The article only demonstrates that many Church bureaucracies have been infiltrated with liberalism. We already knew that.
For over eleven years I have screamed at Catholics and Orthodox who hypocritically believe in dead people coming back to life, in the "real presence," in a man walking on water, in the multiplication of loaves and fishes, in the conception of a human child without male agency, etc., who nevertheless insist that the creation could not have happened as described in Genesis because this would be "contrary to the laws of nature."
However, I have also been surprised by the level of hostility to Catholic supernaturalism. I can understand rejecting miracles of a religion one regards as false, but some Protestant posters take it further than that, evincing a hostility to the supernatural very similar to that of Catholics and Orthodox who reject Genesis. (True, the latter is more frustrating because Catholics and Orthodox claim to accept Genesis and the threat it presents to distinctive Catholic/Orthodox teachings is not at all apparent.)
After much thinking on this subject I have come to the conclusion that this inconsistency with regard to the supernatural is not fundamentally based on doctrine or theology but on sociology. In other words, supernatural phenomena or accepted or rejected primarily because they are "ours" or belong to "those awful people."
I believe that Creationism is so associated with American-style Fundamentalist Protestantism that that it has become associated with "the enemy"--the "bigots" and "KKK members" who live in the trailer parks and backwoods and inhabit a world far different from the urban immigrant environment of Catholics/Orthodox in America.
"We" don't believe in creationism. "They" believe in creationism.
Now at this point Catholics reading this post are doubtless chomping at the bit to post all sorts of explanations as to how the events of Genesis "could not have possibly happened" and that it is for this reason that Catholics reject creationism. But this is not an honest argument for the simple reason that all the miracles and supernatural phenomena which Catholics believe in without question are also, by definition, "contrary to the laws of nature." Thus the inconsistent acceptance of the primacy of natural laws in one case but not in another is simply fallacious. Either the supernatural exists or it doesn't. Either things have happened that "violate" the "laws of nature" or they do not. Period.
"Creation" is a mark of identification. It identifies "others." Thus it is not proper for "us" to believe in it and any who do are automatically suspect of disloyalty. "Whose side are you on--ours or theirs?"
While you will not be able to agree with me, I believe that sociology also plays a role in the universal acceptance of literal, young earth, six day creationism among American-style (white) Fundamentalist Protestants. True, that's "what it says," but many things which the Bible says are interpreted in a multitude of different ways by different Protestants. It is simply highly unusual for a single section of the Bible to be interpreted with such unanimity throughout Protestantism. Again, I believe because it is much more than a theological position--it is an ethno-cultural identifier.
I have mentioned many times through the years the theory of Donal Anthony Foley (I think it's his theory; at least it's on his web site) that a subtle distrust of the Bible entered Catholicism as a reaction to the Protestant Reformation. But one thing I have noticed over the years is how the views of the church fathers are used by these anti-Genesis Catholics/Orthodox: whenever a church father endorses "young earth six day creationism" the reaction is always that people didn't know any better back then. On any other topic the church fathers are considered absolutely authoritative. Protestants are told to submit their beliefs to the judgment of the church fathers. But on the one issue of Genesis 1-11 they don't know what they're talking about because "we didn't know then what we know now." Evidently we haven't learned yet that a male is necessary to conceive a human child or that dead people don't come back to life.
All this simply illustrates that creationism isn't so much a theological position as a sociological ethno-cultural identifier.
I have decided that pointing out the hypocrisy of inconsistently choosing to believe certain portions of the Bible and not others, to accept the historicity of some miracles but not others, will never do any good. It won't do any good because, for all the invocations of "science," science and logic have nothing to do with it. It "isn't Catholic" or "Orthodox" to believe in creationism. And that's what matters. Even though literal creationism was probably the position of at least the great mass of simple Catholics/Orthodox for centuries before it became a badge of identity of anti-Catholic "sects," that was then and this is now. There weren't any anti-Catholic creationist churches then. There are now. Therefore what was once permitted can be permitted no longer and it is useless to appeal to the pre-Protestant centuries of chr*stianity. Just as chilialism was at one time permitted but declared heretical long ago, creationism is now effectively heretical in Catholicism/Orthodoxy. It's strictly "us" vs. "them."
I will close by illustrating this last phenomena with an example from Jewish liturgical history (though one of practice rather than belief, since practice is the important thing in Judaism).
In the days of the Second Temple the kohanim would recite `Aseret HaDibberot (the "Ten Commandments") every morning along with the Shema`. However, eventually a heresy arose that insisted that only the "Ten Commandments" and the Shema` were permanent and the rest of the Torah only temporary and who invoked this daily recitation as evidence. To combat this the Sages removed the Ten Commandments from the daily recitation and forbade their ever being reintroduced (though they are still read every day after prayers by many Jews; we are talking about public ritual recitation here). They could not remove the Shema` because it is a Divine Commandment to recite it twice a day, but (at least this is my understanding, and I ask forgiveness if I am creating any misunderstandings here) they ruled that one should not rise to recite the Shema`. One may remain standing if one is standing already, but one should not rise from a sitting position to recite it. In this way the Sages actually changed the ritual in response to heretics so that something that was once not only permitted but accepted without a thought became forbidden.
It is my belief that the same factor is working in the all-but-universal Catholic/Orthodox rejection of young earth literal six day creationism and the early chapters of Genesis.
I have decided to try to restrain myself from arguing with Catholics/Orthodox about this further. Regardless of how logical, of how harmonious it is with their other beliefs, or how accepted it once may have been among them, this is no longer the case. It is now the mark of "the enemy."
So much for "universal" religions.