Catholics, do you hold the Deuterocanonical books in the same esteem with which you hold the other books?

Question

of the Bible?

I'm only asking to try to learn something about Catholicism. Would a Sunday Sermon be as likely to refer to one of the deutero-canonical books as it would be to refer to one of the other books of the Bible? Are Catholics generally very familiar with them?

Answer 1

The deuterocanonical books are larger than just the books the Protestants call the Apocrypha. They include 2 & 3 John, James, Jude, Hebrews, 2 Peter and Revelations.

So in addition to the books the Protestants call the Apocrypha yes because it is the practice of the Roman Catholic Church to read the entire bible once through every three years if you attend every Sunday (some parallel passages omited to avoid repetition) and two years if you attend daily. The Byzantine part of the Catholic Church does it in less than one year, but you have to attend Church daily and more than once at that. I am not sure what the Copts, Chaldeans, Malankarans, Maronite and others use for their cycle of readings.

Catholics don't have sermons and preaching, they have homilies. A homily makes the proclaimed scripture relevant and real in everyday life. Sermons or preaching pick and choose the parts they need to fit what they have to say. The danger in sermons and preaching is that you will bias the message. The danger in regularly cycling through the entire set of scriptures is that you will not really notice the importance of what is being said.

All of the deuterocanonicals are held in equal esteem. Still, the Gospels are held in highest esteem, well above any other part of the scriptures.

Catholics, like all Christians, tend not to really be familiar with the bible in the way you say. If they were then all kinds of little things that people think are in the bible but are not wouldn't be said. A Catholic who attends Church every Sunday of their life from 0 to 60 would have heard the entire bible 20 times.

Catholics seem to recognize scripture when they hear it, but don't seem to quote it much

The entire Catholic service, except the Creed, regardless of part of the Catholic Church, is entirely made up of scripture. There are no parts which are not direct quotes of scripture or close paraphrases to make it fit the context. If you know where to look, you can find the scripture citations for the entire service.

Mostly the deuterocanonicals matter because they bridge 300 years of Jewish history before Christ. Losing that is like losing the apostolic fathers, the bishops who were ordained and trained by the apostles. Protestants gave up both so it is like Jesus appeared in a vacuum and early Christianity never really happened.

The issue of the shortened bible and scripture alone is at one level minor and at another level very important. Without the Fathers and with the loss of 300 years of writing, you still have the central core of belief. But on the other hand, it permits you to make up any belief you can string together whether it was practiced in early Christianity or not. That part is sad because the Reformation is disintigrating. There are now 46,000 Protestant denominations because they have no standard to judge the truth because they kicked history out. The Reformation was important when it was solving the problem of corruption in the Church. The Catholic Church was a disaster in the sixteenth century in Germany and Italy. It needed the Holy Spirit to give it a kick in the pants.

Unfortunately, Catholicism has moved on and no one knows how to put the Church back together because we have this break in history. It does not impact the salvation of Protestants, except to make it harder for them to do many of the same things. It does make union difficult because Catholics cannot ignore the history of Israel up to Christ nor the history of the Church up to the Reformation.

Do the deuterocanonicals matter yes and no. That is the sad part. They don't matter enough to see readoption, but they matter too much to keep union from happening without them.

Answer 2

Yes we do.
Please note this snip:
DEFENDING THE DEUTEROCANONICALS
by Jimmy Akin
Original Link

When Catholics and Protestants talk about "the Bible," the two groups actually have two different books in mind.

In the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformers removed a large section of the Old Testament that was not compatible with their theology. They charged that these writings were not inspired Scripture and branded them with the pejorative title "Apocrypha."

Catholics refer to them as the "deuterocanonical" books (since they were disputed by a few early authors and their canonicity was established later than the rest), while the rest are known as the "protocanonical" books (since their canonicity was established first).

Following the Protestant attack on the integrity of the Bible, the Catholic Church infallibly reaffirmed the divine inspiration of the deuterocanonical books at the Council of Trent in 1546. In doing this, it reaffirmed what had been believed since the time of Christ

Answer 3

Yes.

The New Testament canon of the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are the same.

The difference in the Old Testaments actually goes back to the time before and during Christ’s life. At this time, there was no official Jewish canon of scripture.

The Jews in Egypt translated their choices of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the second century before Christ. This translation, called the Septuagint, had wide use in the Roman world because most Jews lived far from Palestine in Greek cities. Many of these Jews spoke only Greek.

