Two Encyclicals for Modernists

It is upon two encyclicals, Providentissimus Deus by Leo XIII, Nov. 1893, and Divino Afflante Spiritu, by Pius XII, Sept. 30, 1943, that the modernists of these latter days seize most readily as offering some support for their cause which is utterly to discredit the words of Divine Revelation, especially applied to references touching the physical sciences.

In Denzinger the relevant numbers are D l947-l948 and D 2294.

Leo XIII lays it down as a rule “not to depart in the least from the literal and, as it were, plain sense, unless where reason forbids him to hold it or necessity compels him to abandon it.” He goes on to say that “the Church has received such a method of interpretation from the Apostles, and has approved of it by her own example, as is clear from the liturgy.”

Now Leo does not specify at all or give any particular examples in the passages held up by the modernists as granting some kind of sanction to heliocentrism. Neither geocentrism nor heliocentrism is mentioned in the encyclical.

My method of examining what grounds the modernists think they have for finding a blessing on modern heliocentric cosmology will be to quote from the encyclical and from St. Thomas, interrupting when necessary but with a minimum of commentary so as to allow the truth to shine forth. Those who love the truth will embrace it readily.

Here then are those pages supposedly granting some kind of blessing on heliocentric or a-centric interpretations of Biblical passages that refer to the sun’s motion. After speaking of the abuses of the so-called higher criticism which is textual or philological, the Pope continues:

"In the next place, those must be fought who, abusing their knowledge of the physical sciences, investigate every minute point in the sacred books in order to object against the authors’ ignorance of such matters, and to decry the writings themselves."

This is what one particular modernist does in his constant harping upon what he views as Solomon’s ignorance of physical science in the Wisdom books of Holy Scripture. The Pope continues:  "As these insinuations deal with matters evident to the senses, they are thereby the more dangerous when they are spread among the crowd, and especially among the young men engaged in the study of letters; for when these have once lost their respect in any one point for divine revelation, they will easily give up all their faith on all points. It is indeed all too evident that even as they study of nature, if only it be suitably expounded, is of the utmost help towards perceiving the glory of the Creator stamped upon things created, so also when instilled into tender minds after a wrong fashion, it is no less able to uproot the principles of a sound philosophy and to corrupt manners."

It is in this way, by bad education, that modernism has propagated itself and continues to infect succeeding generations. How many victims of this “wrong fashion” of learning about nature are there in whom no “principles of a sound philosophy” can be found?

Wherefore to the teacher of Sacred Scripture a knowledge of natural science will be of valuable service, enabling him the more easily to discover and refute objections of this kind likewise when directed against the divine books.

Here is where Catholic scientists and exegetes have been woefully delinquent and where full credit must go to the Protestant creationist scientists, especially in America, who have not ceased, since the early l960’s, to refute with empirical evidences, not only the foolishness of evolution but also, in other quarters, to uphold the Church’s condemnation of Galileo in 1638 and to demonstrate that there is nothing in reason to forbid a geocentric universe nor any necessity either of reason or of Faith that compels us to abandon a geocentric universe. For, No real discord can exist between the theologian and the scientist, provided that each keeps himself within his own limits, and following the warning of St. Augustine, bewares of “affirming anything rashly or the unknown as known. Now this is precisely where the modern scientists and their sycophants in the clergy have disobeyed and disregarded the warnings of the saints and have rashly affirmed as fact what is really unknown, the errors of heliocentrism1 and evolution. They are unknown scientifically because they are false and we know them to be false because they contradict Holy Scripture.

Neither of these hypotheses, to give them the highest dignity possible, has ever attained the status of demonstrative proof, and the more time is given to their proponents, the farther any such possibility of proof recedes. Consequently, these hypotheses take on the status of myth. To use such modern mythologies as instruments for ridiculing the “primitive science” of Holy Scripture is the height of arrogant blasphemy.

