Si Si No No - Evolutionism

MODERNIST TEMPTATIONS

The renowned geneticist Giuseppi Sermonti wrote:
The above quotation seems to have taken on the marks of a prophecy today, ten years later, when we read the commentaries on John Paul II's "Message" to the "Pontifical Academy of Sciences"² in the journal La Nazione: "Faith and Science: Satisfaction for the Pope's words, which have served to give a facelift to Darwin's pet but still unproven theory - soul or no soul, thanks to the monkey."³

As far as Darwin's theory is concerned, La Nazione's writer exaggerates, since that theory makes no exception for the soul, which must also be considered to be a product of evolution. It is, however, quite certain that John Paul II's "Message" is indeed disconcerting for many reasons.



TWO DISCOURSES: BASED ON THE MAGISTERIUM?

We read in John Paul II's "Message":
Then the Pope quotes Pius XII's encyclical Humani Generis which does mention evolutionism; as well as his own speech (Oct. 31, 1992) to that same Academy of Sciences - an address in which no mention is made of evolutionism, but of...Galileo and biblical exegesis.

We read in John Paul II's "Message":
One preliminary observation: Since it is a question of evolutionism, it would have been more to the point to remind the scientists of the limitations of natural science rather than the exegetes' and theologians' duty of keeping themselves informed about those "findings (which are certainly not infallible) coming from the various natural sciences." This is especially true in view of the fact that, in this matter, exegetes as well as theologians have already let themselves be over-imposed upon by some presumed "findings" (simple hypotheses, in reality) of "sciences of nature," which have been strongly influenced - let us not forget - by a philosophy based on atheism.


Fortunately, Card. Ratzinger, in the preface to this document, makes it clear that the "historico-critical method" (in actual fact, that same criticism corning out of the Protestant-rationalist mold) is still being hotly debated and, above all, that the new Pontifical Biblical Commission "is in no way to be considered an organ of the Magisterium" (as, on the contrary, was the previous Biblical Commission). It is, therefore, in any case, and for many reasons, quite inexact to speak of "two discourses" of the "Church's Magisterium" on the themes of evolution and the origin of life. The one and only public address of the Magisterium on this question is and remains even today, Pope Pius XII's Humani Generis, which, however, cannot be considered the final and definitive pronouncement on this theme.

On the other hand, we may well say that the Magisterium of the Church has indeed already pronounced itself "with two official discourses" on the "correct interpretation" of Genesis:

1) With the Decree (June 30, 1909) of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which was, at that time, an "organ of the Magisterium," a decree whereby it was guaranteed that the literal-historical sense [i.e., meaning] of the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis cannot in any way be questioned (i.e., doubted) when it is a matter of facts concerning or affecting the very foundations of the Christian Faith; including...the particular creation of man and the formation of the first woman from the first man.⁷

2) With Pope Pius XII's Humani Generis, which upholds the historicity [i.e. the historical authenticity] of the first eleven chapters of Genesis against the neo-modernists of the "new theology," while reaffirming the value and merits of the following decree of the Pontifical Biblical Commission:

Now the dastardly deed of handing over the "correct interpretation" of Genesis to the so-called "historico-critical method" which, in casting off into the trashpile the Catholic doctrine on the inspiration and absolute inerrancy [i.e., infallibility] of Sacred Scriptures, has in effect, simply buried Catholic exegesis while even denying the historicity of the Holy Gospels. All of which means establishing, in the Catholic Church itself, that mythological interpretation according to which Genesis is to be considered just a fabulous tale, and so there is really nothing to be found in Holy Scriptures on the origin of mankind.



A LITTLE TOO MUCH AND A BIT TOO LITTLE

In John Paul II's "Message," the following is said concerning Pius XII's encyclical:
In view of the state of scientific research of those earlier days and also taking into account the particular requirements of Catholic theology, the encyclical Humani Generis considered the doctrine of evolutionism as a serious hypothesis, worthy of research and of serious thought and this, just as much as its opposing hypothesis. Pius XII added two methodological conditions: that this opinion be not adopted as though it were a certain and demonstrated doctrine and as if Revelation could be completely disregarded in questions of this nature. He also mentioned the necessary proviso that this opinion be compatible with the Catholic Faith, a point upon which I shall return.
Frankly, it seems that John Paul II's message makes Pius XII say a little too much on the one hand, and a bit too little on the other.

A little too much, because Pius XII in Humani Generis is distinctly speaking of two evolutionisms. Of the first he writes:
The above quotation constitutes in simple terms the (Church's) official condemnation of evolution, be it materialistic, atheistic or pantheistic: all of which deny the dogma of creation. In his message, John Paul II unfortunately neglects to recall the above-mentioned condemnation of Pius XII, and it is this omission which has probably prompted those screaming headlines about Darwin's unmerited rehabilitation as was done in the previously-mentioned newspaper La Nazione.


