https://fatima.org/news-views/russia-error-evolution/

Russia Will Spread Her Errors: Evolutionism
by Kennedy Hall
Editor’s Note: A slightly abbreviated version of this article was first published in The Fatima Crusader (Issue 125, Winter 2019). The paragraphs which were not included in the printed version, on account of spatial limitations, are shaded here in gray.


When Our Lady appeared to the children at Fatima, She gave the fateful warning that if Her requests were not granted, “Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations will be annihilated.” It is commonly understood that these errors of Russia would be the errors of Communism and atheism, which are of course grave errors. Nevertheless, there are other inherent errors to the old Russian system that were spread throughout the world through the nefarious means of the Soviets. Our intention here is not to analyze the Soviet strategies of implementation, but to identify one of the more commonly overlooked errors that have ravished the Faith and the world.



Communism is often seen as a purely economic system, in which the greatest error is the rejection of the so-called “free market.” Of course, Marxism’s economic errors are disastrous; however, Marxism is a comprehensive world view, of which financial endeavors play only a part. Before someone accepts the erroneous market system of Communism, one must accept a litany of philosophical and spiritual errors. Inherent to Communism is a belief that all things, including people, belong to the State.



If we belong to the State as an ultimate master, then we no longer belong to God. Communist societies are intrinsically materialist and see progress only measureable by material equity. Thus, all members of the society are seen as potential resource accuмulating lemmings, rather than unique persons made in the image and likeness of God. This insistence on production turns the person and the family into a cog in the wheel of Socialism. Because of this, women are thrust out of the home, and children into institutional daycare. The Soviets were voracious in their contraceptive and sterilization practices, and their zeal for abortion was unmatched.



How does a once faithful Orthodox Christian nation become such an evil place? It is not to suggest that Russia was perfect before the Revolution, but it was at least sane. Yet more people were executed in a matter of days in the Soviet Union than in a century under the monarchy. The errors of Marxist materialism have saturated our sociological and anthropological outlooks in North America, thus many suggest that the reasons for such a widespread acceptance of Communism were mainly financial.


While material poverty can be a hardship, it is hardly a commensurate reason for a manifestly demonic revolution. In fact, Christ exhorts us to a true spirit of poverty as a sign of blessedness (Mt 5:3), and tells us the “poor you always have with you” (Mt 26:11). It is clear that poverty, either spiritual or material, is not an intrinsic evil. One can even benefit spiritually and morally from it. Therefore, to suggest that material poverty is the cause of the satanic deluge of Stalinism is a grave error reflective of our materialist – Marxist – society.

Yet, a foundational pillar – and error – of Communism often overlooked is Evolutionism.



Scripture and Tradition against Evolution



I am sure all of us have heard something like: “The Catholic Church has no problem with evolutionary theory because the Church is pro-science.” Like all diabolical deceptions, this is true in part. The word “science” ultimately comes from the Latin word “scire”, which means “to know.” In essence, to say something is scientific is to say that something can be known. This is why many disciplines are called “sciences.” We might think of the social sciences, natural sciences, even literary or library sciences.



The Church is ‘pro-science’ in the sense that she has always been in favor of true knowledge, since God is the source of all truth. When the natural sciences correctly present something as worthy of belief, then it is compatible with the Catholic Faith. Yet if natural science presents something unprovable, it need not be held as true by Catholics, or anyone else. More importantly, if natural science proposes something against the proper sense of Scripture and the Faith, then that so-called ‘scientific’ knowledge is in error and untenable for faithful Catholics.



We live in a legalistic era. The faithful have in many ways become like lawyers, desiring explicit and defined proofs and statements for every bit of theological minutia. It is true that there are no defined teachings against Darwinian evolution per se, but there are many defined and binding teachings for the Traditional Doctrine of Creation. It is not necessary for the Church to say that belief in Darwinian evolution is explicitly against the faith, if she has already made clear that certain theological truths about creation and origins must be held.


For example, until the new Catechism was promulgated in the 1990’s, it seems that there was no official catechetical teaching against pornography. Furthermore, paragraph 2354, in which the Catechism calls use of pornography a “grave offense,” contains no citations to any Council or magisterial teaching. It would be absurd to question this teaching based on a lack of previous dogmatic definitions by council or pope.