The Loophole

Pope Leo continues his encyclical:   “If nevertheless they do disagree, the same doctor [St. Augustine] proposes summarily a rule for the conduct of the theologian: “whatever”, he says, “they are able to demonstrate about nature by true proofs, let us show that it is not contrary to our Scriptures. But whatever they bring forward from any books of theirs contrary to those of our Scriptures – that is to say, to the Catholic faith – let us also show, if we are at all able, or at all events let us believe without any doubt, that it is most false.”

Now here is something to ponder indeed. When heliocentrism and evolution were brought forth in the 17th and 19th centuries respectively, both of which are contrary to the Scriptures, “that is to say, to the Catholic faith”, we did not see Catholic theologians en masse or even in significant numbers, demonstrating the falsity of these hypotheses, nor did we find them believing without any doubt in their falsity, as St. Augustine admonishes. We saw, rather, quite the opposite. We have seen them twist and rend and abandon the words of Holy Scripture so that their own false views might prevail, as prevail they have to this day, bringing about incalculable loss of Faith amongst Catholics. But let us now scrutinize the following words, for it is here that the learned and holy Leo might seem to give some leeway to the modernist enemies of Holy Scripture:

In order to understand the justness of this rule, it should be remembered, in the first place, that the sacred writers, or more truly the Spirit of God Who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men these truths (that is to say, the inward constitution of visible objects), which would not help any to salvation; and that for this reason, rather than apply themselves directly to the investigation of nature, they sometimes describe and treat the objects themselves either in language to some extent figurative, or as the common manner of speech in use at the period required, and indeed still requires nowadays in everyday life in regard to many things, even among the most learned of men. And since in popular speech those things are mentioned first and chiefly which fall under the senses, in like manner the sacred writer (as the Angelic Doctor warns us) “described those things which appear to outward sense”; (ST, I, Q 70, a 1, ad 3) that is, those things which God Himself, in addressing men, signified after the human fashion so as to be understood by them.

The plain sense of Leo’s words is that Sacred Scripture does not employ scientific discourse but a kind of rhetoric. This is discussed in the section dealing with Divino Afflante Spiritu. It is readily admitted that the Scriptures do not propose to teach us the inner constitution of corporeal things. Therefore it does not speak to us in terms of atoms and molecules or even in philosophical terms of matter and form. Holy Scripture is a divine Rhetoric and speaks to us directly in terms we can understand. St. Thomas even defends the Holy Spirit’s avoidance of the term air because it is invisible to the senses. And so, we who revere the Scriptures as the Word of God, inspired and inerrant, have no difficulty with these warnings of the saints.

It is the spirit of St. Thomas, speaking of the condescension of Moses, that the modernists do not comprehend. His spirit of reverence and submission to the authority of God revealing does not at all fit their agenda. Therefore, it will be worth examining the passage in the Summa specifically singled out by Pope Leo in addition to a previous passage to which St. Thomas himself refers us.

Pope Leo refers to ST, I, Q 70, a 1, ad 3. The Question is “Whether the Light Ought to have been produced on the Fourth Day?” St. Thomas’ answer to objections contradicting Holy Scripture is “Suffices the authority of Scripture.” He then continues, explaining the six days of creation according to a grouping of the works of creation, the works of distinction, and the works of adornment. In the first and second objections, he presents St. Augustine’s position that all things were created at once in the beginning so that for him, the lights of the fourth day existed virtually on the first and what was for him the only Day. Then St. Thomas brings in some other views, which are important for any treatment of the six days but need not concern us here and now.

