How to Read the Bible as a Catholic [How? Don't take indv. verses as "literally true", says Pope]

National Catholic Register ^ | 05/05/2011 | Cindy Wooden

[Colofornian]

How can somebody who imagines words like "spiritualize," "symbolize" and "real" in simple English sentences where they never appear...

You know you've said you've wanted to refocus on the roots of the very article itself. The most basic root is where this article originated -- a message from the Pope to the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC). Has this PBC focused significantly on what they deem as a "spiritual interpretation" of the Bible? Indeed they have, as I show below.

So even though the PBC has done that, you somehow treat my intro of the word "spiritualize" as somehow foreign to this conversation...like you did in posts 310 above (that I've "imagined" them as if they don't appear in the PBC documents)...or that this is such a strange concept to you as you indicated in post 285:

The other side of literal truth is not necessarily "spiritualizing," whatever that may be. As the spirit and Spirit are literal truths I am a little confused by your strange choice of opposition here. (Your Post #285)

Here is an author --one of three (Wilken) -- writing about the PBC in First Things:

The value of the report of the Commission is that it offers a constructive response, one that is firmly rooted in the classical exegetical tradition of the Church, yet at the same time attentive to the intellectual developments of the last two centuries. What the Commission offers is a defense of the "spiritual interpretation" of the Bible. Its arguments are informed, nuanced, and sophisticated, but the very use of the term "spiritual" will provoke controversy. "Spiritual interpretation" seems to suggest that the way forward is to go backward, to abandon the accomplishments of the last two hundred years and to return to a precritical reading of the Bible. From "spiritual interpretation," some will say, it is only a tiny step to medieval allegory and all its evil works.
The Commission is aware of the risks in reintroducing the term "spiritual." For this reason it addresses the most obvious criticism of the "spiritual" sense, namely, that it ignores the historical meaning. Its argument is elegantly simple: spiritual exegesis means interpreting the Bible in light of history, the history of God's revelation in Christ. That is, "spiritual" means "historical," reading the Scriptures through the prism of Christ's death and Resurrection: "The spiritual sense," the Commission writes, "results from setting the text in relation to real facts which are not foreign to it; the paschal event [the death and Resurrection of Christ], in all its inexhaustible richness, which constitutes the summit of the divine intervention in the history of Israel, to the benefit of all mankind."
Source: Interpreting the Bible: Three Views

[Elsie]