By Dr. Robert Sungenis
Are you sitting down? I suggest you do so because you’re in for a real shocker. A youth catechism, known popularly as “YouCat,” which is claimed to be modeled from the official 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, contains dubious, suggestive and sometimes scandalous teachings on issues such as homosexuality, contraception, euthanasia, evolution, philosophy, and last but not least, biblical inerrancy.1
YouCat was released by the Vatican on April 4, 2011 and was translated in more than a dozen l
anguages. Under direction from Pope Benedict, YouCat will make its big splash on World Youth Day in Madrid on August 16-21, 2011.
YouCat contains a preface by Pope Benedict XVI, but its editor-in-chief is Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, who once served as the secretary of the editorial team that compiled the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church. In reference to YouCat, Schönborn stated: “The Pope was interested in the project from the beginning. It was his own initiative to honor us with a Preface that he himself wrote….I am always amazed by the high level of the Pope’s understanding of the new generations’ way of thinking and by his capacity to discuss in depth and to lead young people to a deeper sense of the faith and of friendship with Jesus.”
YouCat was originally the brainchild of the Austrian Bishop’s Conference. With its German and Swiss counterparts, YouCat received Vatican approval for the original German edition from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by William Cardinal Levada.
Contraception:
YouCat had problems right from the starting gate. In an article by Hilary White on April 13, 2011, the Vatican admitted the original YouCat had several errors concerning faith and morals.2 For example, question 420 in the Italian language edition stated:
“Q. Puo una coppia christiana fare ricorso ai metodi anticoncezionali?”
(Translation: “Can a Christian couple have recourse to contraceptive methods?”)
“A. Si, una coppia cristiana puo e deve essere responsabile nella sua facolta di poter donare la vita.”
(Translation: “Yes, a Christian couple can and should be responsible in its faculty of being able to give life”).
Because this particular translation suggests that a Catholic can use artificial methods of contraception, the Italian publisher, Nuova Citta, announced it would be recalling the book and correcting it. Prior to that, copies of the book handed out at the April press conference had the section on contraception blocked out, and included an insert saying that the Catholic Church promotes Natural Family Planning (NFP). The English language version states that Catholic couples are entitled to plan the size of their families by “regulating conception” and that to do so the Church “recommends” Natural Family Planning.
Although promoting artificial contraception is certainly heretical, the correction of the Italian publisher and the wording of the English version leave YouCat with a gaping hole in its teaching, since it now appears as if the Church promotes NFP simply because it is an acceptable means of birth control. In other words, it breeds the same contraceptive mentality the world cherishes but chooses a Church-sanctioned method to do so. Such a mentality was not the intent of Pope Paul VI in Humane Vitae, which, although it stipulated that married couples can space births by refraining from relations during fertile periods, they can do so only on two conditions: (a) if one of the spouses has a “physical or psychological condition” or (b) there are “external circumstances” that prohibit bearing a child.3 Too often today Catholic couples interpret Humane Vitae as a permission to practice birth control, albeit naturally, whenever they desire, without having any specific reason to do so other than their own preference not to have child. Humane Vitae does not teach that Catholic couples can “plan out the size of their family.” It teaches that Catholic spouses are to be always open to producing children, unless there is a clear and present danger in doing so.4 Consequently, it appears YouCat is teaching a whole generation of Catholics that NFP is the “Catholic way” of practicing birth control much as it has taught them that an annulment is the “Catholic way” of allowing remarriage after divorce.
Euthanasia
As for the issue of Euthanasia, Hilary White writes:
At a Vatican press conference today [April 13, 2011], officials admitted that a book intended to teach young people the details of the Catholic faith, which will be handed out at upcoming World Youth Day in Spain, contains several errors, with particularly egregious mistakes on life and family issues.
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, president of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference and a director of the project, told assembled journalists that the Italian edition of the book, “YouCat,” contains errors on the Church’s teachings on euthanasia, as well as contraception.
In answer to question 382, the Italian book says, “In so-called passive euthanasia someone helps another person in the dying process and thereby obeys the commandment ‘Love your neighbor.’”
Cardinal Schönborn also said that the French edition contains errors about Catholic teaching on the “value” of other religions according to the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
But instead of having the YouCat recalled and quarantined, White reports that Schönborn said that “the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will create a pool of theological experts to examine the text and will publish all the errors in a pamphlet that will contain corrections.”
Homosexuality
The most egregious parts of YouCat are those which address the issues of sexuality, specifically homosexuality. The bottom line is, YouCat does not treat homosexuality as even a serious condition, much less a sinful state of existence. But YouCat’s teaching is subtle. Note these words in Paragraph 65:
There is no man on earth who is not descended from a union of a mother and father. Therefore it is a painful experience for many homosexually oriented people that they do not feel erotically attracted to the opposite sex and necessarily miss out on the physical fruitfulness of the union between man and woman according to human nature and the divine order of creation. Nevertheless, God often leads souls to himself along unusual paths: A lack, a loss, or a wound—if accepted and affirmed—can become a springboard for throwing oneself into the arms of God.
Implied in the words “homosexually oriented” is the idea that homosexuality is a congenital condition, not a learned behavior or a perverse life-style one decides to enter. By implying that homosexuality is “a lack, a loss or a wound” and not a decision by a mature adult to transgress God’s laws (as Scripture and Tradition say it is), YouCat seeks to elicit pity for homosexuals due to the fact that they are simply “born that way,” as it were, and thus denied the opportunity of sexual “union” that other people possess. YouCat further implies that if the homosexually oriented person “accepts and affirms” this congenital condition, he can do so knowing that God can make good of it because He “lead souls to himself along unusual paths.” Instead of telling the homosexual that his sexual tendencies are an outgrowth of his uncontrolled concupiscence and that he should pray to God to have the power to eradicate this state of mind, he is told, more or less, to accept his condition and hold God to blame for making him homosexually oriented. His only consolation is that God will make up for it by using the condition to lead him back to God. In effect, homosexuality is treated no different than if YouCat were talking about a mongoloid baby, since, similar to YouCat’s understanding of the homosexual, the deformed child can also use his condition as a “springboard for throwing one into the arms of God.” In the end, YouCat neither calls homosexuality a sin, nor does it say that homosexual inclinations are perverse and need to be remedied.
This distorted view of homosexuality begs the question as to how such a weak treatment of such a historically perverse sin could appear in a Catholic catechism. As noted above, YouCat was overseen by Cardinal Schӧnborn, who was also the editor of the 1992 universal Catechism of the Catholic Church. It may be no coincidence that before the Catechism was published, it is rumored that Cardinal Ratzinger was forced to make various changes to the Catechism’s teaching on homosexuality, since the original draft made it appear that homosexuality was inborn and unchangeable. That Cardinal Ratzinger was compelled to edit Cardinal Schönborn’s understanding of homosexuality is suggested by the fact that Schönborn has gone on record stating one of the most perverse understandings of homosexual partnerships to come out of the mouth of a Catholic. In May 2010, The Tablet interviewed Schönborn in which he stated the following:
“We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships” and “A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous.”5
Besides the blatant endorsement of homosexuality as something other than a sin, Schönborn seems to be advocating the position that a “quality” relationship is one in which two men commit to having sexual relations with each other as opposed to tramping themselves around in the homosexual market and sleeping with numerous men. The former Schönborn deems as “stable” and therefore worthy of being accepted by the Church, while the latter is “unstable” and unacceptable. All one can do is shake his head in disbelief that a cardinal of the Catholic Church would come to this point in his view of humanity. This is the very person who was editor-in-chief of YouCat, and perhaps now we can understand why it has such a kid-glove treatment of homosexuality.
Masturbation:
What young man hasn’t struggled with the temptation of masturbation? Unfortunately, he is going to struggle even more if he uses YouCat to be his guide. In paragraph 409 it states: “The Church does not demonize masturbation, but she warns against trivializing it.” One can surmise that this language was chosen so as to cut a middle road, neither condemning nor condoning masturbation. The teenager who reads this equivocal pabulum is not going to know whether he is permitted to masturbate or not. Or, some clever teenager will convince himself that he can masturbate because it’s wrong to “demonize” masturbation, but he won’t masturbate too much because that would be “trivializing” it. Moreover, if there is a connection to YouCat’s weak teaching on masturbation with its weak teaching on homosexuality, perhaps the reason is that masturbation is a favorite practice of homosexuals.
The truth is, masturbation, as the Church has always taught, is wrong.6 On a subject of this nature, a Catholic catechism needs to be clear and decisive – masturbation is wrong and young men should not be engaging in it, at all. If they do, it is a sin (barring some mitigating factor of maturity of conscience); and if he continues to masturbate it will not only harm him spiritually but also psychologically.
Scripture
As dubious as YouCat’s teaching is in certain places, it makes Scripture’s teaching in certain places even more dubious. For example, Question 15 states: “How can Sacred Scripture be ‘truth’ if not everything in it is right?” Directly against the numerous official and infallible Catholic teachings on the total inerrancy of Scripture, YouCat implies that Scripture simply cannot be trusted. A whole generation of young people will now view the Bible as an assortment of historical mistakes and ignorant concepts, despite the fact that the Holy Spirit was supposed to have inspired it all.
Even the qualification YouCat gives doesn’t help much:
The Bible is not meant to convey precise historical information or scientific findings to us. Moreover the authors were children of their time. They shared the cultural ideas of the world around them and often were also dominated by its errors. Nevertheless, everything that man must know about God and the way of his salvation is found with infallible certainty in Sacred Scripture.
Here YouCat appeals to the old canard: “The Bible is not a science textbook.” I’m glad the Bible isn’t a science textbook. If it was anything like today’s science books, it would be changing its contents every ten years.
Yes, the Bible is not a science book, but when it touches upon science the Bible is just as accurate as it is on matters of salvation, and the Church has never said otherwise (at least in its official and binding statements on the issue as opposed to the many and varied opinions that are proffered today by some high-ranking clerics).
It is particularly egregious for YouCat to say that the biblical authors were “dominated by the errors” of the culture around them. If that were the case, why weren’t they dominated by the same “errors of the culture” when they were writing about the “way of salvation”? For example, maybe Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead. Maybe it was just the “error of the culture” to believe that he did. Maybe Jesus really wasn’t God. It was just the “error of the culture” which was steeped in wishing for a divine Messiah that made the people think that way. If the biblical writers can make errors in science and history why can’t they make errors in salvation? Where does the Bible or the Church say that the biblical writers are only protected from error when they speak about salvation? For that matter, where does either the Bible or the Church say that only certain parts of the Bible are for the purpose of salvation? The answer to both questions is: nowhere. It has all been made up out of thin air by modern biblical scholarship which is bent on promoting its unproven scientific theories as fact.
Evolution
In paragraph 42 YouCat asks: “Can someone accept the theory of evolution and still believe in the Creator?” YouCat answers:
Yes. Although it is a different kind of knowledge, faith is open to the findings and hypotheses of the sciences. A Christian can accept the theory of evolution as a helpful explanatory model, provided he does not fall into the heresy of evolutionism, which views man as the random product of biological processes.
It is good that YouCat says a Christian should be “open to the findings and hypothesis of the sciences.” True science and true theology will never conflict. But the problem is this: the domain of science YouCat doesn’t lead the Christian to examine consists of convincing evidence that evolution has very little, if any, scientific support. For the last 50 years Christian scientists have given the world a viable and convincing scientific alternative to evolutionary science, but YouCat, as well as the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church (both with Cardinal Schӧnborn leading the way) fail to even mention these scientific advances. Would a typical YouCat youth know of any of these alternatives? Probably not, since he has been taught since childhood that: (a) the only science available is that which supports evolution, and (b) there is no science that shows evolution to be a dubious hypothesis.
In fact, YouCat goes out of its way to ridicule alternative answers to evolution, as, for example, when it says that creationists “naively take biblical data literally (for example, to calculate the earth’s age, they cite the six days of work in Genesis 1).” Perhaps Cardinal Schӧnborn forgot what the Pontifical Biblical Commission said in 1909 under Pope St. Pius X when the question of how to interpret the “days” of Genesis was posed:
Question VIII: Whether in that designation and distinction of six days, with which the account of the first chapter of Genesis deals, the word (“days”) can be assumed either in its proper sense as a natural day, or in the improper sense of a certain space of time; and whether with regard to such a question there can be free disagreement among exegetes?