If atheistic and materialistic evolutionism was running rampant "outside the Christian fold" at the time of Pius XII, the so-called theistic evolutionism was, indeed, already prevailing inside the fold of Christ. Since this last type of evolutionism admits God's influence upon evolution and the direct creation of the human soul, it was supposed that it could be established in the Catholic Church itself. The theistic evolutionists, one of whom was Carlo Colombo (who later became Paul VI's theologian!) appealed to "progress" of science which they used - we know not with what good faith - to turn hypotheses into absolute certainties.⁸ The background to all of this is well described by Card. Ruffini:
Unfortunately, the doctrine [or teachings] of the Fathers, even though carrying much weight, was not able, in this case, to settle the question once and for all.


This enabled theologians as well as authorized exegetes or those close to Pius XII, such as Boyer, Pirot, Ceuppens and Bea, to affirm that in the biblical narrative we must retain the fact (of God's special intervention in the creation of the human body) and leave it to science to determine the way in which it was done: that is, if God formed the human body from inorganic or organic matter (the latter being a nice way of saying: from an animal). In this case [i.e., from an animal], "slime of the earth" in the biblical text would simply be understood in its figurative meaning, and not in its literal sense, as it has always been believed. Pirot, for example, had written:
And Ceuppens, another qualified exegete:
Also Bea, who at the time was the Rector of the Biblical Institute:
Finally, Boyer, who was then professor (and then rector) at the Pontifical Gregorian University:
These assertions of authorized persons gave rise to a great deal of negative reactions on the part of theologians and exegetes equally qualified in these matters.

It was at this juncture that Pope Pius XII intervened with his encyclical Humani Generis when he wrote:
And at this point, as a note, Pius XII refers to his Allocution to the members of the Academy of Sciences (Nov. 30, 1941, AAS, vol. XXIII, 1941, p.506) wherein he had affirmed:
It is, therefore, a bit of an exaggeration to say that Pius XII had "already affirmed that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the Faith." It is, on the contrary, quite accurate to declare that in Humani Generis, the Roman Pontiff makes no pronouncement, leaving to the scientists and theologians the task of bringing forth arguments both pro and con, while reserving to the "judgment of the Church" the last word once they have finally obtained (if possible) "certain and definitive results." And it is still too much to have Pius XII say that "if the human body takes [sic] its origin from living, pre-existent matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God." Pius XII never used the present indicative tense, the tense of reality and of certitude, and never would have done so. What he did say, since he was only speaking hypothetically, was that even if the human body should have had its origin in an animal (which is still light years away from being a demonstrated fact) the immediate creation of the human soul would remain firm and unaltered.

In the same vein, it is stretching the truth to pretend that Pius XII "considered the doctrine of evolutionism as a serious hypothesis, worthy of research and of serious thought and this, just as much as its opposing hypothesis."

As a matter of fact, Pius XII does not say that theistic evolution is a serious hypothesis, but that it is a hypothesis to be studied with all "necessary earnestness (or seriousness)" (which is, quite obviously, not the same thing at all); he maintains that it is a hypothesis not "worthy" but "which needs" to be weighed and judged "with all necessary seriousness, moderation and measure" and that everyone is duty-bound to be submitted to the judgment of the Church. And lastly, it is too much to say that Pius XII considers the evolutionist hypothesis "worthy of research and of serious thought and this, just as much as its opposing hypothesis." In fact, right after this, Pius XII deplores the case where…:
This last affirmation simply means that Pius XII does not at all consider theistic evolution "just as much as its opposing hypothesis" and that his obvious reservation of judgment on this question is rather more negative (non-licet) than positive.



THE TRADITIONAL AND EVIDENT SENSE OF GENESIS

How are we to safeguard the unmistakably clear biblical account or testimony telling us that the body of the first man became alive through God's breathing upon it, if, as the evolutionists claim, it [that body] was already alive before this.¹⁶


Moreover, this obvious meaning is also the meaning traditionally accepted by the Catholic Church, starting with the Fathers (of the Church); a meaning duly approved by Church Authority (Provincial Council of Cologne, 1860, approved by the Holy See, retractions demanded of Leroy, Zahn, Bonomelli, etc., by the Holy Office); a meaning which still remains, in spite of the evolutionist wave, the "most common meaning," which the exegetes, such as Galbiati himself, admitted.¹⁹ Mgr. .Spadafora writes that:
While Card. Ruffini warns:
Common sense together with prudence, as a matter of fact, require that even in the case of a non-defined question of exegesis, traditional belief be not argued without sufficiently grave and well-grounded reasons. In any case, before evolutionism has ever rigorously proven its hypotheses and the evolutionist theologians and exegetes have come up with arguments much more firmly grounded than their presumed simple-minded "scientific progress," with which they are light-years away from proving the case for evolutionism, these (evolutionists) will have indeed shown themselves to be..:



A NOVELTY

We can now understand why this "intervention" of the Magisterium of the Church which is Humani Generis made no final pronouncement on theistic evolutionism, preferring to postpone such a decision to a later date when both science and theology would be able to offer "certain as well as definitive indispensable proofs."

