The RC's have announced that not everything in the Bible can literally be true. A remarkably progressive stance for them to take despite the fact they continue to turn back their clock on gays, evolution and other matters under the ulra-conservative Ratzinger.
Money quote:
"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.”
I bet this gives fits to the crazy Dobson crew in the US, and to the ID proponents everywhere.
Sweet - I never thought the Catholics would step up and admit something that is obviously TRUE - it just never occurred to me that it was in them.
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It won't give fits to IDers because most of them consider the Pope to be the antichrist anyhow. Catholics are not the ones causing the most problems - it's the fast growing and ever popular evangelical movement causing all the fuss.
Conservative Catholics and the evangelical movement have been dancing together on a variety of issues for the last few years, especially abortion, pornography and evolution. Opus Dei has been particularily active in this regard and several of its US members (Fred Barnes being one) are also ID proponents.
The good news is that the Catholics have a tradition of critical thinking in the Jesuits, which (though not perfect) does tend to give them greater flexability in questioning dogma.
Still, I never thought I would see the Catholic church repudiate biblical literalism - especially not this Pope.
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