A Bishop’s Apostolic Responsibility to Teach the Word of God

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Over the past several weeks, I have been spending a great deal of time reading and studying Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation promulgated at the Second Vatican Council.

And having now worked carefully through this document, I wanted to spend some time with you today talking about something that has remained very much on my mind — Sacred Scripture.

More particularly, I want to talk about our need as Catholics to recover a deep knowledge and love of Sacred Scripture – and about the responsibility bishops have to help make that happen.

I have to tell you that there is much in Dei Verbum that is beautiful. That may surprise some people. There are Catholics today who hear the words “Vatican II” and immediately think about everything that happened in the Church during the years that followed: the confusion, the upheaval, the loss of Catholic identity, the abandonment of traditions, the experimentation, and all of the things that came to be justified under what was so often called the “spirit of Vatican II.” Those things happened. We cannot pretend that they did not. 

And if we are going to have an honest conversation about the condition of the Church today, we have to be willing to acknowledge them. But something else has become increasingly clear to me as I have actually sat down and read Dei Verbum carefully. We also have to distinguish between what a document actually says and what people later did in its name. And in the case of Dei Verbum that distinction is important. 

Because this document does not tell Catholics to abandon Sacred Tradition in favor of the Bible. It does not teach Scripture alone. It does not tell Catholics to approach the Bible as though twenty centuries of Christianity did not exist. It does not tell us that every generation is free to invent a new interpretation of the Word of God. Quite the contrary. Again and again, Dei Verbum places Sacred Scripture within the life, Tradition, and teaching authority of the Church. And that is something worth recovering.

One of the great problems of our time is that we tend to separate things that belong together.

Scripture or Tradition.
Bible or Church.
Faith or reason.
Old Testament or New Testament

But Catholicism has never been an “either-or” religion in that sense. The Church receives Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition together. Dei Verbum says that Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are closely connected and communicate one with the other, flowing from the same divine wellspring and moving toward the same end.

It goes even further. The document explicitly says that the Church does not draw her certainty about everything revealed by God from Sacred Scripture alone. That is an important sentence. This is not Protestantism. This is the Catholic understanding of Divine Revelation. 

The Word of God has been entrusted to the Church. The Apostles received it. They preached it. They handed it on. And the Church has guarded that deposit through the centuries.  

When Dei Verbum discusses the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, it tells us that we must pay attention to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture. It tells us to take account of the living Tradition of the whole Church. And it tells us to observe what it calls the analogy of faith – the harmony that exists among the truths of the Catholic Faith. Those are the guardrails. And they matter.

The Bible was never intended to be removed from the Church that received it, preserved it, proclaimed it, defended it, and handed it down through the centuries. When Catholics read Sacred Scripture, we do not begin from zero. We have the Fathers of the Church. We have the Doctors of the Church. We have the great councils. We have the saints. We have the sacred liturgy. We have the perennial teaching of the Church. We have two thousand years of Catholic reflection upon the Word of God.

And Dei Verbum does not tell us to discard any of that. It tells us to read Scripture within it. That is beautiful. And I think Catholics need to hear that.

But then we have to ask the difficult question. If that is what the document says, what happened afterward? Because we know that in the decades following the Council, things began to change very rapidly.

There were theologians, liturgists, educators, clergy, publishers, committees, and others who began moving in directions that often seemed to go considerably beyond what the Council had actually said.

Sometimes they found an ambiguity. Sometimes they found an opening. Sometimes perhaps the language could have been firmer or more precise. And wherever there is an opening, someone will eventually try to move through it. Before long, Catholics began hearing a phrase that became extraordinarily influential: “the spirit of Vatican II.” Not necessarily the words of Vatican II. Not necessarily what a particular document actually said. But the supposed “spirit” of the Council.

And under that banner, many things entered Catholic life. Some things were discarded that the Council had never commanded anyone to discard. Some things were introduced that the Council had never asked anyone to introduce. And over time, many ordinary Catholics came to assume that all of it had been required by Vatican II. 

That is one of the reasons I believe we need to go back and read the documents. Not so that we can pretend nothing went wrong. Something did go wrong. But neither should we blame a document for telling us to abandon something that the document itself tells us to preserve. 