Reply: In the affirmative.
So there we have it. The 1909 PBC does not say that it is “naïve to take biblical data literally” in regards to the six days of Genesis. It says that one can interpret it as a literal six day period or a period of a certain space of time. Cardinal Schӧnborn once again finds himself at great odds with Catholic tradition. In the end, all the talk about “not taking the bible literally” is a smoke screen for those who, like Cardinal Schӧnborn, have already accepted evolution as the correct scientific position and who wish to indoctrinate today’s youth to the same. Of the two views of the “days” of Genesis permitted by the PBC, our tradition has stated that we should opt for the literal unless science can “prove” that the literal is impossible.7 Moreover, our Catholic tradition has had no problem interpreting the Bible literally. The Church proved this early on when it interpreted the words “This is my body” to be the real body and blood of Christ when the rest of the world was trying to make it a figure of speech.
Uniformitarianism
Hand in hand with YouCat’s push for evolution is the idea that because God brought the world into existence by evolution, all that we see today, including all the bad things, are also the result of evolution. This is strongly implied in YouCat’s paragraph 51:
God created the world to be good, but it is not yet complete. In violent upheavals and painful processes it is being shaped and moved toward its final perfection. That may be a better way to classify what the Church calls physical evil, for example, a birth defect, or a natural catastrophe. Moral evilsin contrast come about through the misuse of freedom in the world.
The ghost of Teilhard de Chardin is alive and well in YouCat. Notice the absence of Original Sin as the cause for why “birth defects” entered the world. YouCat doesn’t teach the traditional Catholic doctrine that God created the world good such that it had no imperfections before Adam and Eve sinned. Rather, it uses the infinitive (“to be good”) to suggest that God merely intends to make the world good and will do so through a long process of evolution; and it is obviously not good now because evolution “is not yet complete.” YouCat also ignores traditional doctrine by teaching that “physical evil” is the result of God deciding not to create the world completely good. It ignores the fact that evil is the direct result of man’s decision to go against the laws of God, after which God was required by justice to administer punishment (e.g., birth defects and natural catastrophes).
There are many other problems in YouCat, but the above are some of the more egregious errors and departures from traditional Catholic doctrine. Overall, YouCat is one of the most farcical efforts at catechesis of youth that the Catholic Church has ever produced. Perhaps the problems in YouCat originated when, as Hilary White reports, it “was written by a committee of 50 unnamed ‘young people’ and theologians,” of whom, to this very day, few know who they are.
1 We are indebted to the recent paper circulated by Maximos and Anastasios which alerted us to these issues in YouCat. Our paper raises additional concerns against the material in YouCat as well as important facts behind the scenes.
2http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/youth-catechism-also-wrong-on-euthanasia-other-religions-vatican-admits/
3 “If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained.” (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html)
4 Humane Vitae further states: “From this it follows that they are not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide what is the right course to follow. On the contrary, they are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to the will of God the Creator. The very nature of marriage and its use makes His will clear, while the constant teaching of the Church spells it out….The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life….Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will….Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means….Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.”
5 The Tablet, May 8, 2010.
6 “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action” (CCC, para. 2352).
7 “But if they are able to establish their doctrine with proofs that cannot be denied, we must show that this statement of Scripture…is not opposed to the truth of their conclusions” (St. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, Book 2, Ch. 9, para 21); “The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: ‘All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, para. 116).
Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D., is the founder and president of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, a non-profit corporation. He holds advanced degrees in Theology and Religious Studies from George Washington University, Westminster Theological Seminary, and Calamus International University. Robert is presently seeking a second doctorate in religious studies at Maryvale Institute/Liverpool Hope University.
He is the author of many books and articles on religion, politics, science and culture, including: “The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 5, The First Epistle to the Corinthians”; “The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 4, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-11″; “The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 3, The Epistles of Romans and James”; “The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 2, The Apocalypse of St. John”; “The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 1, The Gospel According to St. Matthew”; “Not By Bread Alone: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for the Eucharistic Sacrifice”; “How Can I Get to Heaven: The Bible’s Teaching on Salvation Made Easy to Understand”; “Not By Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification”; “Not By Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura”. He has appeared on radio and television, including programs on CNN, the BBC and EWTN. He has authored all the chapters and appendices for Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, except for Chapter 10.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
“a sinful state of existence”
Homosexual activity is a sin. The inclination is a disorder, not a sin.
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Dear Dr. Sungenis,
Do not fret. Your fears are groundless. With such a ridiculous name as, “YouCat,”* no youngster with half a brain between his or her ears will even bother opening it.
(And he/she probably knows how to masturbate, anyway.)
*Some crumbly old twit trying to do “Cool” and “Trendy.” Reckons Toad
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It says worrying things about those compiling this book that they should allow so many crucial errors of translation to go uncorrected into the final version.
That said, the rest of this article is little more than dog-whistling.
In his section on homosexuality, Sungenis ignores the word “wound”, which suggests a thing inflicted after birth (i.e. Not an inherent trait), as that doesn’t fit his argument, which seems to be that people with same-sex attraction should just stop it.
His section on the Bible and the teaching of the magisterium on those parts that are to be read as fact and those parts to be read as metaphor is risible: the passage that he highlights is a paraphrase of John Paul II; he is attempting to offset one Papal teaching against another and failing. His citation of a dubium from the 1900s which, even then, clearly states that the Church does not authoritatively teach his brand of literalism and that a non-literalistic approach to scripture is valid and licit, really doesn’t help his case at all.
His section on evolution is just plain, wrong-headed junk (can I remind us all of Pope Benedict’s teaching that evolution is more than a theory?), the minority of non-specialist scientists who do not give some credit to evolution has no credibility beyond some very strange people in the US. No doubt Roger will love it.
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But the intention is for a generation of religious vocations to be brought up and learn their Faith through this catechism.
But the real issue is this proclavity of seeing everything in material/flesh terms. Nothing of the spirit/soul. There are sicknesses of the Body and of the Spirit. There is the death of the Body BUT the Eternal Death is that of the Soul.
Why no mention of the spiritual sicknesses? The Lord’s prayer expressly includes Temptations. Self is man’s problem and this is where the demands of the flesh come from. Why pander to these demands?
The seven deadly sins especially Luxuria covers this pandering and pampering to the flesh and destruction of the soul.
“..Luxuria, Gula, Avaritia, Acedia, Ira, Invidia, and Superbia – in Latin. In English they are Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride. One interesting thing about these ‘deadly sins’ is that they all relate to things that all human beings need to do..”
Now curious how the demands of materialism especially sex are covered by these seven deadly sins.
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I am not qualified to respond to the other criticisms but the criticism of YouCat’s treatment of evolution is clearly contrary to Catholic teaching. The original article appeared on the website “Faithful Answers”. While that sight has a lot of good information, it also supports scientific creationism which is not what the CCC or the Magisterium teaches. I am traveling and do not have time to respond in detail but I will quote a lengthy response from Ignatian Press on this issue that was raised in another site (See answer to Question 3 in this link http://tinyurl.com/bp2a3xe, which is also produced below).
a. To say that God created the world to be good is not to deny he created the world good. So I don’t understand your objection here.
b. You say, “This wacky explanation of the state of the world doesn’t even mention original sin but introduces this un-Catholic notion that the world is ‘evolving’ towards perfection.” I’ll set aside your use of the word “wacky”. Your comments sound as if you understand YOUCAT #51 to be claiming that the world is evolving or improving in every way or moving in most ways toward perfection. But (1) the Q & A doesn’t use the word “evolving”, contrary to what one might infer from your statement above. And in fact (2) Q & A #51 isn’t talking about some all-encompassing evolution. It’s clear from the context that the Q & A addresses the issue of physical evil and moral evil, in their respective roles, and God’s permitting them as part of a process leading the world, as YOUCAT puts it, “towards its final perfection”, a process that involves allowing evil in order to bring about some particular good. Here is the whole thing:
If God is all-knowing and all-powerful,why does he not prevent evil?
“God allows evil only so as to make something better result from it” (St. Thomas Aquinas). [309–314, 324]
Evil in the world is an obscure and painful mystery. Even the Crucified asked his Father, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). Much about it is incomprehensible. One thing, though, we know for sure: God is 100 percent good. He can never be the originator of something evil. God created the world to be good, but it is not yet complete. In violent upheavals and painful processes it is being shaped and moved toward its final perfection. That may be a better way to classify what the Church calls physical evil, for example, a birth defect, or a natural catastrophe. Moral evils, in contrast, come about through the misuse of freedom in the world. “Hell on earth”—child soldiers, suicide bombings, concentration camps—is usually man-made. The decisive question is therefore not,“How can anyone believe in a good God when there is so much evil?” but rather, “How could a person with a heart and understanding endure life in this world if God did not exist?” Christ’s death and Resurrection show us that evil did not have the first word, nor does it have the last. God made absolute good result from the worst evil. We believe that in the Last Judgment God will put an end to all injustice. In the life of the world to come, evil no longer has any place and suffering ends. 40, 286–287
YOUCAT paraphrases the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) no. 310: “But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.”
You criticize YOUCAT #51 for not mentioning original sin. Of course that particular Q & A’s purpose is not to discuss original sin, which is addressed elsewhere (##68-70). But notice that neither does the explanation of CCC no. 310, on which #51 draws, refer to original sin. Does that make the CCC “wacky” or doctrinally faulty?
c. You go on at some length criticizing the idea that the world in general is getting closer to perfection, but since that is not what YOUCAT is addressing, I don’t have anything to say in response to your comments, except to ask you to go back and re-read the Q & A. I think you’ll see it’s talking about something else entirely from what you supposed.
d. You write:
There is also a slam on people (they are “naive”) who take the Bible at face value on the creation of the world taking six days even though the Pontifical Bible Commission has stated that the Church doesn’t take a position on the literal or literary view of the creation story.
Here is what YOUCAT says (#42):
Can someone accept the theory of evolution and still believe in the Creator?
Yes. Although it is a different kind of knowledge, faith is open to the findings and hypotheses of the sciences. [282–289]
Theology has no scientific competence, and natural science has no theological competence. Natural science cannot dogmatically rule out the possibility that there are purposeful processes in creation; conversely, faith cannot define specifically how these processes take place in the course of nature’s development. A Christian can accept the theory of evolution as a helpful explanatory model, provided he does not fall into the heresy of evolutionism, which views man as the random product of biological processes. Evolution presupposes the existence of something that can develop. The theory says nothing about where this “something” came from. Furthermore, questions about the being, essence, dignity, mission, meaning, and wherefore of the world and man cannot be answered in biological terms. Just as “evolutionism” oversteps a boundary on the one side, so does creationism on the other. Creationists naively take biblical data literally (for example, to calculate the earth’s age, they cite the six days of work in Genesis 1).
I’m not sure it amounts to a “slam” of creationists to describe them as YOUCAT does. But in any case it’s not a doctrinally faulty statement to assert that creationists “naively take the biblical data literally (for example, to calculate the earth’s age, they cite the six days of work in Genesis 1)”. Although the CCC doesn’t describe as “naive” those who hold literalist views of the six days of creation, it does characterize those days as symbolic: “God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity, and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work’, concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day.” Clearly, this is how the CCC thinks the creation account of Gen 1 should be read. Is that doctrinally faulty?
When in his general audience of Jan 29, 1986 Pope John Paul II said of the Genesis account of creation, “Taken as a whole, the image of the world is delineated by the pen of the inspired author with the characteristics of the cosmologies of the time”, was the Pope doctrinally flawed? The cosmologies of that time were creation myths. That would seem even more provocative than describing the sis days of creation as “symbolic”. Nevertheless, I am glad to see that Aquinas and More carried God Father and Creator, the volume of John Paul II’s audiences that contains the aforementioned talk.
When Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger preached the homilies that eventually became the book In the Beginning (an non-Ignatius Press book I am glad Aquinas and More sells), he presented the Gen 1 account of a six-day creation as symbolic. Was he doctrinally flawed for doing so?
In Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn’s Chance or Purpose?, he distinguishes “creationism”, which he associates with biblical fundamentalism, and the doctrine of creation. Regarding the creationist idea of a young earth, he writes, “It is nonsense to maintain that the world is only six thousand years old” (p. 38) and he accuses of creationism of subjecting the Christian faith to mockery. Is Cardinal Schoenborn on this matter doctrinally faulty? I am pleased to see that his book is sold by Aquinas and More.
