The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and ScienceVarious
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
3. There is nothing in the Darwinian theory, or in the more general
theory of evolution countenanced by facts bearing on the development of
life, which a Catholic may not accept, if he wishes so to do.
4. The teaching of Darwinism as to the origin of man’s body is probably
next to heretical. At all events, the only safe opinion is that it
was not evolved from the body of a lower being, but was directly and
quasi-instantaneously created by God.
5. Its teaching concerning the origin of the human soul is in direct
and irreconcilable contradiction with an article of Catholic faith.
6. There is—apart from revealed doctrine—an absolute scientific
certainty of the truth of that same doctrine respecting the creation of
the human soul, and the highest probability of the immediate creation
of the human body.
So much for the facts, so much for the theory, so much for its bearings
on revelation.
In all we have said, we do not wish to be understood as advocating
the Darwinian theory, even in so far as it does not conflict with
Catholic faith, nor as committing ourselves to the general doctrine of
evolution. The fact is, we do not care as Catholics to pledge ourselves
hastily to any hypothesis whatever. We know some little of the history
of hypotheses, and we know that it has been a history of failures.
When the Darwinian hypothesis or the theory of evolution shall
have stood the test of years and facts, and the most searching
investigations, let the Catholics who will be then alive accept them.
There is no special reason why we should profess our faith in them. We
do not need them to account for the phenomena about us.
On the other hand, we can readily understand why a certain class of
minds should subscribe to it.
The human mind naturally seeks for an explanation of the origin of
things. Intelligent men know the human race has not always been on
the earth, that the phenomena about us are not eternal, that animal
and vegetable life must have had a beginning here. Catholics know the
same, and knew it before science had demonstrated it or discovered its
minutiæ.
Men who wish to get rid of God welcome any hypothesis which seems to
remove him to a greater distance from them, even before that hypothesis
has more in its favor than against a it. Catholics, who believe in God,
have no such anxiety. They are willing to wait, since they have already
an explanation of the origin of things in their belief in God, and in
the teachings of his revelation that he in the beginning created the
heavens and the earth, and all that they contain. The minutiæ, the How
of that creation, they leave it to science to discover. When discovered
and proved, they will accept it. But science can never give them
anything not contained in the first article of the Creed: “I believe
in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” All it can do
is to explicate and confirm this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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