So, a Priest Said "Anno ... quinquies millesimo centesimo nonagesimo nono" and Read Fulcran Vigouroux in Seminar ...

Best Source Tying Genesis 1 to Not Much Longer than 24 Hour Days · So, a Priest Said "Anno ... quinquies millesimo centesimo nonagesimo nono" and Read Fulcran Vigouroux in Seminar ... · So, If the Authentic Magisterium Says We Should Believe Science, Should We?

The Christmas proclamation, already quoted in previous, says, the world started two centuries before 5000 BC.

Fulcran Vigouroux said, "no, actually geology proves, the creation days need to be taken as longer periods" ...

Which of the two will he follow?

For NN, the correct answer would be "we don't know." Once a priest was through seminary, and once his position was not directly condemned, which neither was, he was free to take up either. In fact, he could already take up either in Seminar, unless his superiors enforced the one above the other.

There is a certain theory that, once a certain position was taught in one of the subjects in seminar, through standard works, one can deduce from that, that was the position of the Church. Even if the Church actually took no position between the contesting positions. To me this theory seems to mean, you are the kind of control freak who is deadly afraid of even unintentionally disagreeing with the Church, and when the Church is not actively telling you what to think, you come up with hairbrained schemes to second guess what the Church would be telling you, if She had so chosen.

The problems for the idea "if the seminars used Fulcran Vigouroux, we must go with Day Age" (or if not "must" at least "it is safest") don't end here. The subject Old Testament may have a text book that says "day age", but the subject Liturgy may have both a text book and a teacher that say "lex orandi, lex credendi" ... the two positions are in conflict on this topic.

You could of course pretend to go to a third subject, Dogmatic Theology, and make Ludwig Ott the go to for pre-conciliar theology. He asssured, "the Bible has nothing to say on chronology" ... the problem is Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma is pretty late.

Grundriss der Katholischen Dogmatik. Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1. Auflage 1952, 3. veränd. Auflage 1957, 10. Auflage 1981 (Ausgabe letzter Hand), ISBN 3-451-13541-8.

All editions, German or translated, are from after the very problematic Humani Generis in 1950. The first German edition is from ten years before the Council started. The first English translation is from ten years before the Council ended. Your version of Fundamentals may be the third and changed ("veränderte") edition. His teaching activity was in the Catholic University of Eichstätt. It was so small that in 1980, it was merged with the Catholic University of Ingolstadt.

The fact that his work retrospectively (mostly no doubt among Conservatives of the post-Conciliar era has become a kind of standard reference for Dogmatic Theology seems to imply that, before 1952, there was no comparable standard work.

So, let's go back to a priest before the Liturgic Reform, who didn't read Ott in Seminar, but who did read Fulcran Vigouroux for Old Testament and who did say "Anno a creatione mundi, quando in principio Deus creavit caelum et terram, quinquies millesimo centesimo nonagesimo nono" every Christmas. Or let's envisage two priests who did that and came to opposite conclusions. I'll call them Father Rob (loosely based on Fr. Robinson) and Fr. Will (loosely based on Bp. Williamson). But as they were not also accessing Haydock, we'll suppose they were in fact French.

Fr. Rob

I have you teach your flock that Geology is bogus ...

Fr. Will

Oh, not really, just the part that says Millions of years.

Fr. Rob

So, you are saying all the Geologic faculties are teaching bogus Geology, the last Geologist you agree with being ... who?

Fr. Will

Well, Nicolas Steno, who founded Geology is good enough for me. He believed that most fossils are from the Flood of Noah.

Fr. Rob

You are aware that he was a Lutheran, those guys who believed Sola Scriptura?

Fr. Will

Are you aware he abjured Lutheranism in 1667, two years before he wrote De solido intra solidum?

Fr. Rob

Oh, he converted?

Fr. Will

Unlike Hutton and Lyell, yes. He even became a Catholic priest, and sacrificed his health, so also life, to help some very few Catholics in the diaspora of Schwerin.

Fr. Rob

OK, you have a point, but there have still been discovered things since his day ...

Fr. Will

Like faunal succession?

Fr. Rob

Yes, quite.

Fr. Will

OK, would you mind telling me where on earth you have found extinct mammal fossils on top, then dinosaurs, below these, and then amphibians below the dinosaurs?

Fr. Rob

Well, the Paris basin has both extinct mammals and dinosaurs, right?

Fr. Will

Hardly in the same place. Anoplotherium is from Montmartre and Thecodontosaurus is from England ...

Fr. Rob

OK, you believe the Flood covered all the mountains, right?

Fr. Will

Indeed.

