Scripture: It's not just for Protestants, says Papal Nuncio

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Philadelphia, Pa., Nov 8, 2016 / 06:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- While reading the Bible may be associated with Protestantism in the minds of some, love of Scripture is at the core of the Catholic Church, said the apostolic nuncio to the United States.

“The love and veneration of the Word of God is an expression of the heart of the Catholic Church which is increasingly promoting a ‘new hearing’ of God’s Word through the new evangelization of our cultures,” Archbishop Christophe Pierre said Oct. 26. “This new hearing is a recovering of the centrality of the divine Word in our Christian life and in our dialogue with those who do not share our Catholic faith.”

The archbishop addressed a gathering of the American Bible Society in Philadelphia, where the 200-year-old organization is now based. The non-denominational organization is dedicated to translating, publishing and distributing editions of the Bible.

Among those present for the nuncio’s remarks were Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles J. Chaput and Dr. Roy Peterson, the president and CEO of the American Bible Society.

Archbishop Pierre said Sacred Scripture is “at the very heart of the Christian life.” He noted the ancient Catholic tradition to teach and pray Sacred Scripture. The Church Fathers venerated God’s word and prayed it through the practice of Lectio Divina.

“The nature of the Sacred Scriptures calls for an audience of faith who opens the sacred texts to discover the presence of the living God speaking to the soul of the believer,” he said.

This has helped drive the Church’s concerns for proper renditions and translations of the sacred texts, the nuncio recounted.

Different Latin variants of Sacred Scripture in the early Church put at risk the shared story of the Church. In the year 382, responding to concerns about the variant texts of the Bible, Pope Damasus I commissioned St. Jerome to revise the texts for a new version “that would embrace more faithfully the truth of the revelation,” the archbishop noted.

“His dedication to Scripture motivated Jerome to further study the Hebrew and the Semitic tradition involved in the sacred texts. Thus Jerome grew in a deeper and more profound union with the mystery of God though the knowledge of Scriptures,” Archbishop Pierre said.

Over time, the Latin language itself became an obstacle to spreading the Biblical message, as Latin’s use became restricted to a small group of educated people. The Latin Vulgate maintained its dominance as the official version of Scripture in the Roman Catholic Church, while other translations were regarded with suspicion for misleading the faithful.

“The love and devotion of the Catholic Church was, and continues to be, the true motivation behind the faithful custody and zealous preservation of the truth that God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation,” the archbishop said.

He reflected on Martin Luther’s “painful separation” from the Catholic Church. Though he praised the Protestant leader’s dedication to accessible Scripture, he noted that Luther modified the biblical canon from 46 books to 39 and modified the Letter of the Romans’ text to add his concept of “through faith alone.”

The response to the Protestant movement by the Council of Trent established that all Sacred Scripture “must be read according to the spirit in which they were written.”

“This implies that Scripture must go hand-in-hand with the holy Tradition preserved in the ecclesiastic experience of the faith of the apostles,” Archbishop Pierre said.

The development of different languages continued to separate people from a close reading of the Latin Scriptures and, the archbishop said, separated them from “having a personal encounter with the risen Lord manifested in the Bible.”

“The separation produced by the Protestant Reform left a painful wound in the mystical body of Christ and as a consequence of this, the belief that a personal reading of the Bible is a typical Protestant practice grew in the common Catholic mindset,” he said. “The reality manifested in our Roman Catholic Tradition, however, indicates that this common assumption is far from the truth.”

Archbishop Pierre recounted developments since the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII. In the mid-20th century, Pope Pius XII opened the way for translation of Scripture to help Christians return to the sources of faith, while the Second Vatican Council opened the way to dialogue with Protestant Christians in its main document on Scripture, “Dei Verbum.”

“During the decades after ‘Dei Verbum,’ the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church has insisted on the continued study, research, and education of Holy Scripture by the faithful people of God, establishing stronger bonds of ecumenical dialogue and relationships of unity with our brothers and sisters of different denominations,” he said.

The archbishop cited the work of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the Biblical studies in Rome’s pontifical universities, and the biblical institutes throughout the Catholic world that train pastors and the laity to bring biblical truth “to those who are hungry for the nourishment of God’s Word.”

The nuncio praised the American Bible Society as “a providential instrument that exemplifies the ecumenical bonds built upon the treasure of the Scriptures.” He welcomed its collaboration with Catholic ministries, saying its propagation of the Word of God is “a vivid expression of the love of God that unifies us with the purpose of inspiring hunger and thirst for the Scriptures.”

The Bible society supported the October 2008 Synod of Bishops and has created a polyglot Bible. It has distributed Bibles to Spanish-language Catholic communities and has supported Catholic pastoral activities like the World Youth Day events in Poland and Brazil. The society also collaborated with the 2015 World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

It is presently working with the U.S. bishops’ conference to present the Bible as the Book of Mercy for National Bible Week Nov. 13-19.


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Click here to read the Apostolic Nuncio's speech in English. 
Click here to read the Apostolic Nuncio's speech in Spanish.

