What Does God Say About...? Scripture and the Catholic Tradition

What does God say about a given subject? He says it in Sacred Scripture — but Scripture read as the Church reads it, with her Tradition, her Fathers, and her catechism, not as a string of isolated verses pulled out and made to mean what one wishes. To ask what the Bible says about anything is to ask what God has revealed, and that revelation is read rightly only within the Church He founded to guard and explain it.

This is the Catholic answer, and it differs sharply from the common one. A search for what does God say about anxiety, money, or marriage will return a list of verses, each torn from its place and offered alone. We take a different road. Below we set out how a Catholic finds what God says on any subject, and from here we point to what He says on the questions men most often ask.

What does the Bible say — and how do we read it

The first thing to settle is the text. When we ask what the Bible says, we must ask of which Bible, and in which words. We use the Douay-Rheims, the traditional English Catholic Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate that the Church declared authentic. It carries all seventy-three books, none removed, and renders Scripture in the grave English of a Bible made for Catholic worship. When we quote a verse, we quote it in the Douay wording, because that is the version the Church approved (see The Catholic Bible and our collection of Catholic Bible verses).

The second thing to settle is harder. Scripture is the word of God, but it does not interpret itself. The Apostle Peter himself warns that in the epistles of Paul are

some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16)

To wrest the Scriptures — to twist a verse out of its place — is the very danger God warns us against. A single line, lifted from its book and its meaning, can be made to say almost anything. This is why the Catholic does not read the Bible alone, against the Church, but within her.

Why isolated verses are not enough

The Bible is not a dictionary of answers, indexed by topic, to be consulted line by line. It is one revelation, given over many centuries, whose parts explain one another and whose whole is held and taught by a living Church. The man who knows only that one verse permits a thing and another forbids it, with no authority to reconcile them, is left to his own preference. He becomes his own pope.

God did not leave His word to private opinion. He founded a Church, gave her His own authority to teach, and promised the Holy Ghost to keep her from error. The catechism states it plainly: the truths revealed by God are contained "in Sacred Scripture and in Tradition," and it belongs to the Church to guard and define them (St Pius X, Catechism). Scripture and Tradition are the two channels of the one revelation; the Church is the living voice that reads them. To know what God says, then, we read Scripture as she reads it — with the Fathers who received it, the Doctors who expounded it, and the catechism that summarises it for the faithful.

This is one of the deepest divisions between the Catholic and the Protestant. Where sola scriptura leaves each reader to fix the meaning for himself, the Catholic receives the meaning from the Church that gave him the book (see Catholic vs Protestant). The Bible is the Church's book; it is read rightly only in her hands.

What God says, and where He says it most plainly

God speaks His moral will most clearly in the Ten Commandments, the law written on stone and confirmed by Christ. Whatever a man asks about how he must live, the answer begins there, in the law God gave on Sinai and Our Lord summed up in the two precepts of charity (see The Ten Commandments). Beneath the commandments lies the whole of the moral order — the virtues to be sought and the sins to be shunned, set out in the Church's tally of the seven deadly sins.

On the inner life, God speaks comfort and command together. To the anxious He says:

Be nothing solicitous; but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your petitions be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6)

This is His word against the cares that gnaw at the soul — we draw it out in what God says about anxiety and in Be anxious for nothing. To the one who would lean on his own judgement, He says:

Have confidence in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not upon thy own prudence. (Proverbs 3:5)

— the text we treat in Trust in the Lord with all thy heart. On the passions, He warns against anger and the loose tongue of gossip, and He commands forgiveness as the very condition of being forgiven.

What God says on the hard questions

Some subjects men hope God will soften. He does not, and neither do we. On these we are charitable but clear, because to blur the teaching is no mercy.

On marriage, God says it is one and indissoluble:

What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. (Matthew 19:6)

From this comes the Church's constant teaching on marriage as a sacrament and her firm word on divorce (see also Catholic marriage). On the use of the body, Scripture is equally plain, reserving the marital act to marriage and naming fornication a sin that shuts a man out of the kingdom — a teaching we set out, charitably and without flinching, in what God says about sex before marriage. On money and on alcohol, He neither condemns the thing nor excuses its abuse, but orders both to their right use. On bodily marks, the question of tattoos, we read the Levitical text within the whole of the law as the Church reads it.

When sin has been committed, God's word is not despair but the road back. To His Apostles the risen Christ said:

Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. (John 20:23)

— the charter of the sacrament of penance, by which the sins God forbids in His commandments are washed away (see What is confession). This sacrament, with the others, belongs to the seven channels of grace Christ left His Church (see The sacraments and the seven sacraments).

