On the heels of Christoph Cardinal Schönborn’s letter on evolution.
WASHINGTON Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick says Catholics don’t have to believe in Creationism — the Bible’s account of God creating Adam and Eve and the universe in six days.
McCarrick told reporters at the National Press Club that instead of what he called "the beautiful story of Genesis," Catholics can believe in evolution — as long as it’s understood to have been guided by God rather than chance.
The archbishop of Washington said that was the view of the late Pope John Paul, which was echoed last week by a leading European cardinal.
Cardinal McCarrick said the church cannot accept the belief that "this is all an accident." But he added that "as long as in every understanding of evolution, the hand of God is recognized as being present, we can accept that." [Source]
One thing cool about being Catholic is that I am free to believe in a literal six day creation or a God guided evolution. Or if another new and better scientific theory comes out I am also free to accept that too. I was a lot less free and more dogmatic when I was an atheist. Meaningless random evolution was pretty much all I was allowed or allowed myself to believe. As a Catholic I am free to believe in miracles and in certain Church approved apparitions, though I am also free to disbelieve those apparitions. As an atheist I was not free to believe in apparitions or miracles. Yet it is generally Catholic who are called dogmatists. Chesterton said that man is a creature who creates dogmas and that is certainly true since everybody holds to dogmas, they just vary on what are to be held as dogmas. Or they at least hold to the dogma that there are no dogmas.
One quibble that I have with with what Cardinal McCarrick said is "the beautiful story of Genesis," which might have not been the most enlightening or prudential choice of words in front of the National Press Club. The modern idea of story is mainly confined to fiction and using story in this context can be misleading. The Genesis account is likely a story in the mode of the story that the Prophet of Nathan told to King David about the rich man who took the poor man’s ewe lamb. The story represented the factual truths of what King David had done by having Uriah killed and taking Bathsheba as his wife in a figurative way. The Genesis account also relates factual truths in the mode of a story of what could be called true myth. But unfortunately the word myth has also come to mean totally not real and we have mainly lost the concept of true myth.
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Very confusing when those terms are used and not defined.
Interesting how the Bible, through it’s use of myth, and other illustrative tropes to reveal God’s Truth often end up being in line with what science and reason eventually reveal as well. (I’m thinking of the order of creation, the historical presence of Hittites found in support of the Biblical narrative after many tried to use our lack of knowledge of said Hittites as proof that the Bible was inaccurate, leaving fields fallow, etc.)
If I didn’t know better, I’d think it were all part of some vast eternal conspiracy. ;^)
How awe-filled I am that it is!
In Christ’s peace and joy,
Robin L. in TX
Hate to be the cynic, but knowing Cardinal McCarrick’s penchant for obfuscation (or lying, if you prefer) I suspect that he’s simply working on contradicting Cdl.Schonborn, who is B-16’s pal.
Remember that somehow or other, a CDF letter written to McCarrick was slipped to the Italian press after McC had lied like a rug about the issue (CINOs and Communion.)
McCarrick will not forget that he was exposed and humiliated.
No I certainly did not forget the Cardinal’s total misrepresentation of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter. I also felt that he was clarifying/contradicting Cdl Shonborn statement and not exactly shedding light on the subject, though I would not presume to know his motives and will just blame it on a bad choice of words.
Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on a par with myths [mythologiis] or other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitteed to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers.
— Humani generis, Pope Pius XII
He didn’t tell the whole truth to the Blue Army in order to get the Kazan icon the pope gave to the Russians.He was quoted as saying :I didn’t tell them the pope wanted to give the icon to the Russians. They might not have given it.
When Georgetown was found to be experimenting on aborted fetus, he “investigated” and said everything has been taken care of.Of course, we found out later nothing was changed.I consider those to be lies.
I would prefer our bishops place particular stress on cautioning mankind of the folly in investing thoroughly in all aspects of scientific theory. I know this would send up a hue and cry of “Galileo!” but as I understand the whole Pope vs. Galileo incident, the pope was admonishing Galileo for promoting change in Biblical text to conform to his scientific discoveries. Am I correct?
Not quite; the pope was not involved – but there is more to the whole issue. In fact, science disproved Galileo’s claims in his own lifetime: he simply refused to listen to Kepler’s demonstrations from the actual data!
