Playing With Fire

Inthe eyes of the world the Catholic religion is no longer a supernatural force to be reckoned with. The reason is not hard to find. In the past it spoke for God in the affairs of man. Now, He has been replaced as the great architect of creation by a blind force named by Charles Darwin as "natural selection".

Primarily because of its history and the number of people it claims to represent—the majority of whom no longer practice the faith—the Catholic Church is accorded respect by heads of state in its public functions, but not as a prophet.

Evolution theory replaces the concept of "ex nihilo" Creation. Put another way Creation is producing something from nothing: evolution is changing a preexisting thing into a different thing. In the latter case there is always something to start with: in the case of Creation nothing pre-exists. The two are poles apart.

The Profession of Faith by Catholics (the credo ) is an affirmation of belief that God created heaven and earth from nothing. Belief in evolution theory is a denial of such an affirmation.

Throughout the Catholic world the credo is recited at Sunday Mass. According to statistics, however, the vast majority of Catholics believe in some form of Darwinism, i.e. macroevolution.

How can this blatant contradiction be explained, and, even if it can, is it important?

The answer to the first part of the question should really come from a business psychologist. It concerns packaging a product to attract a buyer.

Here the product is evolution theory and the buyer the public. Whatever their IQ, people are impressed by professionalism. Darwinism is espoused by royalty, Nobel laureates, university professors, leaders in the great professions, the entire media; no representative of the public is exempt. It is taught from the womb to the tomb.

Better to be accused of self-contradiction than to be an opponent of evolution: the reigning paradigm of science.

As to whether the subject is one for which it is worth stepping out of line is a question answered by the quantity and quality of its supporters. When to all appearances the whole Curia appears to see no objection one is reassured, especially by the leading theologians who seem quite able to reconcile Darwinism with the Church’s teaching. The situation is not dissimilar to the Galileo affair. The principal difference is that at the time of Galileo more was known within the Church about cosmology and its biblical connotations than is known about creation today. The former was taught openly. For several generations creation has been a taboo subject. As a result it is not discussed and reliable information is not circulating within Catholic academia.

Nonetheless two distinct camps concerned with evolution exist in the world. On the one hand there is the scientific community claiming evolution to be an established scientific fact, on the other are the predominantly Protestant fundamentalist creationists. Because of their respective preconceptions, both sides are closed to objective truth: evolutionists, because they exclude ex nihilo Creation as an acceptable explanation of origins, and Creationists because they prefer hypothesizing from biblical premises rather than established scientific phenomena. For instance the latter will seek an explanation for a geological formation from the assumption that the rocks resulted from the Genesis Flood. The bottom line of all this is that the two sides are vehemently opposed and scientific truth is the victim. The second part of the question concerned the importance of the subject.

It is clear from the exchanges in this and other traditional Catholic journals that things have gone badly wrong both in the Church and in the world. Is this pure pessimism, or is there truth in it? Could the remark in Hamlet that something is rotten in the state of Denmark be equally applied to the Vatican state today? From the known facts and statistics of the diminished state of the Catholic religion, the answer is a resounding "yes". The thousands flocking to the Vatican square give the impression that all is well. If questioned, however, how many would pass the litmus test of catholicity? How many for instance consider Darwin and Teilhard de Chardin enemies of the Church? Put another way, can they reconcile themselves with human history existing prior to Adam and the big bang? If, as the majority of Catholics, they can, they have, albeit unintentionally, positioned themselves with one foot squarely outside the Church. But what about the others? The clergy who run with the hare of creation and hunt with the hounds of evolution. They proclaim Genesis Creation from the pulpit and allow Darwinism to be taught by their catechists. The word "hypocrite" used by Christ against the Pharisees describes them perfectly.

For a Catholic, the unassailable truth is that the world and the prototypes of all living things in it were created ex nihilo by God alone unaided by secondary causes. Catholics believed this without doubting because it was an article of faith revealed by God and inscribed in the Church’s magisterial teaching. It was traditional teaching even before being promulgated dogmatically by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

There is, therefore, no excuse other than to plead invincible ignorance: a plea difficult to sustain with modern communication technology. Theistic and atheistic believers in evolution face just as formidable a refutation of their evolutionary beliefs. This is because evolution theory is based upon the assumption that rocks and the fossils in them are very old. Now experimental research confirmed by field observation has shown that sedimentary layers of rock formed rapidly: they did not take millions of years to form www.

sedimentology.fr . Thus, twenty-first century natural science, whilst being kept very much a State secret, has destroyed the very foundations of the evolutionary paradigm!

