But not of the Pope ?
CB
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1811332,00.html
Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has
published a teaching document instructing the faithful
that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.
The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland
are warning their five million worshippers, as well as
any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they
should not expect total accuracy from the Bible.
We should not expect to find in Scripture full
scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,
they say in The Gift of Scripture.
The document is timely, coming as it does amid the
rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US.
Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the
story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught
alongside Darwins theory of evolution in schools,
believing intelligent design to be an equally
plausible theory of how the world began.
But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two
different and at times conflicting stories of creation
are told, are among those that this countrys Catholic
bishops insist cannot be historical. At most, they
say, they may contain historical traces.
The document shows how far the Catholic Church has
come since the 17th century, when Galileo was
condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal
belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by
advocating the Copernican view of the solar system.
Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist
Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical
methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.
In the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to
biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be
approached in the knowledge that it is Gods word
expressed in human language and that proper
acknowledgement should be given both to the word of
God and its human dimensions.
They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways
appropriate to changing times, intelligible and
attractive to our contemporaries.
The Bible is true in passages relating to human
salvation, they say, but continue: We should not
expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular
matters.
They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its
intransigent intolerance and to warn of significant
dangers involved in a fundamentalist approach.
Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when
people of one nation or group see in the Bible a
mandate for their own superiority, and even consider
themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence
against others.
Of the notorious anti-Jewish curse in Matthew 27:25,
His blood be on us and on our children, a passage
used to justify centuries of anti-Semitism, the
bishops say these and other words must never be used
again as a pretext to treat Jewish people with
contempt. Describing this passage as an example of
dramatic exaggeration, the bishops say they have had
tragic consequences in encouraging hatred and
persecution. The attitudes and language of
first-century quarrels between Jews and Jewish
Christians should never again be emulated in relations
between Jews and Christians.
As examples of passages not to be taken literally, the
bishops cite the early chapters of Genesis, comparing
them with early creation legends from other cultures,
especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it
is clear that the primary purpose of these chapters
was to provide religious teaching and that they could
not be described as historical writing.
Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of
Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in
which the writer describes the work of the risen
Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of
Christ the Lamb.
The bishops say: Such symbolic language must be
respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted
literally. We should not expect to discover in this
book details about the end of the world, about how
many will be saved and about when the end will come.
In their foreword to the teaching document, the two
most senior Catholics of the land, Cardinal Cormac
Murphy-OConnor, Archbishop of Westminster, and
Cardinal Keith OBrien, Archbishop of St Andrews and
Edinburgh, explain its context.
They say people today are searching for what is
worthwhile, what has real value, what can be trusted
and what is really true.
The new teaching has been issued as part of the 40th
anniversary celebrations of Dei Verbum, the Second
Vatican Council document explaining the place of
Scripture in revelation. In the past 40 years,
Catholics have learnt more than ever before to cherish
the Bible. We have rediscovered the Bible as a
precious treasure, both ancient and ever new.
A Christian charity is sending a film about the
Christmas story to every primary school in Britain
after hearing of a young boy who asked his teacher why
Mary and Joseph had named
