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To: wideawake; BlackElk; sandyeggo; ArrogantBustard; Campion; mockingbyrd
Catholics on this forum have accused me of "bearing false witness" (in AB's constantly repeated refrain), yet one of your number, stfassisi, has just confirmed that the Catholic Church accepts evolution with this article to a page on the Official Vatican web site.

So who's bearing false witness now???

37 posted on 02/25/2007 9:49:36 AM PST by Zionist Conspirator (Zakhor 'et 'asher-`asah lekha `Amaleq, baderekh betze'tekhem miMitzrayim.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator

The Commision does not make infallible pronouncements. It studies and presents its views and/or findings to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. These findings may be accepted or rejected. But any contradiction to official Church teaching would be rejected. The explanation below is from the Catholic Answers site.

Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.

The Catechism explains that "Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day" (CCC 337), but "nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history is rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun" (CCC 338).

It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use.

Adam and Eve: Real People

It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).

In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: "When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains 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 parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own" (Humani Generis 37).

The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, "The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents" (CCC 390).

This is very different from the Darwinist position of natural selection and random mutations. The Church teaches that God created the universe out of nothing. There is no separation from God's will and God's action. What God wills happens. It may happen over a period of time but it is always directed by God and sustained by God.


115 posted on 02/25/2007 3:52:47 PM PST by lastchance (Hug your babies.)
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