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Hermeneutics are not mysterious. They are accessible to anyone who is willing to put in the effort (as we are commanded) to learn what God’s Word means.

Indeed, the rant against hermeneutics is one of the strangest episodes I've ever witnessed here. Not THE strangest. This is FR after all. But strange nonetheless. Hermeneutics is just the science/art of figuring out what a text means. We use hermeneutical techniques every time we read an FR post. The Supreme Court is a merry band of interpreters all trying to apply their preferred hermeneutic to the text of the Constitution. You can critique them for the defects of their respective hermeneutic techniques, but they have no choice but to try and interpret what they are reading. It's how all reading happens. The difference comes in being able to back away from personal biases and use a consistent method of interpretation that forces one to be honest with the text. In constitutional law that would be the conflict between the so-called living Constitution versus original intent versus strict constructionism, etc.

Likewise, one can come to any text with prejudices. If the object is to find out what was really said by the author, one needs a way to put those prejudices in perspective. We can never be entirely objective, and the first rule of hermeneutics is to admit that. Once we know there are mines in the ground, we can try to detect them before they detonate. But going in guns a-blazing as if we have a perfect, automatic knowledge of whatever we read is an invitation to disaster. So we set ourselves some rules. We ask questions. When was it written. Why? Who was the author? Who is the audience? What is the general subject matter. What is the operating vocabulary of that period. What does the grammar tell us. What does the history tell us. What do other documents from the same time period bearing on the same subject tell us. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Yes, I know that sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but the only reason for avoiding it is an unfailing belief in subjective autonomy (self as pope). It's true. Rejection of objective methods for understanding textual authorities lead to the opposite standard, despotic subjectivism, which in turn is the root of moral relativism. This is exactly where the "living Constitution" methodology (if it can be called that) resides. We come to the text as Marxists, and reinvent the meaning according to Marx, or we come to the text as anarchists or hedonists or whatever, and reinvent the text accordingly. We do so supposedly in the name of "keeping up with social evolution," but really its nothing but lawlessness, which is devolution.

Peace,

SR

Hermeneutics is just the science/art of figuring out what a text means

I have nothing against that and I have done that work when necessary. I am making fun of Protestant of losing the textual argument and then saying something like "study some hermeneutics". If S.t Paul, for example, makes a remark that reveals that he, Paul, thinks that the bread and wine of the Last Supper is the body of Christ sacrificed for us, then that is not the case for pulling rabbits out of a hat. It is plain text. He says so in the middle of an epistle about Christian brotherhood. That is another fact. So instead of ignoring the verses you-all THINK are out of context as if St. Paul did not write them at all, and calling that sleight-of-hand "hermeneutics", perhaps you-all should learn the other lesson: that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ because of the Holy Mystery of the Eucharist. No hermeneutics are necessary to figure that.

mines in the ground

That is the thing. The Holy Scripture is written by Catholics for Catholics. To the Protestants it is a minefield indeed.