When is it right for a Catholic to swear?

A commenter on a previous post, David Werling of the very beautiful blog, Ars Orandi, pointed out, quite correctly, that the Protestant Bible is a different book from the Catholic one.
The seven Deuterocanonical books present in a Catholic Bible were excised from the Protestant one at the time of the Reformation. And Protestant scholars would refer to the missing seven as "Apocrypha".

Now that, to my mind, is not the only difference; the Protestant version has a different translation of the text which can bend or even change the original meaning and, I am sure that someone will come up with even more distinctions.

This is the only book to swear on!

What this means is that Catholics may only read their own version (the Douay Bible is generally taken as the foundation for all of the Catholic versions).

Now David's comment took me back a few years when I had to appear in a court of justice. No! no! You've got it all wrong; I was not in the dock I was there because it was my name on the licensed premises operated by my College at the time and I had to be sworn in as licensee.
I had given little thought to the whole exercise until the clerk to the court asked me if I wanted to be sworn in using a Bible. I responded that I would but that it would have to be a Catholic one.
He eyed me up suspiciously and stated that all bibles were the same. I refuted this politely and said that they must surely have a Douay Bible in court. By this time he and his fellow officials were loking a little nervous and looking around for the nearest fire exits.
The clerk went off to rummage in some cupboards and came back looking triumphant: "Look" He said: "I've found a Koran for you!"

He was most disgrntled when I told him that just would not do and I was beginning to regret not shoving our family bible in my case before going to the courtroom.
Eventually, a solution was arrived at. I would utter the atheist affirmation! This, after reading it through was actually quite acceptable as it did not deny God in any way and only vouchsafed that I would tell the truth blah blah.

After this stressful event I pondered on whether I was being pedantic in only being prepared to swear on a Catholic Bible - after all, it was the promise to tell the truth that mattered. But then I decide that I was in the right and that any compromise would have been wrong and the oath, in all probability, invalid as I would have had no belief in the book that I was swearing on. It could have been the Protestant Bible,  the Koran or the Bumper Book of Rupert the Bear Stories and it would have been wrong, quite wrong.

Burning the Koran was wrong, very wrong

I doubt that anyone who reads this blog would disagree with my headline; I intensely dislike the extremes of Islam, I believe it to be a harsh and brutal faith but I believe that it was wrong of Pastor Terry Jones to burn a copy of the Koran. We owe respect to all faiths and should indulge in debate rather than abuse.
Pastor Jones (I hope he's not of Welsh extraction) has done what he has been threatening to do for a long time. This week he held a mock "trial", dressed himself up as a judge and declared the Muslim Faith guilty of crimes against humanity. The sentence of burning was then carried out.

Photo: CBS News

Terry Jones has offended Muslims and
condemned Christians to more persecutions

One cannot help but feel that it was the media attention that fed this bizarre character to the extent that he finally carried out what he has been threatening for many months. What result has it produced? So far 12 plus innocent people have been blown up by a bomber in Afghanistan, you can be sure that there will be more to come. Pastor Jones will accept no responsibility.
How fragile our existence appears to be when one man with a following of around 50 people can set in motion a sequence of events that will result in an increase in the persecution and even death of Christians in Muslim countries.

Fundamentalist Muslims around the world seem beyond the law and appear to act violently towards the west as the mood takes them. I use the word "Fundamentalist" when speaking about the Islamic minority that surface at times such as these, but I fear the Pastor's actions will make fundamentalists out of many erstwhile ordinary Muslims - all will respond with anger and violence to the burning. Pity their poor Christian neighbours who will suffer the result of bigotry and crass stupidity.