Ineptitude of Introibo on Anthropology

Creation vs. Evolution: Ineptitude of Introibo on Anthropology · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: What Are False Visions?

What Pope Pius XII actually taught:

[citation of §§ 36—37 of Humani Generis]

The pope did not rule out the creation of the body through evolution and he upheld the necessity of the belief in the immediate creation of the soul by God, as well as the necessary rejection of polygenism.

Introibo Ad Altare Dei: Human Origin
Posted by Introibo Ad Altare Dei at 4:26 AM Monday, January 29, 2024
https://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2024/01/human-origin.html

Introibo seems to not have an inkling that the actual postulate (rejection of polygenism) is at variance with the temporary licence (non-ruling out of creation of Adam's body through Evolution).

There are also other actual postulates of theology, not mentioned here by Pius XII, which are also at variance with an evolutionary origin of Adam's body.

If Adam's body was born of two bodies similar to his own, without the human mind, it stands to reason, they had no human language.

Already a major paradox of having a human body built for a human language, without having the human language, but it would be an even greater one to have a human language without having a human mind created in the likeness of God. If I can say "I had coffee and a jumble for breakfast this morning, coffee only yesterday morning, and may have yoghurt tomorrow morning" the fact that I can speak of foods that I do not have before my eyes and also do not crave to immediately eat, clearly means, I am created in the image of God. I am not limited to hic et nunc.

This being so, if "Adam's progenitors" had human bodies but no human souls, they had no possibility of teaching Adam any human language, and Adam would have been a feral child, before he had sinned, hence this would deny the goodness of God.

But back to rejection of polygenism. The Protestant William Lane Craig will accept Evolutionary "science" and he will reject polygenism. As a result he will put Adam 750 000 years back in time, before Homo sapiens and Neanderthals converged. The rejection of polygenism is fine, the acceptance that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens both descend from Adam is fine, but the 750 000 years are atrocious on two accounts.

• They make Genesis 3 inaccessible by historic transmission from Adam to Moses, who clearly didn't live even 10 000 years ago or even 5000 years ago, just 3500 years ago. This cannot be palliated by making it instead a prophetic certitude, since the supposed prophecy would have been inaccurate in Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies, and also since no tradition claims Moses got more than the six days account by prophecy.
• We are obliged to accept that God not just promised the Saviour to Adam and Eve, but also kept up mankind, up to a narrowing down to the Hebrew nation, in the knowledge of himself and in the hope of the Saviour. However, as modern "science" sees the conditions of the supposed 750 000 years, they lacked writing, the living conditions induced frequent despair about keeping offspring alive, hence vile practises of "family planning" not even barring at setting out of children.

So, some have tried to palliate the former objection by pretending that genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are not meant as even tolerably accurate genealogies anyway. An Anglican heretic named Archibald Sayce had come to this conviction as an Orientalist and was cited by Fr. Rudolph Bandas, who came to accept Vatican II.

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Archibald Sayce was no Church Father, Reverend Bandas was not Pope
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2023/09/archibald-sayce-was-no-church-father.html

So, yes, the genealogies would still be highly inaccurate, at variance with even minimal concepts of Biblical inerrancy, if Adam lived 750 000 years ago. But no one can dispute that a tradition going via oral transmission for 750 000 years (in non-civilised conditions which involve frequent orphaning and relocation of people) is the equivalent of a telephone game. Very far from how Fr. George Leo Haydock conceived how Moses knew Genesis 3:

Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. H.

If in order to palliate this deficiency, you wish to take Adam into the times that archaeologists these days pretend were "7000 years ago", like the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, you have exchanged the preservation of faith problem and the preservation of hope problem for polygenism, which you claim you wanted to avoid. Jimmy Akin and Gavin Ortlund, a Vatican II-adherent and a Protestant, don't claim to an absolute will to avoid it. On Jimmy's view, Pius XII used regulatory language, therefore the regulation could be changed by subsequent magisterium. And Gavin obviously has no will to adher to Pius XII in the first place.

But Introibo cites two pre-Conciliar theologians.

Adolphe Tanquerey's book came in English only in 1959. After Pius XII was dead, under a man Introibo regards as a certain and I as at least a probable antipope. The French original came in 1924, in Paris, at a time when also Pierre Theilhard de Chardin was active there, and after 1920 in which the Jesuit Mangenot had invented the framework theory, as opposed to the more literal views of Genesis 1's creation days, namely literal days, day age, gap theory. He also offered a cogent reason to reject gap theory, while holding to deep time, and day age, as it had previously been understood (by the Sulpician Father Vigouroux, when he proposed it in the Paris region in 1880's and when he was appointed Papal judge in 1909).

