That the Universe has evolved through time is a fact that few would be prepared to deny...
     The vast scope of the process through time is estimated at around fifteen billion years. Initially there was a great expansion of primitive particles, those "building blocks" such as protons, neutrons, electrons of which all matter is constituted. Rapidly the first atoms were formed, conglomerates of these particles such as hydrogen, the first and the lightest, closely followed by helium. There followed the cooling and condensation of these gases into clusters of galaxies, the formation of heavier atoms, by the grouping together and nuclear change of the smaller ones. Then there emerged our own solar system with its planets, the cooling down of the earth with its special atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen, the synthesis of water from hydrogen and oxygen into the seas, and the combination of atoms into simple and now more complex molecules. All is now ready and prepared for the next stage forward, the emergence of life.

     And if the sacred and infallible Scriptures say that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1), in order that it may be understood that He had made nothing previously ... then assuredly the world was made, not in time but simultaneously with time. (The City of God. Bk. II, ch. 6)

Creation does not mean the building up of a composite thing from pre-existing principles but it means that the composite is created so that it is brought into being at the same time with all its principles. (ST, I, Q 45, a 4, ad 2)

     Nothing entirely new was afterwards made by God, but all things subsequently made had in a sense been made before in the work of thesix days. (ST, I, Q7 3, a 1, ad 1)

     God is said to have rested on the seventh day, not from all work, since we read (John 5:17): My Father worketh until now; but from the creation of any new genera and species, which may not have already existed in the first works .... Something can be added every day to the perfection of the universe, as to the number of individuals, but not as to the number of species. (ST, I, Q II 8, a 3, ad I and ad 2)

There is no nature bad in itself, as all nature in so far as it is nature, is good.

For the Devil and other demons were indeed good in their nature as created by God, but they made themselves bad by their own conduct; and man sinned at the suggestions of the Devil. (D428)

     The changes in structure (and therefore function) of the horse family is gradual but great. The size of the horse has increased from that of a fox to that of a stallion. His teeth originally low crowned and primitive, fitted for browsing, have become high crowned and very specialized for grinding coarse, siliceous grasses. The limbs have become elongated, the toes reduced in number, and the fusion of the metacarpals and metatarsals into hooves has taken place.

[25] Ibid, pp. 66-67

      One thing concerning the evolution of the horse has become clear. The story of the evolution of the horse has become more and more complex as further material is collected, and instead of a simple family tree the branches of the tree have increased in size and complexity till the shape is now more like a bush than a tree. In some ways it looks as if the pattern of horse evolution might be even as chaotic as that proposed by Osborn (1937, 1943) for the evolution of the Proboscidea, where, "In almost no instance is any known form considered to be a descendant from any other known form; every subordinate grouping is assumed to have sprung, quite separately and usually without any known intermediate stage, from hypothetical common ancestors in the Early Eocene or Late Cretaceous" (Romer 1949). We know that the evolution of the horse did not always take a simple path. In the first place it is not clear that Hyracotherium was the ancestral horse. Thus Simpson (1945) states, "Matthew has shown and insisted that Hyracotherium (including Eohippus) is so primitive that it is not much more definitely equid than tapirid, rhinocerotid, etc., but it is customary to place it at the root of the equid group.
     Similarly it is clear that though in general the horses did increase in size, certain genera such as Orohippus, Archaeohippus and Nannippus appear to have been smaller than their ancestors. ...

[26] Op.cit., p. 149

     This fact, that at every stage there were many diverse developments going on, gives credence to the evolutionary hypothesis that many, not a single, individual histories were being elaborated at the same time.

[27] Op. Cit.

     If we remove Eohippus (or Hyracotherium) from the series because of its questionable relationship, the remaining animals are all clearly horses. Yes, there are differences--differences in size, in the type of teeth, in the position of the eye on the head, in the number of toes but these differences do not constitute major or fundamental changes. Size variations may be conspicuous, but such variations are common in many families of animals both past and present. The horse family has remained intact. Thus we do not see here an example of change from one major type into another. These creatures have not originated from something which is not horse, neither have they developed into something which is not horse.

28 Harold Coffin. "Creation -- Accident or Design." Review & Herald, 1969, pp. 193-197.

     ... duNouy has stated in reference to horses, "But each one of these intermediaries seems to have appeared 'suddenly, ' and it has not yet been possible because of lack of fossils, to reconstitute the passage between these intermediaries. Yet it must have existed. The known forms remain separated like the piers of a ruined bridge. We know that the bridge has been built but only vestiges of the stable props remain. The continuity we surmise way never be established by facts." Goldschmidt has said, "Moreover, within the slowly evolving series, like the famous horse series, the decisive steps are abrupt without transition."

[29] Duane T. Gish. "Evolution? The Fossils Say No!" 2nd ed., 1973, p. 118. Emphasis added.

     In the same rock formations where scientists find fossils of more modem horses, they also find fossils of more primitive ones. These fossil formations show "modern" and "primitive" horses living at the same time.

[30] Harold Coffin. Creation: The Evidence from Science . p. 9.

     In terms then, ofthe objection raised about the "gaps" in the record in general, it can be said that detailed study of the family tree of the horse reveals the same pattern of development, this time on a more detailed level. Creationism becomes increasingly more untenable, the more deeply one looks into the fossil record.

[31] Nogar, Op. cit.

     Descent with modification evolution becomes more and more likely, for in spite of the degree of conjecture involved in setting up the horse phytogeny, the probability that this appearance of descent is misleading becomes the more remote as fossils are found which augment and fill in the pattern. Add to this the numerous phylogenies of the camels, swine, crocodiles, ammonites, fishes, etc., which manifest the same appearance of descent with modification, and the doubts concerning the probability of the evolutionary solution to origins are increasingly removed.

[32][32] Ibid.

     But, if might be objected, even though the record seems to rule out creationism in the Linnaean sense, since all known species were evidently not created from the beginning of time, is it not possible that a sequential creation would explain the facts of the record? With each new proliferation of species in the record, could not this be explained by a special act of God, creating new species in every period and epoch of time?
      It must be admitted that sequential creationism is a possible explanation of the paleontological record, for God certainly could have extended His creative power in any way that He wished. But there is a very important reason why both the theologian, the philosopher of science and the scientist himself would regard such an explanation as unsatisfactory. All would agree that, if possible, a natural explanation is to be sought. To invoke the extraordinary, the miraculous, in explaining the course of natural events is not good theology, nor is it good biology or cosmology. The theologian, as well as the scientist, is bound by an important axiom: God works in an orderly fashion through natural causes. As long as natural causes are available, the theologian, the philosopher and the scientist should seek them. And because a natural explanation for the origin of new species is available, namely, descent with modification, sequential creationism is not needed. So far as the science of paleontology is concerned, the convergence of evidence is too great to entertain serious doubt that the most probable explanation of the origin and diversity of present organic species is some form of organic evolution.

[33] Ibid., pp. 69-70

     Genesis in its assertion that plants and animals were created in all their kinds does teach fixity in the living world. For example, never has a basic kind like the cat produced a new basic kind, like a dog. Of course there are kinds of cats, but the fixity of Genesis is at the higher level of the cat kind. Variation among individuals of a kind does take place, but never has there been any conclusive evidence that a new kind has ever been produced. Darwin discovered that different varieties and species offinches had apparently developed on various islands of the Galapagos group, but the finches were still finches. They were all descendents of the original finch kind.

[36] lbid

     The challenge this book poses the reader is simply that of thinking long and hard about the evidence indicating that the universe and all of its parts, man and his spirit included, are unfolding in an evolutionary fashion, and of facing up to the implications of this evidence. (Emphasis added)

     Creation does not mean the building up of a composite thing from pre-existing principles; but it means that the composite is created so that it is brought into being at the same time with all its principles.... Creation is the production of the -whole being and not only of matter.
     ... to create can be the action of God alone. For the more universal effects must be reduced to the more universal and prior causes. Now among all effects the most universal is being itself (very existence): and hence it must be the proper effect of the first and most universal cause, and that is God... Now to produce being absolutely (that is, existence as such) ... belongs to creation. Hence it is manifest that creation is the proper act of God alone.
     It happens, however, that something participates in the proper action of another, not by its own power, but instrumentally, inasmuch as it acts by the power of another; as air can heat and ignite by the power of fire.
     And so, some have supposed that although creation is the proper act of the universal cause, still some inferior cause acting by the power of the first cause, can create.
     Thus Avicenna asserted that the first separate substance created by God (in turn) created another after itself, and the substance of the world and its soul; and that the substance of the world creates the matter of inferior bodies.
     And in the same manner the Master (Peter Lombard, Sentences 4: D. 5) says that God can communicate to a creature the power of creating, so that the latter can create ministerially, not by its own power.

But such a thing cannot be, because the secondary instrumental cause does not participate the action of the superior cause, except inasmuch as by something proper to itself it acts dispositive ly to the effect of the principal agent, (all ST, I, Q 45, a 4)

     If there fore it (the secondary cause) effects nothing, according to what is proper to itself, it is used to no purpose; nor would there be any need of certain instruments for certain actions. Thus we see that a saw, in cutting wood, which it does by the property of its own form, produces the form ofa bench, which is the proper effect of the principal agent.
     Now the proper effect of God creating is what is presupposed in all other effects, and that is absolute being (existence). Hence, nothing else can act dispositively and instrumentally to this effect, since creation is not from anything presupposed, which can be disposed by the action of the instrumental agent.
     So therefore it is impossible for any creature to create, either by its own power, or instrumentally-- that is, ministerially.
     And above all it is absurd to suppose that a body can create, for no body acts except by touching or moving; and thus it requires in its action some pre-existing thing which can be touched or moved-- which is contrary to the very idea of creation.
     ...no created being can cause anything, unless something is presupposed; which is the very idea of creation. (ST, I, Q 45, a 5)

     This truth can be proved from Sacred Scripture by a twofold method: (1) by showing that Creation is never attributed to any one but God; and (2) by demonstrating that the Bible positively denies that any creature ever exercised creative power. Hebrews 3:4: "He that created all things, is God. "Apocalypse 4:11: "Thou hast created all things; and for Thy will they were, and have been created." This truth is enunciated even more solemnly in Isaiah 44:24: "I am the Lord that make all things, that alone stretch out the heavens, that establish the earth, and there is none with me." And in John 1:3: "All things were made by Him: and without Him was made nothing that was made. "

     The power which sustains the universe is an incommunicable attribute of God in the same sense as the creative power which called it into being.... The action of God termed Divine Preservation is apositive divine influence directed to the very substance of a creature, and by which the creature is enabled to continue its existence, (p. 63)

     The conservation of all things by God is not by means of any new action but rather through a continuation of the action by which He originally gave existence and this action is without either motion or time. (ST, I, Q 104, a I, ad 4).

     The doctrine of the divine Concursus is not strictly a revealed dogma. But it is a certain theological conclusion, as appears from the fact that it is held by all theological schools. We quote the Roman Catechism as of special weight in this matter:
     Not only does God by His Providence protect and govern all things that exist, but by His intimate (that is immediate) power He also impels to motion and action whatever things move and act, and this in such a manner that, although He excludes not, He yet prevents (that is, comes before) the agency of secondary causes; for His most secret influence extends to all things, and as the Wise Man testifies, "reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly. " Wherefore the Apostle, when announcing to the Athenians the God whom not knowing they adored, said: "He is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, and move, and be. " (p. 69)

     Any true development, any new being, is produced not partly byfinite causes and partly by God but wholly by the finite causes in virtue of the evolutionary dynamism God endows them with. For this reason God's creative activity is not an item in our experience; it is always mediated to us through finite things...

[37] Ervin Nemesszeghy, S.J. and John Russell, S.J. Theology of Evolution. (Theology Today Series, No. 6) Notre Dame, IN. Fides Publishers, 1971, p. 65.

      Some have understood God to work in every agent in such a way that no created power has any effect in things, but that God alone is the immediate cause of everything wrought; for instance, that it is not fire that gives heat, but God in the fire, and so forth. But this is impossible. First, because the order of cause and effect would be taken away from created things; and this would imply lack of power in the Creator: for it is due to the power of the cause, that it bestows active power on its effect. Secondly, because the active powers which are seen to exist in things, would be bestowed on things to no purpose, if these wrought nothing through them. Indeed, all things created would seem, in a way, to be purposeless, if they lacked an operation proper to them; since the purpose of everything is its operation. For the less perfect is always for the sake of the more perfect: and consequently as the matter is for the sake of the form, so the form which is the first act, is for the sake of its operation, which is the second act; and thus operation is the end of the creature.
     We must therefore understand that God works in things in such a manner that things have their proper operation.
     In order to make this clear, we must observe that as there are few kinds of causes, matter is not aprinciple of action, but it is the subject that receives the effect of action. On the other hand, the end, the agent, and the form are principles of action, but in a certain order. For the first principle of action is the end which moves (motivates) the agent; the second is the agent; the third is the form of that which the agent applies to action (although the agent also acts through its own form); as may be clearly seen in things made by art.
     For the craftsman is moved to action by the end, which is the thing wrought, for instance a chest or a bed; and applies to action the axe which cuts through, its being sharp.
     Thus does God work in every worker, according to these three things. First, as an end. For since every operation is for the sake of some good, real or apparent; and nothing is good either really or apparently, except in as far as it participated in a likeness to the Supreme Good, which is God; it follows that God Himself is the cause of operation as its end.