But now we have a novelty contained in John Paul II's recent "Message":
What is this "new knowledge"? The "Message" limits itself to saying that:
However, the "convergence" of those findings has yet to be shown because for a long time already, great difficulties have arisen against evolutionism, including those fields of science which, only a short while ago seemed so favorable to it: embryology, genetics, geology, paleontology , etc...And that this convergence, if it does indeed exist anywhere, be "unsought and unprovoked" remains to be seen, since it is in the habit of evolutionary scientists to twist their findings to fit into their hypotheses: "Many evolutionary authors take into account only those elements which favor their own theoretical conceptions," admitted Professor Piero Leonardi of the University of Padua²² in his debate with Mgr. Spadafora, a renowned exegete.

In any case, a "significative argument" does not in any way constitute a decisive proof nor a rigorous demonstration such as is demanded and required in the field of science, and especially in the case of a question touching the Christian Faith in which we would find ourselves obliged to "put aside our previous convictions based on Sacred Scriptures, on the doctrine of the Fathers as well as on the traditional teaching of the Church." The "Message" of John Paul II himself says, yes, that..:
But it is not at all said that this "new knowledge" leads evolution to be considered as a scientific certainty as the mass media deduced and proclaimed everywhere (a misunderstanding easily foreseen and which those responsible for it had the duty to "nip in the bud"). The rest of the text of the "Message" is as follows:
Now if all of this has been well understood, the "theory of evolution" must no longer be considered as a hypothesis, but as a...theory! And, since a theory, as the same "Message" admits, must also itself be verified "on the level of facts" and eventually "rethought," it seems that evolutionism has gained absolutely nothing from such a promotion (and that such a promotion has served only to create the above-mentioned misunderstanding).



A MYTH HENCEFORTH TORN TO SHREDS

It is all the more so since evolutionism "on the level off acts"- which the "Message" seems to ignore strangely - has already declared itself bankrupt.

We will limit ourselves to a few quotations, but which carry a lot of weight. In 1980, in a congress held in Chicago, 160 scientists from all over the globe acknowledged the shipwreck of their system against the reef of the fixedness (or stability) of species:
Again in 1980, in Italy, Giuseppe Semonti, a world-renowned geneticist and professor at the University of Perugia, together with Roberto Fondi, professor of paleontology at the University of Sienna, published their work Dopo Darwin: Critica all'evoluzionismo - After Darwin: A Critique on Evolutionism (Rusconi, Milan) in which the "myth" of evolutionism gets its so well-deserved scientific burial. In 1985 there followed, by the same Semonti, another work: Luna nel bosco - Moon in the Woods (Rusconi, Milan), once more taking evolutionism to task. Finally, on August 25, 1992, the Corriere della Sera published an article entitled: "Scientists Meet in Congress: We Do Not Come from Monkeys; Darwin Challenged on Evolutionism." The newspaper story was all about the annual congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the very same association to which was presented for the first time the theory of evolutionism. The author of the article was the English scientist Richard Milton, author of The Facts of Life: The Myth of Darwinism Torn to Shreds. The Corriere della Sera wrote:
(Which, moreover, never did convince all of the scientists). And all of this after a whole army of biologists, of paleontologists, of embryologists, of zoologists, of botanists, of geneticists, of anthropologists from all nations exhausted itself for over a century in a vain attempt to flush out from under cover the faintest trace of a supposed evolution. Together with Card. Ruffini we ask the "theistic" evolutionists, "Was it really worthwhile to wander off from the divinely revealed. path, a path so straight, so simple yet so logical and rational even in its smallest details?"²³



TEILHARD'S OMINOUS SHADOW

Things being as they are, we need to ask ourselves the (pertinent) question: why did John Paul II's "Message" to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences seek to undertake the restoration of a myth henceforth completely discredited and lying in shambles before the world? The following seems to us to be probably the most likely answer:
Teilhard's "theology," despite the monitum [i.e., a solemn warning] of the Holy Office against his works, triumphed at Vatican II, especially in Gaudium et Spes, thanks to the efforts of De Lubac.