It is in the reply to objection 3 that St. Thomas speaks of Moses’ condescension, and it is worth quoting at length because we have here exactly what Pope Leo will later on praise again in St. Thomas, namely, his caution neither to dogmatize nor to stigmatize doctrines of philosophers that do not offend against Faith. This is how St. Thomas treats of Ptolemy, Aristotle, and St. John Chrysostom in the following paragraphs:

According to Ptolemy the heavenly luminaries are not fixed in the spheres, but have their own movement distinct from the movement of the spheres. Wherefore Chrysostom says that God is said to have set them in the firmament, not because He fixed them there immovably, but because He bade them be there even as He placed man in Paradise to be there. In the opinion of Aristotle, however, the stars are fixed in their orbits, and in reality have no other movement

but that of the spheres. But Moses describes what is obvious to sense, out of condescension to popular ignorance, as we have already said (QQ 67, a 4; 68, a 3). The objection [that the lights should have been produced on the second day] falls to the ground if we regard the firmament made on the second day as having a natural distinction from that in which the stars are placed, even though the distinction is not apparent to the senses, the testimony of which Moses follows, as stated above. For although to the senses there appears but one firmament, if we admit a higher and a lower firmament, the lower will be that which was made on the second day, and on the fourth the stars were fixed in the higher firmament.

Thus does St. Thomas uphold the veracity of Holy Scripture, which is his one aim, as opposed to that of the modernists who wish only to discredit the Word of God.

In Question 68, the third article asks whether the Firmament Divides Waters from Waters?”

The objections contradict the Scripture, and so, St. Thomas answers: On the Contrary, it is written (Gen. 1:6): Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. His explanation is very instructive for us:  “I answer that, The text of Genesis, considered superficially, might lead to the adoption of a theory similar to that held by certain philosophers of antiquity, who taught that water was a body infinite in dimension, and the primary element of all bodies. ... These philosophers also taught that not all corporeal things are confined beneath the heaven perceived by our senses, but that a body of water, infinite in extent, exists above that heaven. On this view, the firmament of heaven might be said to divide the waters without from those within – that is to say, from all bodies under the heaven, since they took water to be the principle of them all.

As, however, this theory can be shown to be false by solid reasons, it cannot he held to be the sense of Holy Scripture. It should rather be considered that Moses was speaking to ignorant people, and that out of condescension to their weakness he put before them only such things as are apparent to sense. Now even the most uneducated can perceive by their senses that earth and water are corporeal, whereas it is not evident to all that air also is corporeal, for there have even been philosophers who said that air is nothing, and called a space filled with air a vacuum.

Not only does St. Thomas find unreasonable theories to be contradictory to Holy Scripture – would that evolutionists could see the unreasonableness of their theory – but we have reason to he struck with admiration at St. Thomas’ grasp of physical science. If your esteem for his physical science has not risen astronomically, it should!

Moses, then, while he expressly mentioned water and earth, makes no express mention of air by name, to avoid setting before ignorant persons something beyond their knowledge. In order, however, to express the truth to those capable of understanding it, he implies in the words:  “Darkness was upon the face of the deep, the existence of air as attendant, so to any, upon the water. For it may be understood from these words that over the face of the water a transparent body was extended, the subject of light and darkness, which, in fact, is the air.”

Whether, then, we understand by the firmament the starry heaven, or the cloudy region of the air, it is true to say that it divides the waters from the waters, according as we take water to denote formless matter, or any kind of transparent body as fittingly designated under the name of waters. For the starry heaven divides the lower transparent bodies from the higher, and the cloudy region divides that higher part of the air, where the rain and similar things are generated, from the lower pert, which is connected with the water and included under that name.

Then in reply to the third objection, he says again:  “On account of the air and other similar bodies being invisible, Moses includes all such bodies under the name of water, and thus it is evident that waters are found on each side of the firmament, whatever be the sense in which the word be used.”

And so indeed have waters been found far out in space! But this is mainly to show the spirit of St.Thomas which is so beautifully one of divine Faith and one which determines him to defend the literal sense of Scripture in a reasonable way. It is this spirit of St. Thomas that is so very far removed from that of the modernists who in their arrogance simply write off the divine Scriptures if the words of Revelation seem not to accord with their current theories formed, in any case, with no reference or respect to divine Revelation or in open rejection of it, as was the case with both heliocentrism and evolution.