It should now be apparent that Darwinism was a Trojan horse. Once inside the walls of Rome, its cancerspreading troops caused untold havoc.

It was an insidious process. At first Darwin’s theory was strenuously resisted. Pope Leo XIII was an opponent as were the Jesuits of the day. Little by little, as the attractions of evolutionary thinking took hold, the materialist tendency of academia strengthened.

Already to many intellectuals science was leading the way, dazzling the world with technological marvels, like radios and airplanes. These technological achievements seemed to give natural scientists an aura of infallibility to answer questions beyond the proper limits of the natural sciences—such as questions concerning origins. The fact that the answers were hypothetical could be overlooked provided they were "scientific" in nature. Science had become the opium of the people. The ever present anti-clerical materialism of the philosophical elite had been kept at bay by papal loyalty to the Magisterium over the centuries prior to Darwinism.

Even the first Vatican council in 1869/70 stood firm on the question of evolution theory by maintaining the Lateran IV definition of Creation. The natural selection mechanism proposed by Darwin, however, seemed to justify transforming a philosophical hypothesis into a fully-fledged scientific theory almost overnight. It was exactly what the atheists had been looking for ever since the so-called scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries.

From then on, it was just a question of undoing the work that missionaries had been doing since the Apostles were given their divine mandate to go forth and teach. The painstaking work of nearly 20 centuries has been deconstructed in just 5% of that time. If this is thought to be an exaggeration, look at the data.

Darwinism says helium gas evolved into man over billions of years whereas the Church (Lateran IV) dogmatically propounds that the prototype of all things including man was created in an instant from nothing pre-existing ( ex nihilo). One does not have to make fruitless attempts to explain how these conflicting positions can be reconciled with each other. As the ex nihilo one is magisterial teaching, Catholics have no choice. Yet, unbelievably, most of them have rejected the Church’s teaching for an unproven evolutionary h th i I d d t f th b hypothesis. Indeed, most of the members of the Curia have opted for evolution. In the light of Lateran IV’s unambiguous declaration of the Catholic doctrine, it will be worth examining how faith in the traditional doctrine was chipped away.

Let him be anathema ... Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine.

As orthodox as the pope’s words are, the fact remains that evolution was known to be opposed to revealed doctrine. Was it the "spirit of freedom" that allowed this truth not to be mentioned?

Let them [scholars] loyally hold that God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures - and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures. If, then, "apparent contradiction" be met with, every effort should be made to remove it.

Once again the words are beyond criticism, if the evolutionary movement active in Catholic academic circles is overlooked: as for instance the Jerusalem Biblical School already promoting Darwinism. This school in the 1890’s under Fr. Lagrange was using geology to show the "contradiction" between the Genesis Creation account and Darwin’s theory based on long ages. The problem is that if the contradiction is only apparent it is presumably not really contradictory. In his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Leo XIII allowed the caveat "not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires".

Evolutionists propose geology to justify the contradiction. Once the literal sense of Genesis is removed, the interpretation of Genesis of the Church Fathers, upon which the Lateran IV definition of Creation was based, must have been wrong. Yes, of course the modernist argument is used that the Fathers were ignorant about 21st century

Humani Generis

science. However, it only highlights one of the many attempts made over the last century not to face the facts.

According to the Magisterium, the creation of the prototypes of all things was out of nothing; but evolution is always out of some pre-existing thing.

Could there possibly be a more glaring contradiction? It is a clear case of the human "authority" of the scientific community overriding the Church’s infallible teaching authority. St. Pius X was hardly an advocate of evolution theory. As the following words show, however, he was aware that traditional Creation theology and metaphysics, the Church’s principal defense against evolutionary errors, were being abandoned:

With regard to secular studies, let it suffice to recall here what our predecessor [Leo XIII] has admirably said: "Apply yourselves energetically to the study of natural sciences If you carefully search for the cause of those errors

you will find that it lies in the fact that in these days when the natural sciences absorb so much study, the more severe and lofty studies [i.e., theology and related disciplines

have been proportionately neglected--some of them have almost passed into oblivion. [Encyclical "On the Doctrine of the Modernists"]

It is difficult to determine when the dethroning of these "lofty studies" deplored by St. Pius X began, but the process has continued and worsened.

