Book 16 of 44: Why Do Catholics Do That?

Although I was hoping that Why Do Catholics Do That? would shed some light on the various rituals and traditions of Catholicism, I was very disappointed by Kevin Orlin Johnson's ethics.  There were several passages of the book that I further researched using different sources, but a blog is not the place to go into detailed critique of an entire book.  However, let me give you two early examples of my disappointment.

To begin with, chapter one begins on page three.  On page six, Johnson wrote, "Without reference to Tradition, you can end up taking biblical passages out of context, or, really, you can end up taking the whole Bible out of context.  "This, then, you must understand first of all," as St. Peter cautioned, "that no prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation...in these Epistles, there are certain things difficult to understand, that the unlearned and the unstable distort, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures also, to their own destruction" (2 Pt 1:20)."  In two sentences, the author cautioned against taking the Bible out of context and then he took it completely out of context.  The passage that he quoted was partially from 2 Peter 1:20, but the part of it following the ellipses is from 2 Peter 3:16 and is on an entirely different topic (that of Paul's letters).

Secondly, the author attributed the phrase, "let no one add to them or take anything away from them" to St. Athanasius of Alexandria, when instead it is from Revelation 22:18-19.

As my husband will attest to, I neither trust nor respect this author and cannot in good conscience recommend this book as a reliable source for matters of faith or religion.  However, the author did raise some issues that I will probably be learning about for some time to come, including that of the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books of the Bible, the symbolism of the Bible, and Psalm 22.