The Church always looks "bad" to the ill-willed!
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Of course, there is no conflict between science and Catholicism, but your understanding of both science and Catholicism has been somehow warped most probably by a modernist education. You are far from alone in that. Most of us have been it.
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I'd like to hear how you define fundamentalism also, and while you are at it, can you define "modern" science and how it differs from science.
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Meanwhile you do well to read up at the Kolbe Center.
There is a particularly relevant article here:
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http://kolbecenter.org/scoffers-will-arise-in-the-last-days-a-reply-to-fr-paul-robinson-fsspx/
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A very impressive article from the Kolbe Center!
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Fr. Robinson identifies his account of the origins of man and the universe as “progressive creation,” as defined above. However, he contends that his account is the one most in harmony with Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and Magisterial teaching and that the Kolbe Center’s defense of the fiat creation of all things at the beginning of time less than ten thousand years ago actually deviates from the Magisterial teaching of the Church on creation and represents a form of “biblicism,” an over-literal interpretation of the Bible derived from Protestantism rather than from the authentic Tradition of the Catholic Church. He then scoffs at the Kolbe Center for choosing St. Maximilian Kolbe as its secondary patron, after the Immaculate Conception, because, while rejecting molecules-to-man evolution, St. Maximilian acknowledged that the science of his day taught that the universe was hundreds of millions of years old, that the solar system was not specially created, and that the Earth revolves around the sun, as in the Copernican model of the solar system. We will address each of these points in turn....It is tragic that Fr. Robinson gives great weight to statements of Pope Leo XIII that seem to allow for a revision of the traditional Catholic understanding of the sacred history of Genesis but no weight at all to the much more authoritative statements of the Magisterium that support the traditional reading. In this respect, Fr. Robinson has much in common with the mainstream modernist Catholic exegetes who cite Paragraph 36 of Humani generis as their charter to embrace and teach theistic evolution in the face of the plain statements of Pope Pius XII elsewhere in Humani generis that uphold fundamental tenets of the traditional doctrine of creation which clash with the evolutionary hypothesis. These include the requirement that Bishops must teach that all of Genesis 1-11 is true history (HG, 38-39); that Bishops must teach that the Bible is inerrant in all that it teaches, not just in matters of faith and morals; and that the literal sense of Scripture must be believed unless reason dictates or necessity requires. (HG, 24); that the metaphysical principles of traditional Catholic philosophy must be maintained in the examination of the evolutionary hypothesis (HG, 29); and that Speculation is sterile, while investigation of the Deposit of Faith is fruitful (HG, 21). Moreover, in Humani generis Pope Pius XII explicitly stated that the Pontifical Biblical Commission refused to abrogate its prior decrees on Genesis at the request of the Archbishop of Paris, thus confirming that those decrees, cited above, are still binding on Catholics....
When the testimony of the Church Fathers and Doctors is taken seriously, it becomes apparent that the fiat creation of all things at the beginning of time is absolutely integral to the true Catholic doctrine of creation and that the insertion of long ages of time into the creation period involves a denial of the goodness of God and of the goodness of the first created world before the Original Sin and calls into question the inerrancy of the chronological information contained in the sacred history of Genesis....
With their distinction between the supernatural work of creation and the natural order of providence, the Fathers and Doctors expose the principal error of the progressive creationists—their mixing of the order of the supernatural work of creation and the natural order of providence which are always kept separate in the writings of the Fathers and Doctors. Indeed, the progressive creationist makes a second error in tandem with the first when, by the introduction of long ages, he inserts supernatural creative acts of God into the natural order of providence but also into a fallen world, thus denying the unanimous testimony of the Fathers to the fact that God created a perfectly complete and harmonious universe for our first parents in the beginning of creation (...all of the different kinds of creatures, angelic and corporeal, each one perfect according to its nature, existed together with man and for man, in perfect harmony, at the same time, in a world that was completely free not only from human death, but from deformity, disease, man-harming natural disasters or any kind of disorder in nature, all of which “natural evils” only came into the world because of the Original Sin of Adam)..
Both of these errors flow from the uniformitarian error that St. Peter warned us would enter the Church in the last days—the false assumption that things have always been the same from the beginning of the universe and that therefore we can legitimately extrapolate from the material processes that are going on now all the way back to the beginning of time to determine the age of the universe. With this in mind, we will now examine the rise of the uniformitarian scoffers during the so-called Enlightenment to see how the revolution against the true Catholic doctrine of creation began outside of the household of the faith before eventually infiltrating the highest levels of the Church in the form of theistic evolution and progressive creation....