     Again it is to be observed that where there are several agents in order, the second always acts in virtue of the first: for the first agent moves the second to act. And thus all agents act in virtue of God Himself and therefore He is the cause of action in every agent.

      Thirdly, we must observe that God not only moves things to operate, as it were applying their forms and powers to operation, just as the workman applies the axe to cut, who nevertheless at times does not give the axe its form; but He also gives created agents their forms and preserves them in being. Therefore He is the cause of action not only by giving the form which is the principle of action, as the generator is said to be the cause of movement in things heavy and light; but also as preserving the forms and powers of things; just as the sun is said to be the cause of the manifestation of colors, inasmuch as it gives and preserves the light by which colors are made manifest. And since the form of a thing is within the thing, and all the more, as it approaches nearer to the First and Universal Cause; and because in all things God Himself is properly the cause of universal being (very existence) which is innermost in all things; it follows that in all things God works intimately. For this reason in Holy Scripture the operations of nature are attributed to God as operating in nature, according to Job 10: II: Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh: Thou hast put me together with bones and sinews, (all ST, I, Q 105, a 5)

     God alone can create; for the first agent alone can act -without presupposing the existence of anything; while the second cause (a creature) always presupposes something derived from the first cause ....and every agent that presupposes something to its act, acts by making a change therein. Therefore everything else acts by producing a change, whereas God alone acts by creation. (ST, I, Q 90, a 3)

     What is substantially in God, becomes accidental in the soul participating the Divine goodness, ...And thus, because the soul participates in the Divine goodness imperfectly, the participation of the Divine goodness which is grace, has its being in the soul in a less perfect way than the soul subsists in itself. Nevertheless, inasmuch as it is the expression or participation of the Divine goodness, it is nobler than the nature of the soul, though not in its mode of being. (ST, I-II, Q 110, a 2, ad 2)

     In the works of nature, creation does not enter, but is presupposed. (ST, I, Q 45, Q 8)

     Creation places something in the thing created according to relation only; because what is created is not made by movement or change. For what is made by movement or by change is made from something pre-existing. And this happens, indeed, in the particular productions of some beings, but cannot happen in the production of all beings by the universal cause of all things which is God. Hence God, by creation, produces things without movement.
     Now when movement is removed from action and passion, only relation remains.
     Hence, creation in the creature is only a certain relation to the Creator as to the principle of its being (its very existence).

     The only alternative seems to be Special Creation--the theory that each species or family, or whatever it may be, was specially created by God either out of nothing or, in some unknown or miraculous way, out of pre-existing matter. This is not a scientific theory and is scientifically not useful.

[38] Nemesszeghy and Russell. Theology of Evolution. Fides, 1972. p. 25.

     Dr. Geoffrey Bourne. Director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center of Emory University, an Australian-born, Oxford-educated American cell biologist, anatomist, and now considered to be one of the world's leading primatologists, has declared his belief that apes and monkeys are the evolutionary descendants of man. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what evolutionists have been saying ever since Darwin.

[41] Quoted from ICR Acts and Facts, aug 1976.

Carl Winterstein of Saratoga, California has sent us a photostat of a religious survey taken in Germany. A number of reasons were given why people no longer go to church, but a total of 46.9 percent attributed it to the difference between the theological and scientific explanations of creation (creation/evolution). This should serve notice to churches and theologians in America that teaching and acceptance of evolution does make a difference.

[42] Carl Winterstein. Bible-Science Newsletter. June 1976, p. 8.

     The heavens are telling the glory of God; And the firmament proclaims His handiwork.
     Day to day pours forth speech, And night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words;
     Their voice is not heard; Yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
     And their words to the end of the world.

My glory I will not give to another.

     This unique theory of the meaning of the six days was adopted by some of the later Latin writers, but usually only inpart. It was too speculative and difficult to appeal to the majority, who preferred to believe that the six days were really periods of time.

[43] F. E. Robbins. The Hexameral Literature. Univ. of Chicago, 1911, p. 22.

     Thus the Heavens and the Earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished His Work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His Work which He had done. And He blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it He had rested from all His Work which He had created and made. (Genesis 2:1-3)

     Nothing new was afterwards made by God, but all things subsequently made had in a sense been made before, in the work of the Six Days. (ST, I, Q 73, a I, ad 1) God is said to have rested on the seventh day, not from all work... but from the creation of any new genera and species, which may not have already existed in the first works. (ST, I, Q 118, a 3, ad 1)

     "Yom" - Whether the Word Yom (day), which is used in the first chapter of Genesis to describe and distinguish the six days, may be taken either in its strict sense as the natural day, or in a less strict sense as signifying a certain space of time; and whether free discussion of this question is permitted to interpreters.
     Answer: Affirmative .(RSS, p. 124)

     And because the Divine Wisdom is the Cause of the distinction of things, therefore Moses said that things are made distinct by the Word of God, which is the concept of His Wisdom; and this is what we read in Genesis 1:3-4. (ST, I, Q 47, a 1)

     The "direction" of the horse family evolution was not predictable, yet it was not random, but was determined from age to age by natural adaptability to the environment which, in turn was constantly undergoing radical changes

[44] Fr. Raymond Nogar. Wisdom of Evolution. Doubleday, 1963, p. 68.

And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven,
to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons,
and for days and years: To shine in the firmament of heaven,
and to give light upon the earth. And so it was done.
And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day,
and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars.
And he set them in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth,
And to rule the day and the night, and to divide the light and the darkness.
And God saw that it was good. And the evening and morning were the fourth day.

The sun riseth, andgoeth down, andreturneth to his place: and there rising again, maketh his round by the south, and turneth again to the north: the spirit goeth forth surveying all places roundabout, andreturneth to his circuits.

     There was not before nor after so long a day,
     the Lord obeying the voice of a man, and fighting for Israel.
     

Joshua commanded the sun and the moon to stand still, and the Lord obeyed, showing clearly Who controls what.
     Psalm 18:6-7 celebrates Our Divine Lord's desire to accomplish His mission of Sacrificial Redemption for us:

     He hath set his tabernacle in the sun, and he, as a bridegroom
     coming out of his bride chamber, Hath rejoiced as a giant to run the -way:
     His going out is from the end of heaven. And his circuit even to the end thereof; and there is no one that can hide himself from his heat.
     

Nor should we forget the great Adversary, Lucifer, the shining one, a son of the morning (Isaiah 14:2) as he was in his glory before he rebelled and became the Prince of Darkness who rules this world.
     But his sun shall be turned into darkness (Joel 2:31, Acts 2:20, 2 Peter 2:17 and Matt-24-29 with Mark 13:24). Or is it that the sun of truth will be turned into the darkness of sin and ignorance as the End of Time approaches?
     Such are the riches of Divine Revelation that Mystics and theologians,, philosophers and scientists can never exhaust but which will reward beyond measure the docile heart and mind.
     The motion of the sun around the Earth, the stability of the Earth at the center of the universe--these are not articles of Faith but are strongly favored by Scripture and Tradition.
     I believe geocentricity will be reinstated, that the Church's condemnation of Galileo will be vindicated, and that heliocentrism will be seen as the error that opened the door to evolutionism, by undermining the authority of Holy Scripture, and thereby paved the way for Modernism, that sewer of all heresies.
     Having created time and having differentiated it according to an alternation of light and darkness which He termed a day, God then proceeded to create those creatures that were to adorn the respective environments of heaven and earth. Thus the Third Day sees the appearance of dry land and its vegetation; these latter could not have existed long without the light of the sun, and so the Fourth Day sees the appearance of sun, moon and all the stars in space. The Fifth Day witnesses the seas swarming with newly created marine life and the sky directly above the earth, full of birds. The Sixth Day, the most momentous of all, witnesses the appearance of all the kinds of animals, and finally, of the first man and the first women.
     Such a literal interpretation of the Six Days of Creation Week is, for us today, the most certain safeguard against evolutionary cosmogonies.
     The point to be emphasized here is that the appearance of each corporeal creature for the first time is the effect of an act that only God could perform because what appears for the first time is a new creature, different from all the others created before and after. And this creating, whether of the first or the second, traditionally so-called, is proper to God alone because it necessitates the immediate bestowal of existence on a total being, with all its principles, and not the generation of one being from another.
     Nor is there anything unreasonable or unscientific in the Scriptural teaching that God created the plant kingdom on the third day with the appearance of the dry land, the sun, moon and all the planets and stars on the fourth day, the marine creatures and birds on the fifth day, all the animals and mankind on the sixth day. These works of God are not limited by time; but in His Wisdom, He ordained that they take place according to time, that is, each one on a certain divinely-appointed day.
     The transcendent and timeless character of God's creative act is not affected by the fact that it took place on a certain day any more than the creation of the human soul is changed as to its immediacy and timelessness for each new individual conceived by human generation in time.
     God's Creative Acts are not processes and the appearance of a new being in time does not in any way necessitate a process when it is a matter of God creating.
     Processes enter only after the products have been created, after the whole package has been delivered, after the creature with all its principles has appeared and after the laws of its nature and of the entire natural and supernatural order have been instituted, established, and promulgated.
     I wish to stress the primacy of Creation over process. It may be that the processes begin simultaneously with the appearance of the creature. Even so, it is abundantly clear that Creation is primary and as St. Thomas says, is presupposed by everything else.
     In summary, this thesis intends to emphasize and defend a literal interpretation of the days in Genesis One. We uphold that just as time was created with the first corporeality or informed matter,
     so also, time itself was in-formed, structured and patterned according to an alternation of darkness and light, of evening and morning, God Himself called the light day (Genesis 1:5) and the sequence "evening and morning"-- "one day," the "second day" and so on. This day, in turn, was structured
     successively and patterned in the seven-day period of the week. Thus God Himself gave to mankind the model and example of the proper rhythm of activity. For even Adam and Eve in Eden, had they persevered in grace, would not have been idle but were given the task of tending the Garden (Genesis 2:15).
     This perfect order of creation which the Creation Week shows us in its completion and in its hierarchical nature, exhibits the grades of perfection in the grades or diverse kinds of beings, from the mineral kingdom, up to and through the plant and animal kingdoms, to man, and on up through the angels to God Himself. Of this marvelous ordering of parts within the whole, St. Thomas says:

     In the parts of the universe every creature exists for its own proper act and perfection, and the less noble for the nobler, as those creatures that are less noble than man exist for the sake of man, while each and every creature exists for the perfection of the entire universe. Furthermore, the entire universe, with all its parts, is ordained towards God as its end, inasmuch as it imitates, as it were, and shows forth the Divine goodness, to the glory of God. (ST,l,Q65,a2)
     

This is what Creation Week shows as: the perfectly ordered and completed universe, the parts adding up to the whole and the whole existing, as the finished product, hierarchical-vertical in its intrinsic perfection, as part is ordered to part, but also exhibiting a temporal character which is really not so much simply horizontal as it is cyclical in its dynamism. For days and weeks, seasons and years recur.
     The over-all pattern of natural and human history indicated by Holy Scripture is not, then, the straight linear horizontal history of evolutionists. Much less is it an upward linear ascent from simple to complex, from less order to more order in time. Here, the evolutionists confuse the order of Creation which is hierarchical and does ascend from the least grades of perfection mirroring the Goodness and Being of God in the lowliest manner and degree up through the grades of more being and more order and complexity through man and angels to God Himself. This is not a temporal order though evolutionists try to make it so. And their entire view of history is false precisely because they confuse this vertical-static-hierarchical order (and static here does not mean non-operational) with the horizontal-temporal "space" between the beginning and the end of all things. This, indeed, may be seen as a linear horizontal succession. But it might be said that what moves along, so to speak, in this line from the beginning to the end of all things, are "wheels within wheels"--cycles, the cycles of the solar day, the cycles of the working week followed by a Sabbath, the cycles of the lunar month, the cycles of the seasons and the years.
     The Scriptural view of natural and human history, then, is modeled for us in Creation Week. There is a vertical order of perfection containing the immutable moral laws, such as those of marriage; then there is the temporal order wherein the immutable is lived out in time. From the beginning of all things in Creation, the temporal line of history is marked by peaks and nadirs, periods of achievement and of decline, of victory and defeat as the original War in heaven is transferred to Earth and continued to the end of the ages.
     But the outline, the model, is clear and Creation Week stands as the pattern of the perfect order which sin disrupted and continues to wound but cannot, in the end, destroy. xxIn Genesis 31 the Remedy for the Fall is clearly predicted and even given as The-Woman, Mary, and Her-Seed, Christ, are shown to Adam and Eve on the day of their Fall as a pledge of eventual Victory over the Serpent, Lucifer and Satan.
     History has its grand disruptions, such as the Flood, the persecutions of the Church and the on-going Revolution against the Mystical Body of Christ, the Great Apostasy and the Final Tribulations. But the Incarnation and Redemption prevail over all and the Church will rise, victorious and triumphant with Christ and Mary in the End.
     Saint Bonaventure says:

     God could have brought all this about in a single instant. He chose instead to act through time, and step by step, and this for three reasons. First there -was to be a distinct and clear manifestation of power, wisdom, and goodness; second, there was to be fitting correspondence between the days or times, and the operations; third, the succession of days was to prefigure all future ages, in the same way as, at creation, the seeds of all future beings ware planted. So the distinction of the future times--...the seven ages of history--stemmed, as i f from seeds, from the distinction of the seven days. That is why, to the six days of work, there is added one of rest: a day to which no dusk is ascribed--not that this day was not followed by night, but because it was to prefigure the repose of souls that shall have no end. Now, if it should be said, in opposition, that all things were made at once, this is simply considering the seven days from the viewpoint of the angels. At any rate, the first manner of speaking is more in keeping with the Scriptures and the opinions of the saints, both before and after the blessed Augustine.

