Congregations are more knowledgeable about the Bible than they ever were – and the more sophisticated they are, the higher their expectations of the priest and the greater the importance of meditative reading Since THE Second Vatican Council, the Bible has again taken its place at the centre of Catholic life. Before the council, if a Catholic family was asked to produce a Bible, they would probably have offered their missal, which contained only a starkly limited selection of passages. Today, many parishes have a variety of groups who study and pray the Bible together (not necessarily restricted to Catholics or – still less necessarily – led by clergy).In Britain, however, we lag behind countries in Africa where the regular practice of lectio divina is an accepted part