Below is this article in its entirety. It states how the Vatican has recently pinned the Protestant mess on fundamentalist hermeneutics. I find this very interesting considering the fact that I have had to experience much of the Protestant fundamental hermeneutic in my own personal journey. Most Protestants understand the Bible as some sort of magical rule book that can be understood outside of the greater context of the Church (see this post). This fundamentalist perception of the Bible only causes division within the Church (see this post). When I left the Roman Church as a young man, I was pulled into the Calvary Chapel (baptistic) movement in which this individualistic hermeneutic was taught. The Bible, to them, is to be understood in terms of how it speaks to you on a pietistic level; very literally leading one to think that, for instance, the end of the world is eminent. I think that the best way to describe the hermeneutic of Catholic Church (English, Roman and Eastern Church) in a quick snapshot is through the terms of the following categories:

1. Ecclesiology (Covenant and Church)

2. Sacrament

3. Spirituality (law, grace, forgiveness)

4. Eschatology

It is not until one understands how the Bible describes what God is doing with his Covenant people that one can then place themselves in the scheme of things. To apply the Bible to one’s life is to apply one’s life to God’s Covenant people. After all, isn’t that what God is currently up to? drawing his people to form and finish his Kingdom? Many fundamentalists do indeed attempt to study the Bible through a grid such as this, but again, it is attempted through a literalistic approach with no real concept of Sacrament, Covenant and eschatological freedom. One is bound to the current happenings in the newspaper when digesting the Scriptures as well as the overzealous desire to be exactly like the Church of Acts.

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VATICAN CITY (RNS) A tendency to read the Bible through the lens of “fundamentalism” threatens to undermine Catholics’ understanding of Scripture, the Vatican said Thursday (June 12).

The statement appears in the agenda for the next general assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will bring prelates to Rome in October to consider the “importance of the Word of God in the life and mission of the Church.”

The 86-page document released Thursday emphasizes the need to increase Catholics’ knowledge and understanding of Scripture. While encouraging the faithful to read the Bible either alone or in study groups, it stresses that all interpretation must be in light of church teaching.

“Fundamentalism takes refuge in literalism and refuses to take into consideration the historical dimension of biblical revelation,” the document states.

“This kind of interpretation is winning more and more adherents … even among Catholics,” the agenda’s authors add, quoting an earlier Vatican document. “It demands an unshakable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as the only source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research.”

Fundamentalism in its “extreme form” exists in “the sects,” the document states.

The term “sects” refers to “marginal” Protestant churches that do not participate in dialogue with Rome, explained the Synod’s general secretary, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, at a press conference to present the document.

Eterovic noted that representatives of several non-Catholic Christian churches will attend the October meeting.