Sylvester Joseph Hunter was the son of the Unitarian (i e Arian!) Minister Joseph Hunter. This deserves to be taken into account, since Introibo fallaciously pretends that the Kolbe Center and Robert Sungenis are reading the Bible in a Protestant way:

I have noticed a trend among Traditionalists (especially Gen Z) to take positions that seem traditional and Catholic, but are actually Protestant. ... Many Traditionalist Catholics (and "conservative" Vatican II sect members) read the Bible literally in every verse, like a Fundamentalist Protestant.

So, Fundamentalist Protestants became worse theologians than Teilhard de Chardin or than Arians ... exactly when?

Protestant became a synonym of error when? Oh, Trent? Or Vatican Council of 1869 to 1870? Well, none of these condemned a Fundamentalist reading of Genesis 1 through 11. None. When a Catholic used to say "we must beware of Protestant error" it used to mean:

• specific errors condemned in the documents of the Church, I'm going through the 130 anathemas of Trent;
• errors about the origin of the Catholic Church (like those of Hislop);
• pretending the papacy is the Antichrist;
• moral errors, like denying the difference of venial and mortal;
• or tipsy and drunk, pilfering and stealing.

In other words, there used to be a clear and solid and long standing Catholic truth that the Protestant error was erring against. But everything that Introibo has appealed to (in my skimming through at least) as against the supposed "Protestantism" is vague, recent, ambiguous. It makes allowance for a science that does not exist, and blocks an evolutionary science that does exist, if deep time is accepted.

He appeals to preconciliar approvals of Noort, Gerardus Cornelis van, 1861-1946, from the Netherlands, one of the countries that made a power grab at the beginning og Vatican II, and of Tanqueray, from France, another of them. Both of which are infamous for modernism, way beyond US or Swedish or Polish Novus Ordos, after the Council. For Dalmau and Sagues he gives a more Catholic country, Spain, but from the year when Pius XII died:

Sacrae theologiae summa. Iiuxta constitutionem apostolicam "Deus scientiarum Dominus" II: De Deo uno et trino. De Deo creante et elevante. De peccatis.
Iosepho M. Dalmau und Iosepho F. Sagues. Madrid, 1958
https://www.abebooks.fr/Sacrae-theologiae-summa-Iiuxta-constitutionem-apostolicam/31663395732/bd

If there was a previous edition from 1955, this was anyway subservient in a bad way to Humani Generis. Pius XII did, verbatim, not require to regard this as an open question. The only way Biblicists could weigh in on the question from an anti-Evolutionary perspective, as foreseen by his actual wording in paragraphs 36 and 37, would be to state there are Biblical reasons why an Evolutionary origin of Adam's body is illicit. It was wrong to first shoehorn his very unusual wording "the magisterium does not forbid" and "given the current state of knowledge" into first a "definition" that the question was from all sides (rather than from a simple disciplinary side) open, and then later, under Wojtyla, that it was a kind of "definition" that the Evolutionary origin was licit. However, this was so highly unusual, like as if Pius XII was in bad faith, knowing the duplicity of his position, or unaware that this could create a harmful polemic that the Pope had shown some concern to avoid, that they went before his actual wording and declared as a first principle, what is simply a lie, that the question was open.

Every one of these theologians he cites wants to make room for science. None of them was a scientific anything beyond mediocrity.

• Sylvester Joseph Hunter wanted to adapt Stonyhurst to the scientific requirements in London at the time.
• Adolphe Tanquerey was a moralist, canon lawyer, spirituality writer.
• Gerardus van Noort is credited with being a precursor of getting human sciences away from St. Thomas Aquinas. He was also active in Catholic scientific clubs of Amsterdam in 1929.
• Joseph Dalmau was a Christologist.
• Joseph F. Sagüés wrote on theology of creation, but I could not find books on actual scientific subjects.

Like Pius XII, each of them wanted to make room for science, none of them studied it. The one great theologian who was also a great scientist and pretty certainly believed that Adam's body was the result of Evolution was a famous heterodox, a byname of post-conciliar heterodoxy, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin.

The questions back in 1909 were put on a basis of strawmanning the anti-evolutionist position, as if making the Bible a science manual. Creationists of today will say, "no, the Bible is not a manual of science, but it is, in historic books, and that includes Genesis 1 through 11, accurate history."