St. Thomas Aquinas summed up the framework within which all of the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Council Fathers of the Church understood the relationship between the natural order and the order of creation when he wrote in the Summa Theologiae of the “first perfection of the universe” which he defined as its “completeness at its first founding.” By this he meant that all of the different kinds of creatures were created for man, and they existed together with him in the beginning of creation, in perfect harmony. Thus, he defined the relationship between the work of creation and the operation of the natural order which began after its completion as follows:
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The completion of the universe as to the completeness of its parts belongs to the sixth day, but its completion as regards their operation, to the seventh (ST I, Q. 73, Reply to Obj. 2).
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In other words, the origin of the different kinds of creatures—stars, plants, animals and men—cannot be explained in terms of the activity of created things—that is, in terms of the same material processes that are going on now. Thus, according to all of the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Council Fathers, in their authoritative teaching, it is impossible to extrapolate from the present order of nature and from the material processes that are going on now to explain how these things came to be in the past.
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This framework was not based on human reasoning or experience. It was based on God’s revelation to Moses in which He clearly stated that the work of creation was a fiat creation and that it was finished on the sixth day with the creation of Adam and Eve. Therefore, ALL the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Council Fathers drew the boundary between theology and natural science AFTER the creation of Adam and Eve. From this starting point, they recognized that the work of creation was the proper realm of the theologian. The natural order—which began AFTER creation was finished—was the proper realm of the natural scientist.
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Those who defend atheistic or theistic evolution do not accept this premise from Divine Revelation. They believe that the same material processes that are going on now have been operating in the same way since the BEGINNING of creation—in contradiction to all of the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Council Fathers in their authoritative teaching. Progressive creationists like Fr. Robinson reject the evolutionist error that one kind of living organism can generate one of a different kind but accept the uniformitarian chronology for the Earth and the universe which is based on assuming that the material processes that are going on now have been operating in more or less the same way since the beginning of creation.
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We have seen that St. Peter the first Pope actually predicted this revolution in men’s ideas when he wrote that scoffers would come in the latter days, asserting that “things have always been the same since the BEGINNING of creation.” St. Peter went on to predict that these scoffers—[Rene] Descartes, [Immanuel] Kant, [James] Hutton, [Charles] Lyell, [Charles] Darwin, [Pierre] Teilhard de Chardin and all other theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists and their modern disciples— would have to deliberately ignore the FACT—not the pious belief—that it was the Word of God that brought the heavens and the Earth and all they contain into existence, NOT a material process like what we observe in the world today. And this is, indeed, the fundamental error of all evolutionists, theistic or atheistic. Progressive creationists avoid the most egregious error of the evolutionists but still accept the false uniformitarian framework of the Enlightenment philosophers and deny the fiat creation of all things from the beginning of creation as well as the radical distinction between period of Creation and the period of Providence and between the pre-Fall and post-Fall world.
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No one exposed the folly of a uniformitarian approach to the origins and antiquity of man and the universe better than St. Augustine. In The City of God, he reflected on the creation of Eve from Adam’s side and observed that:
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This [the creation of Eve] He did as God…some people use the standards of their own daily experience to measure the power and wisdom of God, by which he has the knowledge and the ability to make seeds even without seeds. And so they regard the account of man’s Creation as fable, not fact; and because the first created works are beyond their experience, they adopt a skeptical attitude. (St. Augustine, The City of God, (London, Penguin Books, 1984), p. 504).
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In this passage St. Augustine lays bare the error that St. Peter warned us against in 2 Peter 3 and which remains the fatal flaw in all accounts of origins put forward by theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists. Both of them regard the account of creation at least in part as a “fable,” precisely because the “first created works are beyond their experience,” and they “adopt a skeptical attitude” toward the literal historical truth of Genesis 1-11 in regard to the chronology of the world.
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René Descartes (1596-1650) was the first Catholic thinker of note—i.e., the first Baptized Catholic “scoffer”—to propose that it would be “more reasonable” to explain the origin of stars, galaxies and other kinds of creatures in terms of the same material processes going on now than by fiat creation. In his Discourse on Method (of Rightly Conducting the Reason), Part V, Descartes wrote:
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But it is certain, and it is an opinion commonly received by the theologians, that the action by which He now preserves is just the same as that by which He at first created it. In this way….we may well believe…that by this means alone all things which are purely material might in course of time have become such as we observe them to be at present; and their nature is much easier to understand when we see them coming to pass little by little in this manner, than were we to consider them as all complete to begin with (emphasis added) (Great Books of the Western World, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Editor, Vol. 31, Descartes / Spinoza, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. Chicago, William Benton, Publisher, pp. 55-56.)