If Dei Verbum tells us that Sacred Scripture is to be received together with Sacred Tradition, and afterward Scripture is treated apart from Tradition, we cannot honestly say that this is what Dei Verbum asked us to do.

If Dei Verbum tells us that Scripture must be interpreted with attention to the living Tradition of the whole Church, and afterward interpretations arise that disregard that Tradition, that is not faithful implementation of the document.

If the document tells us that Scripture, Tradition, and the teaching authority of the Church are so linked that one cannot stand without the others, and afterwards those things are pulled apart, something has happened between what was written and what was lived.

And I think we have to be honest enough to say so.

And this brings me to something that has been weighing heavily upon me during this study. Because there is another question we have to ask.

If people began moving into those openings …
If theologians began proposing things that departed from what the Church had always taught …
If Sacred Scripture began to be interpreted in ways disconnected from Sacred Tradition …
If Catholics were being told that the Church had changed teachings that she had always held …
If the “spirit of Vatican II” began to replace the actual words of Vatican II …

WHERE WERE THE SHEPHERDS?

Where were those who possessed the authority to teach?

That question becomes especially striking when reading Dei Verbum because the document itself speaks repeatedly about the teaching responsibility entrusted to the bishops. And this is where the document has challenged me personally.

We say that bishops are successors of the Apostles. Catholics know that phrase. We use it frequently. But I wonder whether we always stop to consider what it means.

Apostolic succession is not simply an historical chain demonstrating that one bishop was consecrated by another bishop, who was consecrated by another bishop, stretching backward through the centuries. That succession exists because something is being handed on.

A deposit.
A mission.
An office.
A responsibility. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ entrusted the Gospel to His Apostles. Before ascending into Heaven, He commanded them: Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” 

Notice that word: Teaching.

Our Lord did not merely tell the Apostles to establish institutions. He did not tell them merely to organize communities. He sent them to teach.

St. Paul understood this. He tells Timothy: “The things which thou hast heard of me by many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men, who shall be fit to teach others also.”

There is the handing on of the Faith. Christ teaches the Apostles. The Apostles hand on what they have received. Those who come after them hand it on again. Generation after generation. That is Tradition in its deepest sense. It is a living transmission of what has been received from God.

And Dei Verbum says something remarkable about this. Speaking about the Apostles and the preservation of the Gospel within the Church, it tells us that the Apostles left bishops as their successors and handed over to them their own teaching authority.

Think about that.

Their teaching authority.

The bishop therefore does not simply inherit an office. He inherits a charge. He is supposed to teach. 

And then, near the end of Dei Verbum, the document becomes even more specific. It begins speaking about the faithful reading Sacred Scripture. It strongly encourages access to the Sacred Scriptures. It encourages priests and religious to immerse themselves in the Word of God. It encourages prayerful reading of Scripture.

And then it turns to the bishops. It speaks of bishops as those with whom the apostolic teaching resides, and it places upon them the responsibility of giving the faithful entrusted to their care suitable instruction concerning the Sacred Books so that the faithful may use them safely and profitably.

That stopped me. Because it means that when the Council encouraged a renewed love of Sacred Scripture among Catholics, it did not envision the faithful simply being handed Bibles and left alone. The bishops were supposed to teach them. The shepherds were supposed to guide them. The faithful were supposed to learn Sacred Scripture within the Church. 

They needed someone to teach them how Genesis relates to the Gospels. 
How Abraham relates to Christ. 
How the Exodus relates to our redemption. 
How the Passover points toward the Holy Sacrifice. 
How the manna in the wilderness prepares us to understand the Bread of Life. 
How David and the kingdom prepare us for Christ the King. 
How the prophets prepare the way for the Messiah. 
How the Psalms become the prayer of Christ and His Church.
How the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New.
How the Gospels reveal Our Lord.
How the writings of St. Paul illuminate the mystery of Christ and His Mystical Body.
And how all of Scripture belongs together within the one Faith handed down from the Apostles.

That requires teaching.

And Dei Verbum tells bishops that this belongs to us.