What God says about you: who you are before Him

Many ask not what God says about a sin or a duty, but what God says about me — about my own worth in His eyes. The answer is not flattery but something far greater. God made you in His own image (Genesis 1:27), knew you before you were formed in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5), and numbered the very hairs of your head (Matthew 10:30). You are not an accident and not a number; you are a soul He willed into being and for whom Christ died. But this dignity is not a licence to do as one pleases. It is the dignity of a creature made for God, whose worth is found in being His. To know what God says about you is to know that you are loved, and loved into obedience — see how to love God in return.

What God says about pride, and the sins of the soul

Pride is the first of the seven deadly sins, the root from which the others grow, the sin by which Lucifer fell. God's word against it is constant:

Pride goeth before destruction: and the spirit is lifted up before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18)

And again: "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble" (James 4:6). Against pride God sets humility, the virtue Our Lord taught above all in His own example. From the same disordered self come lust, which God forbids not only in the deed but in the look — "Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28) — and hate, which Scripture equates with murder of the heart: "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer" (1 John 3:15). To these the Church opposes chastity and charity, the cleansing of the heart by grace.

What God says about purity: lust, pornography, and masturbation

On the use of the body and the imagination, Scripture is plain and the Church unflinching. God calls us to purity of heart, body, and eye. Lust is sin; so are its modern forms. Pornography offends gravely against chastity, for it makes the body an object and corrupts the gaze Christ commands we keep clean (Matthew 5:28); the Church names it a grave sin and a wound to all involved. Masturbation the Church has constantly taught to be a sin against the order God set in the body, "an intrinsically and gravely disordered action," because the gift of sexuality is ordered to the marital union of husband and wife. These are not counsels of despair but of freedom: the body is "the temple of the Holy Ghost" (1 Corinthians 6:19), and grace, sought in the sacrament of penance, restores what sin disorders. For the broader teaching see what God says about sex and what God says about sex before marriage.

What God says about homosexuality and being gay

Here the Church is charitable but clear, and we will not soften what God has spoken. Scripture names homosexual acts among the sins that exclude a man from the kingdom (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Romans 1:26-27; Leviticus 18:22). The Church distinguishes the person from the act: she condemns the act as gravely sinful, yet she calls those who experience such inclinations to chastity, as she calls every unmarried Christian, and she forbids any contempt toward them. To be tempted is not to sin; to act is. God's word here, as everywhere, is a call out of sin and into the freedom of the children of God — see what God says about sex before marriage for the wider teaching on chastity.

What God says about abortion

God forbids the taking of innocent human life: "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13). The child in the womb is a human life from conception, knit together by God (Psalm 138:13-16) and known by Him before birth (Jeremiah 1:5). The Church has condemned abortion from the earliest age — the Didache of the first century already forbids it by name — and holds it to be a grave sin against the fifth commandment. This teaching is one of mercy, not cruelty: it defends the weakest, and it holds out forgiveness to any who have fallen and repent, in the sacrament of penance.

What God says about dating, family, and friendship

God did not make us to be alone (Genesis 2:18). Dating, though the word is modern, falls under the older virtue of chastity and the end of marriage: courtship is rightly ordered when it seeks a holy and lasting union, not passing pleasure, and when it keeps the body's gift for marriage. On the family, God's word is the fourth commandment — "Honour thy father and thy mother" (Exodus 20:12) — and the whole order of the household under Christ, husband and wife and children bound in charity (Ephesians 5:21-6:4). On friendship, Scripture is tender: "A faithful friend is a strong defence: and he that hath found him, hath found a treasure" (Ecclesiasticus 6:14), and Our Lord names the highest friendship His own: "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

What God says about anger, judging others, and the tongue

God warns against anger and the loose tongue of gossip. On judging others, His word is often misquoted. "Judge not, that you may not be judged" (Matthew 7:1) does not forbid all judgement of acts — Christ commands "judge just judgement" (John 7:24) — but forbids the rash, proud, uncharitable judgement of another's soul, which belongs to God alone. We are to hate the sin and love the sinner, correcting in charity while leaving the secret heart to its Maker.

What God says about money, alcohol, gambling, and weed

God neither condemns His good creation nor excuses its abuse, but orders every thing to its right use. On money, He warns that "the desire of money is the root of all evils" (1 Timothy 6:10) — the danger is in the love of it, not the use. On alcohol, Scripture permits wine that "may cheer the heart of man" (Psalm 103:15) yet forbids drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18); the same measure binds the man tempted to alcoholism, for whom temperance and grace are the road back. On gambling, the Church teaches it is not sinful in itself when fair and moderate, but becomes sinful when it robs a man of what he owes his family or enslaves him to greed. On weed and other intoxicants taken to escape reason, the principle is the same as for drunkenness: we may not freely surrender the reason God gave us, for sobriety guards the soul. The rule throughout is the virtue of temperance, ordering desire to its proper end.

