Posted on 08/28/2004 9:10:46 PM PDT by AskStPhilomena
In what appears to be its latest capitulation to worldly wisdom, the Vatican apparatus now assumes (contrary to the teaching of Pius XII in Humanae Generis) that the evolution of men from animals is a proven fact.
On June 24, 2004 Zenit.org reported that "Vatican Observatory has convoked a range of experts to reflect on a question that at times seems to be forgotten in scientific research: Is there purpose in evolution?" That is, evolution is now assumed to have occurred, and the only debate is over whether it has a purpose. The Vatican called a symposium of experts to meet on June 24-26 to discuss whether evolution has a "purpose."
The Vatican Observatory’s announcement of the symposium states that "in scientific circles, there is a very deep-seated distrust of teleological language, even though researchers may occasionally use the word ‘design’ in an attempt to grapple with the often astonishing adaptive complexes they study … Put crudely, the widely accepted scientific worldview is that human beings or any other product of evolutionary diversification is accidental and, by implication, incidental."
Well, that’s right, of course. And what is the Vatican’s response to this worldview? Read it for yourself, if you can believe it: "The purpose of this symposium is not to dispute this worldview, but to inquire whether it is sufficient and, if it is not, to consider what we need to know and ultimately how we might discover the requisite information with one or more research programs." So, the Vatican does not dispute the view that the emergence of human life is merely incidental to the process of "evolution," whose truth is now apparently assumed.
The symposium (whose results have not yet been published) was asked to address five questions:
-- Can we speak of a universal biochemistry?
-- How do levels of complexity emerge, and are they inevitable?
-- Can we properly define evolutionary constraints?
-- What does convergence [different species displaying the same traits] tell us about evolution?
-- What do we mean by intelligence? Is intelligence an inevitable product of evolution?
Notice that every question presumes that evolution has, in fact, occurred, even though there is abundant evidence showing no gradual transition from one form of life to another (as evolution supposes), but rather the sudden appearance of every basic form in the fossil record, which is precisely what one would expect to see if God directly and specially created each kind, as the Book of Genesis recounts.
In Humani Generis Pope Pius XII warned that "the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now 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, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own."
Moreover, Pope Leo XIII taught in his encyclical letter Arcane Divinae Sapientiae (Christian Marriage) that Adam and Eve, and they only, are our first parents and that Eve was created from Adam's body:
We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated, and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time.
The Church says that no one may doubt these things. Yet how can these things be reconciled with the view that Adam and Eve (and who knows how many other humans) "evolved" from apes and that Eve was not formed from the body of Adam, as the Vatican now seems to suppose, in calling for a symposium to discuss the "purpose" of evolution.
So the question must be asked: Do those who are in charge of the Vatican’s approach to "modern science" still believe in what the Church teaches concerning the origin of the human race? Or are we witnessing yet another sign of the great apostasy in the Catholic Church beginning at the top, which was predicted by the Third Secret of Fatima?
***If you believe in literal creation, your fundamentalism falls apart.***
How so?
Annual growth rings? Like did the Earth go zooming around the Sun really fast in pre-deluge times?
Or do you mean swinging from this tree again?
***Like did the Earth go zooming around the Sun really fast in pre-deluge times?***
Have you ever heard of Progeria?
It's the disease that causes children to age rapidly and have the body of a 70 year old at age 20.
Point being that you are assuming that things are continuing along just as the have been from the beginning.
Just like all intelleget people once thought that the speed of light was a constant...
The original meaning of "soul" was that which gives life to what is not living. From thence ("anima"), we get the words, "animal" and "animate."
St. Thomas believed that there were three types of souls, plant, animal, and rational. Each type of soul was built on the previous type of soul. Hence, organisms which are animals first had a plant soul. To St. Thomas, it was the gift of the rational soul which makes human beings in the divine image.
But note the formulation: Take dirt, add to it a vegetative soul, and you get a plant. Add to that plant an animal soul, and it is an animal. Add to that animal a rational soul, and it is human. (Aquinas argued that what was "natural" was the design of God!)
But did this all happen in six days? Depends if you insist that six days, by definition, last only 144 hours. I do not.
>>To me, it all boils down to this: If the earth is millions of centuries old, that means that man evolved.
If man evolved, it necessarily follows that somewhere in there, man did not have an immortal soul - which would mean that "our immortal souls evolved" - which is an obvious oxymoron.<<
No, it does not. The substance which was our bodies may have been formed from dirt into the form of an animal, at which point our rational souls were breathed into one such animal and it became man.
