Monica, protestants don’t have this because Luther revised the bible when he left.  he wanted to “purify” scripture and cut out things that were too “catholic” - purgatory, praying for the dead, etc.  so, he went back to the “original Jewish scriptures.” 

the problem was, that at the time he did this, the jews had already redacted their scriptures to not include the deuterocanonical books.  this had happened hundreds of years prior, following the fall of the temple in roughly 49 AD (i believe.  79?).  once the temple had fallen again with no present hope of reconstruction, jewish leaders hunkered down, so to speak, and used it as a time to regroup and redefine what it meant to be Jewish.  the two sides were the pharisees and sadducees, the later rejecting resurrection from the dead on the last day and other Christian doctrines.  because of the Christian sounding-ness of many of these ideas, in the spirit of “purifying” judaism during such a terrible time, the sadducees won the argument and as a result, Scripture became limited to only those books which original copies of Hebrew existed.  The problem was that Maccabees, Judith, Tobit and the others had originally been written in Greek, so they got the ax.

However, prior to this revision, they had indeed been accepted as Holy Scripture and would have been read, used and studied during the time of Jesus and before.  Hence why the Catholics kept them.

it should also be noted, however, that the Jews didn’t just chuck these books in the garbage, which is essentially what the protestants did.  THey are still holy texts, but not the inspired Word of God.  They go along side things like the Talmud and the commentaries on the law, which are actually super duper important in how Judaism functions today post-Temple (its sort of like the magisterium - they get the weight of Scripture in their authority to teach.  minus the guidance of the Holy Spirit, of course.  for example, this explains why modern circumcision is so much more removal than that of the Bible.  Scripturally, only a little was required, but rabbis and such decided to then add more cutting to remove the possibily of a circumsized male being able to pull down extra skin and “pass” (this was for serious an issue).)

ok done now

I have a huge interest in religion in general, in addition to studying Catholicism. I’m afraid I don’t know what the Code of Canon law says. However, I asked a priest once about this, and what it basically came down to is differentiating between observing and participating. So, no prayers that aren’t in line with Christianity, no taking communion outside of the Church (unless it’s Orthodox and they’ve OKed it), and so on. If a church recited the Our Father, for example, that would be OK to join in. Basically, you need to discern each part of the service and understand what is acceptable. Non-Abrahamic religions should be easy, since we have so little in common, but attending a Jewish temple can be more difficult.

Growing up Methodist, we attended a Catholic Mass, Jewish temple, and a Southern Baptist service as part of confirmation, and it was wonderful to learn about these different groups, although I think the Southern Baptist service was the strangest to us. It’s great that you want to expose your children to some of their religious heritage.

Wow, lot of interesting information there.  Thanks, Lina and Allie.