The United States Catholic Catechismfor Adults states, “This debate [over evolution] is often fueled, on the one hand, by ‘creationist’ or fundamentalist biblical opinions that do not take into account the literary forms of the Bible and the primary theological purposes of its teaching, and on the other hand by the use of theories of evolution to support a materialist and anti-religious interpretation of the world and humanity” (p. 61). That’s similar to what YOUCAT says on the subject of creationism. What’s more, the same catechism describes the days of creation as symbolic and the sequence of creation in Gen 1 as “poetic and theological”, “not literal or scientific” (p. 55). Aquinas and More also distributes this catechism.
Was Father Stanley Jaki doctrinally flawed when he wrote, “Biblical literalism taken for a source of scientific information is making the rounds even nowadays among creationists who would merit Huxley’s description of biblioaters. They merely bring discrdit to the Bible as they pile grist upon grist on the mills of latter-day Huxleys, such as Hoyle, Sagan, Gould, and others. The fallacies of creationism go deeper than fallacious reasonings about scientific data. Where creationism is fundamentally at fault is its resting its case on a theological faultline: the biblicism constructed by the Reformers”? Was Father Jaki doctrinally faulty when he went on to say, “Biblicalism almost succeeded in bringing irreparable discredit to the Counter-Reformers. This happened as they showed tio much readiness to meet Lutherans and Calvinists on their own chosen ground, that is, biblical literalism”? These quotes are taken from Jaki’s Bible and Science, a book which also strongly criticizes a literalist interpretation of Gen 1’s six days of creation and a book I am happy to see that Aquinas and More sells.
There are other works and authors I could quote, including others from Aquinas and More’s inventory but you get the point. I don’t think that these works and authors are doctrinally flawed because they reject the six-day view of creation or because they imply that those who hold such a view are, at best, incorrectly interpreting the Bible, if not making a mockery of biblical teaching.
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Well now the criticism falls to a young earth. The Bible says a day is a thousand years to God. Lets understand that this Earth isn’t paradise and Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden. Our Lord remember was taken from a garden to suffer His Passion! No this Earth is a place of the Cross and free will. It isn’t Paradise!
“..The scientists will tell you of many things that have happened, they will speak of millions of years. I tell you, My children, this earth is but an infant. I gave it a history so that you, in your free will, could decide whether to follow Me and My Ways, or the ways of this world. Look to My Scriptures. When I created this world, the first man and the first woman were Adam and Eve. There was nothing and no one before them. Evolution is something that science uses, to try to explain what they cannot understand and you, My children, have believed them. I will reveal much to you upon this earth that will confuse science. They will find many things within this next time that will confuse them. They will begin to realise how wrong they have been but still, they will try to explain in order to justify themselves ..”
The key is Science and understanding. Yesterdays Science has been superceded by a revision with today’s Science. So before citing the Faith and Truth can’t be at variance consider what you mean by Scientific Facts! The Bible is interlocked between its books so that cherry picking from one part causes conflicts with other parts. Garabandal in 60’s expressly pointed out the road to perdition and cited priests and Bishops. 19th September 1846 and La Salette that warned of religious misdeamours and the grave danger of Satan and Rome.
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I must agree with Mr. Ockham. The psuedo-science of Protestant backed Fundamentalist Creationism is not the teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Likewise the teaching of the YouCat on Scriptural interpretation, including the statement of the inspired human authors of Scripture has long been the teaching the Magisterium. Catholics are not Fundamentalists and never have been. Scripture has very little if anything to say of science. The Psalms and books of the Old Testament are riddled with a view of the physical cosmos that is based on a geocentric view of the universe with the Heavens pictured as a shell between the waters above and the waters below the ancient Jewish perception of how the universe was constructed. We see today that is not the way God has chosen to construct the universe.
NFP does indeed allow a married couple to choose to limit the time and number of children they conceive through the practice of discipline and communication. It is a method of cooperating with God’s providence that is approved by the Magisterium of the Church. To fault the YouCat for teaching it is to fault the Magisterium of the Church for approving of it. Like the somewhat snide remark about annulments, a practice which is ancient, though unevenly administered in the past (only the rich could afford annulments though most of history) likewise indicates a “I know better than the Church” attitude.
The only point on which I totally agree is one which the Magisterium has not yet spoken on, but which many prelates have accepted without scientific or medical proof, which is the characterization of homosexuality as a condition or state rather than a decision. There has been no scientifically based evidence that homosexual inclinations are biologically based. That does not preclude a genetic or biological component to homosexual inclinations, but neither does anything support it. For many years homosexual inclinations were treated medically as psychological problems, and they might very well be that, rather than merely acts of will. However except in the most extreme cases psychological factors alone are not enough to excuse the performance of sinful acts, because only in the most extreme cases does it negate the three conditions necessary for a sin to be a mortal sin. Usually even those with psychological problems understand that what they are doing is wrong and commit the act through an act of will, rather than a truly uncontrollable urge.
So it being that this subject is not settled science the YouCat has no business taking a stand on it’s causes. It should limit itself to stating that it is wrong to hate those who engage in homosexual acts, or to punish those dealing with un-acted upon homosexual urges and clearly state that homosexual acts are a mortal sin.
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Roger
Why should I credit your quotation (from source or sources unknown) above the teaching authority of the Magisterium?
The fact that your quotation misquotes scripture doesn’t add to its credibility.
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What arrogance and presumption to talk as if this generation has or had exclusive knowledge of the Cosmos and Science. Do you think that Adam was Created as club waving grunting primitive savage?
The Great Pyramid at Giza is tangible evidence of superior knowledge.
“..Speed of Earth around the Sun: The Pyramid Inch times 10^8 = the speed of the earth around the sun, circa 2600 BCE ..”
Thats a calculation of a primative cosmology is it?
http://www.timstouse.com/EarthHistory/Egypt/GreatPyramid/interestingfacts.htm
What irritates is this materialist worldly view. There is nothing here of the spirit.
Now lets look at this supposed geocentric view shall we? Because the Man God was Incarnated and Crucified on Earth doesn’t this make the Earth rather more than just a lump of rock spinning in Space? The sacred Blood spilled on the Earth? Its True Our Lord will not find Faith on this earth. Modern Science trying to explain Sin away as Pyschology because it can find nothing biological. How about the deadly Sins?
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Raven your argument is against the Gospels and the magisterium of the Church that confirmed the canonical books and of course St Jerome.
Luke 3:38
Who was of Henos, who was of Seth, who was of Adam, who was of God.
1 Timothy 2:13
For Adam was first formed; then Eve.
Adam Created by God!
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Roger, you are absolutely correct in stating that it is arrogance to presume that this generation has accurate knowledge of cosmology, biology, physics or any other area of science. While current theories in these areas may have the least holes in explaining the data, we can almost be certain that they will be found to be incorrect by later generations. No one is disputing this point.
However, what the Magisterium has always done is to promote the eternal truths laid out in Holy Scripture and Divine Revelation (e.g. Creation, Original Sin, Incarnation, Resurrection, etc.) and applied them within the current culture and knowledge base. St. Augustine and the prior Church Fathers developed Christian theology in light of the Platonic Greek philosophy of the period. St. Thomas Aquinas developed scholastic theology in light of the rediscovery of Aristotle of his period.
The explosion of scientific knowledge of the last 100 years presents a universe that is much greater (and hence a God that is much greater) than previous generations have imagined. The core theological truths of Christianity need to address this knowledge. That is why I am such a big fan of Pope Benedict XVI. His writings and teachings did exactly that. My favorites are “Introduction to Christianity” and “In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of Creation and the Fall.”
Peace,
W. Ockham
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William
I am well aware of the explosion of scientific theories in the last 100 years. The world wars really stimulated much of what we use and see today. I am equally aware of the debt that science owes to nazism space exploration, medicine and crematoria. At the same time as this explosion of materialism we have the decline in the Faith. In other words the explosion has been in material NOT in the spiritual.
This impetus for a material Paradise on Earth will be found to be doomed. A Material Utopia and guess what occupies a celibrate magisterium SEX. What of spiritual value has come out of Rome since the Dogma of the Assumption? Look the smoke of Satan entered the Church, a list of masons in the senior curia was published (and not denied) in the 60’s. So we watch what comes out of Rome!! If you love the Faith question!
Our Lord is restoring all things that Man lost but over time. The Triumph Of Immaculate will be through the Cross not through science. I have no doubt but in the appropriate time Man will delight in and explore the Universe.
The Universe? Well do you not think it is teeming with Life? This talk of over population? There are more stars in Our Galaxy than there has ever been men!
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Roger, you raise a lot of points, but I will address them briefly.
1. We agree on the big issues, namely that humanity will be saved through union with Christ.
2. I agree with you that one of the main dangers of modern society is scientific materialism (which is also accompanied by relativism). You highlight that WWII and Nazism and Communism are the end results of these philosophies and yet they persist. The Church is uniquely positioned to address them and part of its problem is that it has often been slow to do so, despite the best efforts of its leaders, especially the last three pontiffs.
3. As for some of your other comments, I already mentioned I agree with you on excess materialism, but I am also sure that you would not advocate eliminating a focus on the material world as that leads to the oldest heresies of gnosticism :-). Similarly, I agree it is good to question the Magisterium, but you are sounding a lot like Martin Luther in saying nothing good has come from the Magisterium in the last 150 years :-).
Peace in Christ,
W. Ockham
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Roger
The Church has always revised its view of scripture in the light of scientific discoveries: this isn’t a new thing, just look at St Robert Bellarmine’s correspondence with Galileo, for example.
And as you quotation from a dubium points out, we are free to consider non-literalistic interpretations of sacred scripture; we are not bound by the dead hand of nineteenth century Protestantism in our reading of Holy Writ.
You are dangerously close to the error of Luther in preferring your personal reading of scripture to that of the Church.
God created Adam, but we are not bound to treat the account of Adam’s creation in Genesis as anything more than a metaphorical account of that creation.
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Raven
The express reason for the Passion of Our Lord was because of the Original Sin of Adam. Holy week is a step by step re enactment of the new Adam and Eve suffering God’s Anathema on Adam and Eve. The whole of Christianity requires One singular Man called Adam and one singular woman called Eve. If there were other Men or woman then they the Fall wouldn’t apply to the whole human race would it?
More you render the Dogma of the immaculate Conception as relative. The Immaculate Conception is singular and her Son is singular. You cannot separate Adam;s Creation from the Immaculate Conception. More you cannot separate the Passion from created Adam and the Eucharist. Remove Adam and the Catholic Church has no rational for its existence does it?
As for sacred scripture I presume you are not aquainted with the Douay Fathers (Oxford scholars in exile) and their notes evidencing the beliefs of the Doctors and Fathers of the Church.
I was unaware that the Protestant Bible included these notes!
This Earth exists as a place of Free Will to choose our Eternity.
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William
The Bible the Old lies in the New and the New lies in the Old. Any tampering with the Old impacts on the New and any tampering with the New impacts on the Old. Alpha and Omega thats Genesis and Apocalpyse.
You know the teaching of the Fathers that if any part is doubtful the whole is doubtful.
The Transfiguration Moses and Elias. The tradition cited by the Fathers of the Church is that Moses is the author of the first five books (Torah). Therefor the significance of Moses appearing immediately prior to Our Lords Passion ties Genesis into the Passion.
St Johns Gospel begins with a confirmation off the Word as creator “..[3] All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made…” Genesis (Moses), then names St John The Baptist (the spirit of Elias). The Transfiguration also has present St John the writer of the last book and a Gospel. Present to is St Peter and the first Bishop of Jerusalem James.
So the question is if Moses is the witness of the begining and St John the witness of the End and Elias the precursor and the Gospel expressly says that ” All things were made by him.” The problem is as you know is that the Protestants were invited by the magisterium to input into the novus rites. Thatsd like asking Luther to contribute isit not?
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If Genesis is the begining the Apocalypse mirrors this for when Time is no more.
The significance of the End of time and the begining of Time boxes Creation into a definative measurable period.
Apocalypse 4:11
Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour, and power: because thou hast created all things; and for thy will they were, and have been created.
