Presenting the New Testament

Extract

There are before me three books: The Scripture Textbooks for Catholic Schools, edited by Mgr John M. T. Barton, and published by Burns Oates and Washbourne. They are uniform and each costs 4/6. The binding is very good for the price.

The foreword by Cardinal Griffin states the fundamental point: ‘So many people are taught all about the Scriptures, but few are taught to read them’. That set me thinking. It is certain that an inconsiderable number do read the New Testament. Our aim is to persuade them. There is no need for persuasion with the children; they take what is given them by their masters. So the first question arises: do three more books on the New Testament make it more or less likely that the people who read them will read the New Testament itself? Many times I have set about reading, particularly the Old Testament, and found myself very soon reading a commentary instead. Will these books have the same effect on the children?

To begin with the Lives of our Lord. One is for small children, but is so written that it could be read with pleasure by a person of any age; the other is for school children in their teens. The method employed in both is to make a straightforward account of the life of our Lord drawn from all four Gospels, with occasional digressions and enlargements on local history, geography, liturgy, and so on. They both read easily and have a telling style, but not so telling as that of the New Testament writers, for these have a brevity and economy of words truly breath-taking, while the use of direct speech in the New Testament is so much more suitable to children than the indirect which both these authors favour. Nothing pleases children more than the dramatic style.