The Bible and the life of the church

-- CNS/Reuters/L’Osservatore Romano: Pope Benedict XVI walks with Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople after a prayer service in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican Oct. 18.Reclaiming the Bible as the “book of the church” was perhaps the central leitmotif of the Oct. 5-26 Synod of Bishops in Rome, devoted to the theme of the “Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.”

Created in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the synod is the main opportunity for bishops from around the world to advise the pope. It convenes every two to three years, with this meeting devoted to the Bible.

A towering concern voiced by several bishops -- as well as by Pope Benedict XVI, who addressed the gathering Oct. 14 -- is that Catholic biblical study shouldn’t be an autonomous enterprise, driven largely by secular rules of historical and literary study. Instead, they said, the Bible has to be read in the context of the faith and life of the church.

In some ways, that insistence cuts against the mainstream view in recent Catholic biblical scholarship, which holds that the responsibility of exegetes is to establish what a text meant in its original context, free from pressure to support any later theological interpretation.

In his remarks, Benedict stressed the value of historical-critical study and also warned against “a secularized, positivistic” approach, which, he said, breeds doubt about the historical truth of biblical events such as the Resurrection. The pope called for overcoming what he called a “dualism” between biblical exegesis and theology.

Canadian Fr. Thomas Rosica, a Basilian priest and biblical scholar, captured the meeting’s spirit in a memorable image.

“Most of us were trained as surgeons,” he said. “What we sometimes forgot is that we’re operating on a living body, not a corpse; we’re heart surgeons, not coroners. Success is defined by whether the body survives the surgery.”

Among other things, a synod offers a snapshot of the challenges facing Catholicism in various parts of the world. This time, Europeans and North Americans tended to focus on secularism, while bishops from Africa, Asia and Latin America generally pointed to other pastoral priorities -- Pentecostalism, relations with Islam and other great religions, growing poverty and the need to express Christianity in local cultures.

The synod had an ecumenical dimension, since the Bible is shared by all Christians. On Oct. 18, Pope Benedict XVI and Bartholomew I, the patriarch of Constantinople, led a joint Liturgy of the Word. Noting that Bartholomew had quoted fathers of the Eastern churches, Benedict said that those figures are also considered fathers of Catholicism.

“If we have the same fathers,” Benedict said, “how can we not be brothers?”

As NCR went to press, it remained unclear how the synod would resolve two areas of tension.

The first concerns Liturgies of the Word led by laity. Some bishops, especially in regions of the world where the priest shortage is most acute, voiced support for these services as a vital way to nourish the faith; others were reluctant to hold them up as a model, on the grounds that regular access to the Eucharist should remain the norm.

Lurking behind that discussion, some observers believe, has been the shadow of debates over priestly celibacy and the possibility of ordaining married men.

The second dispute turns on how the Catholic church understands the inerrancy of the Bible. In broad strokes, bishops seemed to steer a middle course between secular skepticism that would dismiss large sections of the Bible as unreliable, and evangelical-style fundamentalism, which insists that all of scripture is literally true. There were contrasting ideas, however, as to where to draw the line, and some suggested that the Vatican’s doctrinal agency should prepare a document on inerrancy.

There was consensus on several other points: the need for better homilies; wider practice of Lectio Divina, meaning the use of the Bible in prayer; the value of reading the Bible in small Christian communities; and the need to make more translations of the Bible available, especially in isolated areas of the developing world where there’s no edition in the local language or where the language is still entirely oral.

John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior correspondent. His complete coverage of the Synod of Bishops can be found at johnallen.ncrcafe.org.

National Catholic Reporter October 31, 2008