The Kolbe Center would have us believe that the approved theologians taught open heresy in their theological manuals, written under the careful watch of the Magisterium, and they were never censured or corrected in any way.

Given the amount of theological output, the diversity of pre-conciliar orthodoxy in different episcopacies, the known outcome in what seems to many the prophecied Great Apostasy, obviously some theological manuals were writing some type of heterodox, and obviously the Magisterium in the 1950's was on some topic asleep. Perhaps the disorders did not come from liturgy, where Pius XII had been watchful, but rather from ths question, where Introibo shows him as lax.

From the comments section, I'll cite how Introibo and one of his readers basically dogmatise the harmony of faith and science, despite Introibo assuring that one is "certainly" allowed to believe Geocentrism and Young Earth Creationism. What he means is, somewhat Russian style, you are allowed to believe it on a devotional basis, but you are not allowed to argue it rationally. But here is what he dogmatises:

Simon

January 29, 2024 at 5:50 AM

Thanks for clearing things up ! It should be an automatic reflex to ask what the Church teaches on a specific question, because she is our Mother and Teacher. By separating themselves from the Church, Protestants make the mistake of thinking they can understand Revelation on their own, and we see that some Catholics make the same mistake. And we can also better respond to those who oppose science to faith, because we see that the two are not opposed.

Introibo Ad Altare Dei

January 29, 2024 at 7:28 PM

Simon,
Absolutely! The One True Church has nothing to fear from science, because both science and theology are sources of knowledge that come to us from the One True God.

God Bless,

---Introibo

So, Evolutionary origin of man, Heliocentrism, Deep Time, all of this is science, and the true Church has nothing to fear fom it, because it comes from the one true God.

But direct creation of Adam, Geocentrism, Biblical chronology, all of this is something one may believe if one choses, but must not dogmatise, hence, must not argue.

Unless one's of equal or superior authority to the theologians he has cited, his orientation reminds me of a line from "Sweet about me" ....

0:40 ♪ Tell ya something that I've found ♪
0:43 ♪ That the world's a better place ♪
0:45 ♪ When it's upside down, boy ♪

The remark may be more apt about the "world" for which Jesus did not pray, than about the world of theology, where Introibo and Simon are applying their upside down ... and their attitude to actual concrete persons who actually do chose direct creation of Adam, Geocentrism, Biblical chronology, is not the kind of sadism depicted by Gabriella Cilmi, but the kind of things that make people describe police as sadistic. Which is a worse thing. Since obviously, the guys who dispute the advisedness or ultimate licitness of Evolutionary origin of Adam (as well as the other questions) are not the Pope. Unless, of course Michael I was and Michael II is precisely that.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Catherine of Siena
30.IV.2024

Sanctae Catharinae Senensis Virginis, ex tertio Ordine sancti Dominici, quae ad caelestem Sponsum transivit pridie hujus diei.

PS, just in case you didn't get it, I do count Pius XII as one of the scientifically inept theologians, often canonists, who wanted to make room for a "science" that they did not understand the implications of. Nor the provedness of. If he kept the faith, if he did not lose papacy, it is because he did not know what he was saying./HGL

"Introibo" makes an ass of himself - unless his priest is abusing him

Creation vs. Evolution : "Introibo" makes an ass of himself - unless his priest is abusing him · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Introibo Blogger Misrepresents Galileo Case Inter Alia

In British English, "ass" means what Americans call "jackass", nothing worse. Donkey is also current in both languages, and I think they would want an apology if conscious of being compared to an evolutionist or two. Which, luckily for them, they aren't.

Let us quote:

Moses*, who wrote the Book of Genesis, used the Hebrew word "yom"--which means a time period of unspecified length as it was used at the time. It was translated as "day."

It means day. Like day it can in some contexts mean sth other than 12 hours that are light or 24 consecutive hours shared outside polar regions between light and dark. If Pius XII - whom "Introibo" you later bring on - thought anything else, he was misled. He can have chosen to be misled.

"Whether in the designation and distinction of six days with which the account of the first chapter of Genesis deals, the word 'DAY' can be assumed either in its proper sense of a natural day, or in the improper sense of a certain space of time; and whether with regard to such a question there can be free disagreement among the exegetes?"

On June 30, 1909, the Commission (with full approval from His Holiness Pope St. Pius X) responded:

"IN THE AFFIRMATIVE"

So far, fine.

