under the patronage of St Joseph and St Dominic

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, remembering Zion;
on the poplars that grew there we hung up our harps. . . Ps 136

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Fratres, sobriie estote et vigilate, quia adversarius vester diabolus tamquam leo rugiens circuit quaerens quem devoret…

1 Peter 5: 8

Creation science is a Protestant virus.  It has infiltrated the Catholic faithful via converts from Protestantism reluctant to abandon each and every element of that ersatz-religion.[1]  Founded as it is on a lie, Protestantism instinctively turned from the one philosophy grounded in the truth, the moderate realism of Aristotle embraced by the Catholic Church, to philosophical error.  In time this error led to the fatuities of materialism and subjectivism that afflict the modern world.

Consistent with Protestantism’s stilted vision, adherents of the creation science thesis adopt a facile understanding of the created world.  They refuse to acknowledge the realities exposed by the innumerable discoveries of modern science calling in aid a literal interpretation of sacred scripture.  They treat the earth as the immobile centre of the universe and regard sun, moon, planets and stars as little more than sensed phenomena.  In doing so they adopt the Protestant protocol, exemplified in sola scriptura, of denying the authority of the one infallible interpreter of sacred scripture, the Catholic Church, in favour of their own interpretation.

Let it be admitted they are right in claiming that the earth is the centre of the universe.  But it is so not because it is its physical, or material, centre.  It is so because only on earth is there found intellect and, as Aristotle remarked some 400 years before Christ, the least degree of intellect in one is greater than the whole of the rest of material reality.[2]  The earth is the metaphysical centre of the universe, the focus around which its almost infinite immensity turns.[3]

This philosophical truth is confirmed in theology.  God revealed in Genesis that He made man in His own image.  He who made the universe and all its creatures, living and non-living, reveals that He made man an intellectual being like Himself.  He revealed that there are in the Godhead three Persons and that the Second Person, the Word of God, chose to become a man in order to satisfy on behalf of mankind the infinite evils committed by Adam and by his offspring resulting from the debility Adam’s sin brought in its train.[4]  God did not submit Himself to such indignity anywhere else.  Hence it is reasonable to conclude that He created no other intellectual material being apart from man and, accordingly, that in the almost infinite immensity of the material universe there is no other place where intellect is to be found.

Modern science has exposed in great intricacy the constitution of the universe.  The followers of creation science refuse to acknowledge its discoveries or to extend them the qualified acceptance they merit.  Their behaviour, an exercise in a practical subjectivism[5], exposes them as members of a cult.

The cult’s signal mark, something it shares with other cults, is Gnosticism.  You cannot persuade one of its adherents that he is in error.  He knows better!  He is possessed of a superior knowledge, a knowledge above and beyond that of other Catholics.  Try as you may to reason with him he will always have an answer.  The answer will contain a deal of truth but admixed with it will be a series of errors.  It will be characterised by long windedness, by appeals to authority from experts (and non-experts!) in everything but sound theological principle.  It will be replete with non-sequiturs.  You will never persuade him that his position is irrational.  He always has an answer. 

He thinks that the more he says the more he must be right, confusing quantity with quality, an error typical of materialism.  The way of sound reasoning is to focus on the issue; that is, to focus on the quality of what is contended.  A sound answer to a problem should never entail more than a page or two of reasoning.  That is not the modus operandi of the creation scientist.  Give him a page or two of argument and he will respond with thirty!

The Church’s Rulings

The classic instance of this obduracy is the cult’s interpretation of the ruling of the Catholic Church on the issue of the meaning of the Hebrew word Yom, meaning ‘day’, in Genesis I.  On June 30^th, 1909, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, founded by Leo XIII and invested with the authority of the Church’s magisterium by Pius X, addressed this question:

Whether in that designation and distinction of six days, in the first chapter of Genesis, the word Yom (day) can be taken in either its proper sense as a natural day or in an improper sense of an indefinite space of time; and whether among exegetes it is permitted to discuss this question freely?

It answered: Affirmative.  (DS 3519)

Pope Pius X had earlier noted that certain of the faithful were treating the Commission’s determinations on biblical studies with contempt.  In his motu proprio Praestantia Scripturae (November 18^th, 1907) he issued this specific direction:

“[We] declare and to expressly prescribe, and by this our act we do expressly declare and decree, that all are bound in conscience to submit to the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, both to those given up to now and those which shall be given hereafter, in the same way as to the decrees of the Sacred Congregations which pertain to doctrine and are approved by the Pontiff; and that all who impugn such decisions as these by word or in writing cannot avoid the charge of disobedience, or on this account be free of grave sin.”  (DS 3503)

The ruling on the meaning of the word ‘day’, among various others, was confirmed by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Emmanuel Célestin Suhard, on January 16^th, 1948.  Then, on August 12^th, 1950, the Commission’s authority, and the authority of its rulings was repeated anew by Pope Pius XII in n. 38 of his encyclical Humani Generis.