Apocalypse 10:6
And he swore by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things which are therein; and the earth, and the things which are in it; and the sea, and the things which are therein: That time shall be no longer.
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Science has again changed its goal posts!
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/organisms-originated-space-154844488.html
“..Scientists believe they have found the first evidence of life arriving to Earth from space, which could “completely change our view of biology and evolution”.
“..Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here.”
Lets see so Adam didn’t originate on Earth?
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Roger
The problem with your long string of posts is that you are shadow-boxing instead of addressing the argument.
The story of the Fall simply does not fall to bits just because God decided to create us in a more complex way than that suggested in Genesis (can I remind you that Genesis tells us only that “…the Lord God formed man of the slime of the Earth”, it does not tell us *how* he did it, and it was only when Adam was formed that God “breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul”).
You write of the Douay Fathers, but their exegesis was based on their understanding at the time; I’ve already pointed out to you that the Church has always made sure that it’s teaching on matters of scripture fully reflects our understanding of the world (c.f. my reference to St Robert Bellarmine).
Your insistence upon their reading as the sole and unique way to understand the Bible is fine in its own way, but it is not the way of the Church (and brings to mind the insistence of some Protestants on the King James Bible as the perfect version of the Bible, despite the many errors of the translators).
The problem with your methodology is that you are turning the Douay Fathers’ work into eisigesis (reading a meaning into a text) instead of exegesis (reading the meaning of a text).
And the news story that you’ve highlighted is reporting a hypothesis put about by a scientist re-hashing an idea that Sir Fred Hoyle was touting in the 1950s; it’s hardly representative of our current understanding of the origins of life.
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“Lets see so Adam didn’t originate on Earth?”
That’s not what the dreaded “masonic scientists” are saying. Roger.
If we call the first fully human being Adam, it is possible – they say – that the elements that went into establishing life on Planet Earth, and from which Adam evolved – came from elsewhere in infinity.
What difference that makes to the price of fish, or the Syrian War, is another thing.
Scientific goal posts are made to be movable as we learn more stuff, and things change.
It is necessary that they be so.
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..And there is no reason why good Catholics should not believe this “life from space” theory, if they like.
Perhaps God chose to populate the world in that roundabout way.
(Does Toad believe that? No.)
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Raven thank you by the way and alos Toad for critique.
The Douay-Rheims version was declared Authentic by the Council of Trent. Which means that it was approved by the Magisterium does it not? For 1900 years if we take in the Challoner versionit was acceptable. But today it isn’t ! As we all know the Biblical readings and Gospel is expressly set out in the liturgical feasts. These selected by the magisterium as being appropriate to teach on specific days.
Ash Wednesday “Remember, Man is dust, and unto dust you shall return.” This is important because we must look at what Our Lord does with the Body of Man. Well we have healing off course. But in Lazarus case we have a decaying dead corrupt body of Adam resurrected. Of course Our Lords Body was Sinless.
So the resurrection of the dead will be the dust recreated into the man and united with the soul. That is clay(dust) notice! Also significantly no mention is made of any kind of evolving. In fact the church has believed in the Creation for 1900 years. If God can take dust and recreate the body of a man and his works are perfect why would he use random causality (with discards?) ? Th Resurrection of the daed from dust is man recreated anew is it not?
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Toad I have nodoubt that the Heavens are teaming with Life. Also teaming with food. God is of the living not the dead. But Adam’s Fall has brought Sin into this Creation and so Life in the Heavens must suffer under Adam’s Sin. I do not limit God’s Creativity. Fatima and the Sun (which science can’t explain). The point is of course that science has theories one of which is Evolution. To date Evolution (Earth source only ) requires millions of years. But finding complex Life from outside of the Earth means these eons of years aren’t required! Far from being proven its just a theory.
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“If God can take dust and recreate the body of a man and his works are perfect why would he use random causality (with discards?) ? “
The key word here is, of course , “If.”
But I quite agree with Roger in this case, as usual.
And if God chose Fatima to tell a few hundred thousand Portuguese some significant information, why didn’t He choose to tell it to the entire word at the same time?
Absurd question, I know.
Because He didn’t, that’s why.
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Roger
The first part of the Douay Rheims version was published a full 20 years after the Council of Trent closed and the enduring part of that version has been the text, not the commentary (which was absent from most editions I the Challoner version that we are familiar with).
Times move on, in scripture as in everything else: the Gospel writers quoted the Septatuagint, but St Jerome preferred the Hebrew OT (which is why the OT quotations in the Vulgate are variants on the texts in the Vulgate OT). Was Jerome wrong or were the Evangelists? Or were both right in their time and in their contexts?
And this nonsense about “life from space” is just a misreading of the science: the report is that a team of researchers have found large fragments of cells high up in the atmosphere and they are making hay from the fact that we don’t know how they came to be up there (therefore they must be from space, runs their argument). We’ll have to wait to find out if there is another mechanism that could have resulted in the displacement of these sorts of organic structures into the upper atmosphere before giving this discovery any more credence.
And quoting a metaphor in the NT that references a metaphor in the OT doesn’t really help or improve your case.
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“If God can take dust and recreate the body of a man and his works are perfect why would he use random causality (with discards?) ? “
Bit presumptuous of you, Roger, to tell God how he should go about the work of creation.
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Raven Our Lord waited 4 days before he raised Lazarus from the dead.
Lazarus born in Original Sin
[23] Jesus saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again.
[24] Martha saith to him: I know that he shall rise again, in the resurrection at the last day.
[25] Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live:
[26] And every one that liveth, and believeth in me, shall not die for ever. Believest thou this?
[39] Jesus saith: Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith to him: Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he is now of four days.
[40] Jesus saith to her: Did not I say to thee, that if thou believe, thou shalt see the glory of God?
So we have Dust actually rotting Flesh. Wouldn’t have mattered if Lazarus had been dust because the Glory of God Re Created the putrid rotting Flesh into the living Lazarus.
Where is the difference Raven between a recreated body and a created body?
The presumption Raven is to deny Creation. The born blind see. The feeding of the 5000. What is matter in the hands of the Creator? To announce a miracle and see the Sun move, the red sea part, manna fall from the Heavens, a burning bush that is not consumed, Bilocution, Incorrupt bodies centuries Old but the greatest is Conversion.
The presumption is to deny God’s Creation of Inorganic Dust into a living Man. Because that is what the resurrection of the dead means doesn’t it?
Dr Crick (of DNA) thought that Life came from space “..Crick found it impossible that the complexity of DNA could have evolved naturally..”
But Raven man has Free Will and we live by Faith. The question is will Our Lord find Faith on Earth
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Raven the resurrection of the dead will be the recreation of Man from Dust won’t it? Or do you think that the resurrection of the dead is a metaphor?
Back to your objection over gnosticism.
William
What was the purpose of Our Lords fasting for 40 days? Did nothing for the flesh and much for the spirit. So what is more important the flesh or the life of the soul? Why is fasting and prayer so important in dealing with demons? Do you not think that fasting and prayer might be the appropriate response to homosexuality, contraception and euthanasis?
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Roger
These are very disappointing posts that you’re setting out here: you are, once again, making arguments against positions that I haven’t taken.
Tell me precisely what it is in the story of Lazarus that you think that I doubt.
More specifically, how can Lazarus’ resurrection be a disproof of any particular reading of Genesis?
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Raven
You doubt the Creation of Adam from inorganic Dust (Earth).
The Resurrection is the Dust Re Created into Man and then revivified by a living spirit.
Just as Adam was Created.
Lazarus demonstrates God and the resurrected dead!
God created Adam out of Dust (Earth) and breathed into him a living soul/spirit.
Lazarus was Dust his body buried and returned to Dust (dead and buried)
Our Lord RECREATED Lazarus body! That is Lazarus as a child of Adam (born in Original Sin) and returned his living soul/spirit into that reconstituted Body.
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Of course life came from space. That’s where we live. In space.
In outer space, actually.
And the planet is composed of organic materials just as we are. Dust, Clay, Mud, whatever is not “inorganic,” any more than we are.
More importantly, William Ockham quotes:
“God allows evil only so as to make something better result from it” (St. Thomas Aquinas). [309–314, 324]”
It is naive to ask what “better” somethings result from Cancer, Leprosy, Senile Dementia, Facebook and The Holocaust.
So Toad will ask it. Because he sure can’t see any.
More crosses for us to cheerfully bear, possibly?
Don’t we have enough already?
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Roger
Everything and every person is made of atoms that were produced during the decay of a star: Adam and everyone else has been created from that material.
You’re disagreeing with me about method, not substance.
And your reading of the story of Lazarus is inaccurate: Our Lord wakes Lazarus, He does not create him anew.
The entire problem with your reading if scripture is that it places a scandalous limit on the power of God: you are, in effect, saying that God can only work in ways that you can conceptualise.
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Raven,
You are correct to call Roger out on this.
Lazarus was resuscitated, not resurrected, from his tomb by Our Lord. Lazarus later died again.
The successful resuscitation after four days, rather than less than three minutes, was a miracle proving to the witnesses that Our Lord was no mere conjurer or ordinary physician.
There is an infinite distance between resuscitation and resurrection.
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No Burrito and Raven
This modernism that seeks to play down the miracles is a sign of the lack of Faith in this generation. Lazarus was dead just as Our Lord was dead on the Cross. Witnessed by St John note!!
Four days dead and buried. He was called out of the tomb in the presence of the Pharisees and Saducees (who didn’t believe in the Resurrection). The Gospel is very clear here. Lazarus was buried and entombed. Flesh rotting, stinking! He died from a sickness. His body was prepared for the Tomb and he was buried.
That rotting diseased flesh was resurrected (re created) from the grave. Is this a metaphor?
John 11
[11] These things he said; and after that he said to them: Lazarus our friend sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.
[12] His disciples therefore said: Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. [13] But Jesus spoke of his death; and they thought that he spoke of the repose of sleep.
[14] Then therefore Jesus said to them plainly: Lazarus is dead.
John 12
[17] The multitude therefore gave testimony, which was with him, when he called Lazarus out of the grave, and raised him from the dead.
Our Lord is True God and True Man
He who can make the Sun Dance doesn’t need random casuality to make Man in his own image.
St John is very clear in the begining was the Word All things were made by Him (whatever that means? it certainly isn’t constrained by the material world).
Lazarus was called out of his tomb by a WORD from the Word!
[44] And presently he that had been dead came forth, bound feet and hands with winding bands; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said to them: Loose him, and let him go.
Toad what is Earth? Dust but this commonality BUT Man is more than Flesh and Blood.
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“Toad what is Earth? Dust but this commonality BUT Man is more than Flesh and Blood.”
True, Roger. But then so are dogs.
They have emotions – curiosity, fear, jealousy, anger, joy, maybe even love.
And they are nicer, better-behaved, (even the mad ones) and better looking than people.
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Toad I love St Francis and especially how he didn’t underate animals. On the contrary he treated them as intelligent creatures of God. I see in animals God drawing Love out of Man. I believe in Life not death. But for Man this Life is that of the soul. A man can be dead but alive. Equally an Man can be alive but spiritually dead.
The distinction between the duality of Man. Flesh (Earth if you like) and Soul/Spirit. The Equilibrium is the soul/spirit ruling over the appetites of the flesh. In our age and especially in the topics here the flesh is placed forward with nothing of the spiritual.
It is said of the animal. Sex , eating and a den. If you view man as nothing more than that then the Gospel isn’t for you.
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“It is said of the animal. Sex , eating and a den. If you view man as nothing more than that then the Gospel isn’t for you.”.
All excellent things, to be sure Roger. But to make life even more agreeable, I like to have a few paintings on the wall of my den, (one or two by me!) bookshelves round the dank walls of the cave with several hundred volumes, and Schostakowitsch on the stereo.
And, yes, a cheese sandwich and a glass of Ribera, does complete the picture.
As to dogs, and brains, can you imagine even the dopiest one barking out the drivel you and I exchange?
No!
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The Gospel expressly tells Us to pick our Cross
Matthew 10:38
And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me.
The Cross is contrary to the flesh comforts isn’t it? The issues of the topic or of the Flesh.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking we have to be religious asthetics. Enjoy music, wine, art in fine culture. Don’t these appeal to the intellect and soul? Its just not forgetting our last end. Doesn’t the totality of Man include culture and appreciation. St Thomas More was a cultured man of taste and appreciation. He was witty and down to earth but didn’t neglect his conscience. God asks nothing more of Us than to fulfil in our lives what he intended when he created Us.
