response 18 of 66:

Oct 10 05:48 UTC 2003

 re #10: 
 > A friend of mine who grew up Catholic told me that in some Catholic
 > churches, you're not 'allowed' to read it; it has to be taught to you
 > in church ("spoon fed" was the word she used).  Is this true?

 If this was ever actually true (I doubt that it was officially prohibited,
 though for many hundreds of years the Church certainly didn't make it
 easy for the laity to read and intrepret the bible for themselves..) it
 certainly isn't official Catholic doctrine any longer, nor has it ever
 been in my lifetime.  The Church has such a long history I won't rule it
 out but I can't guess how far back you'd have to go to find an official
 policy against laity reading the bible.

 It's hard to say with certainty whether your friend was mistaken about
 the policy she though existed in "some Catholic churches" or whether she
 was familiar with some wacky backwater that considered itself Catholic
 but operated at odds with the rest of the Church (because despite the
 Church's insistence that it is one single universal church there can be
 quite a wide variation from place to place) but the policy she describes
 is pretty much directly at odds with the direction the Church took in
 the twentieth century and some high-profile changes it made to get the
 laity more directly involved in the practice and interpretation of the
 religion, particularly the abandonment of the Latin Mass and many of
 the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.


 re #12:
 > Although, come to think of it, I believe it's part of Catholic dogma
 > that all communication with God must go through the priest/cardinal/pope
 > because they're closer to God.

 Not to the best of my knowledge, and totally at odds with my experience
 in the Catholic Church, though perhaps it bears some resemblance to the
 pre-Reformation Church of 500 years ago.  But frankly this sounds like
 the same grade of information about Catholicism that I'd expect from a
 Jack Chick tract.

response 20 of 66:

Oct 10 10:17 UTC 2003

An "approved" Catholic bible will have a little three or four letter
abbreviation in the front. I can't remember what the letters are, but my mom
said it's one way to distinguish a "Pope-approved" bible from the others.

response 22 of 66:

Oct 10 11:56 UTC 2003

That's it! They abbreviate that sometimes. :) I knew it had an "i" in it.
Thanks.

response 24 of 66:

Oct 10 15:06 UTC 2003

re 18:  Actually, the source for the #12 quote was the PHS humanities class,
which indeed dealt with Catholicism primarily before the Protestant
revolution.  I took the class some 9-10 years ago, hence the vagueness, but
am quite sure that this was a long-standing church policy.  I am pleased
to hear that it is no longer the case.  Why is such an extensive papl
hierarchy still in place, if the original function has been dropped and
Catholics are now encouraged to think and worship for themselves?
(Who is Jack Chick?)

response 32 of 66:

Oct 11 04:58 UTC 2003

you prefer ribbed instead?
  
we should all remember this?
  
<<sorta sorry, but not really>>

response 34 of 66:

Oct 13 20:11 UTC 2003

Let us know what Bible you get.

response 36 of 66:

Oct 15 18:19 UTC 2003

I guess it's true that catholics are encouraged to read the bible on their
own now, however...  It is still the official position of that church that
to *understand* the bible, you must have divine guidance through the
revelations given to the catholic church.  So, while you are allowed to read
the bible, you are strongly discouraged from actually forming your own opinion
on it.  

response 38 of 66:

Oct 16 14:32 UTC 2003

I stand corrected, cross.  Apparently I hallucinated the first 20 years of
my life.  

response 40 of 66:

Oct 16 18:28 UTC 2003

They had to in order to make a big point of the "Virgin Birth".