Though there is a similar problem here: some evolutionary scientists disagree bitterly with Darwin on scientific grounds, without bringing up God or six days, etc.
But since Thomism takes time (lovely alliteration!) people do not care to take the effort to separate the various issues, either in Darwin’s or Galileo’s cases.
It is very important to note that there IS a part of evolution which is REAL science and not philosophy, (* see below) and thus stands or falls according to real scientific tests, independent of the Bible, just as the study of the shape of the earth or its motions is independent.
And this was all settled by St. Augustine in his De Genesi ad litteram (his commentary on Genesis, but people keep forgetting it: whenever reason establishes something with certainty about the physical world, the Bible should be reinterpreted accordingly.
* Note: there is also much of “evolution” which is NOT science: sometimes it is philosophy, sometimes a form of a-theism – and Chesterton tore it all to shreds.
I am not that aware of the reasons people believe in evolution or Catholic teaching on it but I have had a question for people who believe in it. So far I have not had an answer from any of them. Twice now I have posed this question to the National Center for Science Education. They are the most aggressive of any organization in defending evolution. [see http://www.ncscweb.org]
My question is: If we evolved from a chemical reaction, what parts evolved first. heart, liver,etc. Did all our parts evolve at once? That sounds like Creation. Why is it that the only evolving that is ever depicted is man evolving from an ape. How did we get to the ape? Why isn’t that depicted?
I sent this line of questioning to the Center 9 months ago and never received an answer. Two days ago I tried again-no answer. Today I sent the same e-mail calling evolution a fraud. I’m just trying to get some response.
I had the wrong website address. It is
http://www.ncseweb.org This is National Center for Science Education
Try this. “What came first: DNA polymerase or DNA?”
The enzyme called DNA polymerase links nucleotides together (the four bases: A, C, G, T). But enzymes are proteins, made by a ribosome out of amino acids. (Ribosomes are made of many smaller molecules. Living cells contain thousands of them. You can actually see them in a good microscope.)
The ribosome does its work from a template, called messenger RNA – like DNA but with a U instead of T. The messenger RNA comes from the DNA master code, which contains the master blueprint – the sequence of A, C, G, T which “spell out” the amino acids in the right order to make the polymerase (and all other parts of the cell. Human DNA has about 3 billion bases.
So you need, at one and the same time, the code to build the machine and the machine to read the code.
Or you do not have life.
But there is a funnier answer, which sends the question back to where it belongs…
A biologist happily went into a church, and called out, “I know how life works!”
God called from the tabernacle: “Oh? You figured it out, did you?”
“Yes,” the biologist said. “I don’t need You at all.”
“Really?” came the surprised voice, “I am, er, rather curious how you managed that.”
“I did it in the lab,” he replied. “First I take some dust…”
“Oh, no,” laughed God, “That’s not fair. That’s My dust – I made it. You want to make life, you get your own dust.”
I’d suggest picking up a copy of “In The Beginning…” by Cardinal Ratzinger.
Nobody can explain the creation more simply or beautifully as the Cardinal, now Pope.
I think Cardinal McCarrisk’s unfortunately succint choice of wording will lead to further conflict between creationist and evolutionist.
Your average Darwinist or atheist don’t ken the concept of ‘evolution guided by God,’ since that appears to obviate the purpose of theory–which to an atheist is merely to provide a godless explanation for How We Came To Be. The idea of god ‘guiding evolution’ conjures up pictures of a dude in a flowing white beard molding clay–just like Michaelangelo’s depiction of Genesis. That view is entirely dependent on the misconception of God being bound by a mortal understanding of time. However, as Paul writes, God is not bound by time, but rather ‘to God a thousand years is like a day.’
To a Catholic it is immaterial whether God made the world and universe over a Dawinian timeframe of 6 billion years or whether he made the world in 7 days and set the physical laws of Nature in such a way that the theory of evolution is useful for our scientific understanding of biology and medecine. Either way, it should be enough for Catholics to know that however God intended us to best understand his works, we should all know that that underneath all the explanations is the ultimate explanation: the Word made flesh: He who Is.