Be selfless and make sure that your soul is the master not your flesh!
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No, Roger, neither BB nor I doubt that Lazarus was truly dead and truly raised.
And as I stated before: Our Lord woke Lazarus from the sleep of death and called him to leave the tomb; He did not create Lazarus anew.
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And what is this “random causality” that you keep jabbering about?
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I wasn’t quite sure if I understood the distinction between “resuscitation” and “resurrection” when it was first mentioned above; but the words: “create Lazarus anew” clears that up. We believe that when Lazarus was brought forth from the tomb, he possessed the same corruptible body as when he was placed in it, which is why he still had to die. The Lazurus who we believe to now be in Heaven possesses, in addition to his immortal soul (which he always had), an immortal body, which he did not gain until he left earthly life – a glorified body quite distinct from the humdrum one he had before. Corrections welcome, if necessary.
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Raven – “the Gospel writers quoted the Septuagint, but St Jerome preferred the Hebrew OT…Was Jerome wrong or were the Evangelists? Or were both right in their time and in their contexts?”
I remember reading somewhere that Augustine of Hippo was VERY critical of Jerome’s translation of the OT for that very reason – his rejection of the Septuagint. Lots of bad blood apparently.
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Toad at 05:31 says: “It is naive to ask what “better” somethings result from Cancer, Leprosy, Senile Dementia, Facebook and The Holocaust? So Toad will ask…he sure can’t see any.”
Ignoring his piffle about Facebook (why does he mention that when mentioning of serious things?), all I can say is that there are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know, or should. I read that somewhere.
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JH, I suggest that the only ones with bods in heaven at the moment are Jesus the Lord and his mum. Lazarus will just have to wait, just like everybody else, for the general resurrection of both the just and the unjust.
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John Henry
Look Lazarus body after 4 days was rotting! He also had died of an illness. I you really want to know read this!
http://www.memorialpages.co.uk/articles/decomposition.php
“..Initial decay (Known as ‘autolysis’) – externally the corpse looks okay, but internally the organs are breaking down. Putrefaction – after approximately two-three days bacteria are active and the body is swollen with gases and accompanying odours. Black Putrefaction – Skin starts to turn black and the corpse collapses as gases escape. ..”
So understand that body had to be recreated free of corruption and the disease it died off!
It was a rotting corpse instantly transformed into a healthy living Lazarus whowalked out of the Tomb!!
Understand Our Lord can call the dead form the dust back to Life (thats what Resurrection of the Dead means!)
I find it incredulous that this is even questioned!
Now the point is the Resurrection of the Dead from Earth(Dust) is no different from Adam’s Creation from Earth (Dust). What is different?
Now Adam made in the image and likeness of God? What does this mean? “..the “only Son of God”, and by this title affirms his eternal pre-existence…”
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c2a2.htm
In other words Adam was Created in the image and likeness of “only Son Of God” . I take it that excludes the Gorilla and the Ape?
For and understand of the theory of Evolution read Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker.
Evolution expressly excludes God. Doesn’t need God and sadly what we might call a Man is probably only a transition into another Species (thats how the theory works!). By the way Hitler wouldn’t be wrong over a master race. its acceptable with Evolution.
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Golden the Fathers of the Church . St Joseph, St Anne and St Joachim as being in Heaven body and soul. Remember we expressly have Henoch and Elias alive. The point is how much better to meditiate over this than the appetites of the Flesh.
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Golden: “…the only ones with bods in heaven at the moment…”
Understood, except what do you mean by “at the moment” when referring to the Final Judgment? This isn’t a loaded socratic-type query (cf. Toad ad nauseam) to which I presume to have an answer – only to say that time is an earthly (er, temporal?) construct with no meaning beyond this Vale of Tears, which in turn means that the general resurrection has already taken place?
___
Roger, I’ll get back to you when I return a few months hence 🙂
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Please ignore my overly italicized comment at 19:30:
Golden: “…the only ones with bods in heaven at the moment…”
Understood, except what do you mean by “at the moment” when referring to the Final Judgment? This isn’t a loaded socratic-type query (cf. Toad ad nauseam) to which I presume to have an answer – only to say that time is an earthly (er, temporal?) construct with no meaning beyond this Vale of Tears, which in turn means that the general resurrection has already taken place?
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John
The point about Lazarus is that his cells died and his body began to decompose etc. he had been dead four days. Further more he died of a illness suffered over days (Our Lord knew this). Our Lord never touched him but called him (WORD) out if the tomb.
This is St John’s gospel and he starts expressly with the WORD and Creation.
I wouldn’t presume to judge anything about St Lazarus and his resurrected body. It certainly wasn’t the sick emancipated rotten body that had been buried was it? We do know that there are Saints whose bodies remain incorrupt centuries after their death. Can you say that Sanctified Bodies are the same as unsanctified?
Sadly instead of a flood of Dogmas which should have followed the Assumption. Nothing. Its fear of materialism and rationalism, the desire to be relevant to this Age. The Dogmas of Assumption and Sanctification of. St Joseph and St Anne and St Joachim are long overdue.
As for that concept of time in flesh and worldy terms, thats dangerous territory. Look current science perception of years and days presumes that these are the same as now.
John you can reconcile the general resurrection with evolution. Please explain to the difference between evolved man and fallen man and the Immaculate Conception? we can wait a few months!
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I’m not a “John”, Rog, and never have been. Familiarity breeds contempt. Ask Toad.
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Thanks for that, JH, it’s a fascinating period and it’s interesting to see the contrast between the versions of the OT quoted in the NT and the text of the OT as we read I today (most modern editions follow Jerome in preferring to go back to the Hebrew sources).
I find myself siding with Augustine on this one: we received the OT in Greek through the evangelists.
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Roger
Dawkins isn’t the only person describing evolution and his take on it simply reflects his atheism.
If your claim is that the Faith is incompatible with an atheistic account of evolution then I will agree with you; but atheistic evolution is just one among many versions of the theory.
God created man, if you acknowledge that God is both omniscient and omnipotent, then there was no “random chance” in His creation of us.
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“Ignoring (Toad’s) piffle about Facebook (why does he mention that when mentioning of serious things?), “
Simply to get the JH’s of this world to write things like: ” …Ignoring his piffle about Facebook (why does he mention that when mentioning of serious things?), “
…And to lighten up all the current talk of rotting corpses.
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“..time is an earthly (er, temporal?) construct with no meaning beyond this Vale of Tears..”
But Evolution requires eons doesn’t it? however this is a temporary place with a short term purpose a young creation. Our Lord’s miracles are by definition outside of the understanding or constraints of Science. No Adam and Eve were Created (they had no animal parents!!).
History and the great apostasies are preceded by apathy, doctrinal indifference and sympathy for all kinds of errors. Lets couple this with change in the interpretation of scripture to match modern thinking. Moderrnism and Rationalism are implacable enemies of the Faith.
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Evolution requires aeons, which is handy, because all of the evidence is that the universe is aeons old.
Do you really constrain God within the tiny circle of the world’s orbit around the sun and its own rotation?
The only modernism here is your embrace of a protestant hermeneutic of interpretation of scripture; your approach contradicts sacred Tradition and the teaching of the magisterium, which has always taught that parts of scripture must be read as allegory and not as history. Or are you going to tell me that St Robert Bellarmine was a modernist?
You keep repeating “this is a young creation”, but this is not the teaching of the Church, this is a phrase that you’ve plucked out the ether.
And the histories of the great apostasies tells us that they usually flow from a pig-headed insistence on a narrow point in contradiction with the teaching of the Church.
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Roger and Toad: If I had a noseful of nickels, I’d blow it all on you –
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Oh my goodness! It’s ten ’til midnight when I turn into a pumpkin. See ya!
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only to say that time is an earthly (er, temporal?) construct with no meaning beyond this Vale of Tears, which in turn means that the general resurrection has already taken place?
JH, there are two possible situations, I suppose. Either time only started with the Creation or time existed with God before it. Either way, time is in relation with God and God acts in time to redeem and restore:.
Acts 3:21
Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.
Galatians 4:4-5
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.
Actually, the NT is riddled with references to time.
The Church also teaches that souls are in Purgatory to undergo the temporal punishment due for their sins and to be purified. We may also pray and offer sacrifice for them that their temporal punishment may end.
Don’t know how that all looks to you, JH, but to me it looks like time still “features”, until the Resurrection at least.
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Golden Chersonese: My dear, I don’t give plug nickel for Roger and Toad as commenters. You rate five times higher than them in my esteem, currency-wise. Which is why I offer you this:
😉
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…I couldn’t resist the monetary comparison, especially knowing that you’d get the joke 😉
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The Roger and Toad show. What a team!
Cheered on by JH!
Who ought not to look down his nose at nickels.
Twenty of them make a buck.
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johnhenry, Travis looks like that member of the Finnish Darts Club who asked us to remove ourselves from the table they always occupied on Friday nights in an English-style pub in the west of our city. We did and took our steak and kidney pie and Tetley’s ale with us, mainly because there were more of them than us.
And is the cab driver talking Noo Joisey? I’ve not heard of either of these gents before this.
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Very wise, Golden. Never cross a dart-bearing Finn, by yimminy!
(or is that Swedes?).
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More seriously, GC, and with all due respect, when you say: “The Church also teaches that souls are in Purgatory to undergo the temporal punishment due for their sins…”, while the Church does indeed so teach, why is it, since the 1968 Handbook of Indulgences, that partial indulgences granted to souls in Purgatory by the prayers of the Faithful are no longer measured in days and years? It used to be, under the 1950 Raccolta, the old official collection of indulgenced prayers, that Ejaculation 29 to The Triune God: “All through Thee, with Thee, and in Thee, O my God!” would earn an indulgence of 300 days – nothing more – whereas Invocation 31: “Lord, save us, we perish!“, although six words less, qualified for 500 days, and for a full plenary indulgence if said devoutly every day for a month. As we know, a plenary indulgence effects a remission of the entire punishment due for one’s sins, whereas a partial indulgence only commutes a portion of the debt. Partial indulgences are still available under the 1968 guidelines, but are no longer given a precise calendar value. I suggest this is because Church teaching has evolved (sorry) to the point of accepting that time is meaningless when speaking of eternity.
Ecclesiastes 1:1-2 Douay-Rheims
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And now for some Gregorian Chant performed by my Shero:
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No, hang on! My real Shero – and Golden’s – is Akkordeonweltmeisterin Christa Behnke, appearing here with Franz Lambert and Ralf Heid:
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I’m gettin’ carried away. I leave you with another Travis (different Travis than above) song:
Not sure; but he probably has Finnish blood, because I looked like that. Once.
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However, JH, the Catechism (1992) still speaks of indulgences remitting temporal punishment.
So somebody is wrong here. Any volunteers, JH?
(Christa Behnke, what a legend! She’d be great at a seniors’ Mass)
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Yes, Randy definitely looks like another of the members of that Finnish Darts Team too, JH.
You can have Matt Damon also.
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Raven
The tradition of the Church is very clear .
This is because of the generations from Adam to Our Lord. This is not metaphor but is essential to the foundation of the Catholic Faith. 5199 years (the Fathers of the Church , the martyology and the Septuguint. The masoretic text truncates the ages of the patriachs giving the Jews the argument that the Messiah hasn’t yet come. The Jews believe in this biblical generation!).
The Immaculate Conception requires that like Eve Our Lady’s Flesh has to come from Adam before the Fall! Meaning that Our Lord has Adam’s Flesh. They Jesus and Mary live through the Trial of Satan again in a Fallen world. The Passion is the reliving of God’s Justice on Adam with a spotless sinless Our Lord.
The knowledge of Good and Evil isn’t a metaphor its in Our Lord’s life and the Lord’s prayer the Free Will choice between Heaven and Hell that we make in this world.
The Eucharist (Flesh, Blood Soul and Divinity) that Flesh has to be of Adams before the Fall.
This is the Faith.
As for St Bellarmine the earth and the solar system are NOT and never have been a matter of Faith nor Dogma, not even of tradition. The Pyramid at Gisa has built within its maths the speed of the Earth as it goes round the Sun!
