New Bible aims to bridge the Catholic ‘scripture gap’

It’s no mystery that Protestants often embarrass Catholics in terms of mastery of scripture. While a Lutheran, for example, could be found reciting the entire Book of Deuteronomy, many Catholics would struggle to distinguish certain scripture verses.

But a new Bible hopes to bridge the gap by making it more accessible to the ordinary faithful.

“Many Catholics that I meet feel that scripture is kind of inaccessible to them. They don’t feel like scripture is something they can pick up every day and read and have a conversation with God through it,” said Bible scholar Mary Healy in an interview with Crux.

“But this Bible is going to help people do that,” she said.

The Great Adventure Catholic Bible, published by Ascension Press, utilizes color coding, maps, timelines, articles and charts to make the Gospel more accessible for those who wish to become better acquainted with scripture.

The new publication features a mechanism that highlights the 70 key events in the Bible and places them in a chronological order so that readers are always aware of where they are in the narrative.

“I think this Adventure Bible is a whole new level of helping Catholics. Healy, who teaches feel at home in the word of God,”  Sacred Scripture at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, said. “It’s a very exciting resource because it helps Catholics really understand the big picture in salvation history.”

Healy was a general editor on the Bible, making sure that the multitude of features it contains is accurate and in line with the best Biblical scholarship, while at the same time accessible for Catholics who are approaching the holy text for the first time.

“As Catholics we’ve not had a culture of studying the Bible. Many Catholics were brought up with the idea that reading the Bible is something more Protestant,” she said.

“That’s actually a tremendous distortion that would have horrified St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas, any of the fathers of our church or theologians of our history, who recognized scripture as the word of God and the soul of theology,” she said.

According to the scholar, the Second Vatican Council has encouraged a shift in this trend, leading many more Catholics with a greater hunger for the word of God.

“It takes time to develop a culture of love and study of scripture and thankfully that’s happening now,” she said.

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