New bible makes scripture more accessible to Catholics

A new version of the Bible has been edited to make scripture more accessible to Catholics.

The new version – published by Ascension Press – has been prepared because Catholics often know less of biblical teachings compared to Lutherans and other Protestants, its general editor Mary Healey says.

Called the “Great Adventure Catholic Bible”, it presents the “big picture of salvation history” and shows how everything ties together.

The text will be familiar to Catholics who read the bible as it uses the text of the Revised Standard Version—Second Catholic Edition.

It also includes a range of images to make reading it easier and more appealing for readers, such as a timeline of 70 key events in the Bible in chronological order, colour-coding, maps, timelines, articles and charts.

One of the key aims of the new publication is to make Catholics more Bible-literate.

“Many Catholics who 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,” Healy says.

“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.

“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.”

The “Great Adventure Catholic Bible” was developed by Jeff Cavins, who has already published “The Great Adventure Bible Studies.”

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