I saw something mean on the Twitter. Someone I follow said something like, “Protestants claim to know the Bible, but they just use it how they want.” Let me stop you right there. Most Protestants do absolutely know the Bible (as they have received it) better than most Catholics. That’s just true. I was there, and I’m telling you, it’s true. Unless we can cheat and use Scott and Kimberly Hahn’s kids, we’d get murdered in “sword drills” by some 16-year-old on a break from Baptist summer camp.
Look, I am not saying it’s rightly interpreted all the time. I’d still be part of the Reformation if I believed that. But I can absolutely promise you: you don’t want to pick this fight.
I was received into the Catholic Church at Easter when I was 31 years old. I’m 46 now. It might have been the happiest day of my life. But I will tell you that drinking deeply of the philosophical tradition and the Sacred Tradition, I started to get sad, because the Scriptural citations didn’t come quite as easily, sharing space in my head with Aquinas, and a blizzard of encyclicals. I’m not saying that I can’t do it, but I have to read the Scriptures constantly to be effective at teaching Scripture. I can’t rely on the spiritual gift, as I arrogantly did in my young adulthood. That’s probably the reason I’m writing commentaries: When I’m not the same me, I already wrote it down, so I can leave this life in peace, having given the best I could do, with insights from the greatest Book ever written. [Only 72 more to go!—ed.]
But seriously, you should read it.
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