[Cheese]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

The only ones who like to interpret the Bible literaly are fundamentalists and atheists.

Proof please.

The theological basis of the belief, in its simplest form, is that as God is infallible, the Bible, as the Word of God, must also be free from error. A more nuanced restatement of the same idea is that God inspired the authors of the Bible without marginalizing their personal concerns or personalities, and so preserved the texts from error. (See Biblical inspiration).
Roman Catholic teaching holds that the resurrection of Christ affirms his divinity, and Christ in turn appointed the Pope, or the body of Bishops led by the Pope, guided by the Holy Spirit, to offer infallible guidance on questions of faith and morals whose answers are found within the Word of God, comprising both sacred tradition and sacred scripture. But some liberal Roman Catholics do not affirm that the Bible is without error, even when interpreted correctly by the Pope or tradition.

The Catholic position

The position of the Roman Catholic Church on the infallibility of the Bible is contained in Dei Verbum, one of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Council, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on November 18, 1965. It states that "everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit" and that "they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He [God] wanted." (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, n. 11).
Dei Verbum reaffirms a well-known and often-quoted statement by Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus (November 18, 1893), that "...all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely ... at the dictation of the Holy Spirit; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican." (Providentissimus Deus, n. 20).
Nevertheless, the Church does not adopt a literalist approach to inerrancy, but holds that, although every biblical passage is true and inerrant when correctly interpreted, the authority to decide correct interpretation rests with the Church through its magisterium.

Biblical Inerrancy