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In reality, Descartes wittingly or unwittingly distorted the “common opinion” of theologians which identified the creative action of God in creating the universe with His action in maintaining it. Rightly understood, this common opinion held that God created and sustained the universe by His divine omnipotent power, but it distinguished (on the side of the effect) between the exercise of that power to create the corporeal and spiritual creatures ex nihiloand the maintenance of the universe after it was finished and complete.
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To appreciate the importance of this conflation of the order of creation with the natural order of providence, consider the following statement by humanist philosopher John Dewey about the pivotal importance of this concept in Descartes’ writing and its link to Darwinism:
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When Descartes said: “The nature of physical things is much more easily conceived when they are beheld coming gradually into existence, than when they are only considered as produced at once in a finished and perfect state,” the modern world became self-conscious of the logic that was henceforth to control it, the logic of which Darwin’s Origin of Species is the latest scientific achievement (John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 997), p. 8.)
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In light of the fact that John Dewey (1859-1952)—the man most responsible for destroying the moral integrity of public education in the United States—identified Descartes as the one who laid the FOUNDATIONS of modern evolutionary thought, we might ask ourselves: WHY was René Descartes the first Catholic thinker of note to embrace this idea? Was he really so much smarter than St. Augustine, St. Thomas and all of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church? Is it a coincidence that Descartes dabbled in the occult and then had three “mystical dreams” brought to him by a “spirit of truth” which gave him the key to igniting a revolution in men’s thinking— a revolution that would overturn the traditional teaching that “the past—as revealed in Divine Revelation—is the key to the present” with the new mantra of the evolutionists, “the present is the key to the past”?
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Perhaps we need look no further for an answer than to Descartes’ devout Catholic contemporary Blaise Pascal. Pascal was as great a genius as Descartes but, unlike Descartes, he had true piety and he saw the terrible consequences that would result from Descartes’ arrogant denial of the traditional teaching on fiat creation in favor of a naturalistic account of origins. Hence, Pascal wrote in Pensees:
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I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy he did his best to dispense with God. But he could not avoid making Him set the world in motion with a flip of His thumb; after that he had no more use for God (Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 669) Sect. 4, No. 6.).
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St Thomas followed Aristotle in teaching that a small error in the beginning becomes a huge error later on. But in the case of Descartes, a huge error in the beginning became an unimaginably monstrous error in the end. And this explains why highly intelligent and virtuous people can be completely wrong in their conclusions about origins—because in regard to the origins of man and the universe they have accepted the false premise of Descartes and unwittingly rejected the premise that was held by ALL of the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Council Fathers in their authoritative teaching. Indeed, a man could be the smartest person in the world—and virtuous and well-intentioned to boot—yet if he starts from a false premise, he will always reason (perhaps even sincerely and brilliantly) to a false conclusion—as all evolutionists do.
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In the fourth century, one generation after the Council of Nicea defined the divinity of Christ as “of the same substance as the Father,” a still larger council approved a watered-down version of the Creed which styled Him only “of like substance with the Father.” Of this dark moment in Church history, St. Jerome wrote that “The world groaned and found itself Arian.”
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Less than 150 years ago, Vatican Council I reaffirmed the teaching of Lateran IV verbatim—that God created all the different kinds of corporeal and spiritual creatures by His own omnipotent power at once from the beginning of time—but it went further. In response to the errors of Descartes, Hutton, Lyell, Darwin and other evolutionists, already gaining widespread acceptance among intellectuals in Europe and North America, the Council condemned the following proposition:
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If anyone says that it is possible that to the dogmas declared by the Church a meaning must sometimes be attributed according to the progress of science, different from that which the Church has understood and understands, let him be anathema (Vatican I, Faith and reason – Canon 3).
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In the light of this forgotten and most charitable anathema, the case is clear: No Catholic is permitted to argue that the progress of the natural sciences requires that the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation be changed. Therefore, if the fiat creation of all things at the beginning of time IS the traditional teaching of the Church—as even theistic evolutionists admit—then the progress of the sciences may not be used as grounds for changing that teaching. And yet, if St. Jerome were walking the earth today, he would surely say of our time, “The whole world groaned . . . and found itself Cartesian”!
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[And so on -- the article is several times longer than the excerpts above! ...
... FYI -- "Cartesian" means based on Descartes' work. The Cartesian plane, for example, is the basis of all higher mathematics, and as such is indispensable to physics, engineering, modern methods of transportation, technology and science, among others.]
Topic: Modern Science and the SSPX (Read 14373 times)