Cardinal Ratzinger told the presidents of the doctrinal commissions in 1989 that traditional creation theology and metaphysics had already disappeared from the theological manuals. How far must one go back to find priests equipped with adequate arms to combat evolution, the deadliest enemy known to the faith? Instead of protection, recent generations of Catholic scholars and seminarians have been given the intellectual tools to adapt themselves and Christ’s teaching to it. The drift from orthodoxy to heterodoxy was relatively slow. The popes mentioned above recognized the opposition of Church teaching to Darwinism, but they seemed unwilling to discuss it. There were also forces abroad, as witnessed by the suppression of traditional creation theology, which insured that several generations of seminarians and university students were denied access to it. The first time the subject of evolution was openly confronted in a magisterial document was in Pius XII’s encyclical

in 1950. He stated that the encyclical concerned errors of thought that "threaten to undermine Catholic doctrine." He wrote:

Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution

These words regarding the nature of evolutionary speculation are, of course, enough to ban it from being taught in Catholic institutions. By using the word "some", however, Pius XII gives the impression that only a minority are concerned – whereas at the time it had already become the majority position. The reality is that he describes the paradigm to which the scientific community as a whole subscribed.

Anyone teaching otherwise does so without authority from the scholastic establishment. Microbes to man evolution may not be explicitly identified as "monistic and pantheistic," but, upon analysis, it will be found to be exactly that. If there is any doubt on this score, examine any natural science text book by a mainstream publisher and it will be found to teach that all living things have evolved through natural processes over aeons of time. Fifty years after Humani generis, all caution on the subject of evolution was abandoned. Pope John Paul II expressed himself clearly with his now famous declaration:

Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical [ Humani Generis ], new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. [...] It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory. And if, at first sight, there are apparent contradictions, in what direction do we look for their solution? We know, in fact, that truth cannot contradict truth (cf. Leo XIII, encyclical Providentissimus Deus ).

Although the statement is not magisterial and therefore not binding upon the faithful, it strongly reflects the thinking of Church leaders. It shows an opening to evolution—a willingness to argue in favor of the evolutionary hypothesis.

Although over history there are examples of ecclesiastics, even Popes, who contradicted prior Magisterial teaching, it has never been on such a virtually Church-wide scale as today.

Even during the Arian heresy there was still a significant number remaining loyal to the Magisterium. This would hardly seem to be the case since Darwin. However, it must be pointed out that Pius XII did forbid the faithful to embrace an opinion

that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.

He continued:

…it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin. [Humani Generis 37]

Such a

caveat

inter alia

, contingent upon mankind ( homosapiens sapiens ) originating in different geological zones from different parents. This reservation indicates, however, the Holy Father’s unwillingness to be more specific.

Although he raises the fundamental objection from revelation of humanity originating from one single man Adam, the encyclical remains silent regarding the metaphysical aspect of ex nihilo creation, i.e. the infallible teaching which precludes Adam having evolutionary ancestors whether man or beast. Such magisterial teaching, if explicitly reaffirmed, would have damned evolution from the outset.

Today, State intervention legislating against the Church’s moral teaching on marriage, abortion and euthanasia is an inevitable consequence of the latter’s apparent tolerance of the error of evolution. Once Church leaders had capitulated on Christ’s foundational teaching on the origin of mankind and the world, the secular authorities had no supernatural obstacle to overcome in imposing its laws in other social matters. The proof is painfully obvious. All entries to the eternal city are blocked by decadence of one form or another.

The fountain of Grace to overcome our temporal problems is on hold until such time as God’s shepherds restore traditional norms. It is a reciprocal matter. To get the grace needed to turn the tables man has to show he loves God. He does this by keeping Christ’s commandments enshrined in the Magisterium. Our Lord says:

John14:23 If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

The bottom line is that by abandoning Christ's teaching on Creation as defined by the Magisterium—as well as the traditional theology and metaphysics needed to defend and explain it— Church leaders have unwittingly aligned themselves with the society in which they live. The latter is broadly materialistic in philosophy—and thereby removed from God's grace. v