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Pope Pius XII was a BIG BANG EVOLUTIONIST WHO MEANT EXACTLY WHAT HE SAID IN HUMANI GENERIS, that the body of Adam could have evolved..
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I remember when I read a speech Pope Pius XII gave where he praised modern science for unlocking the mysteries of the universe and repeatedly declared his belief that the universe was billions of years old, making a mockery of the traditional belief in a six day creation based on the Bible. It was one of the most shocking experiences I had as a traditional Catholic and made me lose the respect I had for Pope Pius XII.
REALLY?! I have never heard this!
How shocking and utterly unfortunate.
To understand papal scientism one has to backtrack into history to find the slow demise 'even of the elect.'
Without a doubt it began with their fall into the Galilean REFORMATION. The first to be hoodwinked was Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758) who, while not conceding to the ban on heretical heliocentric books, began the surrended by limiting it. the next pope who was talked into the reformation by men in his Holy Office was Pope Pius VII (1800-1823) followed by Pope Gregory XVI ((1831-1846) in 1835. In effect the papacy had now to conform to heliocentrism and a heliocentric reading of the geocentric words of Scripture.
Galileo's reformation led popes to defend the new scientism and the new exegesis and hermeneutics. They did this by upgrading the suspected heretic Galileo to a Catholic martyr who tried to save the Church from the false biblical interpretation of the Fathers. They then resurrected Galileo's heliocentrioc Lincean Academy as the Church’s very own ‘scientifically correct’ Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1847 and again in 1936. the record of papal speeches to this academy would make one squirm.
The first assembly of the new Academy was inaugurated on June 1st 1937 by the then Cardinal Secretary of State, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII. On a plaque placed by him to commemorate Pope Pius XI’s role in renewing the Academy, Cardinal Pacelli reminded all that Galileo was a leader of the original Accademia dei Lincei. In 1939 Pope Pius XII, in his first speech to the Pontifical Academy of SCIENTISM, within a few months of his election to the papacy was praising Galileo.
‘To Pius XII (1939-1958), science and religion were heavenly sisters, different manifestations of divine exactness that could not possibly contradict each other over the long term. Regarding their relation, his advisor Professor Robert Leiber wrote: “Pius XII was very careful not to close any doors prematurely. He was energetic on this point and regretted that in the case of Galileo.” Anticipating similar praises from Pope John Paul II in 1992, Pius XII, in his first speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (1939), included Galileo among the “most audacious heroes of research… not afraid of the stumbling blocks and the risks on the way, nor fearful of the funereal monuments.”’ (Wikipedia)
‘In an article in L’Osservatore Romano last November, entitled Thank you, Galileo, Father José Funes, Director of the Specola Vaticana, the Vatican observatory, remarked: “There would have been no Galileo without the Catholic Church, and perhaps there would have been no Specola Vaticana without Galileo.”... All the Popes have always considered Galileo a genius: here outside there is a plaque that was set up by Pope Pius XII, which states that Galileo was a leading spirit of the Academy. ---- 30 days website.’
But it was the encyclicals that placed scientism into the womb of Catholicism. This began in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical
Providentissimus Deus. Ironically, this docuмent was written to address the rationalists and their use of ‘science’ and the new philosophies to dismiss the Bible as a credible authority. These had to include, but not named, the uses and users of natural uniformitarianism and evolutionism, theories that were by then being used by Modernists to change further traditional understandings of Genesis in particular. Included here also, we must not forget, was the sacred chronology of man, the antiquity of man on earth as recorded in the Old and New Testaments, a consecutive and numerical record of years from Adam.
However, in the paragraph they have titled ‘Natural Science’ the Letter was so worded as to allow it to be used to endorse a heliocentric reading of Scripture. The Reform was now complete, and this encyclical was used thereafter to assert the hermeneutics and exegesis of Galileo were at one with the Church’s.
And this is why, in 1920, a mere twenty-seven years after Providentissimus Deus, Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922) had to write another encyclical (Spiritus Paraclitus) on biblical reading to try to redress the imbalance caused by the Galileo fiasco. Two encyclicals then had tried to restore proper exegesis of Scripture but failed miserably. Accordingly, in 1943 Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) had to produce Divino Afflante Spiritu, a third encyclical on scriptural exegeses. In this third attempt to bring harmony to faith and science we again find more of the hermeneutics set out by Galileo in 1613, trying of course to show how a geocentric wording in the Scriptures could in our day be read with a contrary heliocentric meaning. One can see how desperate the three popes were to try to fix the hidden disaster to biblical exegesis they were unaware of, the one they had inherited from the Galilean reformation.
‘On the other hand Galileo was right about heliocentricism. Moreover, some of his theological wanderings eventually found themselves mirrored in several papal encyclicals of the last two centuries. Providentissimus Deus by Leo XIII and Humani Generis by Pope Pius XII, for instance, both have pieces that could have been extracted from Galileo’s Letters to the Grand Duchess Christina… Galileo seems to have won out both on theological as well as scientific grounds…’ ---J.T. Winschel: Galileo, Victim or Villain, The Angelus, Oct. 2003, p.38.
Now recall once again that Pope Urban VIII said that if a heliocentric interpretation of Scripture was adopted, ‘it would put the Catholic faith in danger.’ Here we see not only was it adopted as the true meaning of Scripture, but the hermeneutics used to make this heretical interpretation could now be used as a means to show how it can be applied to other biblical matters’
‘This freeze endured until in 1943 Pius XII’s great encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu reopened the door to the use of modern methods of biblical study and established scholarship in the scientific investigation of the Scriptures. The Pontifical Biblical Commission was quick to follow this initiative with a letter to Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris… taking this as an encouragement to revisit areas which had been blocked off by earlier decisions… stressing that in the context of the times it would have been unwise to teach a particular doctrine, but not that a particular doctrine was untrue or incorrect…. No responsible biblical scholar would today agree with any of these directives of the Biblical Commission.’---Henry Wansbrough OSB (current member of the PBC: The Centenary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Ampleforth Journal, autumn 2003.
‘36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God…..’ Humani gheneris