The following is taken from "God's News to Man" by the Catholic Information Service, Imprimatur Joseph Cardinal Ritter, Archbishop of St. Louis:

     The Bible came into being through God’s personal action on members of His Church. It came into being as God’s legacy to that Church, so that the Church could always keep before her members what God had done to bring them into His own Church. God gave this Church many blessings by which it would unite all men with God. The living, indwelling Holy Spirit will always see to it that this Church can never, under any circumstances, abandon the truths and the divine gifts that make up her nature; otherwise, the salvation of Christ would have been worked in vain; the work of sin would have completely taken hold of the world again, as it had before the call of Abraham. The very fact that we recognize that the whole Bible is the word of God is witness to the fact that we know that God’s Church has continued on in the world long after His Ascension–a visible body of men that can distinguish divine truth from mere human teachings through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
     Once given to man, the Bible does not supplant the living Church. The Bible does not supplant the Holy Spirit Who leads the Church at every age into all the truth it needs for the guidance of men of that age. But as the measure of what God has done in the world, the Bible is of supreme importance in the teaching and worship of the Church. The Bible is not everyman’s Bible; it is the Church’s Bible. Like every sacred gift of God, it must be carefully treasured and preserved wholly for every generation of men.
     In making Himself known to His people, God used men of the Old Testament, whose language was mostly the Hebrew language; in the New Testament the language was the Greek language. But when our Lord gave His Church the commission to preach to all nations, He gave them the commission to bring them His words in a language that they could understand. The practice of putting the Scriptures into a language more easily understood had begun about 250 years before Christ. This was the start of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, made in Egypt for those who spoke Greek, not Hebrew. It was this translation that contained the seven additional books of the Old Testament that we have spoken about. This translation was used, to a large extent, as the source of the quotations of the Old Testament in the writings of the New.

TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE
     About the third century after Christ, as the Church became more widespread among those who spoke only Latin in the West and only Syriac in the East, translations into these languages were used alongside the official Greek Bible of the early Church. These translations, however, were carefully watched over by the Church, whose mission is to safeguard her members against translations that would betray the meaning of God as contained in the Scriptures. Just as the New Testament Scriptures were being gathered by the Church during these centuries and were being judged first of all by their conformity to the teaching of the living Church, the translations of the accepted Scriptures also had to measure up to this same norm. As the Church spread into newer regions of the world and came into contact with newer or different languages, the Bible was translated into these also.
     The barbarian invasion of Europe in the early Christian centuries produced tremendous changes not only in political organization but also in culture and language. The Latin language was gradually supplanted by newer languages that developed out of the Latin. In Northern Europe and Britain, newer Germanic languages developed. It took centuries before these newer languages came to stable literary forms which could be the basis of lasting books. This was a period that had not seen the printing press, the easy means of communication between different regions, and still less the modern inventions of radio and television.
     As in ancient times, most of the people of those times could not have read a Bible, no matter what language it was written in. Those who could read anything at all could generally read Latin. And yet, there were numerous sections of the Bible translated into the shifting languages of the day for the benefit of those who might be able to read them. For those who could not read, the stained glass windows of their churches provided pictorial explanations of the events of the Bible. In addition to this, they were instructed through the miracle plays, through the preaching of the Church, through the dramatic actions of the Sacraments and Holy Mass, and through their prayers which taught them as well as expressed their needs and hopes. It was not unusual in those times for men to learn the whole book of the Psalms by heart, as well as large sections of other parts of the Bible.
     In our present circumstances, we have a hard time realizing what our civilization would be like without the printed word–if the only reproduction of books were by the laborious process of copying word by word. The abundance of writing material that we rarely think about simply was lacking in those times. The ease of buying a book with the very wealthy could afford to buy any book in medieval times. The myth of “the chained Bible” shows how far we can misunderstand those times. Yes, there were chained Bibles. But they were not chained shut. They were chained to a reading stand so that no one could carry away this precious source of teaching which was for the benefit of all. Chained telephone directories in public places are chained for the same reason the Bible was–so that all can have their use. In the light of these things, then, you can appreciate the care and love of the Church in providing for the copying of the Bible. Every monastery in medieval times had its “writing room,” where copies of the Bible were copied out by hand, sometimes on the most costly materials, so that these copies would be always available for those who could appreciate them and benefit by them.