[46] St. Bonaventure. Breviloquium. Part II. Chapter I
     

This literal interpretation of Holy Scripture with respect to the creation of the first man, Adam, has never been defined by the Church but Pohle-Preuss (p. 127) hold the doctrine to be sententia satis certa and proceed to give proofs for it:

     The modern antithesis of Christian Anthropology is atheistic Darwinism, which teaches that in soul and body alike, man is descended from the brute, the human soul being merely a more highly developed form of the brute soul. This teaching is as heretical as it is absurd.
     The modified Darwinism defended by St. George Mivart, -who holds that the body of Adam developed from the animal kingdom, whereas his spiritual soul was infused immediately by the Creator must likewise be rejected, for while not directly heretical, it is repugnant to the letter of Sacred Scripture and to Christian sentiment.
     

And yet, we have Catholic evolutionists today holding such compromised and compromising positions as the following:

     ...man is both a special creation and a product of matter at the climax of the evolutionary process.
     (Nesbitt, p. 10)
     

Such views can only be maintained at the expense of separating human nature into two substantial forms, the material-brute form and the immaterial-soul form from which man emerges not as one substantial unitary living being but rather, as a Cartesian yoking of matter and spirit, of thought and extension.
     Such a view of human nature is against the clear teaching of the Catholic Church which holds that the
     rational-intellectual soul is the one essential-substantial form of the unitary being which is man, (D 481) as will be defended later in Thesis 21.
     The point of this thesis is to defend the positive Scriptural teaching on this subject and
     thereby to challenge the now common view that "Scripture neither teaches nor disproves the doctrine of the evolution of the human body." (Messenger, Evolution and Theology, 1931. p. 275.)
     This view is repeated in The Teaching of Christ: A Catholic Catechism for Adults (Our Sunday Visitor, 1976, p. 58) which states:

     The Bible, to be sure, does not teach evolution; neither does it say anything to oppose scientific theories about bodily evolution.
     

This present thesis maintains that the Scriptural description of the creation of Adam and Eve on the 6th day of Creation Week, constitutes positive teaching that does, indeed, most clearly oppose "scientific theories about bodily evolution" and this in two ways:
     1) by clearly and positively teaching, according to the literal sense of the words, which is the basis of all other Scriptural interpretation, that God did, in fact, create Adam directly from the dust of the earth and Eve from Adam's side, which sense can in no way be reconciled with "scientific theories about bodily evolution" which hold that mankind emerged gradually, over millions of years, from an animal population by means of genetic mutations in those animal bodies; and
     2) by clearly teaching that the creation of man and of woman, of Adam and Eve, was completed, finished, and ftilly accomplished on the 6th day of Creation Week, thereby precluding absolutely any possibility of a long, drawn-out process of emergence for the first man's body, over eons of evolutionary time.

There are no dogmatic statements concerning the creation of Eve. Ott points out, though, (p. 95) that the Fathers agree in interpreting the manner of Eve's creation as teaching the essential assimilation of the woman to the man, that is, the essential nature of woman as derivative, for "woman", Hebrew isha, means "taken from, derived from man." What is derived from is not primary or ordinal but sub-ordinate and secondary. The Fathers also see here the Divine inauguration of marriage, confirmed by Our Divine Lord (Matthew 19:3 -9; Mark 10:2-12) and by St. Paul (Ephesians 5:21-33). Finally, the creation of Eve from Adam's side is a divine type of the birth of the Church from the side of Christ on Calvary. The fact of this divine typology establishes the concrete, historical reality and objective truth of the account of Eve's creation because the type's fulfillment, that is, the existence of the anti-type, derives its very meaning from the historical reality of the type
     itself. In other words, mere symbols and allegories can not be the basis of typology nor can a mere symbol or allegory be a type.

[47] Steinmueller. Companion to Scripture Studies. 1969, vol. I, P. 262 ff.

Saint Thomas has much to say on the creation of women and the order of marriage which is thereby instituted. It may be summed up as follows: Woman is not made to use authority over a man, is not made to be intellectually equal with him or to be a head as he is; and so, she was not formed from Adam's head. Nor is she made to be subject to man in the capacity of a slave, and so she was not formed from Adam's feet. But she is formed from Adam's side, very near his heart, because she is made to be his loving bride and wife, to influence him as Mary did at Cana gently and sweetly, and to resemble, typify, exemplify and imitate the relationship of the Church to Christ: one of living submission and complementarity, (cf. ST, I, Q 92)
     Saint Bonaventure says simply:

     Woman was formed out of the side of man, to be his companion and his assistant in immaculate procreation. They were given the tree of Life as a means of permanent subsistence and of perfect immutability through perpetual immorrality.

[48] St. Bonaventure. Breviloquium. Book II. Chapter 10.
     

Surely, Saint Vincent ofLerins--not to mention the great Doctors and Fathers of the Church--would be horrified at such outrageous novelties as those of Catholic evolutionists who are able, without batting an eye, to hold that Adam and Eve were born of female apes!
     How can such persons be really Catholic?
     And so, far from being scorned as a childish and unscientific myth, this Scriptural account of the creation of Eve constitutes positive, divine teaching about the relations between the sexes, the divine institution of marriage, and the nature of the Church.
     It also, according to Pohle-Preuss (p. 129) "furnishes a decisive argument against the evolutionary hypothesis."
     This is quite obvious for there is simply no way to reconcile this unique manner of Eve's creation with the evolutionary view wherein both the first man and the first woman emerged from an animal population precisely in the manner that male-female pairs are generated today from populations, only in the case of this hypothetical first man and first woman, their appearance was due to the mutated genes of female primates, so that in the evolutionary view, both the first man and the first woman were born of female primates
     In such a view, all is reduced to animal nature and it is difficult, indeed, to see how the Our Sunday Visitor catechism can claim that there is nothing in the Bible "to oppose scientific theories about bodily evolution."
     In the absence of any dogmatic statement, we may cite the decree of the Biblical Commission (D 2123) which states that the literal, historical sense of Holy Scripture may not be called into question when it is a matter of facts pertaining to the foundations of the Christian religion, for example, among others:

the creation of all things wrought by God in the beginning of time;

the special creation of man;

the formation of the first woman from the first man;

the oneness of the human race.

Pohle-Preuss (p. 131) affirms: "The unity of the human race, though not yet formally defined, is a Catholic doctrine." Vatican 1 (1870), a Decree of the Biblical Commission (D 2123) and most recently. Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950) proclaim what today we would call the doctrine of monogenism, or the descent of the entire human race from a single human pair-- Adam and Eve.
     The Biblical Commission (Decree of June 30th, 1909, D 2123, RSS page 123) states "the oneness of the human race" as pertaining to the very foundations of the Christian religion and therefore, the literal historical sense of Scripture on which this doctrine is founded, is not to be called in question.
     The teaching of Scripture on this point may therefore be said to be positive and clear, rather than the opposite, as people too frequently say today under the influence of evolutionary ideology.
     But the Catholic doctrine of the unity of the human race, that is, of monogenism, is an insuperable barrier to the false evolutionary hypothesis. And the teaching of Humani Generis (1950) warns Catholics, in no uncertain terms, against pollution by this error. Pope Pius XII says:

     The Faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains

1) either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin
     through, natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or

2) that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.

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.
     

     Man, as human nature, consists of two essential parts, a material body
     and a spiritual, immortal soul of which he is one composite being,
     unified by the substantial form of the rational soul.
     

This thesis is intended to acknowledge the defide doctrine (D 428 and D 1783) that man is indeed dual in nature. And this is clearly taught in Scripture, especially in Genesis 2:7: "Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living being."
     But this basic, foundational Scripture just as clearly teaches that God created the first man on the 6th day of Creation Week, after which He rested, clearly and positively precluding any such fantastic idea as that of the evolution of man's body over millions of years.
     It seems, in fact, that the false theory of evolution would impute to man more than one soul, at least in the course of evolutionary time, for this theory holds that man, as a unit, evolved through the ages from a primitive brute, half-human, half-animal, up to his present status. But the nature and kind of soul possessed by those hominid in-between creatures has never been elaborated upon by theistic evolutionists.
     However, most theistic evolutionists evade the difficulty and postulate a sudden emergence of man, due to the immediate creation of the human soul, as Catholic Faith requires, and leave the body to the evolutionists and their hominids.
     The difficulties involved in this position have not gone unrecognized. For now we find Nemesszeghy and Russell (1971, p. 71) claiming that "The whole man is the result of evolution, and still a part of it."
     This biological feat is accomplished by means of Rahner's transcendental causality (see Thesis 9) reducing God's Creative Activity to immanent evolutionary processes operating under the influence of the Divine Concursus which enables them to transcend themselves and evolve more complex beings from simpler ones, including man from the primates.
     It may be asked whether this kind of theistic evolution honors the Catholic teaching that man is composed of two really distinct principles, the material and the spiritual, for if the whole man is the result of evolution, and still a part of it, as Nemesszeghy and Russell assert, and if evolution is a natural process as the evolutionists assert, then it is difficult to see how the whole man thus evolved, however transcendentally caused, can be anything more than a superior kind of beast in which it would be difficult to find the rational-intellectual soul, simple, spiritual and immortal, of Catholic doctrine and tradition.

     The rational-intellectual soul of man is per se, of and by itself, the formal principle and cause, the essential substantial form of the human composite, that which causes it to be human. Without the rational soul
     which is a simple, immortal, spiritual, intellectual and immaterial principle,
     there is no human being.
     

Pohle-Preuss says (p. 142) "The spiritual soul is the immediate substantial form of the body. This is deflde." (D 481)
     Ott (p. 97) says: "According to Genesis 2:7, the dust, by virtue of the creation of the soul,
     becomes a living being, a human composite."
     t is impossible to see, in view of this teaching of the Church and all of Catholic tradition, how in the world "The whole man" could be the result of evolution" as Nemesszeghy and Russell hold on the basis of Rahner's transcendental causality or how, in view of the common interpretation of Genesis 2:7, anyone could say, as the Our Sunday Visitor Catechism does, that the Bible has nothing to say "to oppose scientific theories about bodily evolution."
     For in either of these cases--an evolution of the whole man or an evolution of only the bodily part of man--violence is done to the doctrine that the soul is the substantial form of the unity that is a man. This is the scholastic doctrine of hylemorphism or unity of matter and form in all corporeal beings.
     Vera Barclay quotes Msgr. Kolbe:

     This body of ours is not a separate thing.... (that is to say, able to exist without the soul). We deny that it has any organic life of its own which a superadded soul comes in by some mysterious influence to control and direct. Sensation is not a gathering by the soul of impressions on particles united to but external to itself, ...whatever the body is, the soul makes it. The moving of the limbs, the circulation of the blood, the renovation of tissue, the digestion of food, are all as much the work of the soul as are sensation and thought. I am one being, not two. My soul is simple in its essence, as well as various in its powers; and it is one and the same thing which thinks beyond the body's range, which in the body feels, which organizes the body itself, and which constitutes (or gives being to) the very minutest particle of which the body is composed. All this is included in the meaning of the statement that "the soul is the form of the body." Every human being is a unique totum or whole, a single substantial form with its basic matter. Nor is it anything superadded to the parts. It is the parts in their
     co-existence and co-activities

[49] Msgr. Kolbe. A Catholic View of Holism. 1928,
     pp. 47-48. Kolbe is here quoted by Vera Barclay in her excellent 1951 book entitled Challenge to the Darwinians, Johns, pp. 264-265.
     

