The Latest On the Shelf…

I came across Michael Novak’s new book the other day and promptly purchased a copy.  I had been surfing the net and found a sample online and loved it.   Yesterday he was interviewed by Laura Ingram and I was so impressed that I went ahead and bought the book.  I’ve only made it through the Preface and Introduction, but so far I am absolutely loving it.  It is very well written and well thought out.  It respectfully and humbly deals with the “dark night” we all face.   It offers a way for believers and skeptics to converse respectfully and it offers a strong return to reason, divine and sanctified reason, which has been all but abandoned in many Christian circles.  If you’re looking for a uplifting and thought-provoking book to really sink your teeth into, get this one:  No One Sees God, by Michael Novak.

Here’s what Peggy Noonan had to say about it:

“This book is one of the most lyrical and moving reflections on God I have encountered. It is also remarkably generous, both to believers and nonbelievers. Most helpfully it is about how to pray, and how to suffer through the dark night in which answers, and communication, seem absent. A remarkable book by a remarkable man.” – Peggy Noonan

First Things Interview with Novak

Take a look yourself.   Chris, Ed., H2R

---

From the Introduction, “No One Sees God’ by Michael Novak

This text/link is from http://catholiceducation.org

Just as I was writing this book, Christians and non-Christians alike wrote to question me about the meaning of Mother Teresa’s forty-five years of inner emptiness, feeling “neither joy, nor love, nor light . . . and on a darkling plain.” The experience of this darkness is common to all, believer and unbeliever. The fact that Mother Teresa experienced it surprised many people, friend and foe. It should not have. But it did.

In a way that has startled many readers today, Mother Teresa revealed her own darkness in confidential letters written to her spiritual directors during the long time that she suffered from it. Since these letters necessarily became part of the inquiry required for the process of canonization, and since this process would become public fairly soon, an editor was charged with putting them together in a book for the general public. The point of picking out an outstanding Christian in a public way as a “saint” is to shed light on one unique way in which the gospel of Jesus Christ was realized in history. We learn a great deal from the lives of others. There is a “community of spirit,” which is also a community of those who have experienced the common darkness.

Many of my correspondents had not recognized Mother Teresa’s inability to sense the presence of God, and the inner agony in which this left her. All they had seen was her amazing smile, as if she felt God’s love in her heart (when in fact her heart felt empty) during long days and nights when she brought tenderness to abandoned persons dying in the streets of Calcutta. If she couldn’t find God, why did she go on believing in Him? Why did she go on bringing tender care to the abandoned, when she herself felt so abandoned?

Some atheists, such as my friend Christopher Hitchens, now gloat that Mother Teresa was just an unbeliever like the rest of “us.” But few atheists — and, alas, not many believers — understand the depths of the interior life of Jewish and Christian faith. They don’t understand that it is a never-ending struggle. In the Talmud, Moses points to the vision God has shown him of the great Rabbi Akiba viciously tortured to death by the Romans. Moses says to God, “Master of the Universe,” “This is Torah and this is the reward?” And God can only say, “Quiet! This too has occurred to me.” Biblical faith demands putting childhood behind, and adolescence, and the busyness of young adulthood. It requires an appetite for bravery — for going into unknown territories alone to wrestle against inner demons, and a willingness to experience darkness, if darkness comes. Faith is not for those who seek only man-made pleasures.

I had one tiny reason for feeling especially close to Mother Teresa from the first time I heard of her. My younger brother Richard was also a missionary to Bengali speakers, as Mother was. But Richard did his work across the ocean from Calcutta, in Dhaka, then part of east Pakistan. Two years after he arrived there, as he was setting out by bicycle on a mission of mercy during the cruel Hindu-Muslim riots of January 1964, Dick was knifed to death by a group of young men who seized his bicycle and his wristwatch. He was twenty-seven years old. They threw his body into a river already thick with corpses.

