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"Bishops, in attempt to cut expenses, do not encourage people to read the Bible"
That's the headline feared by Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan of Brooklyn, New York, after the Conference of Catholic Bishops voted 137-102 to table plans for a statement urging Catholics to read their Bibles. Actually, the story may be worse than that.

The Boston Globe explains that the pastoral statement was "shelved" to "restrain spending and cut down on a crush of publications [the bishops] fear have little impact."

The Washington Times likewise summarizes bishops complaints that they are "burdened with multiple documents and expensive projects and … agreed Monday to reduce their workload."

Catholic News Service says the finance reason doesn't quite make sense on its own: "Task force chairman Bishop William B. Friend of Shreveport, Louisiana, noted in introducing the proposal that funding would be sought from outside sources to pay the costs of developing the pastoral statement. Sales of the publication would be expected to cover the costs of printing it."

Instead the cost factor is secondary. The bishops on Monday adopted new rules for considering such projects, and it's the financial and managerial cost of new projects in general that the bishops were concerned about.

But there may be more at work than that. Certainly, some bishops were concerned about both the program and the signal that tabling it might mean. Bishop John W. Yanta, of Amarillo, Texas, said, "Coming from a mission diocese, and also from the Bible Belt, I think it would be disastrous for us to vote against this, and I think it would be detrimental. The Word of God is essential to evangelization."

Archbishop Oscar H. Lipscomb of Mobile, Alabama, echoed the fear. "From my position, where the Bible is so much a part of any effort at evangelization, this would be a disaster public-relationswise."

Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk retorted that the conference of bishops doesn't exist "for good public relations, but to do the work of the church."

But encouraging the reading of the Bible is the work of the church, said his colleagues. It's also they said, key to ecumenical efforts with evangelicals.

Ah, those evangelicals. Here's where some trouble may lie. The Washington Times reports:

Milwaukee Auxiliary Bishop Richard J. Sklba, who favored the proposal, worried that Catholics were getting too "individualistic" in their Bible studies.

"I worry a bit about an increasingly evangelical slant" among Catholics, he said.

"You can easily understand his concern," mocked CWN's weblog, Off the Record. "Why, these people might go out and bring their neighbors to the Gospel! They might—now brace yourself—convert Jews!"

A separate posting was similarly satirical. "This is a prudent decision," said the blogger, listing a few reasons.

• Nobody would have read the statement anyway. They saved a few trees.
• If anyone did read the statement, it would probably prove an embarrassment. If the bishops thought they could impress Bible-Belt Protestants by issuing a windy endorsement of read[ing] the Scriptures, they were mistaken. Evangelical Christians have already got the message, and they'd wonder why the bishops took so long (and so many words) to state the obvious.
• Any time the U.S. bishops' conference decides not to issue a statement, it's a good thing.
• Now the next time the USCCB puts out a statement on the Kyoto Treaty or the regulation of short-term interest rates, we can wonder aloud when they'll find time for a statement on the Word of God. Eventually even they might get the point.

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November (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48