YEC, Tradition or Antiquarianism?

If you are not familiar with the distinction (not all readers of the blog here are Catholics), I'll refer to the question of Communion on the Tongue or in the Hand as explained by Brian Holdsworth:

Why Are We Still Talking About Communion in the Hand?
Brian Holdsworth | 14 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5QXp76DfDI

There is no doubt that:

• Julius Africanus calculated parts of the Genesis 5 and 11 chronologies (with 2262 years for Genesis 5, probably a better reading than the standard LXX one, and 942 years for Genesis 11, meaning LXX without the second Cainan),
• St. Irenaeus of Lyons has been read as implying each Creation Day was 1000 years long, but it is at least possible (I'd definitely call it the better reading of what he's saying), he meant instead that world history was going to have had six millennia before Doomsday as corresponding to the six actual days of Creation.

But of course, you could argue, most Catholics are not totally familiar with Julius Africanus (I'm not even sure if he's a saint or not) or with St. Irenaeus.

I'll give you some very much less obscure.

• City of God is a classic, it's only about 100 years ago, when Latin knowledge declined and knowledge of literature in Latin declined as well, that reading it fell out of fashion. Between City of God and Consolation of Philosophy, both are highly Christian classics, but City of God lasted longer, and I'm not even sure that it wasn't part time rated higher even when both were at the peak, however, City of God makes it very clear, a Christian should take the chronology of Genesis 5 and 11 literally, we may not be sure which text is the good one, which literal reading is literally correct, but one of them is;
• we are approaching Christmas, hardly an obscure reference either, and Christmas Matins is included in Midnight Mass, with a reading stating Jesus was born 5199 after Creation, 2957 after the Flood, 2015 after the birth of Abraham, and a few more relative dates.

You cannot treat City of God or Christmas Liturgy as Antiquarianism. You can also not say "well, that's Westerners, misunderstanding tradition, all the Church Fathers were for a purely allegoric acceptation of the Genesis" ... because it's not true, it's a fake news that KGB planted into the Moscow Patriarchate in the 1970's or sth, and which has gained undue traction by the reputation of Russian Orthodox as a "martyr Church" ... just because a patriarch in the Gulag or Magnitogorsk (who back then was by the way probably a Young Earth Creationist!) didn't have access to Migne and Patrologia Graeca doesn't mean the successors are free to reinvent the Church Fathers with untrue statements.

But what about the "definitions" of 1909 and 1950? Isn't it "defined by the magisterium" that "long periods" is a perfectly possible reading for the Creation Days? Isn't it "defined by the magisterium" that it's OK to entertain the idea that Adam got his body from an evolutionary ... pedigree, as long as we maintain that he got his soul, the first of its kind, from God and that he's the unique ancestor of all men alive today, or all real men throughout all ages?

No, those statements are NOT such definitions. They are restricted licences for very few specialists ideally to entertain such ideas in debate, but neither occasion of the magisterium said it couldn't be their duty to admit to losing the debates, if that was the way the arguments went.

The problem is, both occasions have been very widely misused as allowing people to have Old Earth and Evolutionary Origins of Adam as their settled actual belief. Behind this there is a kind of canonical and moral theological reasoning, which basically says, the magisterium cannot even allow the Church to do evil, so, the things allowed in 1909 and 1950 cannot be evil. Now, the magisterium cannot allow all the Church to do evil, but it can make dispensations that turn out to, either have been evil even for the group they were meant for, or to become evil once they are applied to a larger group. Communion in the hand for a very restricted group? Perhaps it was OK those few times. Pope Michael I and so far Michael II do not acknowledge that Paul VI was pope when giving this permission, but many misplaced souls (real Catholics under false Popes) do not recognise them as Popes, or reject Paul VI, they would say he had the authority. On their view, it would have had to be OK on some occasions, which the dispensation was originally meant for. But it has by now come to involve the hideous idolatry of the Black Mass, through stolen hosts.

If the judges on behalf of Pope St. Pius X encouraged a certain debate, and if Pius XII himself personally encouraged another one, very early some Catholics not actually debating took sides in the debate, not singled out as being qualified for them, not being assigned to them, and they took sides for the less traditional view. They can have become idolaters too. This is the time when certain scandals broke out according to recent reports from victim testimony, and the abuses against Henk Heithus began in 1950, the exact year of Humani Generis. Before someone accuses me of "magic thinking" when connecting idolatry and perversion, St. Paul makes this exact connection in Romans 1.

It's not the least disrespectful to the Magisterium of 1909 to state that the traditional view, that being YEC, remained obligatory for the normal believers, whatever dispensation a professional discrete debater may have had, or dito about the direct creation of Adam from no pre-existing ancestry or non-human pedigree, since neither Pope St. Pius X nor Pius XII used words calculated to directly express "believers are free to take such and such an option" ...

It's also not disrespectful to join the debate without having a prior authorisation, just as it was not disrespectful of laymen to point out the evils of hand communion. The dispensation in each case was stretched to cover what it was not intended to cover, and evil ensued, so grave that restricting comment to just specialists by now would be draconic, and it's clear that laymen on the other side are not keeping the restrictions either.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Nicasius of Rheims and
his sister St. Eutropia, martyrs
14.XII.2024

Rhemis, in Gallia, passio sanctorum Nicasii Episcopi, ac sororis Eutropiae Virginis, et Sociorum Martyrum; qui a barbaris Ecclesiae hostibus caesi sunt.