The early Christian Church was born into this world. The Church, with its bilingual Jews and more and more Greek-speaking Gentiles, used the books of the Septuagint as its Bible. Remember the early Christians were just writing the documents what would become the New Testament.

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70, with increasing persecution from the Romans and competition from the fledgling Christian Church, the Jewish leaders came together and declared its official canon of Scripture, eliminating seven books from the Septuagint.

The Christian Church did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint.

1500 years later, Protestants decided to change its Old Testament from the Catholic canon to the Jewish canon. The books they dropped are sometimes called the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books.

With love in Christ.

Answer 4

We consider the Deuterocanon to be Scripture just as much as the rest of the Bible is Scripture. You would usually hear the D.Canon referred to during a Sunday sermon if the day's readings included a D.Canon book. Sunday sermons (or homilies as we call them) are generally commentary on the day's scripture readings. During a Sunday Catholic Mass there are always readings from the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament, and Gospel. The readings are the same for every Catholic church in the world on that day. So this past Sunday Catholics in Japan, Africa, Mexico, and USA all heard the same readings from the Bible. Next Sunday we will all hear a new set of readings. If you were to attend Mass every day (we have it every day tho most people only go on Sunday) for 4 years you would get to hear the entire Bible read to you.

Answer 5

The term "Deuterocanon" refers to ALL the Books in the Bible, (46 OT, 27 NT) not just the ones that appear in Catholics Bibles, but not the Protestant ones.

It is impossible to generalize Catholics' familiarity with the Bible. Some are not familiar with the Bible at all because they don't read it. Others are somewhat familiar because they've read some but not all. And then there are those who took the time to read the entire thing. You really have to take Catholics one at a time when it comes to one's familiarity with the Bible.

Answer 6

Interesting question and even more interesting answers, don't you agree? While Catholics put much importance on Pre Jesus teachings, they overlook many facts about why Martin Luther was so pivotal in changing the world away from a one faith world. One of the main reasons why there are so few actual relics in existence today is that they were selling artifacts to commoners to raise the churches social status. They also were of one mind that intelligence of any sort could only be inherited, thus if you were lowborn you were at best just cannon-fodder to be used and abused at the whim of the more intelligent. What they don't accept about the reformation is that it has proved this allegation to be a hinderance, not a blessing, so they continue to teach the corruption! What is truely sad is because of such teachings they have denied their faithful the free will which is pivotal to the Bibles full message. It is also rarely stated that Luther never wanted to breakaway from them, he wanted to raise its awarness away from the mundane to a total seperation of governing to enlightenment, something that is still ignored and denied to this day. so of course this church denies most of the teachings of Jesus in favor of worshiping the horrifying sacrifice. Imagine knowing what God wishes because its plain as day in what Jesus teaches and not being able to share the good news because the focus of your leaders is on control not wisdom? So to this day, the focus has not changed and Luther is their fallguy as even Jesus was for the Pharasee. One thing the Reformation brought about is that the lowborn can make sure that what the Priests teach in their homolies is factually correct because until then Bibles were not allowed in the believers language. So much more to say but the pain stubbornness inflicts... Made the crown of thorns seem as gentle caresses.

Answer 7

Protestants call these seven books the Apocrypha and Catholics know them as the deuterocanonical books. These seven books are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (or, Sirach), and Baruch. Also, Catholic Bibles contain an additional six chapters (107 verses) in the book of Esther and another three in the book of Daniel (174 verses).

In the Old Testament, the scriptural texts described as deuterocanonical were contained, most importantly, in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament most commonly used by early Christians, but they were not popular among the Hebrew Jews, who excluded them from the Hebrew version around the year 100 A.D.

The radical Protestant revision of the Old Testament canon did not take place until after the Council of Trent. It should be noted that the Church of England's Authorized Version of the Bible (commonly known as the King James Version because it was prepared and published during his reign) included the Deuterocanonical Books. Many of the Protestant Fathers cited the Deuterocanonical Books in their writings.

The Catholic perspective on this issue is widely misunderstood. Protestants accuse Catholics of "adding" books to the Bible, while Catholics retort that Protestants have "booted out" part of Scripture. Catholics are able to offer very solid and reasonable arguments in defense of the scriptural status of the deuterocanonical books.

These can be summarized as follows:

-- They were included in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament from the third century B.C.), which was the "Bible" of the Apostles. They usually quoted the Old Testament scriptures (in the text of the New Testament) from the Septuagint.

