Only a quarter of American Catholics consider the Bible the actual word of God—as opposed to the half of Protestants who do.*5 In fact, Catholics have been fairly reasonable biblical interpreters from the beginning, before modern science even posed any problems, and they’ve stuck with it. Sixteen hundred years ago Saint Augustine instructed, basically, Don’t be stupid. “Shall we say, then,” he wrote about Genesis, “there was such a sense of hearing in that formless and shapeless creation, whatever it was, to which God thus uttered a sound when He said, ‘Let there be light’? Let such
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