It would also be insane to suggest that pornography usage was somehow acceptable before it was explicitly condemned. This is because we know that Jesus said, “But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28). To require a definitive teaching from another magisterial source would be foolish and offensive to Our Lord’s declaration. This example helps illustrate that lack of a definitive teaching against something, does not give us the freedom to be for something contrary.



Our Lord said, “For if you did believe Moses, you would perhaps believe me also; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:46-47) Here Christ is referring to the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Bible. Christ states that belief not only in the words of the Old Testament, but also in the Mosaic authorship of the first books of the Bible is a prerequisite for belief in the words of Christ. Holy Moses is the author of the book of Genesis, in which we find the creation story. We must believe the words written by Moses in order to fully believe the words of Christ. This makes sense since the Second Person of the Trinity – the Word of God – is the ultimate source for the entire Bible.



Granted, there is of course room for mystery in the interpretation of Genesis. Even if we believe in a literal six days of Creation, there will still be a mystery in the majesty of how God creates. If we believe every word as written, like we should, there could still be volumes written to fill in the blanks. There is nothing wrong with this. Why would we expect to understand the ways of God? “For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)


Thankfully, the Church has given us a host of teachings to clarify what we are required to believe about creation. There is no teaching or declaration more clear, and damning to belief in evolutionary theory, than the following passage from the Fourth Lateran Council (1213-1215):

“We firmly believe and confess
 without reservation that there is only
 one true God… the creator of all
 things, visible and invisible, spiritual
 and corporeal, who by his almighty
 power from the beginning of time
 made at once (simul) out of nothing
 (ex nihilo), both orders of creatures,
 the spiritual and the corporeal,
 that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then the human
 creature, who, as it were, shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body.”
 (emphasis added)

This statement is part of the infallible magisterium. It cannot be abrogated. In the future, the Church could add greater specificity to this teaching, but this teaching is binding in perpetuity. It may never be disbelieved and its meaning may never be changed. The creation of all things, out of nothing, in the beginning and at once is a dogma of the faith.



Now, clearly there is room for linguistic interpretation. To say that God created all things at once, can be seen as an immediate creation, which was the position of St. Augustine. Or, it could be interpreted that God created all things in a short amount of time at the beginning, which is the almost universal view of the Church Fathers and Scholastics. For example, we could say; “At the beginning of his work day, the carpenter made a set of shelves.” It is not necessary to assume that the carpenter made the shelves in a single instant, but instead that in a short amount of time, at the start of the day, the carpenter completed his work. This is exactly the sense that fits the creation narrative of six days. It is easy to reconcile a period of a week with in the beginning, or at once, because the sense of interpretation fits perfectly fine.


[size={defaultattr}]Some might protest that this teaching is old, and the Council Fathers of the time were not aware of the coming advancements of “modern science.” I would caution those who make such statements, lest they find themselves rank with the stench of a condemned heresy. Consider the following two heretical statements condemned in Lamentabili Sane (1903) by Pope St. Pius X with the full weight of his Petrine authority:
[/size]
“5. Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences.”



“64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.”



To hold the positions expressed in these modernist errors is heretical. Granted, one who is ignorant of Church teaching and holds these errors is not a formal heretic, but he is in material heresy. However, now you dear Reader, do know.



The Unholy Alliance between Darwin and Communism



Bishop Cuthbert M. O’Gara of Yuanling, China relates the following in a booklet titled The Surrender to Secularism: “The first, the fundamental lesson given [by the communists] was man’s descent from the ape – Darwinism! …. Darwinism negates God, the human soul, the after-life. Into this vacuum Communism enters as the be-all and the end-all of the intellectual slavery it has created.”



Why would the Chinese revolutionaries seek to indoctrinate every common person in Darwinism if Communism was just economic? Simply put, if men believe they come from beasts, they will allow themselves and others to be treated as such.



Joseph Stalin, a man amongst the most evil in history, read Darwin’s Origin of the Species as a young man. He was convinced after reading the book that all religion was nonsense. Vladimir Lenin famously kept a small statue of a chimpanzee contemplating a human skull on his desktop. The theory of evolution claims that man finds his origins in the lower forms of ape-like creatures. If this is true, then we look to animals as ancestors, and not God as our Father.