Evolution explains the material aspect of our existence, only.
Not what I was referring to, but it is a great explanation!
>>Saint Augustine's (354 - 430) ~ The City of God<<
I do not cite Aquinas to prove through Tradition that evolution is Catholic doctrine. I only present him to show that evolution, and the belief in an old Earth are not entirely alien to Catholic tradition, and they are not merely the invention of athiests. I am quite aware that others within the Church did believe that creation lasted only six days.
Please note, however, from its context, the purpose Aristotle had in his assertions: he was pointing out how pagan mythologies are incompatible with scripture.
There is something sublime about watching a debate on evolution between a megatherium and someone who is Stubborn. :^D
Stubborn, do you get why this is funny? Do you know what a megatherium is (most people don't)?
And when science proves man can not have an eternal soul, and your Church agrees, you’ll say you trust the Holy Spirit will continue to work through the Magisterium.
And when science proves there can not be an all knowing, and all loving God, and your Church agrees, you’ll say you trust the Holy Spirit will continue to work through the Magisterium.
And when science proves that God is simply pure energy, and it would be impossible for energy to produce a human Son, that would become a Spiritual being that could make a visible return to this earth, and your Church agrees, you will again say that you trust the Holy Spirit will continue to work through the Magisterium.
This is a perfect example of what happens when the Word of God takes 2nd place to tradition.
What will you say when science tells you your Eucharist bread does not turn into Christ body, or that Mary couldn’t have become pregnant with Jesus with out the aid of a human man?
Let me guess, you’ll say you trust the Holy Spirit will continue to work through the Magisterium.
JH :’)
Thanks... that STILL wasn't what I was looking for, but it actually attacks the subject much more directly!
The two creation stories in Genesis (Genesis 1 and Genesis 3) cannot be taken as literal descriptions of creation. These accounts appear to be re-workings of older creation myths of that part of the world. But what Genesis says that is very important is this: We are not to worship the creation or the things in it -- We are to worship God the creator. For example, Genesis refers to the Sun and Moon as the "greater light" and the "lesser light" in the sky. The writer is deliberately avoiding the proper nouns because the proper nouns for the Sun and Moon were names of gods.
Another important feature of Genesis is that it shows God as caring for the people he has created, and it shows God being concerned with the moral and ethical behavior of his people. This is utterly unlike the surrounding pagan religions, where capricious gods needed to be propitiated with sacrifices, often cruel (including human sacrifice).
So, understood in this way, I believe in Genesis: we were created by a loving God who expects us to live as moral and ethical people obedient to his law and will. I would agree with you that a loving God would not create us without immortal souls. But I disagree with you that Genesis provides a scientific description of creation. If your faith depends on Biblical literalism/innerancy, your faith is on very shaky grounds.
Some evangelical fundamentalist apologetics is filled with often contrived attempts to reconcile inconsistencies and contradictions in scripture. The most contrived apologetics is creation science. But this is all unnecessary: we can read the Bible, especially the New Testament, and we certainly have enough to rely on concerning Christ and concerning salvation.
For example, try reading the Passion accounts in parallel. Timings and the like are not exactly the same. Should we be troubled by these minor contradictions? No! They indicate we have not one single account of the Passion, repeated four times, but instead four different accounts. Four different sources of information concerning this most important of historical events.
We know that Paul affirmed the reality of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15), writing before 60 AD. Paul cannot have written that without having been in contact with the early Christian community he became a member of only several years after the resurrection. Paul is clearly repeating what he had been taught, just a few years after Christ's crucifixion.
There is no need to indulge in the magical thinking of Biblical inerrancy to base a strong faith on the scriptures. To teach inerrancy instead of the authority of the scriptures has no other effect but to scare intelligent people away from Christianity. Try reading athiest polemics one day, you'll see how they argue. They say things like "Acts says the number of believers was 140, at the same time Paul says that Jesus appeared to 500 brothers all at once -- that's a contradiction that makes Paul an unreliable witness." Obviously, they have decided that because there are (minor) inconsistencies in the New Testament, the New Testament is unworthy of belief. The athiests think this way because they have been taught to think that way by rigid Biblical literalists! (Most of the athiests you'll read are former fundamentalists.) My own faith was destroyed by this when I was in my late teens. I didn't recover my faith until my late 20s, when I became aware that Christianity is not bibliolatry.
I'm not familiar with any apparition from 1978.
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