Expert: Jim Miller - 6/24/2007

Question
How can I, as a born-again believer in Christ, convice a Catholic that the Apocrypha books are not the Word of God...but made by man?

Answer
   There are a few problems with your question.  First, the Bible does not hold the same place of authority in the Catholic Church that it does in most Protestant churches.  In the Catholic Church the primary authority is the magisterium (bishops, archbishops, cardinals and the Pope).  One resource for the magisterium is church tradition, and the chief component of tradition is the Bible.  The magisterium decides how the Bible is to be understood, and how it is to be applied.  It would seem to me the first task is to convince your friend to give the Bible primary place of authority over the magisterium.  If you cannot do this, any other attempts to convince your friend may be useless.  At least convince your friend to study the Bible itself without consulting official interpretations.  This may not be difficult, for most Catholic Churches do not warn parishioners away from this practice.
   You could tell your friend about Jerome.  In forming the Protestant Old Testament, the Protestant Reformers followed the lead of Jerome (who translated the Vulgate, the official Latin translation of the Catholic Church).  Jerome wanted the Old Testament to contain only the books in the Jewish Bible of his day, and that is the Protestant Old Testament.  The books are not in the same order, but they are the same books, and the Reformers, like Jerome, took pains to learn Hebrew so they could translate these Scriptures for themselves.  So, you could introduce your friend to St. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, or to a Jewish Bible which won't have the Deuterocanonical books.  A Jewish Bible could be enough of a novelty to pique your friend's interest.  The "taste and see" method may be most effective.  Many readers of the Bible can detect a distinctly inferior flavor in the Deuterocanon.
   Finally, you should realize that Catholic translations are generally rather accurate -- at least no worse than some Protestant translations.  It is possible to conduct successful Bible studies from a Catholic Bible, even with those extra books.  Sometimes it is not necessary to convince a Catholic believer to give up the extra books in order to have a successful Bible study.  If your friend is new to Bible study you may be in for a learning experience yourself.  Most regular sudents of the Bible develop blinders to keep their interpretations "safe".  Bible study with someone new to the Bible may force you to pay attention to some texts you tend to put off to one side.  And if you are learning from Bible study together, your friend may not feel like you are forcing your beliefs on him or her.
   I hope this is helpful,
Jim Miller