So, I believe we bishops have to be willing to ask ourselves a difficult question.

Did we do it?

Did we take up that responsibility with the seriousness it deserved? 
Did we personally teach our people the Word of God? 
Did we make certain that when Scripture was being opened more widely to the faithful, it was being opened within Sacred Tradition and the perennial Faith of the Church? 
Did we teach our people how the Fathers understood Scripture? 
Did we give them the great Catholic commentators? 
Did we show them the extraordinary biblical foundations of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the sacraments, the priesthood, Our Lady, the Church, and the whole economy of salvation?

And when people began departing from that foundation, did we correct them?

I think we have to admit that too often, we did not.

Not every bishop. 

Not in every place.

And I do not presume to judge the heart or intentions of individual men who carried tremendous burdens during extraordinarily difficult times. But as an episcopate, we have to be willing to acknowledge that something was lost. 

The bishop increasingly became an administrator. There were institutions to manage. Finances to oversee. Personnel problems. Committees. Programs. Meetings. Statements. Policies.

And yes, some of those things are necessary. 

But a bishop is not first a chief executive officer. He is a successor of the Apostles.

And the Apostles were sent to teach. If we forget that, eventually someone else fills the vacuum, and they did.

Because a teaching vacuum never remains empty. If bishops do not teach their people, other people will. The culture will teach them. Universities will teach them. Television will teach them. The internet will teach them.

And yes, theologians who no longer think with the mind of the Church will teach them. Then, eventually, Catholics begin to believe things that the Catholic Church has never taught.

And perhaps one reason that happened so rapidly after the Council is that those who possessed the authority to say “No,” did not always say it. 

“No. That is not what the Council said.”

“No. That is not what the Church teaches.”

“No. Sacred Scripture cannot be separated from Sacred Tradition.”

“No. Vatican II did not erase everything that came before it.”

“No. The Catholic Faith did not begin again in 1965.”

Those words needed to be said. And sometimes they were not. 

And this brings me to something else that I believe is very important for the Church today. We are deeply divided. And among Catholics who love the Church, there is tremendous disagreement over the Second Vatican Council and everything that followed it.

I understand why many traditional Catholics look at the years after the Council with profound concern. Much was lost. Much became confused. Things that generations of Catholics had regarded as precious seemed suddenly to be treated as embarrassing or disposable. 

And many faithful Catholics who questioned what was happening were treated as though their attachment to the Church’s own inheritance were itself the problem. Those wounds are real. We will not heal them by pretending they do not exist.

But neither will we heal them if we assume that every abuse came directly from documents of the Council. Therefore, I am committed to reading all the documents through with you in continuity with Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and with the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the perennial teaching of the Church. And I believe that will help us all.

To my traditional Catholic brothers and sisters, I am not asking you to pretend that nothing happened. I am not asking you to deny what you have seen. I am not asking you to accept every novelty that somebody justified by appealing to the “spirit of Vatican II.” 

I am also not asking you to accept the suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass, and we are thankful that there were those who preserved it.

I am asking you, however, to look carefully at what the documents of Vatican II actually say. 

And to those Catholics who have spent years defending Vatican II, I would say: You also have to be honest. Not everything that happened after the Council can simply be defended because somebody attached the name Vatican II to it. If the document called for Scripture to remain rooted in Sacred Tradition, then fidelity to the Council requires us to preserve that Tradition. If the document givers bishops a responsibility to teach, then fidelity to the Council requires bishops to teach.

If the document says the Magisterium serves the Word of God by listening to it, guarding it, and faithfully explaining what has been handed down, then fidelity to the Council cannot mean abandoning what was in truth handed down.

Perhaps we can meet there. Not by denying the past. Not by rewriting history. Not by pretending mistakes were never made. But by returning together to what is Catholic.

We must:

Preserve what is true.
Recover what has been lost.
Correct what has gone wrong.
And hand on what we have received.

That is a bridge worth building. 

But I cannot ask other people to do this while standing safely on the sidelines myself. I am a bishop. And Dei Verbum has caused me to examine my own responsibility. It would be easy for me to sit here and tell you what bishops should have done fifty or sixty years ago. It would be easy to point out failures. It would be easy to lament what happened. But I cannot change what another bishop did in 1968. I cannot change what another bishop failed to teach in 1975. I cannot undo the confusion of previous generations. But I can answer for what I do now.

