Bible Interpretation Fail

The Catholic News Service filed the following story from the Vatican, dated April 20^th,  “While the text of the Bible is fixed, the same Holy Spirit that inspired its writing continues to inspire its proclamation and interpretation in the church, Pope Benedict XVI said.  The obvious intent here is that the Church desperately wants to consolidate its loss of power and influence over its flock.  Apparently Benedict believes that Catholics are not interpreting the Bible as is traditionally understood by the Church. This situation is alarming to Pope who seems unable to connect spiritually with the people it serves.    

Most educated and Confirmed Catholic adults, with an informed conscience, will read and interpret the Bible searching for a God who is relevant to their particular situation in life. The sincerity of their efforts will not go without the assistance of the Holy Spirit (which they received at Confirmation) who meets them where they are – not necessarily where others and the Church would have them be.  

The role of the Church is to help us find God in our everyday lives.  This cannot be achieved when the central focus of the Church seems to be based on constant warnings about such things as secularism, pluralism, atheism, and the ‘godless people of Europe’. Where once it taught love and understanding the Church seems preoccupied with the sins of human sexuality. Sensing further dangers the Church has now launched a modern inquisition aimed at the bishops of Ireland and Women Religious in the US.  These matters obscure the real message to be taken from the bible that  Jesus came so that we might live a life to be lived to the full!

When the Church insists that it alone possesses all the ultimate truths in the Bible does it not contradict the words of Jesus when he said “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you?”  While the text of the Bible is fixed the works of the Holy Spirit continues to inspire the lives of all the faithful, while God’s revelation brings forth new understanding each moment of the day.


 

The Real Inspiration in the Bible

Except for the Bible itself, it took until the second half of the twentieth century for the voices of reform and change to begin to have a wide, public, and legitimate voice. I do not think that is an overstatement. In any swing of the pendulum in the direction of justice, the masses, the bottom, were always considered subversive and traitorous, up until the 1960s! Why not, when even the churches were usually looking down from the top and the Bible had been made into establishment literature—which it clearly is not.

The Bible affirms law, authority, and tradition, as most writings in most of history have done, but then it also does something much more: it strongly affirms reform, change, and the voiceless, starting with the Exodus event itself. This is what makes the Bible a truly revolutionary and inspired book. It affirms the necessity of authority and continuity in a culture (tradition), but against the usual pattern it also affirms the currents of change, reform, the poor, the outsider, and justice for the marginalized groups—starting with the enslaved Jewish people themselves.

The Real Inspiration in the Bible

Except for the Bible itself, it took until the second half of the twentieth century for the voices of reform and change to begin to have a wide, public, and legitimate voice. I do not think that is an overstatement. In any swing of the pendulum in the direction of justice, the masses, the bottom, were always considered subversive and traitorous, up until the 1960s! Why not, when even the churches were usually looking down from the top and the Bible had been made into establishment literature—which it clearly is not.

The Bible affirms law, authority, and tradition, as most writings in most of history have done, but then it also does something much more: it strongly affirms reform, change, and the voiceless, starting with the Exodus event itself. This is what makes the Bible a truly revolutionary and inspired book. It affirms the necessity of authority and continuity in a culture (tradition), but against the usual pattern it also affirms the currents of change, reform, the poor, the outsider, and justice for the marginalized groups—starting with the enslaved Jewish people themselves.

The Biblical bias toward the bottom has been called by some “the preferential option for the poor.” But it is an option, an invitation: it is a grace, and it emerges from inner freedom—or else it would not be from God. In the last analysis, the Bible is biased; it takes the side of the rejected ones, the abandoned ones, the barren women, and the ones who have been excluded, tortured, and kept outside. This is all summed up in Jesus’ own ministry: He clearly prefers, heals, and includes the foreigner, the non-Jew, the handicapped, and the sinner—without rejecting the people of power, but very clearly critiquing them.

Richard Rohr, Adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand:
The Contemplative Stance, the Active Prayer (CD)