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I think you are mistating your case. One can believe in literal 6 day of creation or one can choose not too, as Caatholic as that ultimately is a scientific question not a theological one. The theological issue Whether the Eucharist is truly the sacrament of Christ’s body of Blood and thus partaking of the Eucharist is nothing short of communion with God, that is a theological position that the Fathers were consistent on.

Sir (or Madam), you are wrong--dead wrong. And the position which you are taking, though you have probably never thought very deeply about it, is hypocritical.

Transubstantiation is every bit as scientifically impossible as a creation from nothing in six days some 5770 or so years ago. One is no more possible than the other. And science has just as much right to pontificate (pardon the expression) on transubstantiation as it does on cosmogony.

Similarly, I put it to you that the resurrection of a dead person back to life, the conception and birth of a human child without a father (including the miraculous preservation of the mother's hymen), the multiplication of loaves and fishes, the transformation of water into wine, are all also scientifically impossible. Given the allegedly eternal, immutable, absolutely uniform mechanistic laws of the physical universe none of these things could have possibly happened, and science has the same right to say so as it does to deny the "miraculous" creation of everything from nothing in a short period a few millenia ago. They are all equally scientifically impossible. Your tortured logic in excusing "simple child-like faith" on these other issues while defending the right of science to overrule revelation as to the facts of cosmogony is simply illogical, irrational, and constitutes a breath-taking example of a double-standard. You have absolutely no legitimate logical grounds on which to defer to science with regard to the latter while screaming "miracle!" with regard to the former. None whatsoever.

What then is the cause of this bizarre inconsistency? I will tell you exactly what it is: it's sociology. It's the simple fact that transubstantiation is "our miracle" and six day young earth creationism is for "those stupid inbred morons in the trailer parks." Six Day Young Earth Creationism is marked forever as "the belief of the enemy" and suspect for that very reason. Just as Fundamentalist Protestants interpret everything in the bible literally except for the words of consecration (precisely because of its association with hated "priestcraft") Catholics have acquired an absolute allergy to the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the Book of Jonah, and other such parts of the Bible. It is a test of ethno-cultural loyalty to attack creationism (or at least defend the possibility of evolutionism and the claims of higher criticism) to prove one isn't "one of them." Do you honestly think that it's that difficult to figure out?

Let me tell you a little story. I joined the Catholic Church during the catechumenate of '83-'84 and I tried my best to stay loyal for six years. I spent hours at the library reading the Catholic Encyclopedia trying to understand the faith to which I had committed myself because there was a whole bunch of stuff that isn't taught to catechumens any more. I felt like was being "disloyal" because my conscience wouldn't allow me to accept evolution, higher criticism, or even the allowance of them, yet I had become convinced that the Catholic Church was the "one true religion" to which it was my duty to be loyal. Do you have any idea what kind of mental anguish that caused? Of course you don't!

I was basically forced out of the Catholic Church twenty-one years ago because there was an unbridgeable gulf between not only my conscience but my entire identity and the Catholic religion. What kind of religion baptizes totem poles and teaches its children that Mary made the sun dance but which promotes evolution and higher criticism and contempt for those who will not surrender to those abominable concepts???

It makes no difference to me how much Catholic FReepers thunder with righteous indignation about a "one true church" that is so liberal that it condemns Fundamentalism as "fanaticism." I don't care about threats of "hell" (assuming Catholics even believe in "hell" any more; that could be another part of the ancient faith that got thrown out because of its association with "white trash culture").

My experience is that the Catholic Church and Catholic culture despises me and everyone like me simply because we grew up with Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark instead of some medieval pagan superstition that later got "baptized."

To conclude as I began, your rejection of young earth creationism and total Biblical inerrancy in the face of their acceptance by most of the Church fathers (because they were "men of their time") constitutes a double-standard so hideous and obvious that only sociological reasons could be the cause of it. Otherwise you would recognize the hypocrisy of the position you propound.

re: What kind of religion ....teaches its children that Mary made the sun dance but which promotes evolution and higher criticism and contempt for those who will not surrender to those abominable concepts???

The modernist/progressivist controlled “New Church” teaches that Fatima was not important, a private revelation which one can accept or reject. It is the “New Church” that promotes evolution and liberal criticism of scripture.

As you know, Robert Sungenis, the Catholic, has written extensively on the subjects of which you complain. However, even you have fallen for the progressivist tactic of discrediting him by labeling him an anti-semite.

You left a modernist/Progressivist/liberal “New Church” for Fundamentalism. I feel sorry for you, that you never saw the real Church. I was out of the church for like 30 years, but I came back directly to tradition(except for like 3 weeks), having never attended the Novus ordo during all those years, except for funerals and weddings. Deo Gratia.