Rome doesn’t deny this 5199 How can it, because this would deny the Fall the Redemption and Peter’s Authority? It permitted theorising over Evolution is based on cosmology but NOT Man. Adam was created.
As for Evolution if they are now saying that life came from space then the millions of years will vanish! Science doesn’t have a history of the solar system! It has speculations based on observations and postulates! If Life came from outer space this changes the Science and they know it!
I have pointed out with Lazarus that the WORD called Lazarus the Man from the corruption of the Tomb recreating His flesh from the corrupted flesh. Our Lord used clay however when he healed the Blind Man (from birth) Adam and Clay!
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“If Life came from outer space this changes the Science and they know it!”
Can’t you get it into your head that we are in “outer space” right now, Roger?
Have been since the universe began. That’s where we live. “Space” is not somewhere else off the universe map.
How did the universe begin?
Big Bang maybe. That is current thinking. Might change. Might not.
Maybe God caused the Big Bang. Maybe not.
The great apes “share” 98% of their DNA with us.
Which is why they are only 98% as stupid as we are.
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No Toad we are not in Space thats simplistic. We are within Creation and this includes Hell and Heaven visible and invisible.
The differences between the Apes and Man is huge and significant especially in the infant dependancies then comes the organs for speech, eating and breathing which is totally different.
Totally different species! Thats the point Species because Darwin origin of Species!!
Group characteristics. The Species by the Way all appear at the same time!
DNA is part of the composition and design which is appropriate for the flesh part of Man in this environment.
Look planets are globes! Suns global in shape. The composition and design of creatures is appropriate to the environment that we exist it. Its complex because of gravity, minerals, food, protection because the solar system and space is hostile.
The Jewish, Christian and Islamic are constrained by the generations from Adam to Abraham and onwards! The whole rational for Israel is upon that generation ladder. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating this.
I have tried again and again to bring some sanity here over this. That generation is Public Revelation.
Right Cosmology has built within it the perpetuation of Life and death has it not. Including Stars and planets. Why not because God Created with History and knowledge. Its the chicken and egg. Logically design and continuity are built into this. The Faith isn’t frightened of Science but from Adam to Our Lord isn’t a metaphor its 5199 years.
The Genesis time demarkation is about Creation and that is outside of Cosmology! because Creation is invisble as well as visible.
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“The Species by the Way all appear at the same time!”
No they don’t, Roger.
As Haldane famously said, there are no rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian.
And that’s that.
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Don’t want to be a wet blanket and spoil the lively, foot-tapping musical spree this thread has become, but just want to say that Roger’s opinion (on Man’s spontaneous creation by God – Adam and Eve) is one that has for centuries been by far the most popular theory of Catholics throughout all the previous centuries.
That’s not to say it’s right or wrong, just that in the last 100 years, especially in the last 50 odd years, the theory of Man evolving until the given time that he was infused with an immortal soul, is a valid theory, but a more recent one.
My father certainly believed in the spontaneous creation of Adam and Eve, and did not favour the “evolving theory”.
P.S. Sorry, had this page open since this morning, and hadn’t seen the last half dozen comments when writing the above!
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Roger
You are just repeating points that I’ve either shown are untrue or did not convince me the first time around.
The tradition of the Church, as expressed by the magisterium, is very clear: we are to read the Old Testament as a diversity of literary forms: some parts are histories, others are metaphors. This understanding of scripture goes back to the Fathers and to the Apostles (look at Galatians 4).
The generations from Adam to Our Lord are also just an allegory; if they weren’t then why are the genealogies in Luke and Matthew different? There is nothing in the mission of Our Lord that is dependent on these timeframes.
As writing itself is slightly older than the 5199 years that you’re claiming as the age of the universe, I think that you’ve really got to give that one up (unless you are wanting to make the case that there were people around writing things down before the creation of the world).
The Immaculate Conception only requires that Our Lady is a human being, like us, a descendent of Adam. Why do you want to weigh-down the doctrine with the extraneous baggage of your private interpretation? None of the rest of your analysis of the incarnation or passion is in the least different to mine and none of it is dependent on a literal reading of Genesis.
And you are wrong about geocentrism: it is clearly proposed in scripture and we now read those parts of scripture as metaphor; nothing is dependent on reading the account of creation as being anything other than a metaphorical description of that creation.
I don’t know why you keep bringing up the Great Pyramid, it’s just something that Pagans built for themselves, it has no meaning outside their own religion (which is now largely forgotten in its details).
Are you going to point to where Rome endorses 5199? Because I can point to plenty of places where it doesn’t. And yes, Roger, Rome allows us to theorise over the evolution of man too.
They aren’t saying that life came from outer-space, Roger, they have found some parts of cells in the high atmosphere, that’s all. Even if they were extra-terrestrial in origin, they would still take millions of years to get from where they are now (parts of cells) to what we would call “life” and millions of years beyond that to get to multi-cellular organisms.
The science isn’t difficult, Roger, you just need to read it.
And Roger, Our Lord calling a corpse back to life or using clay to heal a blind man doesn’t change anything: we are dust and to dust we return; how that dust came to be arranged as us is a different matter.
The tradition of the Church is to follow the teaching of the Magisterium, Roger, and the magisterium does not support the view that you are expounding.
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Kathleen
It is true that the Church’s teaching has changed as we have come to know more about the physical sciences, this is a process that has been going on for centuries.
My point to Roger is that he is entirely wrong in trying to paint a literalist reading of creation as being the exclusive teaching of the Church.
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Of course the Church once believed the Sun rose each morning, travelled across the sky and vanished in the West.
Everyone did, for thousands of years.
Why? Because it looks as if it does.
Lots of people probably still believe it. Can’t really blame them.
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Unke ist die beste hund liebhaber (nicht denker) auf dieser welt. Auf Wiedersehen! 😉
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Raven @ 17:58
Yes, I appreciate that, and I’ve given a “thumbs up” to some of your well-reasoned and interesting comments in your discussion with Roger.
But I’ve also given a couple to Roger too.
The story of Adam and Eve is a perfectly feasible one, even if it includes some obvious metaphors, e.g. the serpent, the tree of Good and Evil, etc. Scientific investigations have traced Man’s DNA back to one original family! When you look at the diversity of the peoples that inhabit the world today, that is an amazing revelation.
As you say Raven, recent archaeological discoveries have also shown that the possibility of Man evolving cannot be ruled out either.
The only point we need to agree on (and this appears to be the case anyway) is that God made Man; He gave him an immortal soul and created him in His Image and Likeness. God Made Himself known to Man, and gave him Free Will.
This is God’s beautiful gift to Mankind, and we should thank the Lord unendingly for calling us out of nothing to love and follow Him, and to share the joy of His Presence for all Eternity.
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“..Adam is an Arabic word. It comes from the Arabic word ‘Adim’ that means earth in English. Adam is a Hebrew name, meaning “Of The Earth.” ..”
We are bound to believe Public revelation the Papacy itself would fall if Public revelation was false. The magisterium cannot contradict Public Revelation since the author of the Gospel is Our Lord.
The Church’s teaching hasn’t changed it can’t change because it is Our Lord’s mystical Body and He is Uncreated Truth. The Apostolic Succession is this deposit of truth passed by Our Lord to the Apostles and their successors.
The generation from Adam to Our Lord is not a metaphor nor is it Protestant. There are apparent contradictions in the Bible (only apparent but we pray that the Holy Ghost will enlighten Our misunderstanding of these).
“..Summa Theologica, Thomas argues that God directly created every human soul and directly made the original body of Adam ..”
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html
“..If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principle trends that not a few learned men are following. 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. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism. ..”
“..Catholic apologists who point to Pope John Paul IIs 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences as evidence of the Churchs acceptance of evolution often fail to notice that the late Pope completely passed over the question of monogenism, and indeed never did discuss the problem that genetics poses to the doctrine. ..”
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Did you know that it has been shown that other mammals have dreams? Fascinating! That means that they must have visions of imagination, just like we do.
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Uncle Kyle. St Francis preached to the fish and birds and they listened and comprehended. His famous encounter and contract with the wolf is well know.
Sadly it was men that wouldn’t listen.
Fatima expressly said that Russia would spread its evils throughout the world. Dialectical materialism of course is Evolutionary.
“..It is not conflict with fundamentalist religious doctrine (Creation), nor the often expressed revulsion at the thought of having ape-like ancestors, let alone fish ancestors, that causes the major opposition to Darwinism. The problem for capitalism is that evolution vividly exemplifies the dialectical nature of the world. Neither the world nor the organisms that live in it are static and unchanging. Organisms change and develop, their form and behaviour is not constant, they change in response to the environment. Types at one time plentiful and dominant become superseded by new types which in their turn become dominant, and so on. This is a very dangerous concept for capitalism as a social system which claims to be the eternal order of things – always here and here to stay for ever! It is a system that is very fearful of what materialist dialectics, applied to the history of society, has to say about its future – and lack of it..”
You see the fatal flaw for the Church “A SOCIAL SYSTEM WHICH CLAIMS TO BE THE ETERNAL ORDER OF THINGS. ” but Evolution means constant change.
We see again the Wisdom of Our Lord and His Gospel . Adam Created and a generation to Our Lord.
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Roger
If you are going to quote Pius XII, at least quote his conclusions, not his pre-amble:
Of which Bl John Paul II said:
Bl John Paul II then goes on to address the point that you make in your response to Kyle:
The adoption, appropriation or downright misuse of one theory of evolution by the Soviets says nothing about the validity of other theories of evolution.
I found your second quotation interesting: it is not from a teaching document of the Church, it comes from a journalist writing an article about creationism. And it misses the point by a mile, because it is confusing the origins of man with our parentage.
I am sure that the owners of Forbes will be delighted to know that you have appointed them members of the teaching magisterium of the Church.
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Raven
The games up Pius XII. This is a standard response to Science “..does not forbid that, in conformity with THE PRESENT STATE of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, ..”
John Paul II is NOT Dogmatic but is following the progress of research and discussions.
But note the two key points “monogenism” and genetic . The trouble is materialist dialectics because I pointed this out ages ago here evolution has continous change in response to environment. “..Organisms change and develop, their form and behaviour is not constant, they change in response to the environment ..”
The MONOGENISM is the killer and you have not considered its significance.
Evolution has more than one parent for Mankind. Actually it has COEXISTING VARIANTS! In other words Adam’s and Eve’s at the same time in different parts of the world.
I would be very very wary of using the term metaphor with Paradise. Science doesn’t have sight or knowledge of Paradise, Henoch was taken there. In fact I would strongly recommend NOT dabbling into Genesis. The term Day is an Earth measurement. The Bible says a Day is a thousand years to God!
The Evolution argument is flawed because of Gods’ Anathemas and interventions. Kathleen has mentioned Babel. Original Sin and the Laws of Fallen Man (die the death!, pain in child birth!) Neither Our Lord nor Our Lady were subject to these anathemas. The two keys given to Peter bind on Earth (that imeans change)
The Tree isn’t a metaphor its in Paradise and that place is beyond Science. Our Lord was nailed to the wood of a Tree! Golgotha (the place of the skull , Emmerich said Adam’s Skull!).
No Evolution is not Dogma.
Change is Biblical, change that reduced Man’s life span for instance.
The Catholic Faith has one common Father and Mother for All Mankind Adam and Eve. It has these Created and their flesh changed (not evolved but materially changed) because of Original Sin. The Immaculate has to be of Adam’s flesh before the Fall (sinless) and Our Lord’s flesh the same as Adam before the Fall. The Eucharist is monogenist.
Evolution isn’t monogenist rather it has coexistant variants! these are all called human!
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Roger
You need to read all of the quotation:
You are building a heavy edifice on just the first half of a sentence.
And monogenism is not incompatible with evolution: this is a point that should be obvious to you.
And we have examples of the evolution of human beings during the last two thousand years: changes to the average stature of people; changes in our jaws following the introduction of eating utensils; the development of resistances to certain diseases. These incremental changes are all observable in the comparatively recent history of humanity.
And for what? Nothing in Catholic doctrine is harmed by properly understood evolution.
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Raven Pius XII knew the Achilles Heel of Evolution Monogenism! He expressly condemned polygenism . But Hans Kung knows that polygenism is expressly taught within Evolution!