Dick’s favorite saint was Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), a frail Carmelite nun, the most beloved of all Catholic saints, second only to Saint Francis of Assisi. (I have only once in years of traveling around the world found a Catholic church without some depiction of her.) Saint Thérèse lived for most of her adult life in utter darkness and dryness and abandonment by her divine Lover. She wrote an autobiography about her experience, and how it led her to interpret the inner heart of Christianity. So powerfully and clearly did she write that Pope John Paul II inscribed her name among the historic handful of “Doctors of the Church” — teachers so profound and so sweeping in their wisdom that they instruct the whole Catholic people.

The canonization of Saint Thérèse in 1925 was at that time one of the swiftest on record. Miracles attributed to her care and her attention to the needy — which she promised she would “shower down” from heaven — were too many to count. As early as the war of 1914, Thérèse was the favorite saint of French soldiers in the trenches, held by them coequal with Saint Jeanne d’Arc. And so she remains today, this twenty-four-year-old victim of consumption, who after the age of fifteen never set foot outside her cloistered contemplative convent — with Jeanne d’Arc copatroness of France.

The kernel of Saint Thérèse’s teaching is often called “the little way,” meaning that no Christian is too humble or too insignificant to follow it and no thought or action too negligible to infuse with love. In other words, God cherishes not only great actions of love, but also minor, childlike ones. No matter what spiritual darkness you find yourself in, choose as your North Star a tender love of the persons that life’s contingencies have put next to you. Do not go looking around for more fascinating neighbors to love. Love those right nearest you.

You cannot see God, even if you try. But you can see your neighbor, the tedious one, who grinds on you: Love him, love her. As Jesus loves them. Give them the tender smile of Jesus, even though your own feelings be like the bottom of a bird cage. Do not ask to see Jesus, or to feel Him. That is for children. Love him in the dark. Love for the invisible divine, not for the warm and comforting human consolation. Love for the sake of love, not in order to feel loved in return.

It happens that Agnes Bojaxhiu of Albania eventually became a missionary nun in Ireland, and chose for her religious name Thérèse, in the footsteps of her patron saint of darkness from Lisieux. In Spanish, the same name is Teresa, and Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Doctor of the Church, builder of scores of convents of Carmelite nuns all over Europe — administrator and guide extraordinaire, and a canny operator in bureaucracies, running rings around most of the male hierarchy of her time — was also an experienced traveler in inner darkness. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux took the name Teresa as an honor, and followed her in her way, as inscribed in Teresa’s books and in the traditions of the Carmelites. (Pope John Paul II was a close follower of the Carmelites.)

For those who love God, that way is excruciating. They would like to feel close to God, but they find — nothing! Like Saint John of the Cross, Teresa gradually came to see that if God were a human invention, a human contrivance, then warm human feelings would be quite enough. But God is far greater than that. He is beyond any human frequency. He is outside our range, divine. One must follow Him without any human prop whatever, even warm and comfortable inner feelings. That may be why Jesus loved the desert as a place for prayer.

Continue Reading the Introduction Online>>>

Real Food, Real Drink: John 6

One of the things that led to my conversion was realizing that there were many parts of the Bible that I had neglected. When I read them in light of the Catholic Church’s teaching, they seemed to come alive. John 6 is one of those passages. When people wonder why the Catholic Church is so centered on the Mass, I love to go to John 6 to explain it. 1 Cor 11 also is helpful. This article from John Salza at ScriptureCatholic.com is a great reflection on this passage. Chris

John 6:53-58, 66-67

“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.’ After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Will you also go away?’”

Most Protestants believe that the bread and wine offered by the Catholic priest in the Holy Mass are only symbols of Christ’s body and blood. They do not believe that Christians have to actually eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ to have eternal life. They do not believe that Christ’s flesh is actual food, and His blood actual drink. Why, then, does Jesus repeatedly say in these verses that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood or we have no life in us? Why does Christ say that His flesh is food indeed, and His blood is drink indeed, if His flesh and blood really aren’t food and drink indeed? This teaching of Jesus on the Eucharist is the most profound in all of Scripture, and these verses are very problematic to the Protestant contention that the bread and wine of the Mass are just symbols.

