Duterte might have been ‘absent’ during Catechism class – bishop

Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David (File photo by RICHARD A. REYES / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

President Rodrigo Duterte might have been “absent” when Catechism was being discussed in class since his interpretation of the Bible was not in line with the Catholic faith, according to Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David.

David said he was “sure that [Duterte’s interpretation] was not how religious education teachers of Ateneo and San Beda teach Catechism.”

“What we were criticizing was his own interpretation of the Bible,” David said in a statement written in Filipino and posted on Facebook.

“Maybe he was absent when his teacher explained it to him,” David said. “The Adam and Eve story of the Book of Genesis is in the Bible, not only of the Catholics, but also in the Jewish bible, Protestant bible, Orthodox bible and Iglesia ni Cristo bible,” he stresed.

The creation story in the Bible, David said, had different interpretations, explaining that Duterte’s interpretation was “sort of fundamentalist.”

“[The interpretation] was far from what the puzzle contained in Genesis Chapter 3 intended to suggest,” the bishop said.

“It was about a free man created by God who has the ability to use his freedom to do evil,” he said. “The story is a conundrum. The writer knows that no snake can actually speak in real life. The language is figurative.”

According to the bishop, nothing in the Bible states that the Lord created the world as perfect and that He sent the snake to tempt Eve.

“In what bible did the President read that? The sin isn’t just about eating a forbidden fruit that caused malice. Nothing in the Bible also states that the fruit was an apple,” David said.

“The story was about the desire of man to ‘become like God’ or to ‘act like God’ [as stated in] Genesis 3:4-5,” he said. /atm