"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Being in the image of God the human individual possess the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.
He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons.
And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.
– Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 357
Yesterday I posted the MP3 recordings of “Dei Verbum”, the document on Sacred Scripture from the Second Vatican Council.
I decided that today I’d also post the section of the Catechism on Sacred Scripture, which draws extremely heavily from that Council document.
Catechism On Scripture (PDF) (MP3)
Speaking of the Catechism, did you know that Flocknote have a service which will email you a short section of the Catechism each day?
Do you want to know the Catholic Faith better? Have you ever wanted to work through the Catechism from cover to cover? Well, now’s your chance to go on that journey with some company!
Fr. Hugh from Dominus Mihi Adjutor just wrote about Read The Cat, a blog and podcast whose authors are going to be working their way through the Catechism in 365 days. Every Friday there’s a ten minute podcast in which fifty-five paragraphs of the Catechism are summarized and explained. If you want, you can read those fifty-five paragraphs yourself during the week…
They’ve only done one episode so far so it’s easy to catch up. I’m doing it. Who’s with me?
Yesterday I told the story of a friend of mine who asked me about how non-Catholics memorize Scripture.
I began by offering a few techniques that I’ve used in the past for committing Bible passages to memory. I then went on to explain that, memory techniques aside, non-Catholics tend to be more familiar with Scripture simply because they make it more of a priority in their lives.
Today I’d like to take a look at the Catholic response to this…
First of all, what does the Church teach on the subject? The Catechism says:
The Church “forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful. . . to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures…” – CCC #133
Well, you can’t really get much more forceful than that! The Church says that “all” Catholics should get to know Jesus better through “frequent” reading of the Bible. The Catechism then goes on to sum up the Church’s position beautifully and succinctly with a quotation from one of the Church’s greatest biblical scholars, Jerome:
“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” – St. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah