Word On Fire 2.0…
Fr. Robert Barron’s website, Word On Fire, has just received a significant upgrade…
Vatican website designers, please take note…
"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Fr. Robert Barron’s website, Word On Fire, has just received a significant upgrade…
Vatican website designers, please take note…
In today’s Quick Apology post I wanted to turn to the subject of history…
When speaking about the Catholic approach to Scripture, some Protestants will make the following accusation:
“The Catholic Church used to chain up Bibles!”
The statement is absolutely true; it was not uncommon prior to the Reformation for Bibles to be chained up. When I am told this in a discussion I concede the point, but I then ask the person speaking if they know why this was done…
It is not uncommon to receive as a response, “They chained them up to stop people reading the Bible!”. While the initial statement was true, this explanation as to why Bibles were chained is completely incorrect. In fact, Bibles were chained for completely the opposite reason. Bibles were chained up so that more people had access to the Scriptures!*
You see, prior to the Fifteen Century and the invention of the movable type printing press, Bibles were hand-written. This was an colossal undertaking and therefore extremely costly. This meant that Bibles were expensive items liable to be stolen by thieves. Therefore, in an attempt to provide people with access to the Scriptures, it was common for a Bible to be made available in or around a church building, but to prevent theft, it was chained to a heavy object. If you had a Bible worth tens of thousands of dollars, would you want to leave it unsecured and unattended in a public building?!
If you visit a post office or a bank, you will often see pens chained to immovable services. Do these institutions chain these pens because they don’t want you to use them? Of course not! They want you to use the pens, but they want to make sure nobody steals them! Why? Because if they are stolen then other people won’t have the opportunity to use the pens. It is the same logic at work concerning the chaining of Bibles.
* It is probably worth pointing out that literacy rates were also extremely low even until the 19th Century. It is for this reason that the most common way of learning the Bible throughout Christian history has been the hearing the Scriptures proclaimed at the Eucharistic liturgy.
I can’t believe it has taken me this long to advertise This Week’s Best In Catholic Apologetics:
This website aggregates a collection of different apologetics articles written by bloggers during the past week. They’ve regularly featured my various apologetics posts and sent web traffic my way. Some reciprocal advertising was well overdue. Mea culpa.
When I was living in Washington DC I got to see today’s artist live, the band, Zelos. “Steal Away” is probably my favourite track on their EP, describing a beautiful reality of leaving the crowd and stealing away with the Lord.
In Bible study we completed our study of Paul’s first epistle to the Thessalonians. Although it’s still very much a work-in-progress, my notes are now online:
I came across this article over at Truth And Charity about one ladies spiritual journey through charismatic renewal and traditional prayer. I thought it was really interesting since it somewhat resembles the development of my own spirituality through my 20’s:
Today is Friday, but there’ll be no fasting today because today is the Feast Day! Today we celebrate the Assumption/Dormition of the Blessed Virgin. In case you were wondering, yes, it’s a Holy Day of Obligation/Opportunity.
To prepare for Mass today, I’d invite you read yesterday’s post from Joe Heschmeyer over at Shameless Popery. Joe includes the text of a homily by St. Gregory the Wonder-Worker from the mid-200s..
“When I remember the disobedience of Eve, I weep. But when I view the fruit of Mary, I am again renewed”
“… For from Mary, the divine fountain of the ineffable Godhead, gushes forth grace and free gift of the Holy Spirit. From a single Holy Virgin the Pearl of much price proceeded, in order to make alive once more the first-created man that was dead through sin…”
“Holy and wise in all things was the all-blessed Virgin; in all ways peerless among all nations, and unrivaled among women”
If you’d like to read more, thanks to Joe the entire homily is available here…