This is the meaning, too, of St. Thomas' dictum that the soul contains the body. (ST, I, Q 76, a 3)

From this doctrine, it is surely abundantly plain to the mind sensitive to reality, that the so-called evolution of the body from the beasts is an utter impossibility in the light of both reason and of faith. Indeed, a special kind of blindness seems to be required to believe in this fantastic hypothesis of our times. And yet we find the most orthodox theologians, even after long study and reflection, willing to entertain not only the possibility of human evolution but even its probability. (E.G. Nogar, Rahner, Holloway, and most recently Harden and the authors of the OSV Catechism.) How to explain it? Best not to try. But one cannot help but recall the "mystery of iniquity" (2 Thes. 2:7) and grieve that it is at work even within the Church.
     The words of St. Thomas are very clear:

     The first formation of the human body could not be by the instrumentality of any created power, but was immediately from God.
     (ST, I, Q 91, a 2)
     

Some have thought that man's body was formed first in priority of time, and that afterwards the soul was infused into the formed body. But it is inconsistent with the perfection of the production of things, that God should have made either the body without the soul, or the soul without the body, since each is a part of human nature. This is especially unfitting as regards the body, for the body depends on the soul, and not the soul on the body. (ST, I, Q 91, a 4, ad 3)
     These words of St. Thomas further emphasize the impossibility of bodily evolution, for human evolution, even when held and propagated by theists, really postulates the primacy of the body over the soul and reverses the real and right order of things, assuming that the body can exist and develop apart from the soul in the form of hominids.
     The point of this thesis is to emphasize the unity of human nature in man, the unity of the two composite parts that are the body and the soul, and particularly to emphasize the primacy of the soul in this composite that is man, for it is the spiritual, rational-intellectual principle alone that causes the composite to be human and that communicates the act of existence--very existence--
     to the composite that is man. Without the rational soul, then, there simply is no human being.
     Advances in biotechnology and the manufacture of test-tube babies make one wonder if these procedures could not bring forth creatures with the appearance of human beings but with only an animal, i.e., sensitive soul, lacking true human intelligence and will. Theologians surely need to address such problems.
     Theistic evolutionists err on two sides. Some err on the side of the body, submerging the rational principle into the material and elevating the material to a primacy wherein the development of the material, or evolution is made to appear plausible. But this is impossible to argue on any sound basis because the rational nature of man is absolutely beyond the power and capacity of matter to produce or to educe or to evolve. Theistic, especially Catholic evolutionists, realize this and therefore they insist that God must create the soul in man. But in the meantime, they have accepted the hominids, the half-human, half-ape creatures of the materialists, and they do not explain to us how the rational soul of man is thus reduced to the hominid status. The only way it could be done would be to subordinate the soul to the body in such a way that it partakes of the same developmental processes. This is simply to fall back into materialism and to fail to acknowledge that while the soul of man is, indeed, susceptible of change, it is not--if it is to remain the same basic kind of
     rational-intellectual principle that it is in man--susceptible of that kind of change that would allow it to be, in the hominid, less than its nature, and to develop, along evolutionary lines, into something more than itself. This is to postulate, in any kind of being, a potentiality that is undefined and unlimited, that is, a potentiality for becoming another kind of being.
     But this is impossible. St. Thomas says "It is impossible for the same identical form to belong to different species. " (ST, I, Q 118, a 3) But to remove the limitations of potentiality is to reduce all of nature to chaos, and all of reality to becoming. And to thus remove the stability of being (of nature and of essence) is to take the intelligibility out of reality. For matter is not any kind of principle of intelligibility but only form and there is no such thing as matter without form, no such thing as becoming without existential intelligibility, which resides in and comes from formality. Now evolutionists, like all rational beings, even devils, need intelligibility. And so. they mask the real absurdity of their thesis by telling us one of two things: 1) that man is the ultimate source of intelligibility (Ashley Montague is a good example of this position) or 2) that God is the ultimate source of all intelligibility.
     But the theistic evolutionists are here discovered to be the more culpable and the more diabolical in their inspiration even than the atheistic evolutionists, because the position of the former is consistently absurd, but the latter are using God to mask the original absurdity. In other words, theistic evolutionists call in the all-Holy God and reduce Him to a mechanism for evolution. Is not this the ultimate in blasphemy? Is it not the Devil's own perverse "theology"?
     Catholics who use evolutionary terminology thereby adopt and school themselves in an evolutionary way of thinking, and this is to embrace an ideology. In the words of a French writer:
     "More than ever, two spirits confront us, and we must choose between two languages."
     The spirit and the language are most intimately related. There is the spirit of truth and the spirit o/error. The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, and the spirit of the Devil, Satan.
     Theistic evolution is more dangerous and more evil than atheistic evolution because, typical of all of Satan's activities, it cloaks its poison in seeming holiness, in apparent truth, and in pious terms emptied of their substance.

This thesis was affirmed and defined by 5th Lateran (D 738) against neo-Platonic and Averroistic monopsychism which is not unlike modern Teilhardian pan-psychism. Such errors result from a conflation of matter and spirit, of nature and grace, and are especially typical of theistic evolution of the Teilhardian variety.
     Teilhard de Chardin implicitly denied that every human being possesses an individual soul directly and immediately created by God so that each individual is a unique person destined to give a special, a particular glory to God in heaven for all eternity. He did not deny this doctrine explicitly nor attack it directly. As the Monitum against his works is careful to state: they are full of grave errors and ambiguities that offend Catholic doctrine. One of these ambiguities is the way in which he speaks of individuals. Msgr. Leo S. Schumacher describes Teilhard's belief:

     There are not many beings in the universe, just one. "The world is not an agglomeration of juxtaposed things; ... (it is) a great Whole. " And this reality is not actually a being, but a motion, i.e., evolution. The man in the street may think he encounters many individual persons and things every day, but these are only manifestations of the one, underlying reality. The man in the street himself is merely an appearance or phenomenon of it. ...
     ... Life is more real than lives ... man is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself. ... there is not scientifically speaking minds in nature; but there is one mind...Evolution has reached its highest state so far in becoming man, but it is in the process of becoming "super-humanity, " a gigantic collective super-organism as well as a supreme consciousness.
     That there is but one reality and that what we call individual beings are merely facets or sparkles of it ... Conscious beings are truly only the different pinpoint manifestations of a magnitude which includes them all. ... "the dimensions of the magnitude which we call 'mind'
     ... are the very same as those of the universe. ... Mind then is the very substance of the universe and individuals are like its freckles.

[50] Msgr. Leo S. Schumacher. The Truth about Teilhard.
     Catholic Polls, 1968, pp. 21-22.
     

Individual people, men and women, boys and girls, immortal creatures for whom Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ died a most horrible death on the Cross to redeem from sin so that they might live forever with Him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the Saints and Angels, in Heaven--freckles?
     It should be evident, too, that this extremely collectivist mentality is about the best preparation one could imagine for a totalitarian regime.
     There is the same ominous tendency to personify evolution as some super-force in Fr. Edward Holloway's work that we see in Teilhard. And yet. Fr. Holloway explicitly repudiates any infection with the error of Teilhard. I wish the fad were as pure as the intention.
     I doubt that the many Catholic Sisters who rhapsodize over Teilhard de Chardin, who christen the science buildings in their colleges with his name and place his picture in prominent places in these halls of modem learning--I really doubt that they realize what they are doing. If they did, they simply could not do it. Such is the harm worked by ignorance, even without malice.

The first part of this statement has never attained the de fide status mainly because of the controversies between generationism and creationism (see Ott, pp. 99-100 or any good history of dogma) which concerned the creation of the human soul and its relation to the transmission of original sin by generation. St. Augustine had difficulty in reconciling the transmission of original sin by generation with the creation of the soul by God, not being able to hold that God would create a soul in the state of sin. God, however, does not create any evil. He creates a human soul thus causing the creature conceived by the parents to be human but He does not cancel out or negate the contributions of the parents who carry the defects passed on by Original Sin. Nor does he elevate the newly created human soul to the supernatural order by giving it His Grace. That is done, according to the present dispensation, by the Sacrament of Baptism.
     But the vast majority of the Fathers and Schoolmen taught what is termed creationism, or that doctrine that the individual soul is indeed created by God out of nothing at the moment of its unification with the body. And St. Thomas went so far as to condemn as heretical the opposite opinion of generationism, that the soul was transmitted from the parents in the act of generation. (ST, I, Q 118, a 2.)
     Today, our problem is not with this particular point, especially since Pope Pius XII has stated quite dogmatically (in Humani Generis, 1950) that "The Catholic faith obliges us to believe that souls
     are immediately created by God."
     What he did not go on to say is when. And this point is hotly debated today. St. Thomas laid down the principle, still and forever valid and true, that "the rational soul, which is not transmitted by the parent, is infused by God as soon as the human body is apt to receive it." (ST, I, Q 100, a I, ad 2) Now Aristotle, and St. Thomas, with all the medieval schoolmen following Aristotelian and ancient science in general, knew nothing of genetics. The discoveries of this science have been, in God's Providence, reserved for our times. And so, here is a statement from a textbook of genetics, quite secular, and so, completely unprejudiced to our present cause:

     The zygote cell has, within itself, all the information
     which is necessary to form a new individual organism.

[51] I. J. Predder and E. G. Wynne. Genetics: A Basic Guide. Norton, 1972, pp. 17-18. Emphasis added.
     

The zygote is that cell which results from the fusion of the sperm and the ovum in the process called syngamy. The zygote, therefore, it seems to me, is as apt to receive the soul as the material substrate of humanity could ever be, if it does indeed, as the geneticists tell us, have all the information necessary to form a new individual organism. Perhaps the situation is similar to a computer that has been programmed. Once it has been programmed, you have only to make whatever use of the computer you wish along the lines of that programming. And so with the zygote: it is fully programmed; all that remains is for it to grow and develop.
     It seems safe to hold, then, that insofar as we can determine and insofar as we may presume to discover the hidden mysteries of Almighty God, He deigns to infuse the human soul at the moment of conception; and that the zygote is a human being and may not be prevented without preventing a human fife from coming to be, and may not be killed without murdering a new human being. Abortion at any time after fertilization, then, would properly be termed homicide.
     And it may reasonably be asked if there is any Scriptural confirmation of this view. To my mind, there is, indeed, a very powerful and clear Scriptural basis for this view, and it is found in the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke where the Angel Gabriel .appears to Mary. I find the clearest indication of the moment of the Incarnation of Our Divine Lord in these words Mary said: "Behold, I am the Handmaiden of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word." And the Angel departed from her. (Luke 1:38.) The moment of Mary's consent is the moment of the Incarnation. As she hastens to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the very sound of her voice causes the infant John to leap in his mother's womb and causes Elizabeth herself to understand, mystically, that it is the very Mother of God whose voice has thrilled both her child and her own heart.
     In 1679, the Holy Office under Pope Innocent XI, condemned the following proposition
     (D1195):

     It seems probable that every foetus (as long as it is in the womb) lacks a rational soul and begins to have the same at the time that it is born; and consequently it will have to be said that no homicide is committed in any abortion.
     

There are many today who would like to believe this error. But the public stand of the Church against both contraception and against abortion seems to give clear proof that the view most favored by Catholic theology and the official Teaching Authority is that which we hold: that the human soul is present from the moment of conception and that the zygote is a human being not to be violated without the grievous sin of murder.
     Finally, I would like to call upon all those Christians in the pro-life movement to speak more frequently of the soul which is directly and immediately created, from nothing, by Almighty God, Himself! What a tremendous act of condescension on His part! How it speaks of the dignity and goodness of man and of God's infinite love for His favored creature. Should not this fact be more widely acclaimed? It is Catholic doctrine. May we not proclaim it as such? St. Teresa of Avila, that great mystic and Doctor of the Church, compared the human soul to a castle made of a single diamond or very clear crystal, but a few phrases later admitted that she could find nothing with which to compare the great beauty of a soul and its capacity for grace. And this great beauty of man's spiritual nature derives from his having been created in the image and likeness of God Himself. And she concludes: "for, though it is His creature, and there is therefore as much difference between it and God as between creature and Creator, the very fact that His Majesty says it is made in His image means that we can hardly form any conception of the soul's great dignity and beauty." (Interior Castle, chapter I.)

