In Part One of my two-part discussion, “Can Catholics Be Bible Christians?: Debunking Some Popular Myths,” I addressed many of the misgivings Protestants often have about Catholics and their apparent biblical deficiencies, including some unhelpful caricatures and faulty conclusions.

In Part Two, I expose some of the myths Catholics are themselves often guilty of believing and perpetuating–false ideas about what it means to be Catholic which actually fuel Protestant apprehensions.

My aim in this second part is to encourage fellow Catholics to become more fully and faithfully Catholic, that is to say, Christian. I express my longing for a certain renaissance of the kind of love and study of Sacred Scripture that characterized our Fathers in the Faith, the Doctors of the Church, and the saints, including our Blessed Mother, who, I point out, was full of God’s words before she was full of God’s Word, which probably explains why she was prepared to respond to Gabriel’s announcement in the manner that she did.

I also admit that in my more audacious moments I dream of the day when, consistent with the urging of the Church, all Catholics will be known as much by their love of Sacred Scripture as they are by their love of the Holy Eucharist, and Christians the world over will think first of the Catholic Church when they think of either. This is not a farfetched ideal, but is in line with the Church’s teaching and the exhortations of our spiritual fathers, who insist that Catholics can and must be Bible Christians.

As in Part One, so in Part Two, I welcome further engagement toward a mutually edifying end among both Catholics and non-Catholics.