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Pope Francis has formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, with a new document explaining a radical change in Vatican policy by insisting that people seeking God’s love and mercy shouldn’t be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” to receive it.
The document from the Vatican’s doctrine office, released Monday, elaborates on a letter Francis sent to two conservative cardinals that was published in October. In that preliminary response, Francis suggested such blessings could be offered under some circumstances if they didn’t confuse the ritual with the sacrament of marriage.
The new document repeats that rationale and elaborates on it, reaffirming that marriage is a lifelong sacrament between a man and a woman. And it stresses that blessings should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union, using set rituals or even with the clothing and gestures that belong in a wedding.
But it says requests for such blessings should not be denied full stop. It offers an extensive definition of the term “blessing” in Scripture to insist that people seeking a transcendent relationship with God and looking for his love and mercy should not be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” as a precondition for receiving it.
We’re using the word “adapted” in different ways. There may be no authoritative bible text but texts which are considered to be bibles don’t change in response to their environment. They may be rewritten or translated but the originals are still the originals.
No I’m using it the same way. What I’m saying is there is no such thing as an “original” Bible text, and even if there was people don’t all agree what those texts should be or which versions of those texts to begin from. And even if they did there’d be no way to perfectly preserve their meaning over the many of thousands of years they developed. And the re interpretations at every step along the way will influence how they get passed down and rewritten. Our current versions of all the many different religious texts are all a part of a long process of evolution, some even with common ancestors. Meanings, connotations, words, passages, entire books, and all sorts of things change at every step for many different reasons. They didn’t just appear suddenly out of nowhere. Many started even as an oral tradition.
I never said there was. And the existence of more than one accepted scripture doesn’t contradict what I said. Each of those scriptures will not adapt to its environment.
Again, we’re talking about different things. You’re talking about long periods of time where human civilisation develops, where scriptures are translated, reinterpreted, etc. into new scriptures. I’m saying that the King James Bible of the 1950s was the same King James Bible of the 1970s and didn’t adapt in response to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The king James Bible of 1611? The version specifically made to emphasize the divine rights and absolute authority of kings? Sure sounds a lot like the text adapting to the times to me. And do you understand the meanings and context of English from the 17th century? The answer is no, no one does perfectly, the meaning of that text to you will be different to someone reading in the 17th century than to you because the language has changed. Experts could make surmises based on other writings at the time. Ultimately though newer versions will need to be made, that will inevitably be bound up in the current religious interpretations and linguistics background of the one doing that. The texts change in response to our interpretation over time, they don’t sit still, it’s impossible. They are all an ongoing evolution that has been and is still happening.
So not the same scriptures then.
New texts being created is not the same thing as changing texts. People don’t go around with a pen and update pages.
They do change, otherwise we’d have the exact same Bible as we did a thousand years ago which isn’t the case. And if you read a Bible from a thousand years ago, it no longer means the same thing as it did to someone from a thousand years ago. If the hill you want to die on is, the shape of the letters on the page of a particular version’s pages stay the same over time. Then fine. But a scripture is made of language which has to change over time. So for any practical purposes the texts are changing over time. Take any cursory examination at the history of religious texts including the Bible and you’ll see morphing over time for tons of different reasons. Politics often involved! And our current interpretations, linguistics, and cultural understandings and contexts will absolutely inform how the Bible and any religious text (or any text for that matter) continues to change over time, just as it always has.
Again, we’re talking about different things.
I’m making the time scales bigger to make the changes more obvious to you. But it’s not something that has a start and stop point and suddenly our current version of the Bible froze in time never to change again. You said new editions don’t count but then said people don’t carry around a pen changing them. But that’s exactly what the new editions are. You can’t just read the old versions because that’s a different language than it is now, you won’t get the same meaning as what that language meant when it was written. You can try and translate to current language, but something will always be lost and changes will have to be made in some regard or other, especially for non current languages, and how you do that and the choices you make in that new edition will depend on many factors, including their own religious interpretations. Even fifty years ago English is a different language, just not as much as a thousand. Our current religious texts are continuing to change over time, just as they always done in the past, for many different reasons including the impermenance of language itself. And that process has happened many many times and is still happening. That’s the point. If the text of scriptures stayed the same over time we wouldn’t have so many endless versions of so many different religious texts, some of which even started out as the same story if you go far back enough. To say, the text of the Bible doesn’t change, is just untrue unless you really stretch the definitions of what that would mean to a meaningless place.
I disagree.
I didn’t say that. As you keep pointing out, there are many different scriptures which are referred to as “the Bible”. Each is a different scripture.