In October Britain’s Catholic bishops published a document, The Gift of Scripture, in which they say that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.
While we need to allow for the different genres within Scripture — we would not expect poetry to be necessarily taken literally, for example — yet the bishops are indicating something far more drastic. They say the Bible must be seen to be ‘God’s word expressed in human language’, and that, while it is true when it speaks about salvation, we should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters. It is then a Bible with holes.
So basically we have a pick-and-choose approach to Scripture, with (surprise, surprise?) the Catholic hierarchy telling us which bits to believe and which not. Not a lot of doubt there about where ultimate authority lies.
The re-emergence of heavy shepherds
What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this? ‘Are church members …