But there is more in the encyclical Providentissimus Deus that the modernists claim as giving them permission to depart from the plain sense of Scripture with impunity. Pope Leo is here speaking of the Fathers as interpreters of Scripture rather than of Scripture itself:  “But because Sacred Scripture is to be vigorously defended, it does not follow that all views alike are to be upheld, which individual Fathers or the later interpreters have put forward in interpreting it; for in accordance with the opinions in vogue at the time, in explaining passages where there is question of physical science, they have not always been so correct in their judgment, as not to put down some things which now meet with less approval. In this matter we must carefully pick out in their explanations what they teach as really belonging to the faith or as closely bound up with it, and what they teach with unanimous consent; for ‘in those matters which are not of the necessity of faith, the saints, like ourselves, may hold different opinions’, as

St. Thomas maintains. And in another passage he has these very wise words: ‘It appears to me safer that opinions which philosophers have commonly held, and which are not contrary to our faith, should neither be put forward as dogmas of faith, although they be sometimes introduced under the name of these philosophers, nor yet be denied as contrary to the faith, lest an occasion be offered to the wise of the world to despise the teaching of the faith.’ Indeed, although the interpreter should show that there is nothing contrary to the Scriptures if rightly explained in what the explorers of nature have proved by certain arguments to be now certain, still, it must not escape him that it has sometimes happened that some opinions taught by them as certain have afterwards been called in question and rejected. But if writers about physical science go beyond the limits of their own subject and invade with perverse opinions the province of philosophers, the theological interpreter must send them to the philosophers for refutation.”

In these last sentences, the Pope could well have had in mind either or both heliocentrism and evolution, for both have been held as certain by their proponents but are now being seriously questioned and even refuted by empirical evidences.

The Hierarchy of the Sciences

But let us notice also the chain of authority that the Pope tells us to follow: the physical scientists are not to claim authority in the province of philosophy, which is to say metaphysics, the highest of the natural sciences; and it is the duty of the theologian to send the philosophers of nature first to this higher science if their physical theories conflict either with Scripture or with metaphysical first principles.

Two outstanding examples of physical science in need of metaphysical first principles are heliocentrism and evolution. Both of these theories conflict with reason itself before being against Scripture and thus Catholic Faith. This is a most important point to understand. Truth is one, and so, if a theory is in conflict with the Faith or militates against it in any way, it will also be found, infallibly, to conflict with right reason; and we can say conversely, if some teaching is in conflict with reason, it will also be in conflict with Faith.

This is not to say that the mysteries of Faith, such as that of the Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation, can be reduced to reason. Not at all. The mysteries of Faith transcend our natural reason; but never in any sense can they be said to be against reason, or to be un-reasonable. There is a most profoundly intimate intelligibility even in the highest mysteries of Faith that our natural reason recognizes even as it fails to comprehend. For adoration begins when reason reaches its limits, and there is nothing unreasonable about adoration.

Furthermore, the supernatural gifts of the Holy Ghost that are called Wisdom, Knowledge, and Understanding, allow us to penetrate the mysteries of Faith to a degree that natural reason bereft of these gifts could never do. And because He is Love, the exercise of these gifts of the Holy Spirit in the soul in grace is always suffused by adoration and submission so far as to be transformed in and by the supernatural.

The Pope goes on to recommend the same principles given above to all the other disciplines of study, especially that of history:  “For it is to be deplored that there are many who examine and make known the monuments of antiquity, the manners and institutions of peoples and evidence of a similar kind, with great labour it is true, but too often with the purpose of discovering the stains of error in the sacred books, whereby to weaken in every way and shake their authority. And this some do with a mind utterly hostile, and with a judgment not sufficiently impartial. They have as much confidence in profane literature and in the monuments of ancient history as if it were impossible that even a suspicion of error should attach to them; but upon the mere supposition of an appearance of error, and that not properly discussed, they refuse even an equal amount of belief to the books of Sacred Scripture.”

