d. Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent The Times Online - UK October 05, 2005 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. Come to think of it: If the Vatican is controlled by some ET/s and the Marian apparitions made in different countries and that millions believe in these in them—would not one have in mind the verse in Matt: 24:24: “They would deceive, if possible, the very elect.” 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 Darwin’s 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 country’s 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 analyzing 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 “God’s 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 considers them 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. e Growing ET Awareness in Roman Catholic Hierarchy & World Religions October 2, 2012 Theological Implications Regarding the Impending Discovery of Extraterrestrial Humanities By Giorgio Piacenza The term “Catholic” means “universal” but is the official Roman Apostolic Catholic Church doctrine truly “universal” in relation to what we are gradually discovering about the Cosmos? If we consider that important elements of Roman Catholic doctrine and (and of other religions) are ESSENTIALLY “universal,” there will be room for an interpretive development suitable to the current growing awareness that we are being “visited.” What is happening right now? Perhaps, the unofficial (yet-semi-official because of being high-level in the hierarchy and not being formally suppressed) declarations of Mons. Corrado Balducci and Fr. Gabriel Funes S.J. (director of the Vatican Observatory) are the first intended and un-intended stage of promoting a revolutionary conceptual move in the direction of a truly more “universal” (catholic) and cosmically appropriate kind of interpretation. This entails not just making faith more agreeable with modern science but also developing more adequate theological interpretations that attend to increasing factual evidence connecting Earth humans with the extraterrestrial presence. It is happening now and the role of “God” (also understood not just as “creator” but as “sustainer of being” in some ET contact experiences) should increasingly become a matter of discussion and study. I bet that in trying to find fresh explanations matching settled theologies with current ET-related surprising facts theoretical leaders of many religions will come to recognize how much they share in common. It is not just that the nations of the world will put aside their differences in case of an “alien threat” as president Reagan suggested; the news will be that religious commonalities should also be gradually realized. Many of the faithful will come to realize that ETS can be welcome in the classical versions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The ET presence will inspire the finding of inter-faith ecumenical connections and -perhaps- more sophisticated concepts of God’s nature such as “PANENTHEISM” will form a basis to supersede strict “this vs. that” more superficial doctrinal disagreements. Furthermore, these enhanced interpretations should inspire many of the faithful to update their cultural perspectives. In relation to Christianity, how are we to understand the redemptive role of Jesus when the extraterrestrial presence becomes widely known? Is “original sin” and Jesus’ redemptive intervention on Earth applicable to extraterrestrial beings in the Cosmos? This is a crucial issue here. This was mentioned and discussed in the Vatican sponsored conference (in Vatican grounds) regarding the plausibility of extraterrestrial life in the universe in 2009. I believe that, after being on the wrong side of the rational debate by rejecting scientific advancements which routinely and quantitatively displace Earth’s Man as the center of all creation, the Vatican curia’s attitude is now becoming quite auspiciously agreeable with the findings and extrapolations of biological-cosmological-material science. This is becoming obvious in articles like those of investigative journalists Paola Harris and Marc Kauffman in which public opinion-relevant, researcher-priests (like Fr. Funes and Mons. Balducci) were consistently allowed to declare that God may have created intelligent extraterrestrial beings. While both Funes and Balducci suggested that extraterrestrials would be like cosmic “brothers” to us the latter was allowed to speculate (beyond a scientifically “safe” orthodox view) that extraterrestrials may have already visited Earth. In my view, both declarations are part of a tardy but, nonetheless, healthy move towards the always valid idea of complementing faith with reason, even if it was also done in order to remain culturally relevant in the modern world. However, I think that complementing faith with classical –and intuitively-obvious physical science is simpler than what may be in store for upcoming theologians. Issues for an Upcoming Theology After rather simple generalizations about possible intelligent extraterrestrial biological existing only in our physical universe are superseded by a realization of the multilevel-multidimensional diversity of actual contacts with extraterrestrials already occurring semi-discretely, a conceptual challenge will arise. I think this will occur when science and gradual ET disclosures advance to the point of exposing extraterrestrial diversity and complexity in relation to the dependence of multiple physical realms on non-physical realms. This sophistication about the multi dimensionality of creation will call for a more sophisticated theology. According to some believable contactee friends, this gradual reconnection with a long forgotten ET life will increase after December 21st, 2012 which will mark a “point of no return” towards ending our relative and conceptual isolation from the rest of the intelligent Cosmos. What may ensue is an awareness of additional theological implications in relation to how different extraterrestrial beings may have been affected by a more universal “fall” into “sin” (defined as an interpretive mistake or deviation from an adequate relation with God through the Logos). The “fall” would have included non-physical, non-ET, “angelic” creation-helpers established in a higher, non-physical realm and capable of negatively influencing and-or challenging a variety of physical civilizations some of which may have also “fallen” for it and some of whom may have resisted. This is also part of contactee lore. Considering that human witnessing is decisive for faith and for validating human experience in general (as Monsignor Balducci proposed), I’d say that in-depth ET contact research also suggests that there is credible witness evidence that some extraterrestrials of the “many mansions” in the “Physical Multiverse” may have also been swayed more than others by this “Fall” originating in beings from yet “other mansions” of a higher ontological realm. Accordingly, different context-dependent ways to reconcile with the Creator (the Profound LOVE of Cosmic Consciousness) by positing different kinds of “incarnations” of the Christ-Logos Principle may become necessary as we gradually learn how complex the history of the entire Cosmos really is and grow out of our cosmic parochialism. Like ·
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 09:07:02 +0000
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