Saturday, October 29, 2005

Catholic Smackdown on the Christian Fundies?

It's not every day you'll see me championing an opinion from within the Roman Catholic church, but credit where credit is due, eh? This is from Cox News service:
Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have published a teaching document that insists to worshippers that the Bible falls short in historical accuracy.

"We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision," the Catholic bishops of England, Wales, and Scotland say in the recently released "The Gift of Scripture."

...The bishops pointed out that in general, biblical material often went through long periods of oral tradition before reaching written form.

Even in Revelations, the final book in the New Testament, the bishops assert that many passages related to the end of the world are symbolic in nature and should not 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," the bishops say.

..."The underlying message is accurate, but people have to realize the writing is in human form and that it had to be in human form so that God can communicate his word to us," he said.

"There are different ways of presenting truth, and not everything should be taken as scientific," he said.


Lord almighty! Sounds like a pointed challenge to the creeping popularity of so-called "Intelligent Design" as some sort of science.

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4 comments:

Cathie from Canada said...

Good catch! Its interesting, I think, that this is from Britain. I wonder if the US bishops would take on the Fundies like this?

Anonymous said...

..........just like Dan Brown said in the DaVinci code.

Anonymous said...

Whom would you take, Jack Layton or
the Pope. Tough choice. It's about
where we're at.

Unknown said...

There are different kinds of Christian conservatives. The Roman Catholic Church, despite their positions on ssm, birth control, role of women, etc, still have a strong tradition of rigorous intellectual inquiry.

Say what you want about Pope Ben's politics ( and there's a lot to be said), but he's an intellectual heavyweight. There's a reason why he won't side with American fundies or evangelicals. They're too anti-intellectual for a church where the historical-critical method of interpretation is affirmed and celebrated.

For this pope, the nutty American right wing Christians are far too steeped in their own petty agenda. Pope Ben is nutty in his own way.

kgp