     Adam and Eve were endowed by God with supernatural life in the form of sanctifying grace (defide) and with certain other preternatural gifts, namely bodily immortality )defide), perfect control of nature by reason or freedom from irregular desire, i.e., concupiscence )sententia fidei proxima), freedom from suffering (sententia communis) and a knowledge of natural and supernatural truths infused by God )sententia communis); and Adam and Eve received these gifts not only for themselves but for their posterity (sententia communis).
     

There is so much theology contained in this extended thesis that it would take volumes to explicate it. The point to be emphasized here is that Catholic evolutionists are indeed hard put to fit these doctrines into their evolutionary scheme of things.
     Let us single out but one point. The Our Sunday Visitor Catechism (The Teaching of Christ, pp. 59) is quite embarrassed about the state of original justice and innocence. The cause of such embarrassment is only the theory of human evolution. The fear of this false and evil hypothesis so deceitfully vaunted as scientific, leads the otherwise fine and orthodox authors of this catechism seriously to compromise the doctrines concerning the original state of mankind in the persons of Adam and Eve. Thus they claim that Holy Scripture "does not teach that the first man was sophisticated or enjoyed a rich culture, ..."
     The word sophisticated is curious in the context. What does it mean? Let its precise definition pass. St. Thomas has an article in the Summa which answers the question "Whether the first man knew all things?" The objectors to this question would not only answer with a resounding "No! " but would also make Adam out to be quite un-sophisticated, that is, quite a simpleton! But how does St. Thomas answer? He says:

     On the contrary, Man named the animals (Gen. 2:20). But names should be adapted to the nature of things. Therefore Adam knew the animals' natures; and in like manner he was possessed of the knowledge of all other things.
     I answer that, in the natural order, perfection comes before imperfection, as act precedes potentiality; for whatever is inpotentiality is made actual only by something actual. And since God created things not only for their own existence, but also that they might be the principles of other things: so creatures were produced in their perfect state to be the principles as regards others.
     Now man can be the principle of another man, not only by generation of the body, but also by instruction and government (Bases of all culture. PH) Hence, as the first man was produced in his perfect state, as regards his body, for the work of generation, so also was his soul established in aperfect state to instruct and govern others.
     Now, no one can instruct others unless he has knowledge, and so the first man was established by God in such a manner as to have knowledge of all those things/or which man has a natural aptitude. ...
     To Adam, as being the first man, was due a degree of perfection which was not due to other men. ... (ST, I, Q 94, a 3)
     

This apparently simple event--Adam's naming of the animals--thus contains a great deal of the "scientific anthropology" that the authors of the OSV Catechism insinuate (p. 73) has nothing to do with Genesis. For, the fact of the matter is that evolutionary anthropologists have so far been completely unable to account for the origin of language. In man's present state, language must be learned, and it must be learned early. But Adam engaged in such a highly sophisticated activity as that of classifying, according to the creationists, about three thousand different kinds of animals, including birds. Therefore, he had learned, directly from God Himself, or else had been created with a fully developed human language. And language is foundational to all culture. Therefore, Scripture does indeed teach, if we approach it with the faith and reverence due to God's Word, that the first man Adam was--perhaps better than sophisticated--wise and very discerning. Furthermore, it teaches that had there been more than two people, there would indeed have been, from the very beginning of human life, a rich culture, for the foundations of it were in very high intelligence and its corollary, language

The comments of Ludwig Ott on this decree of Trent are valuable enough to include in our understanding of this doctrine:

     The Council of Trent teaches that Adam lost sanctity and. justice by transgressing the Divine commandment. Since the punishment is proportional to the guilt, the sin of Adam was clearly a serious sin.
     The Biblical account of the Fall through the sin of the First Parents is contained in Genesis 2 and 3. Since Adam's sin is the basis of the dogma of Original Sin and Redemption, the historical accuracy of the account as regards the essential facts may not be impugned.
     According to a decision of the Biblical Commission in 1909, the literal historical sense is not to be doubted in regard to the following facts:
     a) that the first man received a command from God to test his obedience;
     b) that through the temptation of the Devil who took the form of a serpent, he transgressed the Divine commandment;
     c) that our First Parents -were deprived of their original condition of Innocence. (D 2123)

[52] Ludwig Ott. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 1, 6, 7
     

Because of the high state of Adam and Eve, their sin was not of a lower type, such as any sin of the flesh, but rather an intellectual sin of the highest--and worst--kind, namely, of interior pride leading to the act of disobedience, (cf. ST, I, Q 94, a 4, ad 1; 11-11, Q 163)
     These truths of faith are upheld in opposition to the false evolutionary view that would reduce the first man and woman to some pre-logical or pre-civilized status hardly capable of real sin at all.
     But this is exactly what an evolutionary "Theology" would have us believe--that the first
     man (or men) and woman (or women) were brutish, or at best childish creatures, primitive in their "developing reason and conscience," as Francoeur says below. But this modem view of sin has no real conception of the personal nature of sin. For all their talk of personalism and inter-personal relations, modem theologians seem to have lost any notion of the real personal malice of sin and its essential disorder. Rather, they have the Original Sin, which was of necessity intensely personal, occurring in a world already in a state of disorder-- which entirely misses the dogmatic fact that it was this original personal sin that caused the disorder in which mankind has found itself ever since and which only union with Jesus Christ can overcome.
     Robert Francoeur clearly shows, to those who understand the teaching of the Church, that his views are not compatible with Catholic teaching. Quoting two Jesuits, Aiszeghy and Flick, he says:

     "Adam and Eve" is a literary device epitomizing the revolt of all men against their consciences. Every man has a moral obligation and every man inevitably rebels against this imperative.
     Original sin is a collective reality. Whether it was first committed by one man or by many in one or more groups does not matter since subsequent interfertility would bind all men together in the solidarity of rebellion against God.
     As a result of this collective sense and looking at man in terms of evolution, we can maintain that man is born into a situation of inward alienation before his Creator. The essence of original sin is then a state of privation which separates man from God and accounts for the lack of selflessness and love in our world. The redemptive grace and example of Christ is the only remedy to this situation.
     The literary device of "Adam and Eve" symbolizes the first human being or beings, the stage at which man became man, emerging from an earlier form of bipedal gait and developing reason and conscience. Just where and how the first men appeared is a question for science, though it is clear that from biblical and theological arguments alone we cannot deny the possibility of mankind having emerged from more than one unique couple, the historical "Adam and Eve. "

[53] Robert Francoeur. Critic, Feb-Mar 1967, pp. 30-31.
     

Fr. Edouard Bone, Jesuit anthropologist, is quoted as saying "As an anthropologist, the words 'Adam and Eve' have no relevance for me." And Karl Rahner is quoted as saying that "There is no reason why such scientific views as polygenism should be incompatible with Catholic doctrine. Polygenism does not alter original sin."
     By reducing Adam and Eve to a literary device, these men sweep away the authority of the Biblical Revelation and indeed, the possibility of God revealing.
     By reducing Original Sin to a mere "collective reality," these men distort the true nature of Original Sin and also, its relation to us.
     First, the consequences of Original Sin--universal suffering, disease, death, and all else that the wounded intellect and will of man entails--are inconceivable except as a result of sin of such magnitude and malice that could only have been committed by persons of a very high and noble nature.
     One simply does not punish the sins of children and the feeble-minded in the same manner that one does the transgressions of intelligent adults and those "to whom much has been given." The anger of God that we read of in Genesis 3 could hardly be directed against primitive people who had just attained the evolutionary "age of reason." It would make of God a most cruel and unjust monster. But the first man and woman who committed the first sin would be, in the evolutionary view, people who had just emerged "from an earlier form of bipedal gait and developing reason and conscience."
     How did such creatures become so intimate with God that to disobey His command could cause such disaster for themselves and for all their descendants?
     Secondly, men and women having just turned human, could scarcely be capable, it seems to us, of the intensely personal act that the first sin was. For sin, in any form, is the most intimately and intensely personal kind of act there is. It is true that in us, original sin is not a positive evil but a state of deprivation of divine life. But it is inconceivable, again, that this radical deprivation should be allowed to descend to us on account of some primitive misdemeanor, or genetic "mistake," a la Teilhard.
     Again the evolutionary view of Original Sin greatly obscures the personal nature of the first sin. It is inconceivable that Our Divine Lord should have undergone the horrors and incredible torments of His Passion and Death on the Cross to redeem us from the extremely hypothetical "sin" of evolutionary "firsts." The "inward alienation before his Creator" and "the rebellion against moral obligations" that Francoeur speaks of are not the state of original sin in us but rather its consequences. Concupiscence, weakened will, and darkened intellect are the result of a terrible Fall from a very high state of nobility in which there was eminent control of the passions, an integral will and a brilliant intellect. Such a picture hardly squares with a group of suddenly reasoning but barely reasonable primates in a family of brutes.
     Nor can it in any way be reconciled with the Passion and Death of Our Divine Lord. No, sin is something else again from what these men would have us think. Only contemplation of Christ's Redemptive Sufferings and Death on Calvary can teach us the real personal nature and malice of the first sin and of our own constant and desperate need for restoration, and even after the restoration that Baptism effects, for the continual aid to overcome the effects of original sin in us.
     I suggest that Francoeur, the Jesuits Bone, Flick, Aiszeghy and Karl Rahner, with many other theologians of our time, have fallen from divine Catholic Faith into a secular, pagan naturalism which is typical of the evolutionary world view.
     Let their words stand as evidence of what the assimilation of the evolutionary ideology does to divine Catholic and supernatural Faith in the minds and hearts of those who allow themselves to be poisoned by this error.
     Against these heretical teachings, we have the sure and certain Decrees of the Council of Trent:

     If anyone, does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God. and consequently death with which God had previously threatened him, and together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul for the worse; let him be anathema.
     If anyone asserts that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity, and the holiness and justice, received of God, which lost, he or himself alone, and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death and pains of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema: whereas he contradicts the Apostle, who says: "By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned." (Rom. 5:12)
     If anyone asserts that this sin of Adam--which in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own--is taken away either by the powers of human nature, or by any other remedy than the merit ofthe one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ., Who hath reconciled us to God in His own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification, and redemption; or if he denies that the said merit of Jesus Christ is applied, both to adults and to infants., by the Sacrament of Baptism rightly administered in the form of the Church; let him be anathema.

[54] Council of Trent. Session V, 17 June 1546, Decree Concerning Original Sin. D 787-792.
     

No one ever even thought of denying the historical existence of Adam and Eve until the heretical novelties of Modernism gave rise to such fantastic notions, and of Modernism, the principal doctrine is evolution, as St, Pius X warns us in Pascendi.

     As a consequence of the grievous original-personal sin of pride, leading to disobedience, our First Parents:
     1) lost sanctifying grace,
     2) provoked the anger and indignation of God, and
     3)became subject to suffering and death and the dominion of the Devil. (Defide)
     

This and the following thesis serve to further emphasize the constant teaching of the Church with respect to the historical existence of the first man and the first woman, our Parents, Adam and Eve, and the historical reality of their actions.
     Their Fall from the high state in which they were created and originally established, had its most serious consequences in the spiritual order with the loss of intimate friendship with God.
     But, as if to ensure that the human race would never be able to forget the seriousness of rebellion against the All-Holy God, He allowed the effects of this sin to touch the entire creation. The consequences of Original Sin that are evident throughout the entire universe seem also to emphasize for us the fact that the universe is indeed a cosmos, an ordered unity, a great system in which, as in any organized body, a flaw in one part inevitably affects all the other parts and thereby the whole in one way or another. We are told that when an infection afflicts the little toe of a person, all the cells of the body mobilize to mount a campaign against it. And so, when Adam and Eve sinned, the repercussions were felt and the damage proliferated throughout the universe of which they were an integral part and especially, throughout the earth over which they were created to hold dominion and ruling power.
     All the evils that entered the world as a result of Original Sin and as a punishment for it, may be summed up in the one word death for, whether it is of the spiritual or of the material order, evil is the absence of life or a lessening of vital powers or actions that lead directly either to the cessation of life or its weakening.
     No physical evil can compare with moral or spiritual evil which is sin, but the physical evils are intended by God, it would seem, to be for us corporeal creatures that we are constant reminders of the real horror that is sin, that to be separated from God is to die, but also as a means of atoning for the moral evil in the same way that Our Divine Lord did on Calvary, and in union with Him.
     The Creationist position, then, recognizes that physical evils are present and active in the world today only because of the Original Sin of Adam and Eve and as punishment for that sin.
     What could be more reasonable and just? Solange Hertz sums up Tradition most concisely and clearly:

     As soon as Adam, in his capacity as divinely constituted head of creation, engaged his God-given authority to ratify Eve's disobedience by sharing the forbidden fruit with her, the whole world began dying prematurely. Left a prey to his own mortality, he was told, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken, for dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return" (Gen. 3:17-19) Without the vivifying support of grace, nature began taking its course, following its hierarchs Adam and Eve into disorder. Sorrow and pain, labor and toil, thorns and thistles made their appearance in what till then had been a perfectly harmonious environment. Everything in the universe was affected, from the lowest to the highest. The serpent lost its graceful upright posture, locomoting "on thy breast" (Gen. 3:14) over the earth, and the light of heaven itself began to fail.
     On the fourth day of creation God had "made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day, and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars. And he set them in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth." Not only would these luminaries "divide the day and the night, " but they would "be for signs, and for seasons and for days and years: To shine in the firmament of heaven and to give light upon the earth. And to rule the day and the night, and to divide the light and the darkness" (Gen. 1:14-18). The plain literal sense of this passage is that the moon when created was incandescent, burning with its own light "to rule the night" instead of merely reflecting the sun's as it does now. According to Fernand Crombette, once the original sin was committed, the moon's light immediately began waning, the exact date of its final extinction apparently recorded by ancient astronomers in hieroglyphic writings. From that time forth nights are darker than they should be.