--- Almost all of the Church Fathers regarded the Septuagint as the standard form of the Old Testament. The deuterocanonical books were in no way differentiated from the other books in the Septuagint, and were generally regarded as canonical. St. Augustine thought the Septuagint was apostolically-sanctioned and inspired, and this was the consensus in the early Church.

---Many Church Fathers (such as St. Irenaeus, St. Cyprian, Tertullian) cite these books as Scripture without distinction. Others, mostly from the east (for example, St. Athanasius, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory Nazianzus) recognized some distinction but nevertheless still customarily cited the deuterocanonical books as Scripture. St. Jerome, who translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin (the Vulgate, early fifth century), was an exception to the rule (the Church has never held that individual Fathers are infallible).

---The Church Councils at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419), influenced heavily by St. Augustine, listed the deuterocanonical books as Scripture, which was simply an endorsement of what had become the general consensus of the Church in the west and most of the east. Thus, the Council of Trent merely reiterated in stronger terms what had already been decided eleven and a half centuries earlier, and which had never been seriously challenged until the onset of Protestantism.

---Since these Councils also finalized the 66 canonical books which all Christians accept, it is quite arbitrary for Protestants to selectively delete seven books from this authoritative Canon. This is all the more curious when the complicated, controversial history of the New Testament Canon is understood.

--Protestantism, following Martin Luther, removed the deuterocanonical books from their Bibles due to their clear teaching of doctrines which had been recently repudiated by Protestants, such as prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12, 2 Maccabees 12:39-45 ff.; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:29), intercession of dead saints (2 Maccabees 15:14; cf. Revelation 6:9-10), and intermediary intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12,15; cf. Revelation 5:8, 8:3-4). We know this from plain statements of Luther and other Reformers.

-- Luther was not content even to let the matter rest there, and proceeded to cast doubt on many other books of the Bible which are accepted as canonical by all Protestants. He considered Job and Jonah mere fables, and Ecclesiastes incoherent and incomplete. He wished that Esther (along with 2 Maccabees) "did not exist," and wanted to "toss it into the Elbe" river.

--- The New Testament fared scarcely better under Luther's gaze. He rejected from the New Testament Canon ("chief books") Hebrews, James ("epistle of straw"), Jude and Revelation, and placed them at the end of his translation, as a New Testament "Apocrypha." He regarded them as non-apostolic. Of the book of Revelation he said, "Christ is not taught or known in it." These opinions are found in Luther's Prefaces to biblical books, in his German translation of 1522.

In the Catholic Church these books in the Bible are sectioned and put in a Lectionary, it is the book from which the readings at Mass are proclaimed. The readings in this book are taken from the Bible.
The Lectionary is arranged in two cycles, one for Sundays and one for weekdays.

It is composed of the readings and the responsorial psalm assigned for each Mass of the year (Sundays, weekdays, and special occasions). The readings are divided by the day or the theme (baptism, marriage, vocations, etc.) rather than according to the books of the Bible. Introductions and conclusions have been added to each reading. Not all of the Bible is included in the Lectionary.

Depending on what year and day it is, a homily/sermon might include these books you ask about.

Answer 8

yes we are famliar with them as they are used in the readings of the mass to help illistrate the Gospel of the Lord. they are referred to generally like any of the other books in the bible. funny how the catholics have their 7 extra and the protestants have their 3 extra.

Answer 9

Yes. Those books were apart of the bible until the protestant reformation movement. The council of trent reaffirmed them as scripture.

They are not just the "catholic books".

Answer 10

This is the very reason that sent me looking for the truth and questioning all, when I was in catholic school..that was a long time ago. since I have found that Ego is a major problem with all religions. who on earth?... regardless whether or not you have lost sea scroll found?.which makes much of the history of Christianity primarily,roman catholic,questionable to me..catholic is Christianity, so is Methodist,proletarian,baptist and so on and so on and so on. Christianity is the belief that Christ was born of a virgin,was the Son of God,was crucified and on the 3rd day rose again to save us from our sins..." correct?."
all the rest of the legalities are just that!. baptist ,kill Presbyterians in the name of God and legalities, just as the Sunnis and the shites in the middle east, and Muslim and Jewish do.. all in their truth! " who wants to ever think that their God and Their ways of worship ping or honoring God "is not the right way!?", that would be someone is right (Ego, ) and someone is wrong (ego) because God sure isn't!?".. I tell you. if someone comes up to you and says that they have all the answers and the only one correct!?". run from them as fast as you can!" we are all wrong.."but I don't have an "Ego too big for my own good."
EGO,Pride,Vanity, hum??. "what about self-honesty?" more God and Less You!.. :) my opinion