And, Why Mark Shea Publically Ignores Me (also Probable Reason)

Mark Shea seems to have received mail (meaning, some people actually are not on the spam block list of his mail ...!):

Catholic and Enjoying it : A reader has a question about the Fall and its effects
November 22, 2017 by Mark Shea
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2017/11/reader-question-fall-effects.html

"What I cannot imagine is how creation itself was changed by the Fall, since every shred of evidence in the physical record indicates that those things we consider natural evils – earthquakes, volcanoes, cyclones, flood, drought, animal predation, etc. – all existed well before humans arrived on the scene."

Mark Shea Answers:

"As far as I know St. Thomas does not buy any of this “lions were not predators before the fall” rubbish."

I noted this back in 2013:

Church Fathers have differed on this one. St Augustine and Venerable Bede both held herbivores were actually getting fed to carnivores by sovereign decision of Adam.

I am sorry that I cannot consult the book in which I was reading it in George Pompidou and have not found the reference on my blog post here:

Creation vs. Evolution : Carnivores in Eden?
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2013/08/carnivores-in-eden.html

Note well, I would not have written it if I had not had a reference ready at the time, or before. Hoping to update this with a quote some day ...

Actually, if you had given your reference instead of a bald statement, I would probably have found my quote at your reference.

Meanwhile, since St Thomas was depending on Sts Augustine and Bede, how about looking at the diversity of Church Fathers on the question in Benno Zuiddam:

Early Church Fathers on creation, death and eschatology
Benno A. Zuiddam, JOURNAL OF CREATION 28(1) 2014 || PAPERS
http://www.bennozuiddam.com/P_BZ-EarlyChurchFathersOnCreationDeathAndEschatology-v1.pdf

There is sufficient support among some Church Fathers for a Catholic not to call it nonsense, that all beasts were created carnivores.*

As far as I recall my St Augustine reference, and recalled it when writing this other essay, the exact reason why St Augustine concluded for lions having been real carnivores even before the fall is, he believed in fixity of species in an exaggerated way (not so those who maintained lions changed at Fall, obviously, so I am not going against all Church fathers in calling that exaggerated).

"To say the fall affected nature does not necessitate pretending the fossil record does not exist."

* S i g h * the weather is rainy today. The air is raining humidity, while internet in a dryer mood is raining s t r a w m e n.

The fossils found do not constitute a record. They constitute a trace. Turning the trace into a record requires interpretation. Denying the interpretation leaving dinos dead before Adam does not mean denying the traces we have of dinos.

"The fall, recall, includes the fall of angels and we simply do not know how they may have damaged creation."

C. S. Lewis' solution, as per The Problem of Pain. There is a problem with this solution, and it is, it is making Satan too much lord over not just humanity as sinning, but over creation even before Sin. Remember through one man sin entered the world and through sin death.

Not "through one angel". Earth and its centre Hell is Satan's exile, it doesn't become a domain to rule until he tricks Adam, through Eve.

"In addition, Paul tells us that creation has been subjected to frustration–evidently by God himself–for our good."

Indeed, and if it is for our good after Adam's sin, it came after Adam sinned. While God knew all the time Adam would sin, God did not punish him millions of years in advance with a frustration which for millions of years was not going to do Adam any good.

"All scripture is concerned with when it says that death entered the world through sin is human death, not oyster death."

Whether oysters count as alive in the Biblical sense is disputed, it seems only vertebrates have in the Hebrew sense Nephesh Chaya - or so I read on CMI, anyway.

Now, if the death of a pet rabbit (which has such) is affecting the pet owner, it might make sense, rabbits started dying when Adam sinned. And before you say that the dinos we find consumed - on your view millions of years before Adam - aren't as cute as rabbits, and their death would not affect man, well, you know as well as I do how fascinated boys are with dinos. Some unfallen young boy would have been bound to adopt a T Rex or a Bronto, and, if T Rex were dying ... sorry, a Mammoth, you believed Tyrannosauri and Brontosauri went extinct millions of years before any man or boy could adopt them for pets ... what's that? Mammoths too extinct before Adam?