[55] Solange Hertz. Apostasy in America. Veritas Press, 1999, pp. 157-159.
     

(And we have noted a similar lessening in the sun's size and therefore light. See Thesis 4)

     There were similar catastrophic effects in man himself, as if the primordial "slime "from
     which God created him had turned to mire. Not only did he have to wear clothing to cover his nakedness, but Sr. Anna Catherine Emmerich said., "I saw Adam and Eve losing their brilliancy and diminishing in stature. It was as if the sun went down." Man seemed to "draw creation into himself. It was as if man once possessed all things in God ... but now he made himself their center, and they became his master. I saw the interior, the organs of man as if in the flesh, in corporeal, corruptible images of creatures, as well as their relations with one another, from the stars down to the tiniest living thing. All exert an influence on man. He is connected with all of them; he must act and struggle against them, and from them suffer. "
     Since the Fall, every newborn child, normally conceived inpleasure, begins life wailing ... Furthermore, from the moment man is conceived in the womb, everything he produces of himself is fetid.
     St. Paul summed up the effects of the Fall by saying, "The wages of sin is death, " because sin, like death, produces separation. It parts the material body from its immaterial soul as it parted man from God, the one being a direct consequence of the other. Because "the Grace of God" is "everlasting life" (Rom. 6:23), the original rupture in Eden eventually caused not only the separation of souls and bodies, which is physical death by definition, but it initiated the interminable series of separations and dislocations which characterizes a world always on the verge of decomposition.

[56] Ibid.
     

Catholics recognize that physical evils are present and active in the world today only because of the Original Sin of Adam and Eve and as punishment for that sin and all our personal sins thereafter.
     Moreover, because man is a microcosm., the wounds he suffered both in body and soul as a result of Original Sin., were also felt throughout the macrocosm and their traces remain to this day.
     The state of the animals before and after the Fall is a controversial one. Some of the Fathers of the Church held that animals and plants were different before and after the Fall. Saint Thomas was of the opinion that the Fall did not change the nature of the animals, and that those whose nature it is now, after the Fall, to devour the flesh of other animals, were not any different before the Fall. (ST, I, Q 960, a 1, ad 2; cf also Q 72, ad 5)
     And of the plants, he says:

     If man had not sinned, the earth would have brought forth thorns and thistles to be the food of animals but not to punish man because their growth before the Fall would bring no labor or punishment for the tiller of the soil, as Augustine says. (Gen. ad lit. iii,18)
     Alcuin, however, holds that before sin the earth brought forth no thorns or thistles whatever. But the former opinion, of Augustine, is the better. (ST, 1-11, Q 164, a 2, ad 1)
     

Alcuin (730-804) is no mean authority, but Saint Thomas is simply being consistent with his general principle that the world God created in the beginning is essentially the same world that we live in as regards the created natures of things, for these do not change.
     However, it is certainly possible to adhere to this principle of the fixity of created natures and laws and still admit the cosmic reaction to Adam's disobedience.

[57] For an extended discussion of this subject see the author's paper, "Entropy and Eden", April 1992.

Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is in the line of Alcuin and she writes:

     Creation opposed Man because he rebelled against God. And so all the elements of the world, which before had existed in great calm, were turned to the greatest agitation, and displayed horrible terrors, because when Man chose disobedience, rebelling against God and forsaking tranquility for disquiet, that Creation, which had been created for the service of humanity, turned against humans in great and various ways so that Man, having lowered himself, might be held in check by it. What does this mean? That Man showed himself a rebel against God in the place of delights, and therefore that Creation, which had been subjected to him in service, now opposed itself to him. (Scivias. Vision Two. 27)
     

No Creationist position would be complete or even adequate without a firm and loud proclamation of our Redemption from spiritual death, the only really fearful kind, by Our Divine Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Romans 5 is the Scriptural locus for this proclamation and St. Paul concludes:

     Then as one man's trespass (Adam's sin) led to condemnation for all men, so by One Man's act of righteousness leads to Acquittal and Life for all men.
     For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by One Man's obedience many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18-19)
     

Theistic evolutionists, by their de-emphasis if not outright denial of Adam's historical reality and individuality, thus violate or seriously weaken this necessary connection between Adam and Christ. It should be abundantly clear that if you reduce Genesis 1-3 to poetry and myth, you disastrously weaken and undermine the doctrinal basis of the Incarnation and Redemption. And this is nothing other than to cut the very heart out of Christianity, and out of the world.

     Adam's sin--original sin--is transmitted to his posterity not by limitation nor by being born into the human condition, but by natural generation of biological descent and inherited, along with human nature which, by reason of the sin, finds itself in a state of deprivation
     that can only be remedied by the application of the merits of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Baptism and other Sacraments of the Church. (De Fide)
     

The teaching of Scripture, of Tradition and of the Magisterium is clear: Original Sin is a personal sin committed by an individual historic Adam and Eve, our First Parents, and is transmitted to us by biological generation along with human nature. It is essentially a negative state of deprivation in which the soul is lacking that divine gift of sanctifying grace that enables it to see God. This gift of elevation to participation in the Divine life can only be restored to us by Baptism, in which the merits of the Passion and Death of Our Divine Lord are applied to the soul, or better, in which the soul is embraced by the Divine in the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
     The intrinsic and necessary connection between the Incarnation-Redemption of Our Divine Lord and the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, our First Parents, makes abundantly clear the foundational character of the Book of Genesis and the need for Christians of our time to proclaim its historical character in the face of an evil ideology that would deny it.
     The theory of evolution is a root error. It goes about its evil work of undermining all that is most sacred and true in human life in the dark recesses of the human mind and heart. But it is time, very long past time, that the light of Divine Truth, supported by true scientific evidence and insight, began to search into these evil depths and expose their true character and their true source in the Father of Lies himself.
     These defide Truths reveal clearly the necessary and intrinsic relation between the Fall of our first parents and the Incarnation. By denying the historical facts that called forth the Incarnation, theistic evolutionists cannot see the world as it really is. They live in a terrible illusion that blocks out the supernatural light of Truth. They cut out the very heart of Christianity and the world it must redeem. For if they reject Genesis as poetry and myth, they also reject the Great Promise of the Proto-Evangelium. They fail to honor Mary, The-Woman who crushes the Serpent's head and destroys all heresies (Gen. 3:15) and they therefore fail, also, to rightly honor Christ, Her-Seed, for these two cannot be separated.

The theology of the angels is important for a complete creationist position for several reasons, not the least of which is, as Lateran IV (1215) puts it, "the devil and other demons were created by God good in nature, but they themselves, through themselves, have become wicked. But man sinned at the suggestion of the devil." (D 428)
     Angels are more intimately connected with the universe and with human life and history than most of us are aware. These relationships are brought out by the following doctrines of the Church:

1) the primary task of the good angels is the glorification and the service of God (sententia certa),

2) the secondary task of the good angels is the protection of men and care for their salvation (defide),

3) every one of the faithful has his own special guardian angel from Baptism (sententia certa),

4) the Devil possesses a certain dominion over mankind by reason of Adam's sin (defide).

Therefore, no Creationist position would be complete or even adequate without recognition of the place of the Angels in the beginning and throughout human history, including the very prominent part they will play in the end times.
     As to the precise time that the angels were created, there is division of opinion, for Holy Scripture is not clear on this point.
     St. Thomas researched the subject and found the Fathers holding a twofold opinion. Evaluating both sides, he concluded:

     The more probable one [position] holds that the angels were created at the same time as corporeal creatures. For the angels are part of the universe; they do not constitute a universe of themselves; but both they and the corporeal natures unite in constituting one universe. This stands in evidence from the relationship of creature to creature, because the mutual relationship of creatures makes up the good of the universe. But no part is perfect if separated from the whole. Consequently it is improbable that God, Whose works are perfect, as it is said in Deut. 32:4, should have created the angelic creature before other creatures.
     

At the same time, the contrary is not to be deemed erroneous, especially on account of the opinion of Gregory Nazianzen, whose authority in Christian doctrine is of such weight that no one has ever raised objection to his teaching, as is also the case with the doctrine of Athanasius, as Jerome says.
     Jerome is speaking according to the Greek Fathers, all of whom hold the creation of the angels to have taken place previously to that of the corporeal world. (ST, I, Q 61, a 3, ad 1)
     St. Thomas holds the first of corporeal creatures to be the heaven and earth of Genesis 1:1. (ST, I, Q 65, a 3) Therefore, a fair interpretation of his thought would seem to place the creation of the angels along with the creative work of the first day.
     St. John Damascene says, in his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (Bk. 2. Ch. 3)
     He is Himself the Maker and Creator of the angels: for He brought them out of nothing into being and created them after His own image, an incorporeal race, a sort of spirit or immaterial fire: in the words of the divine David, "He makes His angels spirits, and His ministers aflame of fire." (Psalm 103:4)

The decrees of Councils, the teaching of Encyclicals, and the decisions of the Biblical Commission all testify to the inspiration and inerrancy of Holy Scripture, and since the book of Genesis is a canonical book, this constant teaching must apply also to the first, foundational book of the Bible.
     The teaching of the Catholic Church on the inspiration and inerrancy of Holy Scripture may be summed up in the following paragraphs from Emmanuel Doronzo:

     Inspiration as afact is defined by Trent and Vatican 1 (1870). Its nature is described as a direct action of God into the intellect and will of the hagiographers, on account of which their writings are to be attributed to God Himself as their principal author (Vatican 1; Leo XIII; Vatican II). Its extension embraces all the canonical books of both Testaments, "in their
     entirety and in all their parts" (Trent; Vatican 1; Vatican II), "in everything asserted by the inspired authors" (Vatican II) and not only in "matters of faith and morals" (Leo XIII); briefly, "everything the hagiographer asserts, enunciates, suggests" (Biblical Commission, June 18, 1915, Denzinger 3629).
     The inerrancy of the Biblical text, being a mere consequence of its inspiration, can be considered implicitly defined by Trent and Vatican I, at least as regards matters of faith and morals. The absolute exclusion of all error, even in other matters, follows from the same inspiration, which makes God author of the entire text and is considered by Leo XIII as
     likewise defined by the Magisterium (Denzinger 3293 f ).

[58] Emmanuel Doronzo. The Channels of Revelation. 1973, p. 3.
     

Some modern theologians attempt to introduce a distinction between inspiration and revelation, as if Genesis 1-11 were "inspired" but did not contain revelation! But such a distinction does not belong to the official teaching of the Church. Doronzo says (Revelation, p. 13):

     ... supernatural revelation consists essentially and formally in a speech of God to man, secondarily also in deeds inasmuch as these manifest and confirm in a practical way the words themselves...
     Furthermore, the fittingness and necessity of revelation extends beyond its proper object and reaches also natural truths themselves (as Vatican Council I teaches, sess. 3, can. 2 and chap. 2 on relation) ...
     Its fittingness for the knowledge of natural truths is shown by the limited perfection of our intellect, subject to the deception of the senses and to the influence of the will and its passions, which are often sources of error ... Therefore, to be taught by God, infallible Truth, concerning the very things which human reason can know with its own limited and fallible light, is highly perfective of reason itself...

[59] lbid., p. 13.
     

It is in this sense that the Bible is normative for all human learning.

     The Deluge described in Genesis 6-8 was a Flood that covered the entire globe, that is, it was universal both anthropologically and geographically, and the fossil record of the geologists is a Monument-Memorial-Reminder for modern man of this watery catastrophe sent upon the earth as a punishment for sin.
     

There are three points to be emphasized here:
     1) the historicity of the Flood,
     2) its geographical universality,
     3) its anthropological universality.