God’s Providence

The Church’s ruling on the freedom she accords her biblical exegetes - and, by implication, she accords to the body of the Catholic faithful - to regard the word ‘day’ in Genesis as capable of signifying an indefinite space of time demonstrates the providence of God, with the word ‘providence’ taken in its literal sense of ‘foresight’.  For it facilitates provision of an adequate response to the atheistically inclined who, if they could, would convict the Church of indifference to the discoveries of modern science, and facilitates an adequate response too to Protestant literalists who would insist that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are to be read as if a scientific textbook, rather than as a narrative which—

“in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state(s) the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give(s) a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people.”[6]

Intellectual Obfuscation and Lies

The cult indulges in intellectual obfuscation and lies.  The obfuscation is grounded in a refusal to accord the Author of material creation the wisdom which is His due and in a refusal to make essential distinctions in relation to the constitution of created things.

In his Summa Contra Gentes St Thomas Aquinas condemns those philosophers who would deny causality to creatures and attribute their causality to God.

“It is contrary to the rational character of wisdom for there to be anything useless in the activities of the one who possesses wisdom.  But if created things could in no way operate to produce their effects and God alone worked all operations immediately these other things would be employed in a useless way by Him…”[7]

The adherents of the creation science mentality do something similar.  For in contending that the appearances of immense age in the geology of the earth and in the universe should be ignored they imply that God has acted in a useless way.  Moreover, they attack the rational character of the conclusions reasonable men are able to draw from the evidence these provide.

The cultists oppose Darwinian evolutionary theory as an explanation for the intricacy of the natural world.  They are right in doing so.  But they neglect the rational ground from sound philosophy (i.e., arrived at deductively), that what something is, its quiddity, derives not from its material but from its formal cause which, because it is fixed and immutable, is incapable of ‘evolving’.  Instead, they approach the issue inductively after the manner of the materialists they would otherwise be quick to condemn.  They see that evolution’s defenders demand great periods of time for ‘development of species’.  They see also that modern science, via innumerable of its discoveries, has arrived at the conclusion that the universe, including our planet, is millions of years old.  Instead of distinguishing the two - acknowledging that the scientists may be right on the one issue and wrong on the other - they run them together.  They insist there must be a conspiracy deriving from the general acceptance by scientists of ‘evolutionary’ theory to ‘discover’ what is not there.  That is, they assert, or imply, that driven by prejudice, (pre-judgment) in favour of ‘evolution’, scientists in their various disciplines have engaged in collusion.  In doing so they indulge their own prejudice in favour of the literal, i.e., Protestant, interpretation of sacred scripture.

This philosophical thick-headedness is supported by two lies.  The first, already mentioned, entails rejection of the Catholic Church’s clear position that her theologians and the faithful generally are free to consider and debate whether the word ‘day’ in Genesis I signifies a natural day or an indefinite space of time.  Instead they insist that there is a burden of proof on those who deny the literal meaning.  It matters not to them that the Church has said the contrary, not just once, but three times!

The second lie is worse and bids to do enormous harm among the Catholic faithful.  They assert that their position is the Catholic Church’s position when it is not.

These intellectual and moral failings expose the source of creation science theory as the Father of Lies, the devil.  Objectively speaking – for only God knows the subjective state of any soul – those who adhere to the creation science position in respect of these lies fall within the terms of the condemnation pronounced by Pope Pius X in Praestantia Scripturae in 1907.  Considered objectively, they cannot avoid the charge of disobedience to Christ’s Church nor can they be free of grave sin.

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    One would think it quite enough that the Catholic faithful must suffer the assaults of the Modernists in their midst laboring with all their might to reduce the faith to conformity with the world so as to surrender it to the atheists.  But we find ourselves fighting fellow travelers of the very heresy that brought us modernism and atheism, Protestantism.

St Peter warns us specifically against the incursions of the devil who goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.  We should follow his advice in respect of the creation science cult – Resist him, strong in the faith!

Michael Baker

April 21^st, 2024—Third Sunday after Easter