches that the Lord has given us here the church is open to any interpretation that is in harmony with Catholic teaching that doesn't conflict with the tradition of the church and constantly to this day those who study and pray the word are coming up with new depths of insights in fact Vatican two said that very clearly but the understanding of these realities revealed in Scripture is constantly growing we have a call from Debby Pennsylvania hello Debbie what's your question I'm going to say dr. Healy I wanted to ask as an extra hope as witness how do I get over that knee-jerk reaction of proof texting which is so common among Protestants oh boy well I think the best way is to both immerse yourself in Scripture and in the teaching of the church so I would read Scripture but also read the Catechism and the really wonderful thing about the Catechism is that it's very richly scriptural I mean there's no paragraph where Scripture is not quoted and it's not quoted as proof text it's not saying you know here's what the church believes and here's a verse where that we found to prove it not at all it's just the opposite of saying this is the the the revelation that God has given us in his word and this is how that scene has flowered into the understanding the church has today so it's a whole different way of reading the word it's really immersing your mind in it and and letting the connections between all of the truths of faith and all of the doctrines of the church all of what tradition has given us let it form a hole in your mind rather than little bits and pieces where we pick and choose what we want to believe let me give a word of encouragement to you the caller on how to get that proof of sex texting out of your blood and the best way to do it is to read the Bible and read the New Testament read the epistles because epistles are often used for proof texting little quips by Paul read them and instead of what proof texts do is they have an opinion on baptism and then they have their texts so they're really not reading the Bible from cover to cover they're really finding their text and jumping over ones that don't make sense so you read Hebrews or you read Ephesians and as you read each verse ask yourself what is this approve text of and what you'll find is that you'll find this text is contradictory to this text in this text if you're only going on scripture alone once saved always saved I can find you verses for it's good and find your versus against it so what are you gonna do when you read from cover to cover in the physical epistle you're going to see that proof texting apart from the wider tradition gets you into trouble yes that's right because that's a great example a once saved always saved where you can find texts apparently on either side and if you're reading them independently and conveniently leaving aside the ones that don't seem to support your position you could come up with a very distorted theological position so how do you resolve those apparent contradiction contradictions well you have to find a higher principle that somehow makes sense of both of them and we only will do that if we're reading from within the heart of the church and we're thinking with the mind of the church we're thinking with the mind of st. Paul and the evangelists and the Fathers of the Church and the meat evils and the Saints and all of those who have lived and prayed and studied this word for the last two thousand years you know I'm thinking Mary that there's probably somebody out there is really mad because I have you on this show because Paul says that he does not allow a woman to teach the point is proof texting yes that's right you pull that out of the context of the the wisdom of the church yes you know where's your hairnet berry right I mean out of the context of the wisdom of the church and we as a pastor would say well that's the way they did it then and so I would decide on my own how to put that verse aside but what about the next verse mm-hmm and see that's why we're always in danger in the devil laughs because the devil is always right here right and it's going to convince us and I could go on about that Martin Luther was convinced that the mass was wrong because he admitted that he listened to the devil that's another issue he wrote that himself because the devil can pull us away yeah that's right well that scripture that you just gave is a good example of how culturally conditioned the Word of God is and and Vatican 2 is very strong on that and it's document on Scripture Dei verbum that we have to in order to understand the the word properly we have to understand the language the culture the thinking of the time so we don't just kind of lift a verse out and just plop it into our own time we have to recognize how it's been culture culturally conditioned and what is the principle that is to be applied today and we can't do that without the guidance of the church there's some tough examples the example you gave us a tough one but the church guides us in how to do that well in oh boy I once wrote an article on how you could pick any five verses and start a new denomination I mean literally by His stripes you are healed right ask whatever you will in my name you know and so you end up with a health and wealth gospel because I choose these verses and you put them together you make it say any way you want and that is always the danger of proof text you can cure yourself just by studying the Bible and see how proof testing itself can lead to some really strange ideas we went to the email comes from great so the Marcus confession is also an important part of understanding the Bible the Bible is the truth and one must acknowledge the truth before one can understand the truth peace great what you thought about that philosophical comment I think he means can a confession of faith he means a belief in Jesus Christ a basic decision of the heart that I accepted the authority of this word I think that's what he's referring to and I think he's absolutely right if we don't have that starting point of faith we're coming to Scripture with a different starting point a starting point of unbelief and how can we understand a living word that comes from God if we're approaching it already with a preconceived idea that this is not a word from God it's merely a human document that was written 2,000 years ago and that needs to be studied just like any other human document so I I heartily agree with that email that we have to begin with a confession of faith the first letter of John begins that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and touch with our hands concerning the word of life that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you so that you may have fellowship with us and our Fellowship is with the father and with the son Jesus Christ and we're writing this that our joy may be complete I mean they begin with the confession yes that's a wonderful belief yes that's upon which everything else makes sense if you don't begin there nothing else he's gonna say yeah it's gonna make any sense and it's great because he says we've seen we have heard we have touched with our hands and it's like he's saying we want that for you you weren't there when Jesus walked the earth 2,000 years ago and you may think that you're unlucky compared to the disciples who are with him but you too can come to know him that intimately by reading his word you can touch him you can see him you can hear his voice that's why God gave us this precious gift and the thing that most strikes me about all the letters of Paul is you can tell that he always wished he could be there that was his primary way of telling the truth but when he couldn't be there I'll go write you a letter yes that's right you know and the point is that's why the Bible alone does not give you the whole story yes see the whole tradition yeah it's it's a word that's really embodied in human lives that's why who are the best scriptural exegetes the best interpreters the Saints because they lived it you know they may not have understood Greek or Hebrew they not may not have been up on you know the latest technical questions about manuscripts or historical background but they put that word into effect in their lives it's it's a Living Word it's not a dead word on page dr. Healy let's say that some of the audience wants to know more about you to even contact you Europe at the seminary Detroit yes Sacred Heart major seminary I teach Scripture there alright and you've got the Gospel of Mark what's your other book my other book is men and women are from Eden study guide to John Paul the second theology of the body there's a whole other part of dr. Ely that we didn't talk about tonight necessary expertise on the theology of the body so I strongly encourage you to get the Gospel of Mark and maybe even contact dr. Uhl if you have more questions up there at the seminary you can go to our website Catholic commentary on Sacred Scripture com Catholic commentary on Sacred Scripture dot-com thank you Mary thank you this on the program encourage us all to take Scripture more as a regular part of our life everyday so we can follow Christ more clearly and faithfully we all need to do it thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home you know we sometimes make the comment that Catholics don't know scripture as well as they ought we're not meaning to be critical when we say that we're really trying to is being optimistic and positive and encouraging to take time prayerfully to study this wonderful book that's a gift to us from the church

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Length: 56min 22sec (3382 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 12 2015