“.According to the Catholic theologian Hans Kung: “monogenism—the descent of all men and women from Adam and Eve—still propagated by Pope Pius XII—is hardly still advocated today, even by Catholic theologians”.
But taking your examples I simply point out that the argument for Evolution requires millions of years of small changes. You are saying that this is accomplished in only 2000 years (which points to a young Creation!).
Raven this is what the Faith tells Us.
Adam and Eve were Gods masterpiece of Creation with Free Will.
Original Sin and God’s anathema changed them and this world. Adam died 930 years old. Notice the growing reduction in the lives of the Patriachs. But Sin brought the destruction of that world. As Sin has grown so Man has changed. Sin that is the reason for diseases and a growing world of hardship.
And before you deny your Faith Our Lord’s Passion was because of the Origonal Sin of Adam and Eve. The Immaculate Conception because of Original Sin. Deny Adam and Eve and you deny Catholic Faith and the sacraments.
Pope Pius XII blocked the rationalists and modernists in Human Generis.
“.. It is also true that theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to point out how the doctrine of the living Teaching Authority is to be found either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures and in Tradition. ..”
“..Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question…”
“..however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either 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..”
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“As Haldane famously said, there are no rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian.”
Prolly about the only statement on this thread that would be worth reflecting upon. Thank you Toad. Almost redeems the wasted time in skimming this blog at present…
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Genesis and the error of assuming metaphoric language!!
Thought I would share this sacred Tradition with you.
The Church born from the transpierced heart of the sleeping(dead) Christ on the Cross. Just as Eve was of Adam’s side.
“..The fathers also say that the Church who is Christ’s spouse and his coadjutrice in applying the blood and water to the benefit of the Faithful, was here formed, builded, and taken out of this holy side of Christ sleeping on the Cross, as Eve was of Adam’s side, when he was cast asleep in Paradise .”
Eve of course was Created exactly as Our Lord’s new spouse the Church was Created!
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Roger, have you ever considered how you would think if you had no language? How would you be able ponder and contemplate? If a child was raised without being taught a language, would it be fully conscious like we are, or would it think more like a chimpanzee?
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Roger
I am a little worried that you are simply not reading the points put to you.
As Bl John Paul II said (and as I have quoted to you), there is more than one theory of evolution: polygenism is only inherent in some of those theories.
You also seem terribly keen on quoting the parts of Humani Generis that appear to support your position, while ignoring those parts which flatly contradict it.
Similarly, you seem keen to ignore the teaching of Bl John Paul II where it doesn’t suit your position.
And I am flatly amazed that anyone is citing Hans Küng in aid of his argument on this website!
In support of your position, you have cited a secularist journalist and a theologian who has had his licentiate revoked by the Church.
Roger, you are citing the enemies of Holy Church in defence of your opinion. Doesn’t that at least start to give you cause to question your position?
And you even seem to be taking my words as evidence for your view! I’m sorry mate, although we’ve seen observable changes in humanity in the last 2000 years, that’s small beer compared to going from a bunch of carbon molecules to multicellular life.
Give it up, Roger: you’re just demonstrating that your ultra-literalist position requires the support of secularists and dissenters from orthodoxy.
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The Raven in the blue trunks and Roger in the red trunks.
Why do the words head and brick wall come to mind?
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Adam and Eve were not taught anything they were created with knowledge. Adam wasn’t a brute beast and was told to name the beasts. He expressly knew that he must not take of the fruit of the Tree of of the knowledge of Good and Evil. So All understand this is True to deny this is to Divinity of Our Lord and the reason for the Passion. Adam and Eve are the foundation of the Catholic Faith.
The atheist marxist know that dialetic evolution is the death of the Church. Russia will spread its evils throughout the world.
Deny Adam and Eve and you deny Christ and Our Lady.
The following was known to Pius XII.
“..Jesus says: 1943
“One of the points at which your pride founders in error which, above all, degrades precisely your haughtiness by giving you an origin that, if you were less corrupted by pride, you would repudiate as degrading is that of Darwin’s theory.
In order not to admit God, who, in His power, was able to have created the universe from nothing and man from the already created mud, you take the paternity of a beast as your own.
Don’t you realize you are diminishing yourselves, forconsider this won’t a beast no matter how exemplary, selected, improved, and perfected in form and instinct, and, if your wish, even in mental formation always be a beast? Don’t you realize this? This testifies unfavorably regarding your pride as pseudo-supermen.
But if you fail to realize, I will not be the one to waste words to make you aware of it and converted from the error. I ask you only one question which, in your great numbers, you have never asked yourselves. And if you can answer Me with facts, I will no longer combat this degrading theory of yours.
If man is a spin-off from the monkey, which by progressive evolution has become man, how is it that over so many years in which you have maintained this theory you have never succeeded, not even with the perfected instruments and methods at present, in making a man from a monkey? You could have taken the most intelligent offspring of a pair of intelligent moneys and then their intelligent offspring, and so on. You would now have many generations of selected, instructed monkeys cared for by the most patient, tenacious, and sagacious scientific method. But you would still have monkeys. If there happened to be a mutation, it would be this: the beasts would be physically less strong than the former ones and morally more degenerate, for, with all your methods and instruments, you would have destroyed that perfection of the monkey which My Father created for these quadrumans.
Another question. If man came from the monkey, how is it that man, even with grafts and repugnant forms of cross-fertilization, does not become a monkey again? You would be capable even of attempting these horrors if you knew that it could give approvative sanction to your theory. But you do not do so because you know that you would not be able to turn a man into a monkey. You would turn him into an ugly son of man, a degenerate, perhaps a criminal. But never a real monkey. You do not try because you know beforehand that you would get a poor result and your reputation would emerge therefrom in ruins.
For this reason you do not do so. For no other. For you feel no remorse or horror over degrading a man to the level of a beast to maintain a thesis of yours. You are capbable of this and of much more. You are already beasts because you deny God and kill the spirit, which distinguishes you from the beasts.
Your science causes Me horror. You degrade the intellect and like madmen do not even realize you are degrading it. In truth, I tell you that many of the primitive are more men than you are.”
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Meant to say Toad
Liquefraction.
Liquefraction explains strata and fossils it also explains the layering of living material and matter of different densities and buoyance. This would naturally create amphibians at the bottom, reptile, mammal and then birds. I believe that an experiment . was made with dead carcases the result was like the Evolutionary strata but without millenium and a natural process.
Giant waves were believed to be fiction until one was recorded in the north sea hitting an oil rig. .
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What can the wise Raven tell Roger that will be of the slightest use, or interest, or significance, to him?
Roger already knows everything worth knowing.*. Roger’s job is to put us all to rights.
Roger is the looking-glass image of Dawkins – reflected in the waters of certainty. I think.
(Bit of a mixed metaphor there, Toad?)
*Can it be mere coincidence that the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza is exactly half the length of Fatima High Street, give or take a few hundred yards? I think NOT!!!
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I think that JH has his boxing analogy right, except that dear old Roger seems to be fighting someone else.
I am amazed at some of the stuff that he’s whisking out of the air to support his argument: that last quote of his is from Maria Valtorta and comes from a book that Pius XII forbade publication of and which was placed on the Index.
(Although, to be honest, his approving quotation from Hans Küng was the last straw; I think that he’s not even reading the material that he’s citing).
Well, Roger, no-one may have made a man out of a monkey (has anyone even tried?), but someone has made a monkey out of you.
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Roger, your comment (01:00 hrs) purports to give a long quotation (aren’t they all?) attributed to the Venerable Pius XII. Well, not exactly, because you only go so far as to say that “…the following was known to Pius XII…” in 1943. Really? Anyone, even someone with half his brain tied behind his back, would laugh if told that Pope Pius ever said or read these words:
“This testifies unfavorably regarding your pride as pseudo-supermen.”
“If man is a spin-off from the monkey…”
“…how is it that man, even with grafts and repugnant forms of cross-fertilization…”
Not sure where you lifted your 40 line quote from, or is it just your own words bracketed by quotation marks for verisimilitude, which is a very bad thing don’t you know? Why didn’t you give a citation or a link? Tried to Google it, but my computer went into shutdown mode. You won’t give an honest answer, or will you? You know, it’s important to be honest, and if you’re not willing to be honest (and scrupulous) when blogging on a blog of ideas, well what’s the point? This isn’t the first time when I’ve wondered whether you treat people with intellectual respect. Do you suffer from Asparagus (pun) Syndrome?
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JH
He may not suffer from Asparagus Syndrome, but something about his out-flowings smells decidedly odd…
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Shows how much I still have to learn about research via computer, since I didn’t come across this Maria Valtorta chick; but words like “pseudo”, “spin-off” and “cross-fertilization” don’t sound very 1943ish to me 😉
Oh well, must blog off now to watch the last half of Inspector Morse in The Wench is Dead.
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Pius XII personally read Valtorta works. St Pio expressly recommended nay ordered them to be read. Then there is Emmerich , Mother of Agreda and their work are of course subject to the most rigour and scrutiny. Same with seers such as Bernadette and Lucy. .
How very convenient to say that you don’t understand Scripture so it must be allegorical.
But the worse blindness is the denial of sacred tradition on the mistake basis of current magesterium. The reason why this is folly is because the sacred traditions have been the subject of rigour and critique but modern opinion hasn’t.
But if you cut yourself off from tradition and rewrite (interpret the Scriptures) you are in grave danger of losing your Faith and replacing this with a counterfeit. Lucifer (Light bearer) Apes God so the metaphor and irony of Evolution shouldn’t be lost here should it.
It seems that a masonic colony of Apes took over the Curia finally in the 60’s.
But what really sets Catholics appart is the defense of the Faith as handed to the Apostles in season and out of season.
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Roger
Pius XII personally ordered that the works were not to be published and ordered that the copies of the works held Valtorta’s confessor should be destroyed (it was only his disobedience to the Holy Father that meant that any of this work came to public attention at all).
Desist, the horse is dead; flogging it won’t induce it to take another step.
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With considerable reluctance but I have a conscience. I think you need to know the importnace of the generations in the Bible and the Church’s acceptance of this and why the Fathers of the Church expressly taught this.
The reason was prophecy! Especially that of Daniel for the timing of the Coming of the Messiah! The significance of the Magi and the response of the Temple is bound with Daniels Prophecy.
The Maserotic text truncates the patriachs ages whereas the martyrology is 100% Prophetic and accurate. The Douay Fathers included this in their notes, but it was well known to the Jews and the Apostles.
The Messiah would come in the six age of Creation, Man was made on the sixth day. The Church knows these Prophecy’s and has taught them from the time of the Apostles. Our lord fulfilled All the Messianic Prophecies and came in the sixth Age!
Here much of what you are arguing contradicts the Messianic Prophecy’s and actually is saying these are myths and legends which masonory can be conveniently pluralise with the false religions!
You are denying the Faith!
“..In the year, from the creation of the world 5199: from Noe’s flood, 2957: from the Nativity of Abraham, 2015 from Moses and the coming forth of the people of Israel out of Egypt, 1520: from David annointed king, 1032: from the first Olympiad, 800: from the building of Rome, 752: hebdomada 63, according to the prophecy of Daniel (c. 9), that is, in the year 440 or thereabouts: in the sixth age of the world, when there was universal peace in all the world, the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, meaning to consecrate and sanctify the world with his most blessed coming, being conceived of the Holy Ghost, nine months after his conception, JESUS CHRIST the son of God is born in Bethlehem of Juda in the year of Caesar Augustus 42. Usuard. in martyro! Dec. 25, according to the common ancient supputation…”
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“…that is, in the year 440 or thereabouts: in the sixth age of the world, when there was universal peace in all the world, “
How did anyone know there was “universal” peace in Peru, or Mexico or Mongolia or China, or Japan, let alone Australasia, Roger?
Toad! Why do you persist in going on with this farce? Dolt!
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Roger, I don’t know why you seem to think no one else but you (on this blog) believes in the creation of Adam and Eve by God, the first parents of all Mankind. I don’t think anyone is actually denying this Doctrine. It has even been shown (maybe even “proven“, though I couldn’t affirm that) through extensive scientific investigation, that the human race has all descended from one original beginning, or family, and hence one can assume, from one man and one woman a.k.a. Adam and Eve.
