Faith under Attack
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Evolutionism vs Catholicism - I
Evolution, the Devil´s Weapon
against Christianity
Evolution is a theory that delights atheists, yet atheists don´t just believe in evolution; they have made it their banner. It leads them into battle against Christianity. Newman Watts wrote in his 1935 book Britain without God: "Every attack on the Christian faith made today has, as its basis, the doctrine of evolution." That was true in 1935 and it is true now, nearly 80 years later.
There really is no middle ground in the war between Creation and Evolution, for it is essentially a fight between faith in God and Atheism. Wallace Johnson, in his excellent book,
The Death of Evolution, affirms this:
"Darwin´s Evolution gave to Lucifer the perfect weapon with which to shake the foundations of Christianity... We see the result in today´s secular man. Heedless of any Creator God, he acknowledges no Commandments from a Creator. Thus is removed the source of authority, and lost is the sense of moral absolutes. Gone is the concept of rendering a final account to an almighty God. It is small wonder that all authority is breaking down."
Catholics & evolution
I was brought up in a secular, agnostic family, in which religion was simply irrelevant as far as day to day life is concerned. At age nineteen I adhered to Protestantism while in my first undergraduate year at Oxford. I was blown away by the power of the Bible and promptly decided to believe it as the Word of God.
Never, as a Protestant, did I have any doubts about the historicity of any parts of the sacred texts. As far as we were concerned, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Patriarchs, let alone Jesus Christ, were as real as any other historical figures, and any mention of "myths" was automatically dismissed as heresy.
Then, after university I married and moved to Spain, where Protestants are few and far between. I had become disenchanted with the brand of Protestantism I was in, but I also despised what I saw in the Catholic Church, which I thought of as a watered-down version of Christianity.
Notwithstanding, I began a long quest in search of the full Truth of the Gospel and somehow read myself into Catholicism. It took me several years (I´m not as bright as some) to finally figure out that the Catholic Church, despite the tired, modernist façade I had known up till then, was really the One, True, Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The reason I write this is that Catholics seemed far more protestant in their theology than Protestants (not to mention the liturgy). As far as I could make out, it was quite normal for Catholics to disbelieve dogmatic Church teaching as it took their fancy. For the first five years after my conversion I failed to come across a single Catholic who actually believed in Special Creation!
Many Catholics even found it surprising that I doubted whether a Catholic could believe in evolution, because in many Church circles it is adhered to with as much fervor as to the dogmas of the Faith (in some cases with far more fervor). On one hand, I was totally convinced that the Catholic Church was what I had been looking for; on the other hand, I felt like Ulysses, who after years of being lost at sea finally makes it back home, only to find it full of usurpers.
How could this happen to the One, True Church? How could priests and bishops publicly deny Creation and get away with it? An especially disgraceful example of this was when in Febuary 2012, Cardinal George Pell dismissed Adam and Eve as "myths" on BBC television.
Not only did he get away with it, he was recently promoted by Pope Francis to be one of the eight "super-cardinals" who will oversee Church reforms - the fox guarding the henhouse!
The Protestants I had known twisted and misinterpreted the Bible, but at least they believed it was the infallible Word of God!
A remnant follows true theology
I eventually discovered the traditionalist Catholic group in my home city, and to my joy found out that they all believed in Creation. I had left Protestantism and become a Catholic in order to profess and practice the same faith Jesus Christ left to His Apostles on the day of His Ascension. At last, I realized that there was a remnant of true Catholics who did just that, who were blissfully uninterested in what "the majority of Catholics believe," much less in what the "consensus of the scientific community" happens to say about Creation.
They believed that God made the world in six literal days, which is what Catholics have always believed, at least up to the middle of the 20th century. In any case, the term "traditional Catholic" is a pleonasm, like "wet water" or "round circles." Catholics are traditional by definition, because if we do not believe what was handed down from the Apostles (tradere from the latin), we can be sure we do not have the True Faith.
Belief in evolution is definitely a recent thing for Catholics, in other words, a novelty. None of the Church Fathers believed in it (St Basil even wrote some fiery words against it); nor did the great Doctors and theologians of the Church, including especially St. Thomas Aquinas. Most tellingly, the sensus fidelium of all ages, except our apostate times, rejected it outright. Ordinary Catholics always believed that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days, because that is the obvious meaning of Scripture.
If we follow the rule of thumb laid down by the Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lerins, and bearing in mind that evolution is a novel belief, we must conclude that there is little room for it in the Catholic Faith. This is what the Saint has to say about Tradition versus innovation:
“Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense "Catholic," which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent.
“We shall follow universality if we confess to be true that one faith, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations, which - it is manifest - were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consented definitions and determinations of all, or, at the least, of almost all priests and doctors.”
