“St Mark’s Church is that an evangelical church now?” a sincere Catholic parishioner asked me as a meeting was about to begin. A new sign five blocks away, said “St. Mark, the Evangelist Church.” St. Mark wrote the first of the four gospels the other three are of course by Saints Matthew, Luke, and John. The Greek word for the gospel is euaggelion, in English, we call their authors evangelists. The Catholics in the area saw the word evangelist and thought it was no longer a Catholic church.
Many Christians may roll their eyes at these stories and it certainly reflects a lack of formation suffered by some American Catholics. This also demonstrates a difference between Catholics and Evangelicals.
Christians vary in biblical interpretation
Some instantly think Christians are a monolithic group. So, they believe Catholics and Baptists would believe the same thing. In fact, we do not. There are several key differences between us. The same for other Christian denominations and Catholics. Catholics, for example, do not believe in Biblical literalism.
Many Christians reject evolution because it is not in the Bible. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who holds an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. He talks about seeing images of saddles on dinosaurs in a creation museum, which makes no sense in any context. Saddles on dinosaurs reflect the Christian understanding that the Bible says the world was made in six days about six thousand years ago. Therefore, dinosaurs and humans must have co-existed within this time frame in that mindset.
Such Christians put much time and effort into rejecting evolution and reconciling the Genesis account with other scientific discoveries. The cause of their Biblical literalism.
These Christians believe every word in the Bible is literally true and take it as the source of all truth. Show them scientific proof that debunks something in the Bible and they will reject the science, not the Bible. The reason why this is so important for these groups of Christians is if people can prove not every word in the Bible is literally true then they will destroy the faith of Biblical literalists because they based their belief not in pursuit of truth but in every word in the Bible being literally true.
Many former Christians, now atheists, discovered they could not hold true to their faith and at the same time believe in such things as evolution. They decided there must be no God. Such belief is the opposite of the same coin of Biblical literalism. This may illustrate a unique element of a form of fundamentalism found in both the atheist and Christian communities because they are both based on mirror images toward the same book and doctrine — the Bible.
Biblical literalism is not a Catholic value
Most Catholics do not believe in Biblical literalism and it is not church teaching. They accept the scientific account of the origin of the universe. One difference between Catholics and atheists is we do not believe in random evolution — everything we see around us from birds to Billy Joe are all the result of a random process. We do believe in a creator but we also believe in what is known as grace building upon nature. God works through the natural.
So if something in the Bible contradicts science, what do we do?
Let me take that question a bit further: What if Jesus is the source of something in the Bible contradicting science as in Matthew 5
Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) that if salt loses its flavor it is good for nothing but to be thrown underfoot. The salty taste of salt is one of its properties. It cannot lose its flavor. Therefore, Jesus contradicts science. Or does he?
Scientifically, if salt loses its flavor it was never salt in the first place. That is a deeper and more radical meaning to that same analogy. Those who might say that according to Jesus the flavor of salt is not one of its properties because it can lose its flavor would be trying to dismiss a scientific truth to account for biblical literalism.
Those who understand the analogy that something that appears to be salt in every way but in its core reality it is not will see an intense admonition by Jesus to his audience.
Jesus spoke with a full understanding of science
I always point out that if we consider science to be true including and especially the science of evolution then when Jesus spoke, he spoke with the full understanding of scientific truth. Therefore, we understand his words more profoundly than the more superficial understandings associated with them. I also encourage people to read the Bible with that perspective. For example, if we assume evolution to be true, then when Jesus is speaking, he is speaking with full knowledge of it, even beyond our current understanding. Read the Gospels using that understanding, even if you are an atheist, and see if it changes your understanding of passages.
Because they see miracles in the bible, some Christians, including some Catholics, teach God protects us from the virus, which is not Catholic teaching. It makes no sense when we believe that grace builds on nature. In fact, if it were true then St Damien De Veuster who gave up his life to minister to lepers on Molokai in Hawaii would not have died of the contagious disease himself.
I always maintain the most important passage in the Bible is the last line in the Gospel of John teaching the vast majority of Jesus’ actions and words are not recorded. This means that the majority of everything about Jesus was never recorded by anyone but was passed on from one person to another this, of course, becomes the root of tradition.
Biblical literalism is not a foundational Christian doctrine among many believers. Catholics believe that grace builds on nature and scripture and tradition are the foundational structures of our belief. These two differences are the roots of many among Christians which is not the monolithic demographic some believe it to be.