When John 6 is prayerfully read, we see how Jesus gradually teaches the faithful about the life-giving bread from heaven that He will give to the world (through the multiplication of the loaves, the reference to the raining manna given to the Israelites, and finally to the bread that Jesus will give which is His flesh). When the Jews question Jesus about how he could possibly give them His flesh to eat, Jesus becomes more literal in His explanation. As we learned in the link on The Eucharist, Jesus says several times that we must eat (in Greek, “phago”) His flesh to gain eternal life (which literally means “to chew”).

When the Jews further question the strangeness of His teaching, Jesus uses an even more literal verb (in Greek, “trogo”) to describe how we must eat His flesh to have eternal life (which literally means “to gnaw or crunch”). The word “trogo” is only used two other times in the New Testament (Matt. 24:38; John 13:18) and it is always used literally (physically eating). Protestants are unable to provide a single example of where “trogo” is ever used in a symbolic sense. To drive His point home, Jesus says that His flesh is real food indeed, and His blood is real drink indeed (Jesus says nothing about the bread being a symbol of His body and blood).

What is perhaps most compelling about the foregoing passages is what happens at the end of Jesus’ discourse. We know that the Jews understood Jesus as speaking literally. This is demonstrated by their question, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” They could not conceive of why consuming Jesus’ flesh was life-giving and how they could possibly do such a thing. We also know that Jesus responds to their question by being even more literal about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. But we learn at the end of Jesus’ discourse that many of His followers, because of the difficulty of His teaching, decided to no longer follow Him – and Jesus let them go. Then He turned to His apostles and asked them, “Will you also go away?”

Would Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God who became man to save humanity, allow his followers to leave Him if they misunderstood His teaching? Of course not, especially when the teaching regarded how they were to obtain eternal life which was at the heart of Jesus’ mission. Jesus always explained the meaning of His teachings to His disciples. Mark 4:34. Jesus did not say, “Hey, guys, come back here, you got it all wrong.” He didn’t do this because they did not have it all wrong. They understood correctly – we must eat Jesus’ flesh and drink His blood, or we have no life within us. The Protestant who contends that the Catholic offering of bread and wine in the Mass is just a symbol (and does not miraculously become the body and blood of Christ through the actions of the priest acting “in persona Christi”) must address John 6:53-58, 66-67 – why Jesus used the words He did, and why Jesus allowed His followers to leave Him if they understood Him correctly (which is the only time in Scripture where Christ allows His disciples to leave Him based upon a doctrinal teaching).

When we meditate upon this mystery with an open mind and heart, we come to believe and know that the Eucharist is the way the Father gives us His Son in the eternal covenant of love by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Eucharist is an extension of the Incarnation. If we can believe in the Incarnation (that God become a little baby), than believing that God makes Himself substantially present under the appearance of bread and wine is easy. The Church has thus taught for 2,000 years that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian faith – the consummation of the sacrificed Paschal lamb, by which we are restored to God and share in His divine life. Thus, Saint Paul says, “our Paschal lamb has been sacrificed; therefore, let us celebrate the feast.” 1 Corinthians 5:7-8.

By John Salza, from ScriptureCatholic.com

Peeling the Onion: How to Explore the Catholic Church

by Chris Findley

When someone comes to the point of seriously considering the Catholic Church, they are often overwhelmed by all the information they find. There is a complexity to the Catholic Church that is often difficult to traverse. It reminds me of a scene in the movie Shrek where Shrek is trying to help his sidekick donkey understand how complex he is:

Shrek: Ogres are like onions.
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes. No.
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry.
Shrek: No.
Donkey: Oh, you leave em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs.
Shrek: NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
[sighs]
Donkey: Oh, you both have layers. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions.