It annoys me when Catholics say something along the lines of "We shouldn´t bother people with the subject of evolution anymore; it´s a lost battle. We should stick to the essentials, such as the dogmas of the faith and Catholic morality." I think this strategy is mistaken for two reasons: first, because I can think of few aspects more essential to our Faith than Creation; and second, because it ignores the root cause of today´s widespread apostasy.
The evolutionary mindset is hardly a marginal phenomenon; unfortunately it is a philosophy that has permeated right to the heart of Western society: it has eroded the faith of entire nations, and turned millions of Christians into atheists. As the pioneer creationist Bolton Davidheiser, author of Evolution and Christian Faith, put it in 1969: "Whoever believes that the evolution question is peripheral to Christian faith is unaware of the issues."
Our time is a time of Atheism, both in theory and in practice. Nowadays a Catholic who is poorly catechized is not so much in danger of falling into heresy or being snatched up by a sect, as simply losing faith in God altogether and slipping into the spiritual void of atheistic hedonism.
Undoubtedly people´s personal sins have a lot to do with their apostasy, but they find "scientific" excuses to prop up their atheism. They don´t have to look far; a powerful propaganda machine is in place: brainwashing everyone into believing in evolution. And the brainwashing is most effective when applied at an early age.
There are many Catholics who are outraged that schools offer sex-ed classes, often without parents´ consent, with the goal of perverting children. I also find it outrageous. Yet, I don’t understand how people can get so upset over sex-ed and fail to protest about the orchestrated anti-Christian indoctrination that has been going on in schools for decades under the guise of science.
These days you are literally not allowed to mention God in science lessons, because the assumption is that God (if He exists) cannot intervene in the physical universe. This is called Naturalism, and it is a religious belief. Unlike Christianity, it is a religion that has acquired official status in the education system and is heavily funded by the tax payer.
I distinctly remember sitting in a science lesson when I was twelve-years-old, being told by my teacher, with all manner of diagrams, that human beings evolved from apes millions of years ago, passing through various "semi-human" forms. My classmates and I simply accepted it as objective fact, and we learned evolutionary theory in much the same way as we learned the dates of battles and the periodic table.
The correlation between Atheism and evolution is an objective reality that statistics bear up. Over and over again, polls have shown that belief in evolutionary doctrine is inversely proportional to belief in Christianity. The Devil offers us a compromise: if only we admit that Genesis is a fable, we will be allowed to keep our religion. We just have to "adapt" it to modern sensitivities.
We are warned that if we persist in proclaiming that the Bible is free of all errors we will be ridiculed and banished from polite society. The problem with this compromise is that by "demythologizing" Genesis you remove the foundation for the Christian Faith, and sooner or later the entire edifice collapses like a pack of cards.
Continued
Darwin gave Lucifer a weapon to shake the foundations of Christianity
"Darwin´s Evolution gave to Lucifer the perfect weapon with which to shake the foundations of Christianity... We see the result in today´s secular man. Heedless of any Creator God, he acknowledges no Commandments from a Creator. Thus is removed the source of authority, and lost is the sense of moral absolutes. Gone is the concept of rendering a final account to an almighty God. It is small wonder that all authority is breaking down."
Catholics & evolution
I was brought up in a secular, agnostic family, in which religion was simply irrelevant as far as day to day life is concerned. At age nineteen I adhered to Protestantism while in my first undergraduate year at Oxford. I was blown away by the power of the Bible and promptly decided to believe it as the Word of God.
Never, as a Protestant, did I have any doubts about the historicity of any parts of the sacred texts. As far as we were concerned, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Patriarchs, let alone Jesus Christ, were as real as any other historical figures, and any mention of "myths" was automatically dismissed as heresy.
Then, after university I married and moved to Spain, where Protestants are few and far between. I had become disenchanted with the brand of Protestantism I was in, but I also despised what I saw in the Catholic Church, which I thought of as a watered-down version of Christianity.
Notwithstanding, I began a long quest in search of the full Truth of the Gospel and somehow read myself into Catholicism. It took me several years (I´m not as bright as some) to finally figure out that the Catholic Church, despite the tired, modernist façade I had known up till then, was really the One, True, Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Pell dismisses the Revelation cointained in the Genesis as a myth
Many Catholics even found it surprising that I doubted whether a Catholic could believe in evolution, because in many Church circles it is adhered to with as much fervor as to the dogmas of the Faith (in some cases with far more fervor). On one hand, I was totally convinced that the Catholic Church was what I had been looking for; on the other hand, I felt like Ulysses, who after years of being lost at sea finally makes it back home, only to find it full of usurpers.