You don't mean you say you are claiming there was a pre-Adamite humanity, do you? Isaac La Peyrère was risking a somewhat scorchy bonfire for saying that ...as well for being a Calvinist in the wrong territory. He renounced Preadamism along with Calvinism.

Btw, it seems I have wronged Jews by crediting them with his origin, there is no Jewish community in Amsterdam recognising him as theirs. Or, perhaps not, the Archbishop of Mechelen back then (assuredly more orthodox than the supposed successor named by the supposed "Pope Francis", since De Kesel is a Bultmann fan, therefore clearly worse off than CSL) described him as Calvinist and Jew. His pre-Adamism is also very Jewish, since he makes a gap between Genesis 1 and 2 and lets the creation of day six concern the Creation of Gentiles, always foreigners to Paradise.

But pre-Adamism as such is wrong. See my scenario impossible:

Creation vs. Evolution : Scenario impossible
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2014/01/scenario-impossible.html

"But the odds are pretty good that geocentrists and people who say that God put dinosaur bones in the ground to test our faith in a 6000 thousand year old earth are never ever ever EVER going to get the agreement of Catholic theologians or the sciences."

Well, why put Geocentrics in the same category as ... as far as I can tell ... strawman kooks?

I am not a Geocentric becase I believe a Martian is communicating that to me, I am a Geocentric because the immediate evidence (our daily experience) favours it, the supposed evidence to the contrary allows it at least, and a Young Universe requires some solution being true to the "Distant Starlight Paradox", of which Geocentrism is a very economic one.

As to the solution "God put dinosaur bones into the ground to test our faith", I somehow only run across this as an Evolution supporter's account of what Creationists believe and never in conversation with actual other Creationists. Mostly overline, but with internet freedoms I can't see why Creationists in the countries where they enjoy normal freedoms should be hiding their real views.

"They will remain welcome at the altar but they will never be welcome at Symposia on Evolution in Rome."

OK, lets see. Ordinary Magisterium, Papal solitary magisterium, Ecumenical Councils. Infallible, and rules of the Church.

Symposia on Evolution, including in Rome, not infallible, not canonical rule of the Church. Could even be heretical.

Is Mark Shea by any happinstance function the "I have connections" or "I know my connections" basis rather than as a humble Catholic by the rules of ... the Church?

"The Church does not function by the rule “That which is not forbidden is compulsory”."

Indeed. Meaning, if by any chance Heliocentrism of the modern type in 1820 became not just licit to intellectually defend, but to connect to your faith, this has NOT made Heliocentrism compulsory. Dito for Evolutionism 1950.

"But neither does that fact that the Church permits an opinion mean anything like a claim that the Church thinks that opinion is not freaking nuts."

The Church as a Church thinks heresies and similar motives to damnation "freaking nuts". This means, if Geocentrism and Young Earth, Young Universe Creationism is NOT damnable, the Church as Church has absolutely no motive to think it nuts. Your pet bishop in his private capacity (even supposing Robert Barron were canonically licit bishop rather than Robber Baron of Theology) may think them nuts. But as a bishop, speaking for the Church, he has no business whatsoever to pronounce them nuts, unless he really thinks they lead to damnation.

But perhaps Mark Shea is not thinking in canonical terms, but is functioning by the "I have connections" or "I know my connections" basis?

In a sense, the Church is sociologically visible - and in that sense, if not the Church as a whole, at least its majority can be fallen away.

On Ireland, a Catholic did not own a horse, under the Penal Laws. Visit a Spaniard or a Frenchman who seems to know how to ride. Must the Irishman conclude he is a heretic? On sociological criteria like the ones given by Mark Shea here, I suppose yes.

Fortunately for the Irish Catholics under Penal Laws, their priests were Catholic, and did not allow this kind of purely sociological and unjuridic criterium to take over when it comes to interpreting what it means to be a Catholic.

Mark Shea, I'll try to reach them too, but how about your passing this on to some others I suspect of your attitude, like Armstrong, like Palm, like Keating, and why not the forementioned Robber Baron of Theology?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St John of the Cross
24.XI.2017

* That all animals were created as vegetarians, I mean. Someone seems to have been tricking me into situations where I can occur excommunications, this is really a lower form than my usual./HGL