What God says about war, hell, and the end of times

On war, God's word is neither pacifism nor bloodlust. The Church, with St Augustine and St Thomas, teaches the doctrine of the just war: force may be used only by lawful authority, for a grave and just cause, with right intention, and as a last resort. "Thou shalt not kill" forbids murder, not the just defence of the innocent. On hell, Christ Himself speaks more often than of heaven, warning of "the unquenchable fire" (Mark 9:42) and the "everlasting punishment" (Matthew 25:46) prepared for those who die unrepentant. Hell is real, and the warning is a mercy. On the end of times, God says the day and hour are hidden — "of that day and hour no one knoweth" (Matthew 24:36) — and bids us watch, ready, rather than calculate. The whole of revelation ends not in fear but in hope: Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom shall have no end.

What God says about cremation, the body, and the dead

Here the Catholic must distinguish the older discipline from the present law. The Church has always honoured the body as "the temple of the Holy Ghost" (1 Corinthians 6:19) and buried her dead in the sure hope of the resurrection of the flesh, after the example of Christ Himself laid in the tomb. For centuries she forbade cremation, chiefly because it was promoted by men who denied the resurrection. Since 1963 the Church permits cremation provided it is not chosen in denial of the faith, while still earnestly recommending the ancient custom of burial. For the Catholic who keeps the tradition, burial remains the fitting sign of our hope. On bodily marks — tattoos and piercings — the principle is reverence for the body God gave: nothing that defaces it in vanity or in pagan imitation, and Scripture's word "you shall not... make any cuttings in your flesh" (Leviticus 19:28) is read within the whole law as the Church reads it.

What God says about animals, and the rest of creation

Some ask, with real tenderness, what God says about dogs and the animals we love. God made them, called them good (Genesis 1:25), and gave man dominion over them — a dominion of stewardship, not cruelty, for "the just regardeth the lives of his beasts" (Proverbs 12:10). Animals are not persons and have not the immortal souls of men; Scripture does not promise us reunion with them. Yet they are God's creatures, to be used well and treated kindly, and they praise their Maker in their own way: "all ye beasts and cattle, bless the Lord" (Daniel 3:81). On dreams, finally, God has at times spoken through them in Scripture — to Joseph, to the Magi — but the Church warns sternly against seeking omens or meanings in our own dreams, which is a form of superstition forbidden by the first commandment. We do not read our fortunes in the night; we trust the God who holds the day.

What God says when we will not act: faith and works

A common search asks what God says about not taking action — about idleness, inaction, or fear that paralyses. God's word here cuts two ways. Against the sloth that does nothing, Scripture is severe: "faith without works is dead" (James 2:26), and the servant who buried his talent was cast out (Matthew 25:24-30). We are made to labour in the vineyard. Yet against the anxiety that drives frantic action, God commands trust: "Be nothing solicitous" (Philippians 4:6) — see what God says about anxiety. The Christian way is neither sloth nor restless striving, but faithful work joined to confidence in God, "lean[ing] not upon thy own prudence" (Proverbs 3:5).

The whole answer: love God, and live in His Church

Behind every particular question stands the one God asks of us in return. When He was asked which is the great commandment, Our Lord answered:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. (Matthew 22:37-38)

Everything God says about anything is ordered to this: that we love Him above all and our neighbour for His sake. To learn what He says is finally to learn how to obey Him in love (see How to love God and The spiritual life).

To ask what does God say about a thing is a good question, the best of questions. But it is answered fully only one way: by opening the Scriptures the Church gave us, in the words she approved, and reading them with her — with her Fathers, her Doctors, and her catechism — rather than alone. God has spoken. He has also given us the Church to hear Him rightly.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Bible say about anything I ask?

The Bible is not a dictionary of answers indexed by topic, to be searched verse by verse. It is one revelation, given over many centuries, whose parts explain one another and whose whole is guarded and taught by the living Church Christ founded. To know what God says about a subject, the Catholic reads Scripture in the approved Douay-Rheims wording and within the Church — with her Fathers, her Doctors, and her catechism — never wresting a single line out of its place, "as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction" (2 Peter 3:16).

What does God say about love?

When asked which is the great commandment, Our Lord answered, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind... and thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew 22:37-39). Every other thing God says is ordered to this twofold charity: to love Him above all and our neighbour for His sake. We open this in full in what God says about love.

What does God say about marriage and divorce?

