The Bible in the Liturgy

The Bible in the LiturgyOver recent decades, Scripture has become newly prominent in the polities of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.The documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) frequently quote or reference Scripture, and the Council directly concerned itself with the relation of Scripture to other recognized sources of authority.Dei Verbum, its brief but profound Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, makes clear that Scripture is not to be viewed as a parallel source of authority to tradition, with which it might be in tension or even competition.Rather, the tradition of the Church is nothing other than Scripture's lived exegesis by the Church.Scripture and tradition, in the words of the Constitution, 'together form a single sacred deposit of the word of God' . 1 As Roman Catholics have engaged with Scripture, those in some global regions of that Church have critically reflected on the challenges that it presents to their Church, such as why the proportion of women church leaders in Rome was so much higher in St Paul's day than it is in their own. 2 Within the Anglican Communion, there is a similarly heightened awareness of the ecclesiological and moral implications of Scripture, also by no means unproblematical.Sharply contrasting views, both between, and sometimes within, Churches of the Communion, about aspects of human sexuality and their pastoral and ministerial implications, have threatened to break the Communion apart, and have to some extent already done so.While the disputes in this area have complex institutional, financial and cultural dynamics, scriptural interpretation is a presenting issue, as encapsulated in the terse 1998 Lambeth