Fr. Rob

Himalaya too?

Fr. Will

Himalaya rose only after the Flood. I am aware the water level required to cover Mount Everest would have required more water than there is on earth.

Fr. Rob

Oh ... I think I recall that kind of solution, but there is a problem, you see?

Fr. Will

What?

Fr. Rob

The Pyrenees are much older, and they too are too high, like the Alps and the Himalaya.

Fr. Will

How do you know the Pyrenees are older?

Fr. Rob

Well, they are more worn down.

Fr. Will

How do you know they are more worn down?

Fr. Rob

They are less pointed.

Fr. Will

So, they could have risen in a different manner.

Fr. Rob

Oh ... I see.

You recall our text books on the Old Testament?

Fr. Will

Fulcran Vigouroux? Of course. Who can forget him!

Fr. Rob

Indeed.

Fr. Will

A very high regard in principle for Biblical inspiration, he just didn't push it to actually believing the text of Genesis 1 was inspired in the way it was taken by the first audience of Moses ... he also had funny ideas on science. I doubt Benveniste or Saussure would agree that all languages start out isolating, so a synthetic language like Hebrew cannot have been the first one.

Fr. Rob

Oh, you mean, he has his flaws in science?

Fr. Will

He cowed down to a science he didn't understand.

Fr. Rob

But, the Church allows priests to give pastoral to the faithful after reading him in Seminary?

Is there even one Seminary for the French language where he isn't read?

Fr. Will

I doubt it.

However, the Church also allows us to give pastoral to the faithful while being required to state Young Earth Creationism every Christmas.

Fr. Rob

Yeah, that's kind of an old ceremony, and one which, being based on the Bible, should be re-read the way the Bible itself should ...

Fr. Will

I disagree that the Bible "should" be reread, other than as going back and actually reading it.

However, in times of dispute, the old statements, like the old ceremonies of the liturgy, are the Gold Standard.

Fr. Rob

What do you mean?

Any discourse on the matter in Academia these days, anywhere, seems to favour an Old Earth ...

Fr. Will

Yes, but they are modern ...

Fr. Rob

With the Church, we should have confidence even in modern statements, as long as they aren't condemned for modernism.

Fr. Will

Not as much as in old statements.

Fr. Rob

How do you mean? Are you distrusting the Pope and his dicasteria?

Fr. Will

Not if you read them correctly.

1909, Fulcran ipsissimus Vigouroux was judge on the Pontifical Biblical commission, and here is a question and an answer, signed by him:

VIII. Utrum in illa sex dierum denominatione atque distinctione, de quibus in Geneseos capite primo, sumi possit vox Yom (dies), sive sensu proprio pro die naturali, sive sensu improprio pro quodam temporis spatio, deque huiusmodi quaestione libere inter exegetas disceptare liceat?

Resp. Affirmative.

He didn't translate

(speaking to a priest before Vatican II, he didn't have to), but I do:

VIII. Whether in that naming and distinction of six days, of which in Genesis 1, the word Yom (day), can be taken either in the proper sense for a natural day, or in an improper sense for some space of time, and whether this kind of question can be freely debated (or judged) among exegetes?

Answer, affirmative.

Fr. Rob

You see, the Church has told us, Yom can be taken as "some space of time" ...

Fr. Will

Not really. The Church has told us, exegetes are free to discuss this. This would be pointless if an exegete wishing to deny the propriety were blocked due to your kind of hasty inference.

Fr. Rob

Either way, it's a more recent statement than the Christmas proclamation.

Fr. Will

Precisely. St. Vincent of Lérins stated that in times of dispute, you need to go to "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus" and to this the liturgy is a good clue, since "lex orandi, lex credendi"

He didn't translate

but I do:

"what [hath been held] always, what everywhere, what by everyone" "law of worship, law of belief" ...

Fr. Rob

But he said that in the Arian crisis.

Fr. Will

A time precisely in which much recent discourse had been going the wrong direction.

A time in which the Pope had been insufficient in repressing Arianising points of view.

So, in times of dispute, go with the old views of the Church. The Church cannot oblige you to a new view. Here is Trent Session IV:

Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, It decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall,—in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, —wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church,—whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures,—hath held and doth hold;

The Council of the Vatican confirmed precisely this: the sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures that the Church "hath held and doth hold" ... not what some would have you believe "the Church hasn't held all that long, but holds now" ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Queen St. Clotilde
3.VI.2024

Lutetiae Parisiorum sanctae Clotildis Reginae, cujus precibus vir ejus Clodoveus, Rex Francorum, Christi fidem suscepit.