Forgive the silly metaphor but the point remains that there are many layers to this Church. If you’re new to exploring it you might want a few ideas as to “peel” this onion. (Saints forgive me…)

1. Start with a summary of the Catechism. The Catechism will be your best friend in understanding the beliefs of the Catholic Church. It’s a bit daunting, weighing in at some 846 pages. But it has been praised for its accessibility and clarity. It’s not written for theologians, but for the laity. Yet it is far from shallow. The depth of thought and the logic and Biblical consistency are refreshing. You may want to start with a book that summarizes the main parts of the Catechism. One I found helpful was “Essentials of the Faith” by Fr. Alfred McBride Another you may want to consider is the Compendium of the Catechism. This is the Catechism in question and answer format. At the end of the day, however, you’re going to want to have the “real” thing. Get a copy of the Catechism.

2. Supplement the reading of the Catechism with sound Catholic theology. What you choose here is going to have to depend on your own level of comfort and knowledge of theology. Some really great resources include the classic work by Frank Sheed, “Theology for Beginners” , “By What Authority?” by Mark Shea, and “What Catholics Really Believe” by Karl Keating If you want a deeper exploration of the faith I would recommend Scott Hahn’s “Reasons to Believe”. There are a number of others, but these will go a long way in helping you dig deeper into the faith.

3. Read some conversion stories. Some of the best are Scott Hahn’s conversion (former Presbyterian minister) which can be found online here. From a woman’s perspective I’d recommend Cindy Beck’s conversion story A whole list of stories can be found on Steve Ray’s website. As to books, you can do no better than Thomas Howard’s Evangelical is Not Enough or Lead Kindly Light.

4. Find someone you can talk to. I’d suggest getting in touch with the great people at the Coming Home Network. They were so instrumental in my own conversion. Their annual “Deep in History” conference is an incredible gathering that is worth the effort to attend. They can provide much assistance in your journey. They are people of deep faith and prayer. If you are in a situation that requires you keep this exploration confidential (ie you’re a pastor and if this got out you’d immediately be an unemployed pastor!)– they can do that. Check them out at CHNetwork.org Also, if it is helpful, you can email me here and I’ll be glad to offer any assistance I can.

There are many layers, but I promise you it is worth the effort to peel them back, explore and discover the beauty of the Church for yourself.

Here’s a great quote from G.K. Chesterton that I want to leave you with:

“The moment men cease to pull against [the Catholic Church] they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair. . . . When he has entered the Church, he finds that the Church is much larger inside than it is outside.”

Evangelism and the Church

I’ve been reading and working through several books on Catholic Evangelism, particularly John Paul II and the New Evangelization: How You Can Bring the Good News to Others. This book is a collection of essays about the need to do, what we used to call in evangelical circles, “baseline evangelism”. This is evangelism of the first order, telling the good news of the Gospel to those who have little or no religious background. It seems so much of the Catholic Church’s apologetics are aimed at conversion from Protestant groups instead of reaching out to the unchurched –something non-Catholic churches have made a primary focus of their ministries. Being a convert from Protestantism, I am thankful for the apologetics that helped me “cross the Tiber”, but I have become more and more intrigued with the idea of Catholic Evangelism aimed at being first on the scene with the Gospel and engaging our culture head-on with the message of Salvation.

Sounds pretty Protestant, eh? Well, it’s really just New Testament Christianity. Consider Pope Paul VI’s words in Evangelii Nuntiandi:

“We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church. It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present day society make all the more urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize. . .”

I’d love to explore this further. For now, here’s a piece from CWN about St. Columbanus and how he can serve us today as a model for evangelism. What are your thoughts on Evangelism? Anyone have good resources they can share?

Chris

St. Columbanus as Model of “New Evangelization”

+++++

> Vatican, Jun. 11, 2008 (CWNews.com) – Pope Benedict XVI (bio – news) spoke of St. Columbanus, the 6th-century Irish monk, at his regular weekly public audience on June 11.

After his education and spiritual formation in an Irish monastery, Columbanus and a group of 12 companions became missionaries on the European continent, the Pope recalled. They spread the faith “where the migration of peoples from the north and the east had caused entire Christian regions to lapse back into paganism.”

This first “re-evangelization” of Europe succeeded, the Pope said, because of the powerful witness of sanctity in the missionaries’ own lives. Soon Columbanus and his monks had to found a new monastery to accommodate the young men seeking to enter their community. Then a third monastery was started and the movement began to take root.

