Thank you. I appreciate your suggestion and am making this change:
In Catholic thought, this has been interpreted to provide room for the concept that the bodies of human beings were created over millions of years through evolution, and that God ultimately provided separately-created souls to human beings. These souls reconnect to God through practicing the sacraments.
(You can see it in context at http://religiousliberty.tv/burden-of-proof-why-american-evangelicals-reject-long-earth-creationism-evolution.html )
I want to be as fair and accurate as possible when describing what people believe.
Michael Peabody
ReligiousLibertyTV is conscientiouisly trying to explain the Catholic doctrine of ensoulment accurately.
The following is the statement worked out by ReligiousLibertyTV:
| "In Catholic thought, this has been interpreted to provide room for the concept that the bodies of human beings were created over millions of years through evolution, and that God ultimately provided separately-created souls to human beings. These souls reconnect to God through practicing the sacraments." |
Is this correct as stated?
Here's the background: The Catholic Church teaches that as soon as fertilization occurs, a new human body has come into existence by natural causal means (the sexual reproductive processes of his parents),--- this tiny body is suitable to receive a rational, spiritual soul --- and immediately the newly conceived human embryo is endowed with a rational, spiritual soul directly created by God without material causes.
Would his apply, too, to the ensoulment of the "newly developed Human sapiens" -- namely, that the bodies of the human race could have come into existence via the naural causal chain of evolution, but as soon as the suitable physical type was complete, God could have endowed the newly-developed species with directly-created, rational, spiritual souls?
And after the catastrophe of sin occurred, all human souls thereafter were deprived of sanctifying grace-- their contact with God ---but this contact can be restored by Christ via the grace of the sacraments?
(I hope I have not made myself totally obscure!!)
I appreciate ReligiousLibertyTV for putting forth the effort to express this intricate doctrine with precision.