Here's a question from an evangelical MoJ reader:
I'm sure you're familiar with all the problems and divisions Evangelicals have concerning science and scripture. It seems that Catholics don't sweat trying to figure out things like exactly who Adam or Noah were or whether God may have created life through evolution (or maybe that's a misperception). Why is that? What kind of hermeneutic do Catholics employ here -- do Catholics take some of the early parts of scripture as only figurative? Are there some official documents on hermeneutics that discuss this?
UPDATE: Villanova law prof Mike Moreland responds:
It seems to me that Catholic biblical exegesis, since the time of Origen, Augustine, and Jerome, has distinguished between the literal and spiritual senses of scripture, with the spiritual sense commonly divided further among the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical senses. Aquinas simply took the possibility of several senses of scripture for granted in Ia, q.1, a.10. Obviously, there's an enormous range of material to consider on such a complicated question, but a classic study is Henri de Lubac's multi-volume Exégèse médiévale, which Eerdmans brought out in a new edition and translation a few years ago (Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, 2 vols.). The most important recent magisterial pronouncement, of course, is Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation from Vatican II, though its discussion of the interpretation problem is brief.
Boston College law prof Greg Kalscheur, S.J. also recommends Dei Verbum, "especially Chapter III (Sacred Scripture: Its Divine Inspiration and its Interpretation) and a 1993 document from the Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Intepretation of the Bible in the Church, which can be found in vol. 23 of Origins, issue 29 (Jan. 6, 1994). The latter document is a very helpful comprehensive discussion of the usefulness of a variety of hermeneutical methods." Jonathan Watson recommends online resources here, here, and here.
UPDATE #2: Thanks to David Buysse for passing along this (somewhat puzzling, in my view) quote from Origen's De principiis, IV, II, ix:
Divine wisdom has arranged for certain stumbling-blocks and interruptions of the historical sense to be found therein, by inserting in the midst a number of impossibilities and incongruities, in order that the very interruption of the narrative might as it were present a barrier to the reader and lead him to refuse to proceed along the pathway of the ordinary meaning: and so, by shutting us out and debarring us from that, might recall us to the beginning of another way, and might thereby bring us, through the entrance of a narrow footpath, to a higher and loftier road and lay open the immense breadth of the divine wisdom.
Monday, October 1, 2007
On the topic of the Connecticut bishops' decision to comply with a new state law requiring Catholic hospitals to distribute emergency contraception (Plan B, not RU-486) to rape victims without an ovulation test, a reader emailed me an article from the December 2006 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal by Daniel Sulmasy titled Emergency Contraception for Women Who Have Been Raped: Must Catholics Test for Ovulation, or Is Testing for Pregnancy Morally Sufficient? Here is the abstract:
On the grounds that rape is an act of violence, not a natural act of intercourse, Roman Catholic teaching traditionally has permitted women who have been raped to take steps to prevent pregnancy, while consistently prohibiting abortion even in the case of rape. Recent scientific evidence that emergency contraception (EC) works primarily by preventing ovulation, not by preventing implantation or by aborting implanted embryos, has led Church authorities to permit the use of EC drugs in the setting of rape. Doubts about whether an abortifacient effect of EC drugs has been completely disproven have led to controversy within the Church about whether it is sufficient to determine that a woman is not pregnant before using EC drugs or whether one must establish that she has not recently ovulated. This article presents clinical, epidemiological, and ethical arguments why testing for pregnancy should be morally sufficient for a faith community that is strongly opposed to abortion.
From the article itself:
The real heart of this issue is the blunt fact that medical science presently has no way of determining whether a woman has conceived until the early embryo has implanted in the wall of the uterus and stimulated the production of substances that can be detected in the blood, about seven days after conception. It is this fact that causes the debate. The ovulation approach attempts (imperfectly) to eliminate any possibility that the woman might have conceived by precluding the prescription of EC drugs for any woman who might be ovulating or about to ovulate. This is a very crude approximation of what we are after. In medical jargon, it is called a “shotgun” approach—hoping to hit the target by intervening with a wide scatter. It is equivalent, for instance, to recommending that all men over the age of 50 have their prostates removed because PSA screening misses some cases of prostate cancer.
The Hartford Courant reports:
In a major softening of their position, the state's Roman Catholic bishops announced Thursday that Catholic hospitals would comply with a new law taking effect Monday that requires all hospitals in the state to dispense emergency contraceptive pills to rape victims.
. . . .
The bishops said Thursday that it is sufficient to require a pregnancy test - and not an ovulation test - before the emergency contraceptive is administered to the rape victim. The law does require a pregnancy test.
"The administration of Plan B pills in this instance cannot be judged to be the commission of an abortion because of such doubt about how Plan B pills and similar drugs work and because of the current impossibility of knowing from the ovulation test whether a new life is present," the bishops said in a statement. "To administer Plan B pills without an ovulation test is not an intrinsically evil act."
From the Detroit News:
The alumni board of Ave Maria School of Law has issued a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the Catholic college, the latest attack on an administration that is increasingly the subject of negative Web logs, petitions and complaints.
The alumni board last week called -- for the second time -- for the resignation of Dean Bernard Dobranski and the ouster of board Chairman Thomas Monaghan, the Domino's pizza mogul who has donated more than $50 million to fund the law school. ...
The board's move followed a rebuke earlier this month from a group of Catholic law professors from around the country. The group issued a joint statement sharply criticizing the law school administration's "failure to live their Christian commitment."