1) The Historicity of the Flood. That the historicity is well founded in tradition:

     It will not ... be enough to grant that the ancient Flood legend became the vehicle of religious and spiritual truth by means of a divinely guided religious feeling and insight of the inspired writer. The Deluge is referred to in several passages of Scripture as a historical fact; the writings of the Fathers consider the event in the same light, and this view of the subject is confirmed by the most distant nations of which the Flood tradition lives in the most distant nations of the earth. ... the Bible story concerning the Flood has never been explained or understood in any but a truly historical sense by any Catholic writer ... It would be useless labor ... to enumerate the long list of Fathers and Scholastic theologians who have touched upon the question. The few stray discordant voices ... are simply drowned in this unanimous chorus of Christian tradition.

[60] The Catholic Encyclopedia. 1908.
     

That was in 1908. But there is another view abroad today; it is widespread within the Catholic Church and it is being taught to our children. It is an attitude deeply influenced by modernism. It says:

     We are not to ask ourselves how the Flood can have happened or what were the details about the Ark and the number of the animals. At the time of the inspired author the story of the Flood was thus named on the basis of a very old tradition which is found also in Babylonian documents. The author took two versions of that tradition and interpolated one into the other without modifying them and without taking complete account of them (hence the obvious repetitions): instead, he gave to the old tradition a totally new meaning, which is actually the lesson we must draw about God's justice and His persistent will for our salvation.

[61] Enrico Galblati. The History of Salvation in the Old Testament. Edizione Institute S. Gaetano, 1969. Dist. by Alba House Comm. p. 45.
     

This brief passage illustrates three of the most typical characteristics of modernism pointed out by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi. First, it illustrates that agnosticism toward all things but especially toward the things of Faith, a deeply anti-intellectual prejudice in favor of experience even while at the same time it exhibits a false rationalism in being against all things supernatural. Thus we and many students are told that we are not to attempt to understand the historical events of Holy Scripture but rather leave our reason outside when we come to Holy Scripture and adopt an attitude of nescience. This is also the heresy of fideism, which makes an un-natural separation between the supernatural virtue of Faith and the human intellect in which it is rooted and practiced. Secondly, we have here that "dismembering of the records of Sacred Scripture" which Pius X lamented, for it is plain that the Documentary Hypothesis of the Welhaussen school underlies the exegesis and literary criticism of these authors. Thirdly, there is here the quite obvious assumption (also forbidden by the official Teaching Authority of the Catholic Church) that "the subject of these books is not science or history, but only religion and morals" (Pascendi).
     A fourth and very serious objection is to be taken to the assertion that the Biblical author borrowed versions of the Flood from pagan traditions, which are thus held to be prior to the Biblical Revelation itself. Although the 1909 Decree of the Biblical Commission pertains specifically to Genesis 1-3, its decision may certainly be applied with equal force to Genesis 1-11. In that Decree it is emphatically forbidden to teach that the Holy Scripture contains "fables derived from mythologies and cosmologies belonging to older nations, even if these be considered to be purified of all polytheistic error ".
     The fact of the matter is that the Hebrew Scriptures contain Divine Revelation whereas the mythologies of pagan nations are either corruptions of this original Divine Revelation or later inventions, or a mixture of both. Our children are being taught a perverse view of the Sacred Scriptures and the Catholic population in general is being indoctrinated in such a way as to view Holy Scripture as a purely human set of books full of errors which they must somehow disregard in order to extract a read-back-into "religious" meaning.
     This situation should be vigorously opposed by all Christians who value, not only the Holy Scripture as God's Word, but also and especially the existence of the Church itself, for how can the Church stand in any healthy manner, deprived of its real sustenance in Scripture and Tradition? The "new theology" of which the text quoted above is eminently typical in its subtle appeal to the anti-supernatural bias of modem people, is a theology divorced from both Holy Scripture and Tradition. It represents a real bifurcation in the movement of history and will ultimately end in the deserts of unbelief. That such a large number of Catholics and that such a large number of Catholics in high places, especially priests and religious, have committed themselves to this divergent, wayward stream, does not presage a good time ahead for the Church or for the world.
     Therefore, in union with Catholic Tradition and the mind of the official Magisterium of the Church as perceived in her documents, we uphold

1) the historicity of the Flood of Noe's time

2) the geographical universality of the Flood is also upheld. This fact was not disputed until the
     modern rise of uniformitarianism which began to impose upon the fossil record an evolutionary rather than a
     catastrophic interpretation. But again, Tradition and the Magisterium are on the side of a literal reading of
     Genesis 6-8 and full acceptance of what Scripture clearly teaches about this cataclysmic event.

3) the anthropological universality of the Flood is well attested by both Scripture and Tradition.
     St. Peter speaks twice of the fact that only eight persons survived the Deluge (I Peter 3:20
     and 2 Peter 2:5) and these were in the Ark, namely, Noe and his family. There is, indeed, a really
     frightening degree of fitness in the second Epistle of St. Peter to our times. For never in the history of
     Christianity have the historical events of the Bible itself been so scoffed at as unworthy of belief by
     "enlightened" men. And never in the history of Christianity have the Shepherds of the Church been so blind
     and negligent with regard to these "destructive heresies" which thus invade the Flock of Christ "secretly"
     because, either wittingly or unwittingly, unseen and unheeded by the guardians of truth. (II Peter 2:1 and
     3:3)

It must be emphasized, also, that Catholic Tradition has always regarded the Ark as a divine type of the Church and the purifying waters of the Flood as a type of Baptism. The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia article says that this view of the Fathers was not entertained as a private opinion "but as a development of the doctrine contained in I Peter 3:20" wherein the Apostle points out that these eight persons, that is Noe and his family, "were saved through water."
     As pointed out earlier (in Thesis 17), the existence of a divine type in Scripture is a guarantee of the reality of the type or original event. Thus, the historicity of the Flood may not be doubted without danger to divine Faith.

As an inescapable conclusion of all the foregoing, the thesis is put forward that the theory of evolution, touching as it does, the all-important foundational doctrines concerning Creation, Sin, and Redemption, by its very nature undermines divine Catholic Faith and poisons the mind in which it takes residence, obscuring the supernatural truths of Faith and warping the natural powers of reason. Acceptance of this error forces the Christian to hold false views of Holy Scripture, to disregard the constant teaching of the Catholic Church and its Tradition, and distorts his understanding of crucial Christian doctrines. In the general sense, then, the error of evolution must be asserted to be incompatible with divine Catholic Faith. In more specific senses it is against Catholic Faith, as can be seen from the foregoing theses.

In Genesis 28:12 and again in John 1:51, the Angels of God are described as ascending and descending, in the first instance, upon a ladder and in the second, "upon the Son of man." This lmage may also be seen as a symbol of our growth in knowledge and the gradual maturing in our souls of wisdom and love. For all knowledge begins in the senses and ascends from there to higher orders but we also return down again to verification in sense knowledge and experience, and so ascend again and descend. If the process is one of true growth and maturity and if the goal is truly desired (it is an aberration of our times to exult in the quest as quest and to deprive the journey of its attainable purpose), then each ascent attains a higher degree of wisdom and each descent a deeper degree of understanding until the limits of our capacity are reached and God calls us to the end and goal of all our striving in the Beatific Vision of His Glory.
     This ascent and descent of our soul as it seeks to know God more deeply in order to be able to love and serve Him more intensely and purely, may be compared to the inductive and deductive methods of all science. When we proceed deductively, we begin with the reflection upon the truth: of Faith known as theology. The truths of Faith are revealed to us in Holy Scripture and in Tradition. Therefore, the Bible and Tradition are presupposed to theology as its source and foundation. And as a living guardian of the truths of Faith, the Magisterium of the Church, the rule and analogy of Faith operate to guide and protect the ascents and descents of theological reflection from error.
     But because theological activity never takes place in a vacuum but always in time and in a particular culture, two other kinds of thinking impinge upon the theologian as upon any person who reads the Bible and reflects upon the truths of his Faith. These are philosophical concepts and what today we term scientific concepts. Both of these differ greatly from culture to culture and from age to age. But the first question to be asked of them is this: do they offer us truth? To answer this question requires a degree of maturity in these disciplines themselves and especially in that branch of philosophy known as epistemology. Here, one can only assert that the human mind is indeed not only capable of attaining to truth (which is defined by St. Thomas as the conformity of the mind with reality) but that it is made for truth, for the real Truth is the good and the perfection of the intellect of man. Strange perversion then it is, of our time, to deny that truth can be attained.
     Obviously, the truth offered us by any one branch of science cannot contradict that of any other field of study and still be termed truth. And the ultimate norm of all truth is God's Revelation of Himself in Holy Scripture and Tradition, for He is truth-full and can neither deceive nor be deceived.
     But there are many truths that God has not revealed to us because we are capable of knowing them without the aid of Revelation. Some of these are self-evident, such as the fact that my senses give me true knowledge of reality, that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time, and that a thing is what it is, it exists and it exists as such and such a kind of being. These are the first principles of all knowledge and to deny them is to deny the possibility of any kind of knowledge, to commit intellectual suicide, a not uncommon phenomenon of our time.
     The rungs of the ladder may thus be counted as four: the Bible and theology are supernatural in their objective and subjective modes while philosophy and empirical science are natural. But the four belong together, they are part of the same ladder, and we could see empirical science, with its emphasis upon the material-physical universe, as the bottom rung, with philosophy and theology being the higher rungs. And in a sense, the Bible is both bottom-foundation, containing much that is material, especially in the historical parts, but also the highest, containing as it does, the most sublime theology.
     In summary, we might say that the total subject of Creation--specified in its formal object as the study of origins--could be entered from any one of four points. These are:

1) the Theological, which in a sense includes and certainly presupposes the Bible and Tradition.

2) the Philosophical which functions as an instrument inasmuch as it provides from its own proper sphere of rational activity certain definitions such as those of cause and effect, existence and essence, being, act and potency, substance and accident, change, motion, time, place, quality, quantity, and so on.
     When these categories are subsumed into theological reflection and are used in the light of divine Faith, then the concepts of philosophy are protected from the kinds of errors that we see multiplied and
     multiplying today in those systems that divorce themselves from this saving and sanctifying influence.
     It is also in the realm of philosophy that Aristotle's four causes are examined and it is by looking at these that one can see perhaps more clearly than anywhere else the precise relations between philosophy
     and theology.
     Thus, the efficient cause of things becomes in theology God, our Creator, the highest Efficient
     Cause of all things and the only source of existence for all things. The formal cause of things falls into the realm of essence and especially of nature (the composite of existence and essence or existing beings) as a principle of identity and of operation. The material cause is that upon which empirical science presently concentrates most distinctively but always, it must be emphasized, in-formed because matter without form is nothing but pure potentiality or possibility and as such, is only a logical concept with no extra-mental actuality. (Theories of modem science enter this realm of pure possibility and of fantasy with increasing frequency and sometimes with rather bizarre effects as witness the credibility with which the popular TV program Star-Trek is entertained.) Then, just as there are lesser agencies and efficiencies acting in the manner of secondary causes, so there are lesser finalities in the cosmos and more proximate ends which are studied by the natural scientists as they investigate, for example, human and animal behaviors. But the Final Cause and ultimate destiny of all things is God Himself and His Glory.
     Aristotle's four causes would be an excellent way to unify all the sciences. This kind of model
     or total framework would impose no more stasis than there actually is in reality. And best of all, it would admit of no more dynamism than there actually is. Today's much-touted emphasis upon dynamism and the irrational rejection of all stasis that often accompanies it, is not by any means the emphasis that is necessarily most true to the real. Rather, it seems to us to be a distinct preference, a cultivated and calculated bias of certain powerful intellectuals of our time. And their preferences should not be permitted to shape the world view of all other persons--unless, of course, all other persons so choose. I, for one, feel bound to question the bias of today's evolutionary scientists and resist their tendency to impose their b>false philosophy upon my mind and my life for the precise reason that having examined it, I find it false.

3) Empirical Science. What today we call science is but a narrowed portion of the total reality open to the human mind for study. This science limits itself to the measurable and observable
     physical data of the senses and the data yielded by the instruments constructed to extend the range of the human senses. And because the physical universe which this science studies is a vast system of inter-related particulars and particles, it is obvious that, as one Creationist textbook points out:

     Science ... has the drawback of never producing final or absolute answers. The findings of science must be taken as merely temporary answers. If science were absolute, science textbooks could be written once and left unchanged, with no need for revised editions. But science is changeable.

[62] Emmett L. Williams and George Mulfinger. Physical Science for Christian Schools. Bob Jones Univ. Press. 1974, p. 6.
     

