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Let’s deal now however briefly with the elephant in the room, The Bible. Oh dear,

how it has been abused and misunderstood.

It could occupy many many pages detailing all the erroneous ways it has been abused, interpreted by cults, Protestant sects and many others to say what they want it to say. If however you were a Catholic and attended Mass every day or simply read the readings each day, after three years you would have been fed the entire Bible in bite sized pieces. I have read it twice from beginning to end more as an academic exercise than for spiritual growth and thus have such worthwhile gems tucked away that like logarithms have proved really useful in life, King Og of Bashan had an iron bed!

So let’s address a simple question where did the Bible come from? Fortunately that is an easy question to answer. From all the various documents floating about in the early centuries the Church pulled together the various books of both the Old and New Testaments that they felt as led by the Holy Spirit, had the mark of Divine inspiration and were useful for edification of the faithful. Many if not all of the books they excluded are still around to be read. Many like some of the other Gospels are laughable works of fiction. Others are very worthy of reading as they contain wonderful insights, as do many good books that have been written over the last two thousand years.

So as the Church created the Bible as a useful repository of what we should know, containing history, poetry, biography and mystical writings, so the Church itself is the one body that should and does interpret the Bible for us. It can be a very dangerous book in some hands, used to bludgeon other people.

It is about God. We can't take it as literal history, because it isn't. It has to be explained where it gets difficult, by those steeped in knowledge and training. But to return for a moment to taking it literally. If you do, you have enormous problems, how many animals for example did Noah take into the ARK? Was it two or was it seven, depends which part of the Bible you are reading. Do the Gospels all agree, no they don't, anymore than eyewitness accounts of any event ever fully agree. Are these problems, of course not, unless you think it is a literal account of human history. Take the Book of Revelation or as it is also known The Apocalypse. Firstly this a form of literature that was common in the time that it was written it has its rules but we don't write like that anymore. To the Church which brought all these books together it is a beautiful description of The Mass and the Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven with a beautiful poetic vision of future bliss. Read it that way and it makes perfect sense. To those who misuse the Bible, if I can put it as strongly as that, it is a weird and wonderful vision of a future hell on earth. It has been used to support strange ideas from the destruction of the Twin Towers to the rise Hitler. It is a happy hunting ground of eccentrics and conspiratory theorists.

It makes me very sad to see such a wonderful book as the Bible brutally misused. Read it with care, love and under guidance, it is a source of comfort, inspiration and spiritual growth but don't rush at it without understanding or you may fall flat on your face or into real error. It is a precious jewel to treasure and love.