Yes, you heard that correctly.  In a surprise move that demonstrates that even the Catholic Church, with its dirty little secrets, hidden agendas, support for child molestation, and outright bigotry, has realized and admitted that the bible is indeed not accurate or true in its entirety.

As reported in Times Online:

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect "total accuracy" from the Bible.

"We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision," they say in The Gift of Scripture.

And:

The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: "We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters."

They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its "intransigent intolerance" and to warn of "significant dangers" involved in a fundamentalist approach.

"Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others."

Stunning though this admission is, I admire Catholicism for being the first to step forward.  Regardless of whatever immediate effect this has on Christianity as a whole and all religions in general, this is important news.  This is very significant.  It is the first sincere honesty from Christianity in a very long time.  It will ripple throughout the world and will bring, even if brief, a moment of clarity to everyone (non-Christians included).  Its long-term effects on our planet will be staggering, but the most important will not occur for some time.

In more immediate considerations, what does this mean for intelligent design advocates here in the US?  While I won't delve into that too deeply since it will be included in my intelligent design series, it certainly won't help the radical right in pushing religion into public schools under the guise of science.  Even the Catholics admit that the first 11 chapters of Genesis tell two different and conflicting stories of creation.  It certainly won't help that the church found this specific passage to be untrue (from Genesis 2:21-22):

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Uh-oh.  That's a significant part of the equation to have thrown out, wouldn't you say?

I believe we can expect a backlash against this finding, desperate and impulsive, from the rest of the Christian religion.  It will be interesting to see how they attempt to minimize the damage.  It could get very ugly if their history is any indication.