The only issue here seems to be whether Adam and Eve were created instantaneously, literally, or evolved gradually until they became totally human…. with all that this entails, primarily the capacity of knowing Good from Evil, and communicating with God, These are uniquely human qualities. (This would have been the moment they were infused with a human soul.)
I shall admit to you that I am open minded about it, but I do tend to favour the first of these possibilities.
However, IT DOESN’T MATTER; God in His Omnipotence could have done it either way, and the result would be the same. It is the meaning and message behind the Genesis story that matters: God created the world and everything in it, and Man was his supreme creation, the only being created in His Image and Likeness.
If Christ’s Vicar on Earth, the Pope, says that there is more than one acceptable theory on the subject of our origins, we should humbly accept his word.
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Kathleen
You have said, beautifully and concisely in four short paragraphs, everything that my long-winded posts set out to say.
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Kathleen, I think Richard Dawkins would also agree with you on the monogenesis of the human species, but what were the specific differences or qualities created in the minds of these new humans as God infused them with a soul?
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Toad
The Catholic Faith everything has its foundation in Adam Created by God and the Messiah promised after His Fall. The fulfilment in time of the Messiah in Our Lord and His reparation for Original Sin.
Your observation re “..Peru, or Mexico or Mongolia or China, or Japan, let alone Australasia ..” is most applicable to monogenism because this can only certain with a created Adam and Eve.
You appreciate that rabbits are less dense than dinasours and toads. Hence the Pre-Cambrian comment. But the least dense are birds such as Ravens. Liquefaction was filmed in the New zealand ChristChurch Earthquake.
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Kathleen, Uncle Kyle.
What was stopping Adam from mating with other Apes? According to this logic as an animal he could. Polygamy is the norm with male Apes!
Do you not understand that Monogenism means One man and One Woman with no possiblity of cross mating. The only way this could very be certain would be through Creation. Understand that it is not possible for a Ape to mate with a human and has never been possible.
The Faith requires a Created Adam and Eve.
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Kathleen
Paul correct Peter! Because Peter was wrong. With the Arian heresy even the Pope for a time was Arian (just check this out).
What both Pius Xii and John Paul II said (but with caveats!! because of revelation) is that as a science Evolution could be studied, There is no denying the DNA, genetic etc.. even change but the Cause of this will be Divine not random chance. The Word built History into Creation (Adam was never a child) .
Evolution isn’t Dogma because the church sees it as Science.
However simply put the evidence is of a young Earth. The absence of a 1/2 mile layer of dust on the Moon for one thing! Seriously when they flew to the Moon because of Evolution timescales they expect to land in deep dust! The same holds true for Mars. Raven has criticised scientists and engineers who actually have very good answers and unanswered questions. Serious Evolutionists actually praise this critique.
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Do I believe in Evolution? No its not Dogma.
Do I believe that Adam evolved No.
Original Sin brought death into the world.
However with Evolution there is already death and pain in child birth in the world isn there? This for millions of years. The world of Evolutionists is the world of sex, pain, death and suffering. The world of mass extinction and mutants.
If death, sorrow and pain existed before Adam and Eve evolved then Adam and Eve couldn’t be responsible for bringing death and pain into the world could they?
The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the virgin Birth are Man’s state before Original Sin. So the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception requires a world contrary to that of the observed Evolutionists.
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“…how is it that over so many years in which you have maintained this theory you have never succeeded, not even with the perfected instruments and methods at present, in making a man from a monkey? “
What would be the point in dumbing down a monkey to make it a man. Roger?
(What “perfected instrument” would be needed to make a man out of a monkey?)
There are already far too few monkeys in the world, and far too many humans.
“If death, sorrow and pain existed before Adam and Eve evolved then Adam and Eve couldn’t be responsible for bringing death and pain into the world could they?”
Absolutely correct, Roger. They were not responsible for that.
You appreciate that rabbits are less dense than dinosaurs and toads.
No I don't. More furry, maybe.
“Seriously when they flew to the Moon because of Evolution timescales they expect to land in deep dust! “
No they didn’t.
And, even if they did believe that, they now know better, don’t they? That’s “science” for you.
“Giant waves were believed to be fiction until one was recorded in the north sea hitting an oil rig. .”
That was the first time anyone had ever seen a “giant wave”, was it? I rather doubt that.
Why didn’t Adam mate with monkeys? Possibly they turned him down as being not being good-looking, or clever enough.Or because he would lower the ape IQ pool.
Or maybe having his own nice human wife, Adam saw no need to put it about and cause trouble.
Or possibly.. Oh, shut up Toad. This is silly.
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Roger, I was shocked, frankly, to see this scene shot at the Boston Athenaeum some years ago, and have never set foot there since.
http://www.varis.com/Assignment/GeoChimps.html
Like you, I find people who equate people with animals a bit – troubled? – yes, that’s the word, and have made that clear here before. But evolution is what it is, for better or for worse.
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…Busily writing the complete works of Shakespeare, no doubt.
Well, somebody had to.
But we are animals – for better or worse.
Better at some things – e.g. writing plays, putting gibberish on Facebook, and mass genocide, and worse at others – e.g. running at 40 miles an hour, flying, and rolling in fox excrement.
But it is fun, of a somewhat masochistic sort to be sure, trying to convince Roger that we humans have evolved.
How about the fact that even he and JH have vestiges of tails? \
Why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccyx
No? OK. How about the moon, since you bring it up? How old is it?
How did it get so pock-marked?
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Roger
Paul may well have corrected Peter, but Paul was an apostle, chosen by Our Lord, not a chap on the internet repeatedly making the same points over and over again (citing journalists, dissenters and writings condemned by the Holy Office in support of his argument at that!).
And no, none of the evidence points to a “young creation”; all of the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction.
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Raven
I believe in Creation and the Messianic Prophecy’s from a Created Adam. A belief shared with Moses, (Abraham might well be a metaphor?) David, Elias Daniel, Our Lady, Our Lord, The Apostles and for 1950 years Christendom. Further more Trent and Pius XII. He expressly reiterated the Council Of Trent over Adam and Eve.
“For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either 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.”
In other words 5199 years of Messianic Prophecy known to the Jews, known to Our Lord and , know to the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/what-do-catholics-believe-about-adam-and-eve
Perhaps Raven you would care to enlighten these critics as to how to reconcile Evolution, Original Si, Council of Trent and Adam and Eve.
But what does Raven believe? Well here is Evolution and what you profess to belief.
Lets have Science of Evolution and the population figures.
Population figures
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm
110 billion ever from 10,000 BC to 2012 with projections Thats 12,012 years!
They start at an estimated 10,000 BC 1 million
5,000 BC 5 million
2012 AD what 7 billion
Evolution of Man
The BBC for the Evolution of Man “..Our three million year journey from the treetops of Africa to civilisation. ..”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/human/human_evolution/
The estimate for 12,012 years 7 billion (110 billion overall) humans
So from 3,000,000 – 12,012 = 2,987,988 years the population of Man grew from 2 to 1 million.
Toad.
Armstrong was asked by Bob Hope what was his greatest fear. The lunar dust layer.! Evolution estimation 4.5 billion years of space dust. Estimates from 50 to 180 feet of loosely packed cosmic dust on the moon’s surface. There was, in fact, only a few thousand years’ worth of dust on the moon’s surface.
Giant waves were reported but not believed. They were considered myths until 1995 when one was record in the North Sea hitting the Draupner platform,
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Roger
If you want to know what I believe, try reading my posts. It would make a nice change for you.
I care little for lunar dust, theories about the origin an composition of the moon have come on quite a way since the late sixties.
I care nothing for giant waves or liquifraction; neither of these processes would explain the fossil record (if it was down to “density” of corpses, why do we not find archaeopteryx in higher level deposits? Or the smaller pterosaurs, which had a similar bone density?).
All that you have, Roger, to support your view is your own beliefs (and the opinions if heretics, secularists and dissenters). I admire your tenacity, but your argument from science fail, as does your wholly erroneous presentation of the current teaching of the Church).
We don’t need creationism to get to monogenism, we don’t need creationism to get to the Fall, we don’t need 5,199 years to get to the immaculate conception or incarnation of Our Lord and we don’t need creationism or 5,199 years to get to His sacrifice and our redemption.
And if you think that Hans Küng or Commonweal are authentic interpreters of the Faith or the magisterium…
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Raven
First the Tablet “Don’t let spring turn to winter”
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/164164
I leave you to explain this Great Catholic papers choice of Benedicts personal friend and confidante article.
Not to my personal taste but others may enjoy it.
The fossils were formed in moments of great upheaval and violence. Actually fossils are not uniform as the Evolutionist like yourself would have Us believe. I mentioned waves because one was reported in Alska that was 1/2 a kilometer in height.
But for the edification of others since you do not believe.
Evolution relies on what is called the principle of uniformitarianism. That is all geological features can be explained by today’s processes acting at present rates. In other words the millions of years required BY TODAY’S PROCESSES AT PRESENT RATES. This is why I have drawn attention to giant waves and liquefaction. Because these illustrate that there are other processes which have since been discovered. Pompeii is and example where more recent knowledge of volcanos has revised understanding. The Tsunami that killed 250,000 in Indonesia was an underwater force 9 earthquake that moved hundreds of miles of rock. Liquefaction has been caught on film by the way, its associated with Earthquakes. Appreciate that Science identifies global catastrophes (Earthquakes upon violent Earthquake).
By the way some fossils are vertical! You also get animals together who would never be found together such as crocodiles and their prey.
Raven you are denying the two pillars of the Faith, Sacred Tradition and Scripture. Evolution isn’t Dogma!! But worse you are denying Our Lord
Prophecy over time (such as Fatima) is God’s way of evidencing His Providence and Authority.
You are denying the Messianic Prophecy’s and the Ages of the World refered to by the Douay Fathers (and the Council of Trent) and from sacred Tradition.
Our Lord explained and taught the Messianic prophecies to disciples on the road .
Luke 24
[27] And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him.
The importance of Moses(Genesis) is he is the author of the first 4 books of the Bible (the Torah the Law) These books start the Messianic Prophecy’s, Moses identifies with the Temple and the Promised Land. Our Lord RAVEN IS TEACHING THE CREATION AND OF ADAM AND EVE!
I recommed the Doauy fathers Notes on scared Tradition.
The Messiah came in the sixth Age. The Fathers of the Church identified these (you will find this in St Augustine). Moses and the Transfiguration is so important because of the start of the Age of the Law (and the Temple) that will bring the Messiah in the sixth Age. Lovers of the Faith should enjoy the wisdom and sagacity of the Early Church.
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I’m told that The Tablet did indeed used to be a great and Catholic magazine; but alas, many years have passed since it could last lay claim to either title. Evelyn Waugh, a former contributor, must be rolling in his grave. Even our confrère, Frere Rabit, also a former contributor, seems to no longer grace their precincts. As for Dr Küng’s piece…well, from all I’ve read of his work – not a lot, but enough – including your link (and congrats on evolving to the point of knowing how to provide them) – he strikes me as a lonely, frustrated, bitter old man, one who now seeks to pull down, to level the Church, which has disappointed him, instead of building it up. But enough of this YouCat kerfuffle, please. Let’s please just watch YouTubeCat and be happy 😉
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Roger
On sacred Tradition: you keep ignoring the fact that obedience to the teaching authority of the Church is the root and foundation of Tradition; the Church does not teach creationism and the works of seventeenth century exegetes does not trump later judgments of the Church.
I strongly recommend that you read the rather excellent paper setting out the Church’s teaching here.
On the science, you’re advancing nothing new:
Liquifraction is just the process of muds and other loose solids behaving as liquids, it cannot explain why fossils are embedded in consolidated rock deposits.
A big wave event just explains why items from the same geological strata end up displaced from their usual location, even the biggest waves (like the recent tsunamis) only carry loose wastes and silt with them, not whole rock strata.
We have a very good understanding of the way that vulcanology can impact the geological record; we have been excavating the gargantuan volcanic deposits in Colorado and Utah for the last century.
As for “uniformatism”, we have zero evidence that there has ever been any differing rate for the formation of rocks.
And finally, if I am “rejecting scripture” by reading the creation account as metaphor, aren’t you doing that too when you acknowledge that we are on a sphere describing an elliptical orbit around the Sun? After all, scripture writes of a flat, immobile Earth orbited by the Sun. Or is your next screed going to be a defence of geocentrism?
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