Such is the character and the agenda of the Modernists. Pope Leo describes them well. There are two more examples from St. Thomas which may be described briefly to show how well he exemplifies in himself, as a perfect role model, the principles that Pope Leo advocates when quoting the Angelic Doctor.

1) Aristotle and Plato had both taught that the heavenly bodies were moved by separate intelligences. Almost all the Fathers, St. Jerome excepted, taught that these separate intelligences moving the heavenly bodies, were the Angels of Holy Scripture. They figure most cosmically in the Apocalypse. And St. Thomas said that he found nothing in Holy Scripture to contradict this teaching of the philosophers, modified as it were by the Fathers. And since it made good philosophical sense, especially in the light of Aristotle’s laws of motion, and since it did not contradict anything in Faith but rather enhanced and supported the truths about the Angels as God’s messengers and as being very important denizens of the universe, he accepted it. But he did not dogmatize it. He did not insist that it was a dogma of Faith. Nor did he condemn St. Jerome for not believing it.

Similar views about which we do not dogmatize are just how the Original Sin of Adam and Eve affected the rest of nature; whether or not the Cainites, building on the knowledge of Tubalcain, developed a highly advanced technology, perhaps even rivaling our own in the twentieth century; certain historical questions as to whether Joseph of Genesis is identical with the first vicar of Egypt mentioned by Egypt’s historians and named Imhotep; and other questions of like nature. There is nothing against Faith in holding these views, and yet, we may not dogmatize about them nor may we condemn as infidels those who fail to recognise their worth.

2) But then there is the teaching of Aristotle that the world is eternal, having no beginning in time nor destined for any end (though there are places in Aristotle’s works where it may be thought with reason that he doubted his own doctrine or that he failed consistently to believe in it). Since it cannot be demonstrated from the nature of things themselves that they were not always in existence in some form and receiving their existence, in an eternal recurrence of coming to be and passing away from the equally eternal Prime Mover – St. Thomas immediately saw that this teaching of the Philosopher, whether it were really his own conviction or not, could not be accepted because it contradicted the first verse of Genesis and was therefore against Faith and to be rejected on that authority alone. (Cf. ST, I, Q 46, a 1 and a 2) It is quite obvious from this that St. Thomas took the first verse of Genesis, and all of Genesis, for that matter, quite literally. His divine Faith, based on Holy Scripture interpreted by the Church, alerted him immediately to the error in the Aristotelian teaching. Would that modern.-day exegetes, so tormenting the Church with their heresies, had but one spark of the Faith that animated the Angelic Doctor. For it must be admitted that the Church, in the Galileo case, reacted in a similar manner to the error of heliocentrism, but intimidated by the phenomenal rise of a godless Scientism, has failed to react appropriately to the even grosser error of evolution.

Pope Pius XII in Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) after insisting that the “greatest care shall be to discern and define what the so-called literal sense of the language of the Bible is” went on to encourage exegetes and scholars to make use of all the methods of textual and historical criticism then so much in vogue. These were attempts on the part of literary scholars to bring as much as possible of the “scientific method” into their discipline. And so, the literary work was treated like any other specimen under the microscope. It was vivisected, dissected, and analyzed until all sense of the total form was lost in a morass of material and historical details. I have taken courses in Shakespeare and Spenser which left me wondering if either of them was a poet! However, there was one Catholic scholar who took another approach that was scientific in a higher sense. His name was James Craig LaDrière, and he had a small following for about 25 years. He looked at the literary work from the point of view of Aristotle’s four causes, and he found that literary works could he classified and analyzed and appreciated for their true worth according to these causes, that is, the efficient, material-formal, and final causes. He insisted, too, on looking only at the work itself. Otherwise, one could easily be led astray from the specifically literary form and value. For example, a poet or novelist might deceive himself as to his own intentions. Milton did this. He announced the purpose of Paradise Lost to be the justifying of the ways of God to men. However, the poem itself does not achieve this end but another, more poetic or aesthetic end. People do not read Paradise Lost primarily to learn theology but to enjoy the beauty of its sonorous lines and cosmic imagery.

