The Church does not “teach” evolutionary theory. Nor does it condemn it. Same with many theories outside the realm of religion. If your point is Catholics do not adhere to “Creationism,” again, it’s not taught, nor condemned. These are matters of discretion, not doctrine.
Catholicism is not full of rules like some people portray. We have dogma, doctrine, praxis, and then people are free to think and choose.
Evidently you didn't read my response to Campion in which I told him to check any current Catholic Bible with nihil obstat and the imprimatur other than a reprint of the Douay-Rheims. They all teach evolution.
Let me ask you a question: does the Catholic Church consider whether or not the "virgin birth" described in the "new testament" is literally true, or is that also a matter of "discretion?"
Furthermore you ignore the fact that it isn't just evolutionism that the Catholic Church propagates, but higher criticism as well--the higher criticism invented by liberal Protestants. All of the first eleven chapters of Genesis are dismissed as Babylonian and Canaanite mythology. Esther is dismissed and its leading figures identified with pagan "gxds," G-d forbid! Jonah is turned into an Aesop's fable. Daniel is late-dated into a pseudepigraph written after the fact of the events it allegedly foretells (I guess all those prophecies "about J*sus" will have to go as well). Why? Because the world described there doesn't operate like the one we know today? Then I guess you must also dismiss the "virgin birth," "resurrection," "miracles of J*sus," and the "real presence." After all . . . don't we all know better now, thanks to the science Catholicism worships and fawns on? And the very fact that you consider cosmology none of religion's business and a field belonging exclusively to empirical science shows exactly where you stand.
You, Sir (or Madam) are a hypocrite.
Catholicism is not full of rules like some people portray. We have dogma, doctrine, praxis, and then people are free to think and choose.
Oh yeah. The "unchanging one true religion" that claims to be semper idem has no opinions on anything. And there's so much "freedom" if you're a homosexual (as long as you belong to some traditionally Catholic ethnic group). Every diocese in the United States has a department ministering to "gay and lesbian persons" so they don't feel out of place. But what about "literalist persons?" They can just go elsewhere, can't they? Or what about if one's conscience informs one that the Messianic kingdom will be a literal messianic kingdom, not some "social kingdom" run by people. I note that any form whatsoever of literal messianism (such as millennialism) is not permitted and seems to be the one opinion held in common by both far left and far right Catholics, since it takes the world out of man's hands and places it directly under the governance of Heaven. Can't have that.
Hebrew Bible, we call that the Old Testament.
I know what you call it. The name you give it shows the contempt you hold it in.
It’s been fully included in the Bible for several centuries longer than protestants,
And before that they were part of the TaNa"KH, long before there was a Catholic Church to appropriate and misuse them (only to eventually deny them altogether). But no matter. I am stressing that contemporary Catholicism ignores all previous Catholic Biblical interpretation and instead reinterprets everything through Darwinian science and Protestant historical-criticism (Catholics nowadays have to subscribe to Protestant historical-criticism to prove they aren't Protestants!). Deny this if you will.
and we include the books you leave out.
Oh . . . you include a lot more books that I leave out that you can imagine!
I wonder if you are getting your ideas from some strange source aimed at defaming the faith?
You mean like the six years I spent in the "one true unchanging religion" where all of the clergy and laity believe exactly as I have described, where every approved "bible" had the exact commentaries I have described, ever Catholic publication carried articles explaining that most of the "old testament" were Aesop's fables and attacking people who held to total Biblical inerrancy as stupid, and where I was finally asked to leave by "my very own" Catholic denominational counselor because my simply taking the Bible's words at face value was "not Catholic?"
What about the fact that the official newspaper of "my" Catholic diocese ran an article advocating the teaching of historical criticism of the Bible in public schools? Or about the sometimes implied and sometimes spoken idea that G-d permitted the rise of Fundamentalist Protestant churches because some people are simply "not smart enough" (or don't belong to the "right" ethnic group) to be Catholic? You know, like all those ultra-intellectual illiterate Mayan peasants in Guatemala who are so much better than a simple rural American "peckerwood?"
The Catholic Church is in the process of being destroyed by G-d. No one deserves it more. But you'll go down the drain claiming that there is "no connection whatsoever" between the adoption of higher criticism and evolution on the one hand and sexual revisionism on the other.
Your words have made your position on these issues perfectly clear; never fear about that.
Attend Mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation.
Go to confession annually if not more often or when needed.
Receive Holy Communion during Easter. Receiving weekly or daily is encouraged, though.
Observe laws on fasting and abstinence: one full meal on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday; not eating meat on Fridays during Lent.
Be subject to the pope.