Although disagree with Sen. Sentorum on just about everything (in this latest interview, he affirms that gay marriage does indeed threaten his own marriage: “Yes, absolutely. It threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages. It threatens the traditional values of this country”), I at least gave him the credit of thinking, well, he’s a sincere “good Catholic,” trying to do what he thinks is genuinely right according to his religious beliefs.
Then this, in today’s Times magazine:
It’s not easy to strike me speechless, but danged if that didn’t do it.
Well, I’VE never read it cover to cover, and I’d be willing to bet that not many have. However, saying that he’s not a Biblical scholar because he’s Catholic is only going to give the anti-Catholic fundies fuel.
That’s the pretty standard Roman Catholic response. We don’t need to read the Bible, that’s what we have all those priests for. They read it, tell us what we believe, then we go play bingo, drink beer and gamble.
And I’m only partially facetious there. In my religion classes in grade school (parochial, of course), I remember assignments to read verses and offer an interpretation. In high school, we had more rigorous curriculum, but it had a definite historicalk perspective, since tradition is so important to the RCC, and I don’t rememer ever actually reading the bible. So, it isn’t just Santorum, it’s every Roamn Catholic who isn’t in a theology graduate program, or just interested on their own.
So he’s not a biblical scholar, but that never stopped him from spewing his bigotry while claiming his “authority” came from the Bible. I wonder how many quotes would apply to him specifically, as in “Hey Santorum. stop judging and shut the hell up”. He isn’t just giving free fuel to antiCatholics, he is giving plenty to many Catholics too (like me fer instance). I also fail to see how what someone else does could threaten his marriage, unless he is a closet queen desparately fighting temptation. If that indeed were the case, then someone should out him.
No, lots of people have read the whole Bible and have reconciled any perceived contradictions to their own satisfaction. It does seem to me, however, that the onus falls on both sides — whoever would declare the Bible to be the complete and inerrant word of God ought to have read every word, and so ought whoever would declare that it isn’t.
I disagree that a person saying it’s not inerrant needs to read the whole thing.
The idea that the book is the inerrant word of a supernatural being is the extraordinary claim, not that it isn’t, and hence has the burden of proof. It’s up to the inerrancy people to demonstrate what other biblical text shows why a contradiction is not a contradiction. It’s perfectly reasonable for a person to bring up something that looks like a contradiction without reading every word, and expect the people making the extraordinary “word of God” claim to back up their assertion and show why it isn’t a contradiction.
Have you read the Koran? If not, as a result do you make no claims about it being the word of God or not?
I haven’t read Moby Dick. If a person claims it’s the word of God, are you saying I cannot reasonably say that isn’t before reading it?
With or without any Bible at all, Santorum would still be a pissant putrescent pustulent pile of panther puke in my book. With no Bible, he would just latch onto something else as his “authority” to spew shit.
This is an aspect of Catholicism that I thought had fallen by the wayside in recent years.
Traditionally, this is what the big split between Catholics and Protestants was all about. Catholics had a Church Hierarchy to interpret the religion (as defined, supposedly, by the bible) and disseminate it to the masses via the Masses (sorry, I couldn’t resist!). For the laymen, it was predominantly a religion of mysteries. The Protestants maintained that, through reading the bible and praying, lay people were capable of establishing and maintaining a personal relationship with God, and they didn’t need the middle-man. Until fairly recently, I believe that bible study was highly unusual among lay-people among the Catholics.
But in recent years (say, the past 20-30), just as the Fundamentalist movement has grown within the Protestant community, it has also grown within the Catholic community, at least in the US. Now Catholic churches have bible study groups and charismatic movements. I’ve sometimes joked that if you wanted a good traditional Catholic service, you’d better go to the Episcopals - they’re not in Latin, but they’ve retained a lot of the beauty and Mystery of the earlier Catholic services.
I’m surprised Santorum hasn’t read the bible cover to cover. He’s young enough that this has been available to him through his church, and he certainly seems to have the fundamentalist leanings that would propel him in that direction.
Oh, and Liberal - what Revtim said. Your extraordinary claims. Your burden of proof.
Why? As soon as you’ve found one error, the whole this clearly isn’t inerrant and hence you don’t need to keep reading. A single counterexample disproves the hypothesis. You may be right that as a matter of principle I ought to know what I’m rejecting before I reject it. Fine. (Though it seems to me that if I skipped Obadiah and II Timothy it wouldn’t be a big deal.) As a matter of logic, however, you’re just wrong.
Oh, crikey, did you have to say that? Now Lib will crank out a three-page rebuttal pointing out in excruciating detail how utterly impeccable his logical chops are.
Nonsense. If A is an extraordinary claim, then so is ~A. Due respect to Carl Sagan, the statement that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is itself a fallacy of ambiguity, and may itself be called an extraordinary claim.
But Guin, you’re also not using your religion to try and influence the way the whole country lives (at least, if you are, you’re keeping mum about it!).
But I am also shocked: here’s a guy who’s been a lifelong Catholic, goes to church every single day, will not work on Sunday and is trying to remake the U.S. government in the face of Catholicism. Catholicism seems to be a huge part of his life, and that of his wife and children.
So don’t you think he’d be at least curious to read this book that dictates his whole existence? I mean, what’s keeping him? Take a damn week’s vacation and read it, it’s only one book! (Well, two, if you’re gonna read the Old Testament, too.)
To spare EddyTeddyFreddy a frightening ordeal, I’ll say simply that you’re mistaken, and are confusing a generalized claim about specifics with a specific claim about generalities. For example, suppose a compendium says in Book A, Chapter B that “X”. Now suppose “X” is false. But suppose that Book Y, Chapter Z says that “X” in Book A, Chapter B was an example of a false statement. Is the compendium accurate?
That’s a pretty extraordinary claim in itself. If someone present a new chemical claiming it has anti-gravity properties, that claim could easily be considered extraordinary. The ~A claim, that the chemical does not have anti-gravity properties, is pretty darn ordinary.