And that is the question I have been asking myself: 

What am I going to do now?

If I believe bishops should teach, then I need to teach. If I believe Catholics need to know Sacred Scripture, then I need to help them know. If I believe Scripture must be read within Sacred Tradition, then I need to show them how. If I believe our people need the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, then I need to put those treasures before them. If I believe bishops should have stepped into the breach when confusion arose, then I cannot spend my time merely complaining that other bishops failed to do so.

I have to step into the breach now.

And so I intend to do something. We are going to begin developing a place devoted specifically to Sacred Scripture. And I intend to teach. I want to open the Scriptures with you. I want us to walk through salvation history together. 

I want Catholics to understand the Bible – not simply to know a handful of isolated verses, but to understand the magnificent unity of God’s revelation. 

I want you to see Christ in Genesis. I want you to understand the covenants. I want you to understand Abraham. Moses. David. The Prophets. The Temple. The Psalms. I want you to see how all of it moves toward Jesus Christ. 

I want us to open the Gospels together. I want us to listen carefully to the words of Our Lord. I want us to study St. Paul. I want us to see the Book of Revelation through Catholic eyes. 

And throughout all of it, we are going to read Scripture as Catholics. With Sacred Tradition. With the Fathers. And the Doctors. And with the perennial teaching of the Church. 

And always with Jesus Christ at the center. 

This is not going to be Scripture separated from the Church. It will be Scripture within the Church. Because that is where Scripture belongs.

And before I finish, I want to speak for a moment to my brother bishops. Brothers, I believe our people need us. They need us to teach. Our people are hungry. Many of them know very little Sacred Scripture – not because they do not love God, but because no one has ever taught them. 

Some have been Catholic their entire lives, and have never been shown how the Scriptures fit together. Some cannot explain the Catholic Faith from the Bible. Some have never been shown how deeply biblical the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass really is. Some encounter a Protestant friend who quotes Scripture to them, and they do not know how to answer. Some encounter modern biblical scholarship that questions things Catholics have always believed, and they do not know where to turn. Some are simply trying to open their Bible and understand what God is saying.

They need shepherds. And brothers, we are those shepherds. 

We are successors of the Apostles. This responsibility belongs to us. Yes, most of you have many other responsibilities. But none of those things can be allowed to consume the very office we were consecrated to fulfill.

We must teach.

Perhaps before another program is created, we should open the Gospel with our people. Perhaps before another committee is formed, we should teach them St. Paul. Perhaps before commissioning another study about why Catholics are leaving the Church, we should ask whether we have given them the treasures that would make them want to remain.

We have already seen what happens when others move into the vacuum. And if there is a lesson to be learned from the confusion of the past sixty years, surely one of them is this:

The shepherd cannot surrender the teaching field and then be surprised when the flock becomes confused.

When confusion arises – Teach. 

When they are hungry for the Word of God – Feed them.

“Going therefore, teach ye all nations.”

Those words were spoken to the Apostles. Brothers, we are their successors. We should tremble before that responsibility. But we should also embrace it.

Perhaps this is one small way we begin repairing and renewing what has been broken. Perhaps this is one way we begin bringing Catholics back together. Not by asking anyone to abandon the truth. Not by pretending that the turmoil following Vatican II never occurred. Not by refusing to acknowledge mistakes. 

We return to what has been handed down. We read carefully. We distinguish the Faith from the fashions of an age. We recover what is beautiful. We restore what was lost. We correct what went wrong. And we teach. 

As I finish this study of Dei Verbum, that is what I find myself taking from it personally. Sacred Scripture is an extraordinary treasure entrusted to the Church. Our people should know it. And our bishops should teach it. 

I cannot repair every mistake of the past.
But I can answer for myself.

I take seriously the apostolic responsibility that has been placed upon me. And I can begin. And that is what I intend to do. 

It is not enough for the watchman to point toward the darkness. He must light the lamp.

May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Amen.

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop Emeritus