The Catholic expectation that creation took untold millennia precedes Darwin by many, many centuries. I'm looking up the quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas, now...
Thank you!
They [pagans] are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of [man as] many thousands of years, though reckoning by the sacred writings we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed.
Saint Augustine's (354 - 430) ~ The City of God
Jesus was born some 5200 years after creation so this world is not much more than 7200 years old.
The Bible clearly says otherwise. I'll take God and common sense over "St." Thomas Aquina.
I assume you are referencing some of the writings on the six days of creation.
I have 2 major problems with macro evolution.
1. It violates the laws of thermodynamics.
2. It starts down the slope where God gets removed from the creation of man.
As for how long creation took, don't know. That is one of the questions I want to ask when I get to heaven (I have quite a list actually!). The language used in Genesis points to a series of 6 "conventional" days, but not necessarily.