Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible

[Montauk6]

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.

more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1811332,00.html

[Beer Snob-50]

1. this has been the catholic teaching for a long time.

i have taught my ccd students this for the last three or four years. i read to them from the forward of a catholic bible that i have that tells this.

[AngryOldDem]

9. That's what I thought....

...which is why I find Catholic interpretation of the Bible such a refreshing change from the Fundie stuff I grew up with.

Catholics have never believed in literal interpretation.

[shrike]

2. Yeah, this was posted yesterday, elsewhere in DU

A couple of us Catholic Duers showed up (politely, I thought) to pount out that this is indeed nothing new.

[Montauk6]

3. I apologize, shrike, I wasn't aware

Geez, this search engine is gonna be the death of me. I always have bad luck using it; I tried a search first before posting, as I figured that something this... well, BIG... would be into the discussion phase.

Sorry for the overlap/redundancy.

[shrike]

4. Oh, no need to apologize

It's a good topic for the Catholic/Orthodox forum, too.

[DemBones DemBones]

5. It's OK. I considered posting it here myself

so that we could all have a good laugh. It's not NEWS to Catholics who know that the Church has always taught that the Bible is not to be taken literally, that it contains many types of writing (history, poetry, prophecy, etc.) Anyone who thinks this is a new development for Catholicism is uninformed.

The British Catholic bishops apparently have found that British Catholics aren't properly catechized, and the rest of the populace knows little about the Bible. I don't know if it's in the article you linked to, but the long article I read cited a case of a boy asking his teacher, apparently in all seriousness, "why Mary and Joseph named their baby a swear word." No doubt knowledge of the Bible is sadly lacking among Americans as well. Pretty sad that so much of Western culture has forgotten its roots. Those who aren't familiar with the Bible don't understand many references in great literature.

[hedgehog]

7. Well, maybe not always, but certainly in recent years.

[pelagius]

6. Anglicans aren't particularly...

...well-versed (hahahahahah!) in the Bible, either. At least not compared to the typical evangelical. To be fair, if you're sola scriptura you have about two-thirds less to keep up with than other Christians, though. :-)

[Matilda]

8. As a teenager in Methodist Bible Study class,

I was taught that many Old Testament stories were really allegory,
designed to help simple people gain an understanding of the power
and presence of God, but were never meant to be taken literally.
Our teacher was very strict in many ways, but he obviously had a
lot of commonsense, and knew where to draw the line.