The fresh air is staggering. Just breathe it in for a few blank lines.
The tales defrocked in a teaching guide issued by the Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland, include the vandalism of Adam to build Eve, descriptions of both the beginning and end of the world, and the particularly vicious claim of Jewish responsibility in the execution of Jesus.
Those who don't care much for, or about, the Catholic Church should take notice. While many liberals and progressives have long viewed the institutional Catholic Church in this country as backward, reactionary, and irrelevant at the top, the Vatican is deeply concerned about the inroads that the Evangelicals have been making among Catholics.
To its credit, the Big V has not chosen to outrun the Evangelicals on fundamentalism -- a good decision because the sex scandals have seriously discredited the priesthood among non-Catholics in this country, and at least embarassed a significant number of Catholic regulars. Going the "hotline to God" claim for Papal authority would not be a credible strategy.
The Vatican has a longer view of its business, and has noticed that the Evangelicals have trotted past them on the weakest limb of Christianity. Catholics have spent a lot of time on that limb and learned a thing or two. Faith is critical to religion, and people are willing to believe many things in its name, but DO NOT expect educated people to believe things that can be proven false.
The man who was charged with steering the Church through the sex scandals is displaying the "Candor" card. Priests are people, and the Bible is not all true. Mindless fundamentalism is wrong.
That said, of course, the document goes on to affirm the Virgin Birth and the proof of the bodily resurrection of Christ. Not to worry though, they may be betting that science just hasn't caught up to proving Mary was a functional hermaphrodite.
Implied concessions can include:
- God didn't write the Bible, or at least all of it.
- The author, authors, or whoever, did not want or expect the Bible to be used for purposes for it was not intended.
- There were human editors with not-so-benign intentions.
1 comment:
This isn't a new policy on the part of the Church
Saint Augustine (354-430) wrote:
"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian.
It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are." (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20 [A.D. 408]).
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