We have the CCC and the Compendium, the encyclicals, bible studies, faith formation material and of course, the Bible. There are no excuses for ignorance.
I am an unusual Catholic of my generation as I grew up reading the Bible in my family, but so did my parents and even my Luxembourgian and Czech ancestors. We, perhaps, were different in our love of the Scriptures and our lack of fear. I, for one, and I am 63, never, never was denied access to the Bible in elementary Catholic school and I never heard a priest say we should not or could not read the Bible.
But, I am convinced that the proliferation of information on private revelations has to do with a lack of real catechesis. We in the West have the highest levels of literacy. Again, the information available to the average Catholic abounds on the Internet. If one has time to follow daily the private revelations, one has time to follow the daily readings, read Scripture, read the CCC.
No excuses. And, as I remind many people in a week, we are responsible for our own souls. STOP the blame game. My several Irish friends, young and old, insist on blaming the priests and the culture.
Get over it! Here is some tidbit from the homily given at the Mass of the beatification of Cardinal Newman on September 19th, 2010:
...what better goal could teachers of religion set themselves than Blessed John Henry’s famous appeal for an intelligent, well-instructed laity: “I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it” (The Present Position of Catholics in England, ix, 390)
The Pope gets it, and St. Paul gets it.
Milk then meat, says St. Paul in l Corinthians 3:2. Not poison....I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able,3for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? 4For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not mere men?