How could this happen to the One, True Church? How could priests and bishops publicly deny Creation and get away with it? An especially disgraceful example of this was when in Febuary 2012, Cardinal George Pell dismissed Adam and Eve as "myths" on BBC television.
Not only did he get away with it, he was recently promoted by Pope Francis to be one of the eight "super-cardinals" who will oversee Church reforms - the fox guarding the henhouse!
The Protestants I had known twisted and misinterpreted the Bible, but at least they believed it was the infallible Word of God!
A remnant follows true theology
I eventually discovered the traditionalist Catholic group in my home city, and to my joy found out that they all believed in Creation. I had left Protestantism and become a Catholic in order to profess and practice the same faith Jesus Christ left to His Apostles on the day of His Ascension. At last, I realized that there was a remnant of true Catholics who did just that, who were blissfully uninterested in what "the majority of Catholics believe," much less in what the "consensus of the scientific community" happens to say about Creation.
They believed that God made the world in six literal days, which is what Catholics have always believed, at least up to the middle of the 20th century. In any case, the term "traditional Catholic" is a pleonasm, like "wet water" or "round circles." Catholics are traditional by definition, because if we do not believe what was handed down from the Apostles (tradere from the latin), we can be sure we do not have the True Faith.
Belief in evolution is definitely a recent thing for Catholics, in other words, a novelty. None of the Church Fathers believed in it (St Basil even wrote some fiery words against it); nor did the great Doctors and theologians of the Church, including especially St. Thomas Aquinas. Most tellingly, the sensus fidelium of all ages, except our apostate times, rejected it outright. Ordinary Catholics always believed that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days, because that is the obvious meaning of Scripture.
If we follow the rule of thumb laid down by the Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lerins, and bearing in mind that evolution is a novel belief, we must conclude that there is little room for it in the Catholic Faith. This is what the Saint has to say about Tradition versus innovation:
To fit in the world, progressivists deny the creation of man as revealed by God
“We shall follow universality if we confess to be true that one faith, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations, which - it is manifest - were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consented definitions and determinations of all, or, at the least, of almost all priests and doctors.”
It annoys me when Catholics say something along the lines of "We shouldn´t bother people with the subject of evolution anymore; it´s a lost battle. We should stick to the essentials, such as the dogmas of the faith and Catholic morality." I think this strategy is mistaken for two reasons: first, because I can think of few aspects more essential to our Faith than Creation; and second, because it ignores the root cause of today´s widespread apostasy.
The evolutionary mindset is hardly a marginal phenomenon; unfortunately it is a philosophy that has permeated right to the heart of Western society: it has eroded the faith of entire nations, and turned millions of Christians into atheists. As the pioneer creationist Bolton Davidheiser, author of Evolution and Christian Faith, put it in 1969: "Whoever believes that the evolution question is peripheral to Christian faith is unaware of the issues."
Our time is a time of Atheism, both in theory and in practice. Nowadays a Catholic who is poorly catechized is not so much in danger of falling into heresy or being snatched up by a sect, as simply losing faith in God altogether and slipping into the spiritual void of atheistic hedonism.
Undoubtedly people´s personal sins have a lot to do with their apostasy, but they find "scientific" excuses to prop up their atheism. They don´t have to look far; a powerful propaganda machine is in place: brainwashing everyone into believing in evolution. And the brainwashing is most effective when applied at an early age.
There are many Catholics who are outraged that schools offer sex-ed classes, often without parents´ consent, with the goal of perverting children. I also find it outrageous. Yet, I don’t understand how people can get so upset over sex-ed and fail to protest about the orchestrated anti-Christian indoctrination that has been going on in schools for decades under the guise of science.
The never proved evolution is accepted as a dogma of the new religion
I distinctly remember sitting in a science lesson when I was twelve-years-old, being told by my teacher, with all manner of diagrams, that human beings evolved from apes millions of years ago, passing through various "semi-human" forms. My classmates and I simply accepted it as objective fact, and we learned evolutionary theory in much the same way as we learned the dates of battles and the periodic table.
The correlation between Atheism and evolution is an objective reality that statistics bear up. Over and over again, polls have shown that belief in evolutionary doctrine is inversely proportional to belief in Christianity. The Devil offers us a compromise: if only we admit that Genesis is a fable, we will be allowed to keep our religion. We just have to "adapt" it to modern sensitivities.
We are warned that if we persist in proclaiming that the Bible is free of all errors we will be ridiculed and banished from polite society. The problem with this compromise is that by "demythologizing" Genesis you remove the foundation for the Christian Faith, and sooner or later the entire edifice collapses like a pack of cards.
Continued
Posted March 19 2014
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