Are you quoting the rest?

This also comports with the Commission's decision of June 23, 1905 (also approved by Pope St. Pius X) that Scripture gives historical accounts except "...where without opposing the sense of the Church and preserving its judgement, it is proved with strong arguments that the sacred writer did not wish to put down true history, and history properly so-called, but to set forth, under the appearance and form of history a parable, an allegory, or some meaning removed from the properly literal or historical significance of the words."

Yes, and as there are really and truly no such indications of Moses meaning sth else than giving history, the decision of 1905 clearly means that Genesis 1 to 11 is history, not fable, history, not allegorical fable (I am not saying there is no allegory in history!).

Key word PROVEN.

"In my opinion (and consistent with the decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission approved by Pope St. Pius X), Moses meant to convey that man was God's special creation, so the Earth (our planet) takes place of pride over the other celestial bodies."

No, Sir.

You stated it as your OPINION that Moses meant to convey sth other than a strictly historical account of not only what God did but how God did it.

Your OPINION is not PROVEN fact.

Therefore you are violating the decision of 1905 by deviating from Genesis 1 to 11 as history.

Next question?

Oh, yes, Humani Generis by the maybe Pope Pius XII.

"For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that ..."

Taste these words a little.

Catholics are allowed to remarry if they become widows or widowers, unless the widowers have first been ordained and unless widows or widowers have after loss of conjoint entered a monastery and made eternal vows.

No Pope could ever formulate this as "the pastoral authority of the church does not at present forbid widows and widowers to remarry, pending future modifications from research by psychiologists" or anything like that.

And the words corresponding to "at present" and "pending future" etc. while not in the line I just quoted are paralleled definitely all along the rest of the quote from Humani Generis. In other words, Humani Generis does not mean we can believe Evolution if we feel like it (the wording does not discuss what we are at liberty to believe in our hearts even) like definitions immemorable mean we are free to eat meat (unless it is a day when the Church forbids that).

You are also missing that you may not be an expert of both Biblical exegesis and natural sciences, I am probably more so than you on both accounts.

You proceed to complain of any Catholic disagreeing with you on holding Old Earth to be licit like a widower remarrying is definitely licit in a way totally disagreeing with the conditions posed by Pius XII, your darling:

"However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith."

Note, you are socially treating those differing from your way to a traditional way like heretics disputing the freedoms of Catholics. That is definitely incompatible with the condition here given.

Note also, Pacelli was a lawyer before he maybe became a Pope. He does not specify the decision of the Church has to be a future one. He is hiding, but not daring to deny it could well be that the decision is already given.

Church Fathers. Trent. 1905. 1909.

Here is a theologian from 1955, Sagues:

"It is assumed that the hypothesis is not certainly directly or indirectly opposed to revelation, since otherwise it would be totally rejected; it is assumed it can, since the Church does not forbid it, be freely discussed in the present-day context of theology and natural science (this does not include everyone), but only by experts in both camps"

I am in the anti-Evolution camp and after 15 years of debate, sorry, 16, an amateur expert (note, the Latin expertes does not involve the connotation of University accredited expertise that the translation has!) of both Biblical and Scientifical evidence relevant to the matter. I can therefore on these terms discuss it. Even assuming Pius XII was a true Pope, even assuming he was giving a charitable rather than an iniquitous judgement (being careful not to taint his infallibility by any direct favouring of the theory he seems by then to have favoured, to the detriment of his faith), even assuming I am schismatic for not recognising his authority, even assuming all this, I am not violating in fact his conditions.**

You are. Repeating his words to shut down the debate by those who have more definite reasons against Evolution than you have and even by those who would like to favour Evolution by argument more direct than merely "canonic", that is the very opposite of even his ruling. You are violating it.

Learn to read before you start to write.

Learn justice before you start judging.

The exact age of the earth in terms of how many centuries more or less, is not and probably cannot be infallibly defined.

We have Vulgate which can be read as 6000 years (which is why Haydock commentary on its translation Douay Rheims gives Ussher years for OT events).

We have LXX, the standard text of which can easily be read as the 7500 years of Syncellus or its near equivalent Byzantine martyrology (September 1 in their case, perhaps?).

We have the calculation of St Jerome, based on what seems to be a non-standard LXX version, perhaps a LXX tradition without the Second Cainan. In this sense, we were 7199 in 2000 AD. It is used in the Roman Martyrology for December 25.

