Hawking Wrong About Pope

[Era Might]

Catholics must affirm that there was a literal first man and first woman:

[quote]When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

--Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Letter "Humani Generis"[/quote]

Pope Leo XIII explains the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture:

[quote]The principles here laid down will apply cognate sciences, and especially to History. It is a lamentable fact that there are many who with great labour carry out and publish investigations on the monuments of antiquity, the manners and institutions of nations and other illustrative subjects, and whose chief purpose in all this is too often to find mistakes in the sacred writings and so to shake and weaken their authority. Some of these writers display not only extreme hostility, but the greatest unfairness; in their eyes a profane book or ancient document is accepted without hesitation, whilst the Scripture, if they only find in it a suspicion of error, is set down with the slightest possible discussion as quite untrustworthy. It is true, no doubt, that copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible; this question, when it arises, should be carefully considered on its merits, and the fact not too easily admitted, but only in those passages where the proof is clear. It may also happen that the sense of a passage remains ambiguous, and in this case good hermeneutical methods will greatly assist in clearing up the obscurity. But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred.

--Encyclical Letter "Providentissimus Deus"[/quote]

The Bible does teach history, and history also falls under the protection of inerrancy. However, that doesn't mean everything is precisely correct, because ancient writers often did not intend to give an exactly precise account; it was common to paraphrase or sum up a point.

The key is to read the sacred text as the author intended it. If he was intending it as history (such as the geneology accounts), we should read it as such, though not ignoring the ancient form of writing history. If it is not meant as history, then we should read it as such. The Church is our guide here, when we are unsure.

[CatholicCid]

[quote name='jswranch' post='1008329' date='Jun 19 2006, 01:19 PM']
John Paul did said ‘Science...
[/quote]

I think it should be "John Paul did [b]say[/b] `Science..."

[Laudate_Dominum]

IMHO, we would not have modern science without Catholicism. And insofar as science is true, it's ours. We've got the monopoly on truth.