St. Columbanus wrote Regula Monachorum, which, Pope Benedict remarked, is “the only ancient Irish monastic rule we possess today.” He also introduced the practice of private confession to continental Europe.

After rebuking King Theodoric for his adultery, St. Columbanus and his Irish companions sent into exile. But when their ship headed for Ireland ran aground, they returned to Europe, setting out to evangelize new territories around Switzerland and northern Italy– a region deeply infected with the Arian heresy. The Irish monk wrote against the heresy and urged Pope Boniface IV to take action to restore orthodox Church leadership. In Bobbio, Italy, the Irish monks founded a new monastery, where St. Columbanus died in 615.

Because of his “ascetic life and his uncompromising attitude toward the corruption of the powerful,” St. Columbanus invites comparisons with St. John the Baptist, the Holy Father said. Yet his uncompromising and sometimes severe attitude gave him the ability “to open himself freely to the love of God and to respond with his entire being.”

Today, Pope Benedict concluded, the example set by St. Columbanus is a special challenge to Christians who, like the 6th-century Irish monk, wish to “nourish the Christian roots” of European culture and bring the message of the Gospel to a society that has become estranged from the faith.

Devotion: Running from God

“But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction in order to get away from the Lord.” Jonah 1:3 (New Living Translation)

For converts and those thinking of conversion, the Jonah-like flight is a common experience.

Sometimes the Bible just comes alive with the humanity of God’s people. We tend to think of the Biblical characters in rather inflated terms, locked into a stained-glass ideal. In many of the personalities of the Bible you can see their flaws. From Abraham lying to save his hide by saying Sarah is not his wife (Genesis 20:1-9) to James and John’s mom trying to get them preferential treatment in the kingdom (Matthew 20:20-23) there is a wonderful humanity to the Biblical characters.

Jonah is certainly one that many of us can identify with. How many of us have gone in the “opposite direction in order to get away from the Lord?” Like Jonah we sense the Lord’s call is too demanding, too radical, too much for us. So we turn away.

And yet in our turning away we discover something else wonderful about God –his persistence. Once he calls, he doesn’t rescind the call. He pursues us, woos us, courts us. He longs for us to come home. We discover what Jonah discovered—that God never gives up on us. So, in the end even our turning away is used for his glory and so that we’ll never doubt his love and commitment to us.

Ash Wednesday

from Catholic Online

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Season of Lent. It is a season of penance, reflection, and fasting which prepares us for Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday, through which we attain redemption.

Why we receive the ashes
Following the example of the Ninevites, who did penance in sackcloth and ashes, our foreheads are marked with ashes to humble our hearts and reminds us that life passes away on Earth. We remember this when we are told

“Remember, Man is dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

Ashes are a symbol of penance made sacramental by the blessing of the Church, and they help us develop a spirit of humility and sacrifice.

The distribution of ashes comes from a ceremony of ages past. Christians who had committed grave faults performed public penance. On Ash Wednesday, the Bishop blessed the hair shirts which they were to wear during the forty days of penance, and sprinkled over them ashes made from the palms from the previous year. Then, while the faithful recited the Seven Penitential Psalms, the penitents were turned out of the church because of their sins — just as Adam, the first man, was turned out of Paradise because of his disobedience. The penitents did not enter the church again until Maundy Thursday after having won reconciliation by the toil of forty days’ penance and sacramental absolution. Later, all Christians, whether public or secret penitents, came to receive ashes out of devotion. In earlier times, the distribution of ashes was followed by a penitential procession.

The Ashes
The ashes are made from the blessed palms used in the Palm Sunday celebration of the previous year. The ashes are christened with Holy Water and are scented by exposure to incense. While the ashes symbolize penance and contrition, they are also a reminder that God is gracious and merciful to those who call on Him with repentant hearts. His Divine mercy is of utmost importance during the season of Lent, and the Church calls on us to seek that mercy during the entire Lenten season with reflection, prayer and penance.