The Pope’s Popularity in Latin America

Before the popes, both the Venerable Paul VI and the Blessed John Paul II, began to travel —an initiative that became routine with Pope Wojtyła — it was possible to discuss or debate the pope’s popularity, or the interest it awakened among the Latin American people. Distant, situated on another continent, object of a very insufficient catechesis, that produced myths and religious prejudice, although in Ibero-America there was never hostility or lack of confidence among the people regarding the pope, one might ask, on the other hand, whether Peter’s successor was not simply an object of indifference.

The recent visit of Pope Francis to Rio de Janeiro to celebrate World Youth Day, where he was acclaimed by more than three million participants, gives us reason to reflect on the figure of the Pope in Latin American Catholicism.

The visits of Pope Benedict XVI to Brazil, Cuba and Mexico offer us similar experiences. We have seen that each one of the traveling Popes have very different personalities, yet the people have come out to welcome them with enthusiasm and admiration. 

Paul VI’s trip to Colombia (1968), although quite brief, was the first indication of a response to that question. The people put on their best clothes, filled the streets, and the country stopped everything for four days.

During the first trip of John Paul II was to Mexico (a country in which, incidentally, the Church of Rome had no legal standing). But the country came to a standstill, and the state-run TV had to cover every aspect of the visit of the Holy Father. Possibly half of the people of Mexico saw and heard the pope directly. That clearly implied tiring walks on foot and, at times, all-night vigils. The papal trip from Mexico City to Puebla took three times as long as normal, because the highway, from the day before, seemed to snake between two walls of human beings. Even in Monterrey, in the Northern desert, which is not a megalopolis, the Pope gathered two million people (by government figures).

The Mexican case (considering the proportion of the country’s inhabitants) has been repeated with almost the same exact characteristics, in each Latin American country the pope has visited. No other foreign visitor in history, no local politician since the day of independence, no sporting event, political concentration or national holiday of any kind has achieved such power of convocation. Sociologists ask themselves why, just as do public relations experts and, above all, the political leaders in government. Even some theologians are perplexed. There have been cases (in Mexico, for instance) where political scientists and sociologists have called for a meeting with priests, in an effort to understand the phenomenon.

To attribute the pope’s popularity among the Latin American people (who are as believing as they are insufficiently evangelized) to the Polish Pope’s charisma is an affirmation that no one seriously believes. With Paul VI the same thing occurred. There is little foundation for the argument that the people adhere to one pope over another, or that one, pleases them more than another. Experience shows us that the Latin American people —everyday Christians— have neither points of reference nor ecclesiastical formation, nor any interest in evaluating their popes. That subject is left to the elite in Latin America, who also gather in the street to receive the current pope. It is a question of the pope’s popularity, simply because he is the pope.

How are we to respond to these perplexed sociologists and political scientists?

The answer of course is complex, involving several psychological and social factors, but the key factor is religious. The main cause of the experts’ perplexity is the forgotten fact in the power of the religious to convoke. For one thing, the Latin American people are more or less Christian, and all Christians are interested in meeting the pope, seeing such a meeting as something extraordinary, once in a lifetime, that they dare not miss. Add to this the matrix of Latin American popular Catholicism. This is an expressive Catholicism, happy to participate in community and multitudinous gatherings. It is a Catholicism of the tangible and the symbolic. And the pope (apart from all ecclesiological and doctrinal content, often unknown to the people) is a living religious symbol of the first magnitude. A theologian would call it a symbol of the church’s unity, and of apostolic succession; the people see it in other terms. In their religious intuition, the pope is to them the “man of God”, God’s representative, the concentration of that which is religious and sacred. “To go see the pope” is sacramental; it is also coherent with the itinerant tendency of their religious practice.

To this religious and fundamental factor other factors must be added, which are not always separate from the former marriage, given the marriage in Ibero-American religiosity between faith and culture.

We certainly should not despise the element of novelty and contagion in the collective enthusiasm that is always produced by the visits of Peter’s successor. But there are other, more profound, factors as well at work in the Latin American people and in the Third World in general. The pope is a religious leader who speaks to the people not only of God, but also concerning their life and their human, social and even political problems. In the contemporary scene (especially in the Third World) where the public and political discourse has lost credibility, where demagoguery and popular manipulation are routine, and where corruption is notorious among the powerful, the presence and the word of the pope becomes (in addition to the its relevance for faith) a breath of fresh air that brings truth, authenticity and hope. It tends to verify the gospel-saying “The sheep know their shepherd, and recognize his voice”… distinguishing it from the false prophets and others who seek to take advantage of the flock.

In a certain way, from the social and political perspective, the multitudes that gather about the pope (many of whom are poor, marginalized and oppressed) are indirectly protesting against their political and financial leaders, and are giving expression to a desire of liberty and dignity to which they aspire.

Do the people understand what the pope says? Surely not everything. But people are intuitive and understand with their heart. Probably, their approach to the Holy Father is not so much a search for teaching as for religious inspiration and human freedom and, above all, a strong experience of God, the kind they cherish throughout their life, and which justifies in itself the significant sacrifices involved in a papal visit.