David Anthony says : "Just been reading Luke 11v27-28. This along with 8v21 are Jesus prophetically speaking into where Catholicism will go wrong centuries later. A woman declares 'blessed be the mother who gave birth to you' and look at Jesus' reaction. Rather than agree that Mary ought to be revered he says 'blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!'. This strikes right at the heart of where Roman Catholicism has gone wrong."

It is amazing how flagrantly the Roman Catholic system seems (at least to the outsider, anyway) to ignore certain parts of the bible. Few protestants could understand a verse like this any other way than that Jesus is clearly challenging the notion of a special blessedness being attached to his mother by his followers. Yet Catholic doctrine says precisesly what this lady said to Jesus.

I would love to know how my Catholic readers (if I have any!) interpret this verse. I suspect that most would simply skip over it. Of course we can easily sit here smugly at this point, but the challenge that sprung to my mind as I considered this was which verses do I neatly skim over in a similar way? Are there parts of the bible that due to their inconvenience to our theological systems we somehow ignore? New Catholic blogger navarrecatholic seems to think so.

I am not against theological systems, but when we hold onto them so strongly that we blindly ignore parts of the bible that seem to disagree with them then we have turned them into idols.

"...learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another" (1 Cor 4:6)