PROPER USE OF THE BIBLE

     The main problem, then, is not just having the Bible, but also profiting by its use. This should not be hard for anyone of us to understand. Our lives are surrounded by gifts of God, everywhere we look. Our own life itself is a gift from God. Yet, we don’t have to look far to see how these gifts of God are constantly misused. The Bible is one of the greatest of God’s gifts. But the fact that the Bible is God’s gift does not automatically mean that everyone is going to make good use of it. Misuse of the Bible is at least as old as Christianity itself. For St. Peter writes of St. Paul’s epistles: “In these epistles there are certain things difficult to understand, which the unlearned and the unstable distort, just as they do the other Scriptures also, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16).
     The Bible is a religious book, one which teaches man how God acts with man and in man for his salvation. Since it is a record of God’s dealings with His people in the past, it reflects the times and customs of these men. But it is not, as we have pointed out, simply a history of civilization. We have noted also the startling differences of the times in which these men lived, the language which they spoke, the customs which they followed. God used men of those times, living by those customs to state the truth of what He was doing through His own people.
Hence, to understand the Bible profitably, it must be read with a view of understanding how the life of each man in the Church must be lived as manifesting in every action of his day the truth of God Whom he worships. Likewise, to understand the Bible fully, it must be read according to the ideas and ways of speaking in ancient times. Records, for instance, carried by word of tradition for centuries will have different characteristics from records of current events which you read in the daily newspaper. In those days, men didn’t encumber their memory with details that had no meaning for their daily living. They were concerned first of all about God’s dealings with them among their own people; what He was doing elsewhere would not help them to understand their own religious obligations to God.
     It is a gathering of the teachings of the people of God regarding their own lives. Some of these teachings were in simple narrative form. Others were in the form of customary laws. Others still were either stories told to explain a situation or perhaps poetic compositions which delight in exaggeration and startling contrasts. Sometimes fables were told to teach a lesson, just as we do with children. Language was taken from the religions of surrounding peoples who did not know the true God, and this language was used to show that the true God was all the false god pretended to be and infinitely more. Surely, the preaching of Jesus did not in any way deny the truth of God as revealed in previous times. But it did lead men to understand the profound realities that God had been referring to in those times.
     You might come to the conclusion that the Bible is meaningless for the bulk of mankind. But that would be going too far. It is God’s written message to mankind; and His word will not return to Him empty, no more than the word of creation was simply an echo in empty space. He has spoken to men in ancient times to give them a dignity that is beyond any that man could possibly dream of: to be the living image of the truth of God in the world. These messages to men, God later put into writings that were His own writings, and entrusted thee to the group which He had founded as His Kingdom on earth. Other men, not of that Kingdom, would be able to read the truth of God as lived in the lives of the members of His Church, and thus understand His written word.

BENEFITS OF READING THE BIBLE
     The reading of the Bible, therefore, will lead you to a keener understanding of the nature of God’s work among men. It will teach you that God is not afar off, speaking to men through the pages of a book that most men could not have read. Rather, He speaks to others through you and your loyalty to Him if you don’t count the cost.
     You will read the pages of the Bible to see the living examples of the teachings which the Church sets before you. You will know that the Holy Spirit dwells in the Church, leading it to all truth. Hence, if some passage of Scripture seems to say to you something that is contrary to the teaching of the Church, you will know that you have misunderstood it. There are many passages of the Bible that still puzzle even scholars. But through the teaching of the living Church, they know at least some things that these passages cannot be saying. Otherwise, God could have made a mistake in one place or the other; or He would have abandoned that very institution which He brought into the world as the living pillar of truth. Neither of these is at all possible. What is possible is that we do not know all things; there are many things which you might know right now that would be practically or absolutely no value in your relation to God. But when you look at the immensity of the truths proposed by God through the Bible, you ought not be disappointed to admit that they must be beyond you in all the wealth of their meaning.
     Secondly, you will read the Bible as it was directed to the people of its own time in the Church. What he said through them is what He says to us. Reading into the Bible curious statements about modern times and political situations that have no relation to salvation is the most fundamental and basic mistake. What the Bible must means to us is what it meant to the men of those times; nothing different. From these truths, the Church will draw many applications to prevent conditions through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Or we ourselves may draw conclusions of this kind; but in our case, we have to admit candidly that we are neither infallible nor all-knowing. God guaranteed that His work and his teaching through His people will not fail. But He has not guaranteed that each individual will know all things with certainty.

DAILY READING RECOMMENDED
     You should therefore undertake to read the Bible day by day. If you can do so, read it out loud. You don’t need to set out to read as much as possible at once, rather, read what you can thoroughly grasp as applying in some way to your own life. It may even be possible to read passages with someone else; this, too, is of great value because you have the benefit of their understanding as well as your own. A slow and thoughtful reading of the passages of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles will be unquestionably of value if it is done in the proper spirit.
     And what is this proper spirit? It is the earnest and unflagging desire to draw closer and closer to God. You are first of all using the Bible as the word of God to you. God is your Savior. He wants you to live in peace with Him and with others for His sake. He wants you to live the truth of His revelation not only in church, but in the shop, in the home, in matters concerning our nation and other nations. Knowing that you don’t know everything about the Bible, you won’t be afraid to admit that certain passages are puzzling. But that will not discourage you from reading further, where other passages will open your heart to the light of the Holy Spirit. This desire to know God, joined with the effort to practice His truth day by day, will bring you to realize the truth of the saying of Jesus: “If anyone desires to do His will, he will know of the teaching whether it is of God” (John 7:17).
 

"You must all obtain a copy of the Book of life and love, the Bible. Do not accept the new mods. Try to find in your bookstores the old Bibles, My children, for many are being changed to suit the carnal nature of man. I repeat, sin has become a way of life." - Our Lady of the Roses, October 6, 1992