Now the Catholic hierarchy, starting with the Roman Curia, is teeming with highly-placed clergymen unfortunately infected with "acute teilharditis" - according to Gilson's formula for De Lubac²⁶ - and the first of all, as we have already so rigorously documented, is the Prefect of the ex-Holy Office, Card. Ratzinger, for whom, exactly as with Teilhard, in Jesus Christ, it is not God Who was made flesh, but it is man becoming God.²⁷ John Paul II himself following the example of Paul VI, does not hesitate to quote Teilhard de Chardin. Above all, take the case recently quoted in a Passionist review..:²⁸
Thus are they depicted today, by the followers of Teilhard, all those great theologians who were so opposed to that Jesuit's condemned works, in particular Fr. GarrigouLagrange, O.P., whom they will never forgive for having proved that their "new theology" proceeds unrestrained to heresy by the "path of shims and fancies."²⁹

That Passionist publication forgets, however, the fact that, almost immediately, on July 22, 1981, a press release from the Holy See hastened to make it clear that the letter sent by Casaroli "in the Holy Father's name" was not at all meant..:
What had happened? A group of cardinals of the Roman Curia had immediately and sharply protested against Teilhard's undeserved praise, and, consequently, this attempt at rehabilitating that heresiarch suffered a partial setback.³⁰

We sincerely hope to be mistaken, but we do fear that John Paul lI's "Message" to the Pontifical Academy of Science was not intended to be so much a restoration of evolutionism already "in shreds," as a renewed attempt to officially approve or sanction the modernist error of Teilhardism, which is not only a form of evolutionism, but which is, in fact, much more and much worse: for it is, in truth, a dangerous and radical distortion of Christianity, wherein the fundamental dogma would no longer be the Incarnation of God, but the "ascent of man"³¹ with the consequent cult of Man made God instead of God made Man.

Paulinus

(From Courrier de Rome, Mar. 1997)

1. Sermonti, who refers to his book La luna nel bosco (Rusconi,1985), is also the co-author with Roberto Fondo of the work Dopo Darwin-Critica all' evoluzionismo.

2. Cf. Osservatore Romano, Oct. 24, 1996.

3. La Nazione, Oct. 25, 1996.

4. Cf. Motu proprio Sedula Cura of Paul VI, art. 3.

5. Byrne, Ravasi etc. Cf. Si Si No No, Oct. 31, 1994.

6. Cf. Si Si No No, Dec. 31, 1994.

7. Enchiridion Biblicum no.338.

8. V. C. Colombo, "Trasformismo antropologico e teologia, " La Scuola cattolica, 77 (1949), pp.17-43; on p.26 it is claimed that the theory of evolution belongs to science ''as demonstrated facts and theories."

9. E. Ruffini in his article "Responsabilita dei paleoantropologi cattolici" in Osservatore Romano,June 3, 1950.

10. E. Ruffini, La teoria dell'Evoluzione secundo la scienza e la Fede, (Rome, Orbis Catholicus, 1948).

11. L. Pirot, Adam, Dict. de la Bible, Supplement, I, 1928.

12. P. F. Ceuppens, Le polygenisme et la Bible, Angelicum, 1947, p.27.

13. A. Bea in Biblica XXV(1944), p.77.

14. C. Boyer, De Deo creante, 1948, p.412.

15. L. Ott, Compendio di teologia dommatica ed. Marietti, p.161.

16. E. Ruffini. op. cit.

17. F. Spadafora Dizionario Biblico; ed. Studium, Rome, word Adam; see also in Temi di esegesi (I PA G, Rovigo, pp.154-160), Evoluzionismo e Poligenismo.

18. Parente-Piolanti-Garofelo, Dizionario di teologia dommatica, ed. Studium, Rome, 1952, p.130.

19. La Sacra Biblia, ed. Marietti, vol. I, p.21, note 7.

20 Dizionario Biblico, loco. cit.

21. Article cit.

22. Cf. Palestra del clero,]an. 15, 1949.

23. Article cit.

24. V .A. Kohn, Falsi profeti, ed. Zanichelli; 30 Giorni, December 1991, p.66; and Grandi civiltà del passato of Hobby and Work.

25. Cf. Osservatore Romano, Dec. 2, 1948, O.Fribault's article-A.Dubois who take up Boule's plain refusal. See also Si Si No No, Oct. 1978, pA. "Un gesuita traditore di Cristo e della Chisa."

26. E.Gilson's letter to A. Del Noce, Nov. 14, 1967 ,published by Il Sabato, Dec. 29, 1990.

27. Cf. Si Si No No, March 31, 1993, pp.1 sq.

28. La Sapienza delta Croce, April -June, 1996 p.137.

29. Cf. Si Si No No, March 31, 1994, pp.3 sq.; on the defamation of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange cf. Si Si No No, Jan. 31, 1993 and Feb. 15, 1993, pp.1.sq.

30. Cf. Si Si No No, June 15, 1981, pp.1 sq. and Sept. 15, 1981 pp.5 sq.

31. Cf. Cardinal Siri, Gethsemani.

Index


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