All of this is applicable to Holy Scripture. First of all, it must be emphasized that God is the primary Author of the Bible and that the human beings who wrote under His inspiration were only instruments. However, God’s purposes in giving us His divine revelation cannot be thwarted or obviated by the human authors. What it comes down to – and what the “higher critics” of Biblical exegesis invariably miss – is the fact that the Bible is not a human book but a divine one. Courses in college for decades now have borne the title, “The Bible as Literature”. This has helped immeasurably to demolish the Faith of young people in Scripture as the Word of God, inspired and inerrant.

I know of no Biblical scholar or exegete who has approached Holy Scripture with a view to understanding its mode of discourse, which is determined by the end and purpose of the Author.

Given the fact, because it is guaranteed by the Church, that Holy Scripture is the Word of God and that He is the primary Author, we know that there can be no deceit or error in it.

However, when we seek to discover the end or purpose of Scripture, we must look into the book itself. The human author Milton could deceive himself, but God can neither deceive nor be deceived. Holy Scripture has only one purpose that is achieved by its Author in every verse, chapter and book. Saint Paul tells us what it is when he says that “All Scripture, inspired by God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, instructed in every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:l6) All of these purposes are rhetorical in nature. The Bible, therefore, is divine rhetoric. God is the Speaker and His words are directed to us, His hearers.

Rhetoric, as a mode of discourse, differs from two other modes of discourse. It differs from scientific discourse wherein the end and aim of the speaker is to examine the nature of things in themselves for the primary purpose of finding out the truth about them. St. Thomas’ Summa is a perfect model of scientific discourse as he focuses on the data of revelation and explains all things with one view in mind: to set forth the truth. In the physical sciences, Aristotle’s works, such as his Physics and De Coelo, are models of objective, detached scientific discourse in the natural sciences.

The remaining kind of discourse is poetic. The end and aim of the poet is to make something beautiful. Therefore, the end of his work is set and fixed, not in the hearer and not in reality, but rather in the work itself. In Holy Scripture we do not find scientific discourse as such. What comes closest to it is historical narrative. But even here, when God is telling us exactly how events occurred, His primary purpose is to teach us some lesson. The end is rhetorical. This in no way cancels out the literal veracity of the historical narrative. Quite the contrary. It makes it imperative that the narrative be exactly and truthfully expressed, fitting the facts in every detail. Otherwise, the lesson we are to derive from it could be distorted. The lesson itself, if it is to be correctly given and received, must be based on the absolute truth of the literal meaning which is said, therefore, to be infallible. A perfect model of this is the book of Genesis in its entirety. The Church has always viewed the Pentateuch as the historical hooks. The narratives are always expressed in such a way as to draw us to make the proper analogy with later events, as in the types and anti-types, truly miraculous foreshadowings, and with our own personal lives. The Fathers of the Desert and of the Church are models of interpretation of the typological, mystical and moral senses of Scripture.

And they never question the basic, literal sense. Indeed, they know that all else depends upon this basic, literal sense.

When we look at the material-formal causes of Scripture, that is, at the sounds and meanings of the original or faithfully translated languages, we find that the Bible contains many literary forms and especially those peculiar to the Semitic cultures. However, too much is made of the peculiarity of the Oriental literary conventions. Or perhaps I should say that not enough is made of the universality found in all literary forms of the same genre. For example, one can recognize military strategies in the Book of Judges, as well as in the work of Herodotus. The great difference lies in the intimate presence of God in the inspired Word as opposed to the humanistic paganism of the Greek “Father of Historical Writing”. As for the literary form, while the one is divinely inspired and the other is not, the one is natural and the other is supernaturally given, still the universality is there. Grace does not destroy nature but builds upon and transforms it.

