I’m not an “evolutionist” unless you want to call Newman, Garrigou, and Pius XII evolutionists.
ALL WERE EVOLUTIONISTS.
Ok, let us begin with Newman, about to be canonised by Pope Francis. then Garrigou and then Pius XII.
When Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859, it came as no surprise to Henry Newman. His idea of history, with change and development implicit in it, enabled him to comprehend Darwin’s claims, which shocked so many well-educated men whose minds were dominated by a static view of history. They believed in a literal exposition of the Book of Genesis. Newman’s view of history was dynamic and he found no difficulty in reconciling his views to Darwin’s.’ -- Brian Martin: J. H. Newman, His Life and Work, Challo & Windus, London, 1982, p.76.Reminder of what the heresy of Modernism is:
‘The truths of religion are, according to the general progress of culture, caught up in a constant substantial development (evolutionism).’--- Ludwig Ott: Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, P.17.
As for Fr Garrigou legrange, let the evolutionist John Paul II tell us in his Galileo speech:
‘8. Another crisis similar to the one we are speaking of can be mentioned here. In the last century and at the beginning of our own, advances in the historical sciences made it possible to acquire a new understanding of the Bible and of the biblical world. The rationalist context in which these data were most often presented seemed to make them dangerous to the Christian faith. Certain people, in their concern to defend the faith, thought it necessary to reject firmly-based historical conclusions. That was a hasty and unhappy decision. The work of a pioneer like Fr Lagrange [1877-1964] was able to make the necessary discernment on the basis of dependable criteria. It is necessary to repeat here what I said above. It is a duty for theologians to keep themselves regularly informed of scientific advances in order to examine if such be necessary, whether or not there are reasons for taking them into account in their reflection or for introducing changes in their teaching.’ Would these ‘advances in their historical sciences’ that supposedly brought about a new understanding of the Bible be the Big Bang and 15 billion years of evolution? And what about Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., considered by many in the Church as the greatest theologian of his time, a kind of twentieth century St Thomas Aquinas, writing against Modernism? Well, even his theology on creation in his ‘the order of the universe’ was that of the Pythagoreans Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler, the same order defined as formal heresy and against the faith in 1616. He writes about Newton’s ‘universal attraction between bodies’ and ‘the two fold motion of the Earth’ as created that way by God in His wisdom. He goes on to describe nature while trying to eliminate the ‘chance’ of a Godless evolution and argue for divine design-evolution and millions of years of it. Oh yes, Fr Garrigou-Legrange did a wonderful job applying Thomistic theology of the Creator trying to make heliocentrism, long-ages and evolutionism Catholic as the Pope acknowledges above. Indeed it was the same Fr Lagrange who it is said to have been a dominant influence on the content of the encyclical Humani Generis.
‘No. 30. The theory of evolution undermines divine Catholic Faith, poisons the mind in which it takes residence, obscures the supernatural truths of Faith and warps the natural powers of reason. It is incompatible with divine Catholic Faith and in its theistic form, constitutes a major heresy infecting the Church today.’ --- Paula Haigh: ‘30 Theses against Evolutionism, 1976.’POPE PIUS XIIThe courtship between Catholic faith and modern science reached a lower point on November 22, 1951 when Pope Pius XII once again addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The title of the Pope’s address was ‘The Proofs for the Existence of God in the Light of Modern Natural Science.’ What followed was an inferred endorsement of nearly every evolutionary theory on offer at the time, theories that (1) conflicted with the literal order of creation and the geocentric order of the universe held by the all the Church Fathers; (2) theories that denied the biblical age of 6-7,000 years for the universe; (3) theories that denied the global Flood as recorded in Genesis and its effect on the topography as we find it today, and God knows what else. Here is some of Pope’s speech:‘44. It is undeniable that when a mind enlightened and enriched with modern scientific knowledge weighs this problem calmly, it feels drawn to break through the circle of completely independent or autochthonous matter, whether uncreated or self-created, and to ascend to a creating Spirit. With the same clear and critical look with which it examines and passes judgment on facts, it perceives and recognizes the work of creative omnipotence, whose power, set in motion by the mighty “Fiat” pronounced billions of years ago by the Creating Spirit, spread out over the universe, calling into existence with a gesture of generous love matter bursting with energy. In fact, it would seem that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial “Fiat lux” uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies.’
48. On the other hand, how different and much more faithful a reflection of limitless visions is the language of an outstanding modern scientist, Sir Edmund Whittaker, member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, when he speaks of the above-mentioned inquiries into the age of the world: “These different calculations point to the conclusion that there was a time, some nine or ten billion years ago, prior to which the cosmos, if it existed, existed in a form totally different from anything we know, and this form constitutes the very last limit of science. We refer to it perhaps not improperly as creation. It provides a unifying background, suggested by geological evidence, for that explanation of the world according to which every organism existing on the Earth had a beginning in time. Were this conclusion to be confirmed by future research, it might well be considered as the most outstanding discovery of our times, since it represents a fundamental change in the scientific conception of the universe, similar to the one brought about four centuries ago by Copernicus.”50. It has, besides, followed the course and the direction of cosmic developments, and, just as it was able to get a glimpse of the term toward which these developments were inexorably leading, so also has it pointed to their beginning in time some five billion years ago. Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, it has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the cosmos came forth from the hands of the Creator.’Yes, admits Pope Pius XII, it all began with Copernicus.
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