God made marriage one and indissoluble: "What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder" (Matthew 19:6). From this comes the Church's constant teaching on marriage as a sacrament and her firm word on divorce — that a valid, consummated bond is broken by nothing but death.

What does God say about forgiveness?

God commands forgiveness as the very condition of being forgiven: "Forgive, and you shall be forgiven" (Luke 6:37), and in the Our Father we ask to be pardoned "as we forgive them that trespass against us." To His Apostles the risen Christ gave the power to remit sins — "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them" (John 20:23) — the charter of the sacrament of penance. We treat the duty itself in what God says about forgiveness.

What does God say about anxiety — does He say "do not be anxious about anything"?

He does. To the anxious God says, "Be nothing solicitous; but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your petitions be made known to God" (Philippians 4:6) — the older Douay wording of the verse modern Bibles render "do not be anxious about anything." The answer is not to manage a feeling but to cast the care on the Father who counts the sparrows. We draw it out in what God says about anxiety.

What does God say about suicide?

God forbids the taking of innocent life, and a man's own life is not his to destroy: "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13) binds him toward himself as toward his neighbour. Yet the Church weighs the despair, anguish, or illness that can cloud the mind and lessen guilt, and she does not despair of God's mercy for the dead. We answer this hard question with both firmness and tenderness in what God says about suicide; for the related darkness, see what God says about depression.

What does God say about me — about my worth?

God made you in His own image (Genesis 1:27), knew you before you were formed in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5), and numbered the very hairs of your head (Matthew 10:30). Your worth is not earned and not measured by men; it is the dignity of a soul God willed into being and for whom Christ died. But this is not flattery to do as one pleases — it is the dignity of a creature made for God, found fully in being His and obeying Him in love.

What does God say about pride and lust?

Pride is the first of the deadly sins, the root of the rest: "Pride goeth before destruction" (Proverbs 16:18), and "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble" (James 4:6). Lust God forbids not only in the deed but in the gaze: "Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). Against both the Church sets humility and chastity, restored by grace in the seven deadly sins.

What does God say about judging others?

"Judge not, that you may not be judged" (Matthew 7:1) forbids the rash, proud, uncharitable judgement of another's soul, which belongs to God alone — not the just judgement of acts, for Christ also commands "judge just judgement" (John 7:24). We hate the sin and love the sinner, correcting in charity while leaving the secret heart to its Maker.

What does God say about abortion?

God forbids the taking of innocent life — "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13) — and the child in the womb is human from conception, known by God before birth (Jeremiah 1:5). The Church has condemned abortion since the first century Didache and holds it a grave sin against the fifth commandment, while holding out forgiveness to any who repent.

What does God say about hell and the end of times?

Christ warns often of hell — "everlasting punishment" (Matthew 25:46) and "the unquenchable fire" (Mark 9:42) — for those who die unrepentant; the warning is itself a mercy. Of the end, He says the day and hour are hidden — "of that day and hour no one knoweth" (Matthew 24:36) — and bids us watch and be ready rather than calculate.

What does God say about cremation?

The Church has always honoured the body and buried her dead in hope of the resurrection of the flesh, after Christ laid in the tomb. For centuries she forbade cremation because it was used to deny the resurrection. Since 1963 she permits it when not chosen in denial of the faith, while still recommending the ancient custom of burial — which remains the fitting sign of our hope.

What does God say about war?

Neither pacifism nor bloodlust. With St Augustine and St Thomas the Church teaches the just war: force used only by lawful authority, for a grave and just cause, with right intention, and as a last resort. "Thou shalt not kill" forbids murder, not the just defence of the innocent.

The Iter Fidei app carries the Douay-Rheims Bible, the catechism, and the prayers of the Church. Download it here.

Sources. Douay-Rheims Bible (Rheims New Testament 1582; Douay Old Testament 1609-1610; Challoner revision): Genesis 1:25-27; 2:18; Exodus 20:12-13; Leviticus 18:22; 19:28; Psalm 103:15; 138:13-16; Proverbs 3:5; 12:10; 16:18; Ecclesiasticus 6:14; Daniel 3:81; Jeremiah 1:5; Matthew 5:28; 7:1; 10:30; 19:6; 22:37-38; 24:36; 25:46; Mark 9:42; John 7:24; 15:13; 20:23; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 19; Ephesians 5:18; 1 Timothy 6:10; James 2:26; 4:6; 1 John 3:15; 2 Peter 3:16; Philippians 4:6. St Pius X, Catechism of Christian Doctrine (1908), on the Creed and the Church, on Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and on the rule of faith. Council of Trent, Session IV (1546), Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures, on the Vulgate and the canon. Didache (1st century), on the prohibition of abortion. On cremation: Holy Office, Piam et constantem (5 July 1963).