It shows that the Vatican accepts science from the 19th century once and for all.

Which is good.

In another hundred years they'll say: 'Well maybe condoms do stop AIDS...'

And 300 years after that they will apologise to the relatives of the millions who were needlessly infected after following blind dogma over common sense.

In fact, though it's not always acknowledged, ALL sects treat parts of the Bible as being "not true." These Not True sections go by different names: "teaching stories", "inspirational verse", "poetic metaphor", and "stuff we pretend isn't there."

The ostrich (Job 39: 12-18) verses, for example, show poor understanding of the behavior of the real birds and so is declared "metaphor." And it works okay as metaphor but if you take it for biology and go ostrich ranching, you're going to be appalled at how little Yahweh knows about the birds he created.

"Stuff we pretend isn't there" material includes the sacrifice of humans to Yahweh (Num.31:25-29 -- the "heave offering" meant that the sacrificial victim (and note that the verse says humans WERE included) was killed and his or her body parts were waved around up in the air.) and the sacrifice of Jepithah's daughter for a victory (Judges.11:29-40 )

And I haven't seen any fundamentalists kill their disobedient children (they say they believe in the Bible absolutely.

I think they're simply making plain a pracitce that ALL Christians have, and it's a little hypocritical to be shocked over it.