Fr. Barron's second Youtube Heresy is Biblical Interpretation. Many people assume that the Catholic approach to the Bible is the same as a fundamentalist/evangelical Protestant approach to the Bible; on the other hand evangelicals think Catholics don't even know what the Bible is. Two things must be noted from the get go:
1. Biblical literalism or fundamentalism has never been the Catholic approach to the Bible.
2. And as for the Protestants who think that Catholics know nothing about the Bible...we compiled it.
Catholics do not approach the Bible in the same manner as Muslims approach the Koran. Catholics believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God written down by human hands. God is the ultimate author and inspiration for everything in the Bible, but it was written down by different people in different times and different places with different emphases.
The Catholic approach to the Bible is similar to the way one approaches a library. There are many sections in a library just as there are in the Bible such as poetry, stories, psalms, wisdom literature, letters, mystical writings, and journalism (i.e. the Gospels). One cannot approach a piece of poetry with the same lens as one who would approach a piece of journalism and vice versa. The Bible is not so much a book but a collection of books. This has always been the Catholic approach. There is no contradiction between true faith and true reason simply because truth cannot contradict truth.
Catholicism unfortunately often gets roped into the same category as fundamental protestantism, but as stated above, nothing could be further from the truth. When some fundamental evangelical decides to build a creation museum with cavemen riding on animatronic dinosaurs because the Bible says the world cannot possibly be older then several thousand years, one cannot help but laugh. Modern science and reason has shown that that is not the case (by the way a Catholic priest came up with the Big Band theory of the universe, Fr. Georges Lemaître). Unfortunately such people tarnish Christianity in whole and make many think that all Christians have thrown reason out the window altogether. True Christianity however has certainly not.
Part 3 coming soon.
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