This passage might leave the impression that there are no real laws, no universals that modem science recognizes. But this is not so. There could be no system of classification at all without universal concepts and there are laws, such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. What is designated as changeable is the mind's construct of a certain portion of the studied reality. And this work of revision is hardly peculiar to empirical science. Everyone is always revising and correcting their views as more data are encountered. This is part of the total process of learning. One continually adjusts one's interior "model" of the way things are. But again, there are limits. And the evolutionists' model is false and misleading precisely because its limitations are the wrong ones. The limits, plainly indicated in reality itself, are those of created nature. The true Creationist position recognizes only those limitations discovered in created nature itself. Thus science, which is knowledge, studies realty and each branch of science is distinguished by its formal object or what is more commonly called, its subject matter.
     But the evolutionist says No! He says that reality is only what you can observe and measure. He says that science s only what he says it is and not what nature indicates. And he says there is no Creator, no first efficient Cause and no Final Cause and destiny for all things outside of present measurable processes. But he will also tell you that there are no limits to what these present processes of matter can do so long as you continue to understand them as nothing but material processes. And so, he puts limitations in the wrong places and imposes his own desires upon created nature and upon the Creator Himself, refusing Him a place in reality. When seen from this angle, it is plain that evolution does not deserve to be termed a theory for its will-full character is plain. It is not so much an intelligent comprehension of reality as it is a preference, a choice, and a willed exclusion of certain portions of total reality.
     The theistic evolutionist goes along with this view of science and thereby contributes to and reinforces the fragmentation of knowledge and the fideistic necessity for an unreal leap of faith across artificial chasms constructed by a false science. This is nowhere better illustrated than in those Catholic schools where some variety of creation is taught in Religion courses and straight evolution is taught in science courses. (More and more, though, the compromise is wholly on the side of the Religion courses and the variety of creation taught is not creation at all but the evolutionary process itself, hiding under the name of "creative processes" or some such euphemism.)

4) The Bible. Holy Scripture is itself the source of our knowledge of Creation. It is also the source of our Faith and our Worship since it is the Word of God telling us what we must believe, what we must do, and how we must both believe and do (e.g. "in spirit and in truth" John 4:24). But most relevant to our present purposes is the discipline of exegesis. Today we witness a harmful separation of Biblical exegesis from theology as the textual and literary aspects of the Sacred Books are excessively analyzed in terms of purely human literature. Thus we are confronted with that "dismemberment of the records" of which Pius X spoke in Pascendi.

There could be no more healthy corrective to this situation than to take seriously the words of A.M. Rehwinkel, a Lutheran scholar whose views in this matter are entirely in harmony with Catholic teaching and tradition. He says:

     ... The religions of Greece and Rome, of Egypt and Persia, of India and the East, did not postulate an historical background. The mythical period of the Greeks, though similar inform, was distinct in kind from the historic. The objective reality of the scenes and events of each period was not even conceived as belonging to the same order, or as being of the same kind. It is quite otherwise with the religion of the Old Testament. There the doctrine is bound up with the facts; and, moreover, it is so dependent upon them, without them it is null and void. If there is no first Adam there is no second Adam. The facts are the necessary substratum of the truths or doctrines of the Old Testament precisely as those truths are the necessary substratum of the beauties that arise out of them.

[63] A. M. Rehwinkel. The Age of the Earth and Chronology of the Bible. 2"d ed. Adelaide, South Australia. 1967, p. 10, wherein Rehwinkel quotes from the work of the Biblical Chronologist, Rev. Martin Anstey.
     

This passage emphasizes the fact that if the historicity of Holy Scripture is undermined, the reality of doctrine is called into question.
     The present-day relation to science and to history can also be seen very clearly from the following, as Rev. Rehwinkel continues:

     ... today there is a glaring conflict between the Biblical concept of the origin and age of the universe and the theories propounded by modern scientists.
     According to our Bible. God created heaven and earth in a period of six days, and this occurred within historic times. But according to the theories of the scientists, this universe with all its creatures, including man, came into being through a process of evolution extending over millions and billions of years.
     According to the Bible, Creation, Fall, and Redemption occurred within measurable human history. The theories of the scientist know nothing of man's creation and fall, and completely ignore His redemption.
     As a result, people become confused. If the opinions of these wise men of the world are right, the Bible must be wrong. But if the Bible is not reliable in these matters, how can we be sure that it is reliable in the far more important questions concerning the person, the work and the redemption of Christ, the certainty of life hereafter, the resurrection from the dead, and the ultimate consummation of this universe in the final judgment?
     So a careful and reverent study of the Biblical Chronology will indeed prove to be profitable and important and will show conclusively that the three greatest events in the history of the human race, namely, man's creation, fall, and redemption, are intimately connected and that they have occurred within historic times and are not separated from each other by the astronomical figures commonly ascribed to the history of man.
     ... the Bible is absolutely the only source of information in the world concerning the chronology and the history of the human race from the very beginning. For the first 2,000, or possibly 3,000 years of human history, there is no other reliable record outside of the Bible. This record is found in the first II chapters of the book of Genesis. ... the Bible record is complete and accurate, beginning with the creation ofthe first man. It presents him not in a nebulous sub-human condition, but as a superior personality endowed with intelligence and perfect holiness, and created in the image of God, and then traces his history for more than 2.000 years directly from father to son (even including the ages of each) so that we have not only an accurate genealogy, but also an exact chronology.

[64] Ibid., pp. 2, 3, 7-8.
     

This author is quoted at length to emphasize the fact that Holy Scripture does indeed give us knowledge--revealed knowledge--of that portion of history which the natural sciences also claim to reveal to us. And since the two conflict when the latter is informed by the false philosophy oi evolution, we know from God Himself where the truth is to be found, and that, of course, is in His Word.
     In conclusion, the insidious influence of the error of evolution and its real incompatibility with the Catholic Faith can be seen more clearly when the doctrine of Creation is viewed in the total perspective of the hierarchy of Catholic Truth: The Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology says in its introductory article entitled "Synthesis of Theological Doctrine":

     Christian doctrine is not afragmentary collection of truths, ... but a compact system of truths organically elaborated, in which reason moves in the light of faith and divine revelation. It is also science, but science that transcends the subject matter and the method of common human sciences, because its principles consist in a datum or known fact which rests on the authority of God, the infallible Truth. The datum or premise is divine revelation consigned in two sources: Holy Scripture and Tradition. Custodian and authentic interpreter of both these sources is the living and infallible teaching authority (magisterium vivum et infallibile) of the Church instituted by Jesus Christ.

[65] Parente, Piolanti, and Garofalo. Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology. 1974. Original edition, Bruce, 1951. From introductory article entitled "Synthesis of Theological Doctrine".
     

This hierarchy of divine truth is a system in which all the parts are related organically and, as Paul Hallet says (National Catholic Register, 9 May 1976) Catholicism is thereby "so compact in its doctrinal edifice that to remove the least of its established teachings would be to throw the whole thing into ruins."
     Where precisely then, is the doctrine of Creation situated in this hierarchy? The General Catechetical Directory issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy in 1971 indicates this for us in the following directives:

43. In the message of salvation there is a certain hierarchy of truths which the Church has always recognized when it composed creeds or summaries of the truths of Faith. This hierarchy does not mean that some truths pertain to Faith itself less than others, but rather that some truths are based on others as of a higher priority, and are illumined by them.

On all levels catechesis should take account of this hierarchy of the truths of Faith.
     These truths may be grouped under four basic heads: the mystery of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Creator of all things; the mystery of Christ the Incarnate Word, who was born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered, died, and rose for our salvation; the mystery of the Holy Spirit, who is present in the Church, sanctifying it and guiding it until the glorious coming of Christ, our Saviour and Judge; and the mystery of the Church, which is Christ's Mystical Body, in which the Virgin Mary holds the pre-eminent place.
     The doctrine of Creation and the doctrines most immediately following from it (Creation of Adam and Eve, their natural perfection and elevation to divine grace, the state of original innocence and the Fall) are seen here to be situated at the very top of the hierarchy of Catholic Truth, with the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. In other words, they are foundational truths.
     Later on in the General Catechetical Directory (paragraph 51) the centrality of Jesus Christ, Our Divine Lord, and His Redemptive life and death is insisted upon and emphasized. In other words, given the Fall of man, everything is ordered to and hinges upon "the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ."
     Thus, we may say that the history of the world begins with a perfect universe, and the first man and woman begin with a perfect nature indescribably enriched with supernatural gifts. Very early in this history, however, the first man and woman commit the most disruptive act, a mortal, grievous sin, and thereby bring death and degeneration into their own human nature and into the entire universe of which they are a part. From henceforth, the history of man and of the world looks forward to and yearns for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who incarnates His Divine Person in human nature, thus redeeming all men who are willing and in them, all matter in the Baptism of His Death and glorious Resurrection.
     This, then, is the central fact of all history--the Incarnation and Redemption of sinful man and his world. But it hinges upon the Fall of man in the beginning of history and makes no sense.
     One cannot mar or distort this perfect unity of historical Fact, Doctrine and Faith, this trinity of reality, without threatening its collapse.
     But this is precisely what the error of evolution attempts. It undermines, in the minds of men, the historical foundation, the very incarnational aspects of the divine realities.
     It presents to the mind of modem man who idolizes empirical science and whatever his senses present to him, a view of history that claims to be that of science itself. But this view of history is a most perverse counterfeit of that given us in Divine Revelation. It is a very clever reversal of the Divine Order of all things.
     Thus, the theory of evolution is not just a scientific theory or hypothesis. It is a systematically developed world view, a consummate web of error able to twist any fact to fit its own perverse ends. It has penetrated and deformed every academic discipline and every area of ordinary life. It is the best preparation one could imagine for the reign of evil in the world, for the (temporary) defeat of Christianity (as Our Lord suffered a seeming defeat on the Cross) and for the (again, temporary) sovereignty of Satan in the world.
     As such a systematic counterfeit of the true, divinely revealed truth about man and his history, his origin and his destiny, the evolutionary ideology is worthy of the totally perverted but still angelic intelligence of Satan himself. The success it enjoys is but a further proof of its diabolic origin and we are indeed laboring under "the dominion of the Devil" (see Thesis 25).
     ONLY the truth of God's Word can set us free from this net of error and darkness that Satan has so ingeniously woven and continues to weave with such cunning and tenacity of purpose. All the clear proofs of reason and of faith do not affect those who have chosen to embrace this error. Against these Our Divine Lord says: "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." But to His disciples He says: "If you continue in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8: 32, 44)
     And so, the doctrine of Creation in the total hierarchy of Catholic truth is not only an alternative world view to that of evolution, a more likely or even more rational and more aesthetic choice of beliefs, though it is all these things. It does not just present to the mind of modem man another item on the menu of his opinions available to his cosmopolitan taste. No, God is not a theory and His Word is not an a la carte in the smorgasbord of life, not even as dessert. Rather, God's claim on us is absolute and total and those who have not seen with their intellect and experienced in their heart and along the strings of their nerves the fact of their own creaturehood and fallen down in worship at God's Feet as a result of this Grace--such people have missed the only really important fact of life, the one that gives meaning and importance and proper perspective to all the others.
     The theory of evolution could have attained such a degree of acceptance as we witness today in the Catholic Church only in a time of great doctrinal decline and obscurity.
     The theses presented in this paper emphasize the fact that clear and strong doctrinal affirmation will extirpate the evil of this ideology from the Body of Christ and do much to restore its health and unity.
     That this will happen, and happen soon, is the prayer of the author, and must, it seems to us, be
     the prayer of every concerned Christian.

Evolution is an Error. Science and Philosophy disprove it; the Bible and Theology reject it.
     The Catholic Church is the Mother of Truth and cannot teach Error. Nor can She allow Her children to embrace Error.
     Therefore: The Catholic Church cannot teach Evolution, cannot accept Evolution, and cannot allow Her children to accept it.
     The Catholic Church must reject Evolution as the Falsehood that it is, because She is the Mother of Truth and Falsehood has no Fellowship with Her. I know it is the major premise that will be questioned.
     I welcome such a challenge, for the burden now rests entirely upon theistic evolutionists to demonstrate that their position is other than what is claimed in these 30 Theses or that it is in any sense a true rather than a false position.

Denzinger. The Sources of Catholic Dogma. Translated by Roy J. Deferrari from the 30th ed. of
     Henry Denzinger's Enchiridion Symbolorum. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1957.

Ott, Ludwig. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 6th ed. Ed. in English by James Canon Bastible.
     Transi. by Patrick Lynch. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1964.

Pohle, Joseph. God: The Author of Nature and the Supernatural, A Dogmatic Treatise. Adapted and
     edited by Arthur Preuss. St. Louis: B. Herder. 1912.

Rome and the Study of Scripture, 7th ed., St. Meinrad. 1964. (RSS)

St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947.

Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald. The Trinity and God the Creator. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1952.

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