Bibles in Civil Court?
Question:
I have been selected for Jury Service.
If the time comes and I am selected to serve on Jury Service, should I swear on the Bible, or should I bring a Catholic Bible rather than say a protestant bible as might be provided by the Court?
Answer:
Pace the words of the historical Jesus about oaths on the Temple treasuries, Non iurate omnino - do not swear on the Temple gold at all, and these can be consulted in the Bible, it can be said right at the start, that if the protestant bible provided by a Civil Court in the UK islands is just a Gideon New Testament as sometimes has been the case, then it is only a partial presentation of the truths necessary for salvation, so difficult to use that GNT as swearing materiellen.
If the protestant bible provided is a complete protestant bible of 66 books, then some argue, maybe since all believers in Jesus are Christians and what the heck baptism makes us all members of the Church Christian, associated members or remote members, and a protestant bible is good enough for such civil duties of high office. An amusing parish secretary also once opined in a chuckle and a giggle that if a Catholic person was given a protestant bible of just 66 books then they were only obliged to tell 66% of the truth. Amusing line.
There are two positions worth noting here above, the first that baptism makes everybody a member of the Church however remotely and protestants too, though only remotely and not in full communion with the fullness of Christianity residing in the Catholic Church, subsisting in the Catholic Church as a young Dr Ratzinger and his theology team put it at the time in the "De Ecclesia - Lumen Gentium" committee at Vatican II, and second that the protestant - vide Lutheran bible - of just 66 books is hey presto "good enough" for such civil purposes.
These two positions have become popular in a secular age when almost anything goes and Christians are regarded as ticks under the skin if they insist too much on their rights and complain too much about the judges. But while unpopular now in an advanced age of much relativism, the idea that the fullness of Christianity resides in the Catholic Church is sometimes doubted by the haters and the doubters, all sincere people but overly used to secularism.
Most Civil Courts in the protestant nations of Switzerland and Scandinavia and Britain do allow for some leeway in this tortured area of ecumenical entente, there is some debate but the reformation judges of Britain are well intentioned and some are just relieved to see any Christian swearing on any textus liber usualis being offered in a Court in a Christian nation, and some too, indeed many, will allow the Catholic layperson up for Jury Service to bring their own complete Catholic Bible of the requisite 72 books.
Hindus are offered their Bhagavad-Gita, even radical Moslems are offered a holy koran, so it should be apposite of the Court to offer a Catholic his or her Catholic Bible. The diplomatic thing to do. The South Korean hierarchy of Catholic Bishops a few years ago copyrighted the roman collar and roman uniform when it found that lots and lots of protestant evangelical ministers were donning these items, and claiming to be pastoral fathers, and to date the Catholic Church, though the original author and authorising authority since the dawn of the messianic age of the Master and since the official approval of 382 AD under Pope Damasus, has still not copyrighted the complete Bible of 72 books as a Biblios Proprios - but that day is not far off and may arrive sooner than people think.
The word "Biblios" simply means a manuscript copy or scroll of the many books of the biblical literature. These scrolls were originally and historically at the sunrise of the messianic age, kept in tabernacles in churches and synagogues of the early Neo-Judaean Christians, but it is put in the singular to denote that some authority somewhere, notably beginning in Jerusalem under James, took the trouble of collating all the more reliable and more perfect books about Jesus - and in the Ancient World there were many booklets and scrolls written about this wonder worker of many signs - and attaching these to the already established canon of the Hebrew Testament, that is what "Biblios" means, and the expression "Biblios Proprios" means the Bible really and truly and completely, as approved by the episcopal authorities in ancient sacrosanct Synodus from the reign of Pope Damasus.
Complete Bibles of the catholic kind are always provided in church courts of the Catholics when a lay person or even a cleric has to swear an oath, that is standard tribunal practice, so some concession should be offered to the Auntie Overseas Church, as Anglican bishops like to call it all. So there is a point to make, in a nice diplomatic way, at such Court Sessions, before fellow Christian judges, that a Catholic Bible is to be selected among the options by Catholic believers of the Fullness of Christianity, not a Gita or a Buddha or a Koran or a Gideon, remembering too coincidentally and historically at the height of the reformer reform when not only whole official 1500 year old Bibles were being reduced but even the sacrosanct number of the 7 Sacraments to just 2 Sacraments, that if Luther had had his way, then lots of books would not have appeared in the later "kleiner protestant bible", such as the cunning Letter of James for example plus the Gospel of John for all of its eucharistic didactica of Jesus, still very much a bugbear for many evangelical solas, plus the very romantic and secular Song of Songs. It was all go, go, go at the time in the 1520s.
Reformation judges are stern warriors of the constitutions of the twin islands, and yet they should not refuse this simple request from any Catholic Christian.