We do not look to Herodotus for guidance in any kind of conduct, not even in military matters. Even if Herodotus were a model of military genius, we would fail to learn the most important lesson from him which is the necessity to be in God’s grace and to seek to do His Will.

Furthermore, Holy Scripture always teaches us the infinite superiority of Supernatural wisdom over merely human prudence. That’s the difference between the human and the divine book, even though the underlying literary forms and genres remain recognizable. And not only recognizable but also present in their natural integrity.

And this is precisely, it seems to me, where a modernist like Cardinal Ratzinger goes very far astray in his book In the Beginning where he discusses the literary form of Genesis 1-3. Following some Platonically influenced literary theorists, he is led to make not a distinction, which would be valid, but a separation between the literary form of Genesis 1-3 and its content. The “content” of any literary form may be reduced to its theme or main idea. The content or main idea of Genesis 1-3, according to the Cardinal, is simply the fact that God created all things in the beginning and ex nihilo. This is what we find in all the Creeds of the Church. Lateran IV goes somewhat farther, but the Cardinal does not refer to that Council. What he does is tell us that the content is all that matters because the form, according to him, cannot be true. His mistake, and it is a grievous one, is to have us believe that the form is meaningless when its content is separated from it.

In the first place, it is impossible to separate a theme or main idea from its embodiment in a

literary form, except as the merest abstraction that thereby loses any meaningful relationship with its form. Because such a separation is not possible, we find that the idea itself is determined, incarnated, and given specific meaning by the form.

Consider: the same idea in its most abstract form, that of courage, is embodied in the English epic Beowulf, in the French epic Song of Roland, and in the American Civil War narrative, The Red Badge of Courage. But who will say that the literary form embodying the idea of courage in each of these works is irrelevant, tells us nothing meaningful, and can be disregarded as unimportant? Cardinal Ratzinger treats the narrative of Genesis in this way, thereby denying the veracity of the entire Genesis record, involving as it does not only the Creation account but also the historical basis of Original Sin and our Redemption through the promised Woman and her Son.

Even if one were to do this kind of thing with a human book, it would be the height of folly and presumption. What, then, is the transgression of Cardinal Ratzinger when he so treats Divine Revelation? The most notorious result of the textual analysis of Holy Scripture has been the Documentary

(JEDP) Theory. I refer my readers to the excellent discussion of this theory and its refutation in Creation Rediscovered .by G. J. Keane. Mr. Keane also discusses the more instructive and constructive results of literary analysis that have been achieved by reverent, believing scholars.

One such discovery is that of the colophon, which has been an invaluable aid in identifying the original human authors of the early chapters of Genesis – the Patriarchs – whose works Moses gathered together and edited under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Such, in brief, is one person’s attempt to answer the challenges of those modernists who boldly claim the Church’s magisterial support for their heresies and aberrations, especially those of heliocentrism and evolution.
Notes
1 The work of Redmond O’Hanlon [Ireland] is highly recommended. After years of research, he has gathered scientific evidences and historical examples to challenge, on their own turf, the wayward theologians and scientists of today. His The Earthmovers may be obtained from him at 82 Braemor Rd, Churchtown, Dublin 14, Ireland.

REFERENCES

For an account of St. Thomas’ debate with other scholastic theologians on the question of the Angels as movers of the heavenly bodies, see Etienne Gilson. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Random House, 1955, p. 358 ff.

Critique of Cardinal Ratzinger’s In the Beginning by P Ellwanger. From F Kramer at 1834 Peters Colony #903, Carrollton TX 75007.

“Cardinal Ratzinger’s Idea of Creation” by Paula Haigh. Available from author.

Creation Rediscovered, by G. J. Keane. Available from TAN Books, POB 424, Rockford IL

61105-0424