There is an excellent reason why the Church is not deciding between these and defining one of these at the cost of the other ones. No one of these can claim exclusive rights to defending Biblical literal inerrantism on Genesis early history.

All of them do.

None of the at least first and last can be seen as violating Trent, or both do.

You define 6000 years, you ditch Roman Martyrology and therefore violate Trentine defense of Traditional Mass Liturgy.

You define 7200 years, you ditch the Vulgate reading and thereofore violate a rigorist at least reading of the "as contained in the Vulgate" clause of canonic books. Also a requirement of Trent.

But not deciding between 6000 and 7200 years is very far from not deciding between 6000 and 4.5 billion years. You are off by orders of magnitude between the latitude Catholicism actually allows.

Perhaps the days before creation of the Sun were not 24 hours long, but only 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds? The first light God created could have been rotating (see book I of De Genesis ad Litteram, read it through in a Loeb edition, not just the quote you love quotemining) at same speed as the aether which is presumably rotating around earth at full circle that time. Creation of Sun slowed the day down a bit.

Or, the Church has not condemned the Augustinian position which Palmar de Troya dared to dogmatise : "in one moment" (taken from a discussion from same work, but books 5 and 6*** - a discussion St Augustine ends by noting a one moment creation is not a compulsory feat of mental gymnastics, it is fine for beginners at least to stick with the actual six days).

In other words, the question has its shades - and evades certain nuances like directly asking on long ages - and the answer is as rough and ready as I was asked to yesterday by a believer in OSAS.°

This does not directly make the answer applicable as an affirmative to a specific version of the "not 24 hours".

The question was not posed as involving long ages as one such alternative to strictly 24 hours. There may have been an attempt to do so, and it may have been sent back unpublished with comments (not from Pope St Pius X, certainly) "on these terms I can give no wiggle room : you want wiggle room, be less specific". Presumably more direct wiggle room could have been given with Rampolla as Pope - and Pacelli was, I seem to recall, close to Rampolla at this or some close time.

In sum, you have done a nice work of quotemining and discussing glibly documents of Church Authority which you seem incapable of totally grasping the implications of, you have shown yourself as an ass (donkey) in the process of being the other kind of ass towards the kind of Traditional Catholics you don't happen to like. Because they take social risks you don't feel prepared to take and you feel implied even in their taking this.

Meanwhile, since the actual terms of Pius XII involved a weighing of evidence, it is noteworthy that the evidence which has come up since then on the Creationist side is being ignored and also purposefully ignored, but it is there.

And it is momentous, since a Creationist timeline of Göbekli Tepe would probably make it Babel, and that means wheat is post-Flood, and that means Cain when sacrificing "fruits of the earth" was not sacrificing wheat.

And non-Catholics - both Protestant and Jews - are contributing to showing it. Are we seeing the children of the kingdom (that is, of the Catholic Church) about to be thrown out and strangers about to be invited?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Pope St Marcellus I°°
16.I.2018

PS The addition in the title refers to the possibility that the laymen called "Introibo" on the web, since anonymously or pseudonymously writing the blog "Introibo ad altare Dei" could be handing on what he had from a priest who, in this fashion, is not attacked himself by those responding to it./HGL

PPS, here are references to fuller text of Bible commission 1909 and 1905: 1905 & 1909 - when I accuse someone of quotemining, I had better not ask everyone else to just take my word for it, let alone himself.

PPPS, spotted a "psychiologists" which should obviously be shorter by an i.

* "Introibo" : Monkey Business About Creation
https://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.fr/2017/02/monkey-business-about-creation.html

** Note : when I started, or a little after that, I was Palmarian. I was therefore believing the Church had already given a definition subsequent to Humani Generis, since that is what Gregorio XVII did (he went for 6000 years, not 7200, see below for details). But more importantly, I already knew that the Church had really defined the question by its being there in all Church Fathers treating on it as per Trent.

*** I think St Augustine may also have discussed his one moment creation briefly in Confessiones, since the six days had prevented his conversion from Gnostic or Manichaean as in "why would God need so much time".

° Catholic magisterium has some in common with Evangelical street preachers (though this one was over internet) and I am not writing magisterially. The commission of St Pius X was.

°° Romae, via Salaria, natalis sancti Marcelli Primi, Papae et Martyris; qui, ob catholicae fidei confessionem, jubente Maxentio tyranno, primo caesus est fustibus, deinde ad servitium animalium cum custodia publica deputatus, et ibidem, serviendo indutus amictu cilicino, defunctus est.