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And I might ask how you can lump all Catholics with Loisy just because they find nothing in evolution as a secondary cause that is incompatible with Scripture. The original meaning of evolution after all is “unfolding,” as in the unfolding of a flower, or, the process that leads from seed to fruit. What happened, of course, is that infidels like Huxley attached a biological theory to the cause of unbelief, and a century of demotion of the Bible from history to myth.

How about the fact that a vast majority of Catholics, both in the world at large and here at FR, are inordinately loud-mouthed evolutionists who are continually shooting off their bazoos about how their church, unlike "Billy Bob's Glory Barn," understands that the souls of scientists and intellectuals are far superior to the souls of simple people so that if someone is going to be alienated from the "universal religion" it is going to be the latter and not the former? And of course it doesn't help when the few inerrantist Catholics left in the world (I'm willing to grant that the other ancient churches were never inerrantist because their religion is purely mythological and symbolic and they have never canonized a Bible in the first place) never demonstrate any disagreement or discomfort with said loud-mouthed brethren?

And btw, you seem to misunderstand my objection to evolution. There are plenty of anti-evolutionists who interpret Genesis allegorically. I object to evolution because it conflicts with the Biblical narrative and because there is no ancient immemorial tradition that agrees with it.

I dispute that the narrative says one thing or another about evolution. It says nothing more about it than the whole Bible says anything about physics. The Creation stories end with the creation and the failure of man to fulfill his role as the gardener of Eden. What I find most interesting is how radically different it is from the Creation stories of the societies around. It is an anti-myth and it leaves no room for the gods: there is Creation and the son of God, Adam. The only other actor is the serpent, which is to say the spirit of evil. who leads Adam and Eve astray by positing the idea of the gods. It is something that recurs throughout the Biblical narrative: the illusion of power. The gods of Mesopotamia/Egypt, and their kings and priests, who stand over the people as their masters. We see it today.