Original Link >>>

Call No Man “Father”?

Why do Catholics call priests “father,” since Jesus says “call no man your father on earth” (Mt. 23:9)?

Response: In Matthew 23:9, Jesus emphasizes the primary role of our Heavenly Father. He created us in His image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-28). He made us His children through baptism in the death and resurrection of His Son (Rom. 5:12-21; 6:3-4; 8:12-17). Because God created us in His image and likeness, we share in the attributes of God. Insofar as men share in the attributes of the Father, they participate in the one fatherhood of God.

In Matthew 23:9 Jesus says, “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.” Many people interpret this to mean, “Do not call a priest “father,” and do not call your dad “father.” Some who hold this opinion go further and believe that calling a priest “father” is a sin because it directly violates a command from Jesus. Many Protestants make this a common objection against Catholicism.

f we believe these opinions, then what are we to make of the Scriptures that contradict this one? For example, in Mark 7:9-13, Jesus criticizes the Pharisees and scribes for not honoring their “fathers.” Furthermore, calling the apostles and their successors “father” was common within the early Christian communities (1 Cor. 4:15, 1 Jn. 2:12, Acts 7:2, 22:1). As in the case of all scriptural interpretations, we must understand this passage in light of the rest of Scripture (cf. 2 Pet. 1:20; 3:16). This interpretative principle is called the “analogy of faith” [Catechism of the Catholic Church (Catechism), no. 114].

The title “father” does not confer upon priests the same status proper to Our Heavenly Father alone, nor does it diminish God’s absolute and universal fatherhood. However, it is incorrect to interpret Matthew 23:9 in an exclusively literal sense. In 1 Corinthians 4:15, St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says, “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.” St. Paul calls himself “father” because he recognizes his cooperation with God in begetting the spiritual life of the community entrusted to his care. There are several other passages, such as 1 Corinthians 4:15; 1 John 2:12; Acts 7:2, and Acts 22:1, which show that the title “father” was applied to others besides God in the New Testament.

Read the entire article for a more complete explanation at Catholics United for the Faith>>>

Adam, Eve, and Evolution

from catholic.com

The controversy surrounding evolution touches on our most central beliefs about ourselves and the world. Evolutionary theories have been used to answer questions about the origins of the universe, life, and man. These may be referred to as cosmological evolution, biological evolution, and human evolution. One’s opinion concerning one of these areas does not dictate what one believes concerning others.

People usually take three basic positions on the origins of the cosmos, life, and man: (1) special or instantaneous creation, (2) developmental creation or theistic evolution, (3) and atheistic evolution. The first holds that a given thing did not develop, but was instantaneously and directly created by God. The second position holds that a given thing did develop from a previous state or form, but that this process was under God’s guidance. The third position claims that a thing developed due to random forces alone.

Related to the question of how the universe, life, and man arose is the question of when they arose. Those who attribute the origin of all three to special creation often hold that they arose at about the same time, perhaps six thousand to ten thousand years ago. Those who attribute all three to atheistic evolution have a much longer time scale. They generally hold the universe to be ten billion to twenty billion years old, life on earth to be about four billion years old, and modern man (the subspecies homo sapiens) to be about thirty thousand years old. Those who believe in varieties of developmental creation hold dates used by either or both of the other two positions.

The Catholic Position

What is the Catholic position concerning belief or unbelief in evolution? The question may never be finally settled, but there are definite parameters to what is acceptable Catholic belief.

Concerning cosmological evolution, the Church has infallibly defined that the universe was specially created out of nothing. Vatican I solemnly defined that everyone must “confess the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing” (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5).

The Church does not have an official position on whether the stars, nebulae, and planets we see today were created at that time or whether they developed over time (for example, in the aftermath of the Big Bang that modern cosmologists discuss). However, the Church would maintain that, if the stars and planets did develop over time, this still ultimately must be attributed to God and his plan, for Scripture records: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host [stars, nebulae, planets] by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6).

Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.

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.

Continue Reading>>>