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Denver, Colo., Mar 12, 2018 / 02:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- These biblical commandments probably sound familiar: Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

These might not: Do not shave your beard with a razor. Do not wear garments of mixed fibers. Stone adulterers.

In a new T.V. show on CBS, main character Chip Curry, a film critic for a New York paper and soon-to-be father, sets out to improve his moral life by following every law in the Bible – all 613 of them – as literally as he possibly can, with the help of his ‘God squad’, which includes a rabbi and a Catholic priest.

The premise of the show is based on the 2007 New York Times bestseller A Year of Living Biblically, in which author A.J. Jacobs describes his real-life journey of taking the Bible as literally as possible for a year.

While the results in the show and the book are largely comical and portrayed in good humor (at one point a pebble is chucked at a cheating spouse), following every law ever given by God to the letter is nearly impossible, and not what Catholics are called to do, biblical scholar Andre Villeneuve told CNA.

“Good luck if you really want to try to live the Old Testament completely literally,” Villeneuve, who has a doctorate in biblical studies and teaches at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colo., told CNA.

“It would mean you would have to stone your son if he’s rebellious and doesn’t listen to you. You would have to stone adulterers. You would have to check every time you approach a woman that she’s not on her period because you’re not allowed to touch her,” he said, “a lot of these things that have to do with purity which are really frankly awkward and would be really problematic, if not impossible, to observe.”

The problem with such literal fundamentalism, he said, is that it doesn’t read and interpret the Bible in light of salvation history and in light of the intent of the laws given by God.

“The 613 commandments in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible, they were given to Jews to begin with, so it’s ridiculous for anyone, whether a Catholic or Christian, to say they’re going to live by all of these commandments, because they were never given to Gentiles,” he said.

Some of these commandments still stand, however – most notably, the 10 Commandments. When Christ came and established a new covenant, the apostles decided which laws were still meant to be followed by Christians, and which laws pertained only to Jews, Villeneuve said.

“What the (apostles) did is…they saw the law as divided into three categories – the moral laws, the ceremonial laws, and the judicial laws,” he said. “So what has been considered to be universal and perennial and never to be changed are the moral laws, which are the 10 Commandments and their interpretation.”

The ceremonial laws related to Jewish worship, or the judicial laws related to matters such as what kind of compensation you can expect if your neighbor’s animal comes onto your property, are not binding for Christians.

Catholics can distinguish what laws of the Bible to follow and what it means to follow them by reading the Catechism and following the teachings and traditions of the Church, Villeneuve noted.

“The easy answer … is that today we have the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the third part is called Life in Christ, or the Moral Law. That’s where you can see the Catholic interpretation of the Ten Commandments in light of jesus’ teaching, and the apostles and the teachings of the Church,” he said. “It’s essentially extracting what is universal about the commandments without taking up all the specific commandments that were given to Jews in their times and culture.”

Even the Jews do not follow and interpret all of the 613 commandments in the Hebrew Bible exactly literally, Villeneuve noted.

As an example, he pointed out that the law “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” may seem cruel at face value, but it was never interpreted literally, even by the Jewish people.

“It doesn’t mean literally gouging out an eye, it means what is an eye worth as far as livelihood, quality of life … and therefore your neighbor should compensate you by so much, by paying you back,” he said. “It’s read and interpreted in a way that’s not literal.”

“The bottom line is that the fundamentalist reading of scripture doesn’t work; even the Jews don’t live that way,” Villeneuve added.

“We don’t read scripture in a vacuum, we don’t believe in ‘sola scriptura’ (the Protestant doctrine of ‘scripture alone’), but it’s always read in light of Christian tradition and the teachings of the Church and the magisterium.”

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Father Joseph Cao, assisted by Deacon Clarence McDavid, blesses the parts of the church affected by an Aug. 30 break-in, during a Mass of reparation at Curé d’Ars Catholic Church in Denver, Colo., Sept. 1, 2021. / Jonah McKeown/CNA.

Denver, Colo., Sep 27, 2021 / 14:49 pm (CNA).

Several valuable items belonging to a Denver Catholic parish, including the tabernacle and vessels used for Mass, were recovered late last week, after the church was robbed nearly a month ago. Consecrated hosts taken from the church were not found.

The predominantly African-American parish of Curé d’Ars, located in north Denver, was broken into and robbed overnight Aug. 30-31. All the church’s vessels used for Mass were stolen from the vestry, which the thieves accessed by kicking in a wooden door. 

The church’s tabernacle, containing the Eucharist, was stolen from the sanctuary. 

In a Sept. 25 post on the church’s Facebook page, Deacon Clarence McDavid reported that he had been called in by a detective working the case to look at items recovered from a man Denver Police had recently arrested. 

The recovered items included a number of religious objects including a tabernacle, a ciborium, a communion bowl, and a container used to hold the priest’s hosts.

“These items are clearly ours and have been retrieved from the police department. The person who is in police custody is believed to have broken into several other churches in the area,” McDavid wrote. 

McDavid said the consecrated hosts contained in the tabernacle, however, were still missing and were “obviously dumped.”

The vessels found have now been cleaned up and are at the church, he said, though not every single vessel has been recovered. A larger ciborium is still missing, he noted. 

Speaking with CNA Sept. 27, Deacon McDavid said he wished to thank everyone who, moved by the story of the robbery, reached out with donations, well-wishes, and prayers. 

“It certainly shows how connected we are as a Church. It’s been very moving to see,” he told CNA. 

Denver Police confirmed to CNA that an arrest had been made related to the Cure d’Ars burglary, and named the suspect as thirty-seven-year-old Deshaun Glenn. 

The Cure d’Ars burglary is believed to be a pattern burglary involving other churches, the police department confirmed to CNA. The investigation is ongoing and any charges against Glenn will be determined by the District Attorney. 

The thief, or thieves, also took a laptop used for live streaming Masses, and a sound board used to connect to the church’s microphones. Those items were not among those recovered, and the church has since ordered new ones. 

The assailants also tore out several security cameras throughout the sanctuary, ensuring they would not be caught on video. McDavid said the security alarm company is set soon to replace the three security cameras that were stolen and broken.

The thieves also cut all the copper piping off of the building’s furnaces downstairs and from a stairwell on the building’s exterior, flooding the church basement with water. The church currently has no heating or air conditioning as a result, McDavid said. 

“Work to replace all five furnaces and the air conditioner units will hopefully start within the next two weeks. As reported previously, we need to wait until the necessary supplies are available before the installation can happen. The company that we are working with has escalated the matter as they know that we are without a heating or cooling system,” McDavid wrote in the Facebook post. 

Father Joseph Cao, the church’s pastor, told CNA immediately following the robbery that he has no idea who could have done it. Around 8:40am on Aug. 31, Father Cao discovered that the church’s outer door had been pried open. 

Fr. Cao found an upturned chair and several unconsecrated hosts on the ground when he entered the sanctuary. He then saw that the tabernacle was gone, and found the flood in the basement. 

“As you can imagine, this is very devastating for the entire community,” Deacon McDavid told CNA Sept. 1. 

“We have people who have been here probably since the mid-60s…I’ve been a deacon here for 34 years.”

Curé d’Ars parish dates to 1952, and its name honors St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests who had care of souls in Ars, France, in the nineteenth century.

By the 1970s, thanks mainly to changing demographics in the area, Curé d’Ars served approximately 200 predominantly black families. The current church building was dedicated in 1978 under pastor Fr. Robert Kinkel. The parish later welcomed Charlie Bright as the first African-American deacon in the Denver archdiocese.

The sanctuary was blessed and rededicated as a sacred space Aug. 31.

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