From progressive stances on homosexual rights and evolution to an actual Twitter account, things under Pope Francis seem to run a bit differently.
However, despite the fact that Pope Francis remains an open-minded, pivotal figure, this newfound progressivism contradicts the basic foundations of the Catholic religion.
Recently, Pope Francis claimed that “God is not a demiurge or a magician” and that the Big Bang “does not contradict divine intervention, but exacts it.” Needless to say, media outlets blew the story up, sporting headlines like “Pope Francis schools creationists,” despite the fact that the church preached the same thing for years.
But just because this adaptation to modern-ish values has been a gradual one and not what the mainstream media makes it out to be doesn’t make Pope Francis’s claim any less contradictory or logically inaccurate.
Breaking it down, Francis basically said that the Big Bang theory and the Bible’s idea of creationism work together in harmony. That couldn’t be more false.
To simply point out the most glaring contradiction: The Big Bang theory — not the corny television show — indicates that the universe is almost 14 billion years old. The timeline of Bible indicates that it’s about 6,000 years old. In reality, it took millions of years for evolution to actually occur. Sorry, but it seems to be missing a few years.
That alone should prove the incompatible nature that these claims have to actual science. And yet, the church seems to pick out only the facts that it wants to acknowledge in order to sound more progressive than it actually is.
The book of Genesis explicitly says that the world was created in seven days, and that “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” That sounds a tiny bit like a magician. The sad thing is, those major inconsistencies in ideology exist only in the Genesis, the one most addressed by scientists and, in this case, the pope. There are hundreds more throughout the actual story that differ from the image it’s trying to project.
It seems, that in Pope Francis’s reign, the church is transforming into something much more flexible. For years the church took a very literal stance on the Bible, having no science to actually question its contents.
Now it’s at a transitional point where interpretations of the Bible are mixed together into a big melting pot of confusion. The Vatican still takes many pieces of it, like nearly the entirety of the New Testament, very literally, while relaxing its stance on things like evolution and offensive messages.
For instance, many verses contain acts of prostitution, sexism and rape. Some even go as far to say things like: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ,” or “I permit no woman to teach or have authority over man; she is to keep silent.”
While those verses are actually in the book on which they form their entire religion, the Catholic Church tends to disregard them and pretend they’re invisible, because such parables don’t exist in any sane person’s set of moral values. Yet, it views Jesus walking on water and dying and coming back to life in the most literal sense.
The problem is, while people become more and more progressive and scientific research begins to contradict major doctrines in the Bible as well as stances of the church, the Church tries to adapt with it, acknowledging only the most agreeable parts of the Bible. But how can it take one part of a religious book and view it so literally, and then take another part of the book and almost completely ignore it? Can people really pick and choose their religion and still characterize themselves as “Catholic” or “Christian”? It isn’t Build-A-Bear, after all; it’s a philosophy on life.
So while the Catholic Church’s seemingly progressive, rational stance seems progressive, it’s just a single-minded attempt to pander to the masses and keep an archaic religion alive. If the Church wants transition into a more forward-thinking ideology, it needs to cut the vast amount of hypocrisy found in the basic core of its religion by perceiving the Bible in a more metaphorical manner and less as fact.
It needs to decide whether it views the Bible in a literal sense and whether it will be based off of a narrow-minded view of the world or if allow for inclusiveness and open-minded conversation about humanity.
Reach the columnist at mjanetsk@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @meganjanetsky
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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