The logical consequence of this thinking is an immoral “survival of the fittest” mentality like that of the common chimpanzee. Animals operate in ways that facilitate their own needs to be met, and can be conditioned to obey a master. The State is the god of the communist, and all citizens must be led by the Violent Alpha. With its materialistic and atheistic world view, Communism ultimately treats man as an animal, nothing more than cattle to be culled and used for the good of the state which trumpets the supposed progress of man and society.



Communists believe that man, history and society must inevitably progress and they seek to speed up this ‘evolutionary’ process. Their so-called progress is ill-defined and non-specific, yet it ensnares many for it promises a mythical utopia. As Catholics we know that such an “Eden’ is not possible in this fallen world, and we must await Christ’s Second Coming.



Yet to achieve this ethereal metamorphosis of society, communists constantly agitate by all means necessary, including terrible violence It comes as no surprise that all communist inspired political landscapes are rampant with the culture of death. Human populations are treated like beasts of burden and invasive species, which at times need to be pruned or culled to strengthen the herd and save resources. No wonder Our Lady of Fatima cautioned mankind so strongly against these diabolical errors!



Amongst communist societies we also find sɛҳuąƖ perversion and the destruction of marriage decades before these things became popular in North America. In the Soviet Union, all things were seen as public property – including people – which means that marriage was seen as a social construct to facilitate child-birth. In fact, it was a common practice for children to be taken from their homes as infants and raised in government-controlled centers. Furthermore, adultery was encouraged and there were even “public women,” who were essentially state-funded prostitutes.



It may seem like a logical leap to link Darwin’s ideas with the moral perversion of communist societies, but, as we have seen, Evolutionism was at the heart of revolution. All ideas have consequences, and the results of evolutionary thinking are heinous. If you deny the intentional creation of man by a benevolent Creator, and replace it with a random evolution of intelligent animals, then ultimately there is no basis for moral good. All obstacles that stand in the way of “progress” are casualties to the cause of the Almighty State. Darwinian Evolution is a bottom-up approach; the complete reversal of the top-down Biblical narrative. Rather than coming forth from the Mind of God, the origins of man emanate from the unconscious matter of a meaningless cosmos.



Blasphemy against Our Lord and Our Lady



Faith in Darwinian evolution is nothing but a fallible human faith in something that has never been observed nor ever will be. For a Catholic who accepts evolution, it implies God used explosions, chaos, chance, deformity, diseases, suffering and death to create His own image and likeness! How does this not blaspheme our Perfect, Beautiful, Almighty and All-wise Creator? It entails the belief that God chose to evolve the bodies of our first parents, and that Adam was born of a sub-human primate mother and suckled at the breast of a beast. It implies that Eve was conceived immaculately, because she would have been conceived without sin by some ape. Yet this blasphemes Our Lady who is dogmatically and infallibly defined as the only Immaculate Conception. Note, that according to true Catholic teaching, Eve was never conceived but directly created by God Himself.



Our Faith requires us to believe in a First Couple who propagated the whole human race, but these were the first created human children of God, not the randomly occurring children of soulless animals. In some fashion, the evolutionary Adam would need his soul to be infused into him either at conception or during gestation. He would be destined for a life with God, while his own mother, in whom he was gestating, remained soulless and destined for eternal annihilation. It is an offensive blasphemy to say God would use an ape to achieve the miraculous creation of the first human being, and that the “son of an ape” would prefigure the “Son of Man.”


[size={defaultattr}]Without a soul, Adam’s mother would be just an animal, no matter how intelligent; and Adam, the “son of God,” would be raised by a beast. Likewise, Eve would also be born of an animal mother, and thus this Evolutionary Creation Myth is nothing but a perverted parody of the Immaculate Conception. The idea of a bestial mother of the evolutionary Eve is a demonic attack on the most Holy Mother of God who brings us the New Adam. The bestial mother of the Evolutionary Eve would be animalistic and anything but chaste, whereas the Blessed Mother is the Virgo Potens, the Virgo Castissima, and the Dei Genetrix. The First Adam would be the antithesis of a Son of God, visited not by Magi bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh, but by monkeys bringing death, disease, and destruction. There would be no animals in a manger to watch the birth of the First Adam, but instead the animals would be his mother and his father, his brothers and his sisters.
Evolutionism is a great scourge of Russian error against which we are warned by Our Lady. Let us pray that Russia is finally consecrated to Our Lady, which will bring an end to this devilish deception and sacrilegious pseudoscience.[/size]