Here is Introibo:
Introibo Ad Altare Dei : Contending For The Faith—Part 3
https://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2022/05/contending-for-faith-part-3.html
Here is a comment of mine, that I tried to post, and he may have decided to still keep me off the blog, so I give him to tomorrow before this is published here. If he validates and answers, the debate will be around here, for now, my comment:
Tanquerey* ... did not ask himself at what physical age Adam was endowed with a human soul.
1) As a baby or from conception (his body being evolved implies there was such an age for his body)? What was it like for an image of God endowed with language capacity to grow up among non-images of God who had no human language to transmit to him?
2) Or, at adult age, after he had already been socialised as a non-human being? What was it like for a newly made image of God, given language, to recall growing up among anatomically similar creatures with himself also at the time not endowed with reason?
The 1909 decision came before carbon dating, and it was obviously still possible to hope the geological evidence was compatible with a fully Biblical chronology from Adam's creation on. This was indeed the position expressed by the judge signing the decision, namely Fr. Fulcran Vigouroux. He believed that since Adam's creation c. 7400 years had passed by 1900 AD.
Only mountains and non-human remains would be much older than the Biblical time scale. With carbon dates of 40 000 BP on some Cro-Magnon remains, normally taken to literally mean 40 000 years ago, if you believe the rest of the universe is much older, since it would be hard to place a "still very low" carbon 14 level after hundreds of millennia of earth already there, this hope is gone. The decision of 1909 no longer has its original object, except to those who refuse to think things through, like JW's do. To my best knowledge, they are the most typical representative today for the position that Fr. Vigouroux had back in 1909.
"This also comports with the Commission's decision of June 23, 1905 (also approved by Pope St. Pius X) that Scripture gives historical accounts except "...where without opposing the sense of the Church and preserving its judgement, it is proved with strong arguments that the sacred writer did not wish to put down true history, and history properly so-called, but to set forth, under the appearance and form of history a parable, an allegory, or some meaning removed from the properly literal or historical significance of the words."
But it is nowhere so proven. Therefore** the 1905 decision definitely promotes literalism in the reading of early chapters of Genesis!
There is a danger of falling into Protestant errors if information is gotten from heretical Protestant sources, such as Ken Ham.
And for some reason, this danger is not attended to when it comes to getting information from sources like Hugh Ross, who is avowedly a Calvinist?
You are sifting mosquitos and swallowing camels!***
Update, he actually did go to full support of Old Earth in the very next blog post's comment section:
Introibo Ad Altare Dei : The Authority Of Papal Allocutions https://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-authority-of-papal-allocutions.html
Where he was asked:
Mary's Vagabond
May 21, 2022 at 1:55 AM
The Dimondbacks said that Pius XII taught the earth was millions of years old (a falsehood) in an allocution. Can you address that?
and in his answer quoted this passage from the allocution:
“ The examination of numerous spiral nebulae, carried out especially by Edwin E. Hubble in the Mount Wilson Observatory, led to the significant result° - albeit tempered by reserves - that these distant galaxy systems tend to distance themselves from each other with such speed that the interval between two such spiral nebulae doubles in about 1300 million years. If we look back at the time of this process of the " Expanding Universe ", it appears that, from one to ten billion years ago, the matter of all the spiral nebulae was compressed in a relatively small space, when the cosmic processes began… The oscillations of gravitation within these systems, such as the friction of the tides, again restrict their stability within the terms of 5 to 10 billion years. If these figures can move to surprise, however, even to the simplest of believers they do not bring a new concept different from that learned from the first words of Genesis " In the beginning", that is to say the beginning of things in time. To those words they give a concrete and almost mathematical expression, while a greater comfort flows from them for those who with the Apostle share the esteem for that Divinely inspired Scripture, which is always useful " ad docendum, ad arguendum, ad corripiendum, ad erudiendum"
and gave his own comment:
I personally subscribe to Old Earth, and believe it both on the science, as well as its gaining acceptance by Pope Pius XII and the approved theologians of the 1950s.
I would go as far to say IT IS BETTER SUPPORTED both by the Church under Pius XII and the discoveries of science, but it was not compelled by the Church. Had Vatican II not happened, I believe the matter would be settled for an Old Earth. That's just my layman's opinion, and Pope Pius was NOT making the matter settled.
As I know from Christine Pedotti, if the upheaval of the original schemas hadn't happened, Vatican II would have decided for Young Earth Creationism and for Adam being created out of non-organic matter, that is for God creating in the manner described in the Bible./HGL
PS, I always forget if it was Silvio Oddi or Alfredo Ottaviani, but I think the latter who wrote the discarded schema for Vatican II with this content. Alfredo Ottaviani was made cardinal by Pius XII, unlike Oddi only named by antipope (clear such) Montini./HGL
* Commenting on Humani Generis.
** See my comment on 1905, here:
Creation vs. Evolution : When Are Implicit Citations Licit?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2017/07/when-are-implicit-citations-licit.html
*** And perhaps even forgetting canon law, how about this one? Here:
Canon 129 (1983 CIC 279)
Upon ordination to the priesthood, clerics shall not interrupt their studies, especially sacred ones; in sacred disciplines, the solid and traditional doctrine that has been commonly received by the Church shall be followed, avoiding profane verbal novelties and what falsely passes for science.
° It means, Pius XII's acceptance of Heliocentric pseudo-science led him to believe, if not Old Earth, at least Old Universe, but I think other parts of the allocution also stated for Old Earth. This being so, I have wondered if Humani Generis was a betrayal of the faith in others, making him in a first step a material only pope and if the allocution was his coming out as an apostate and therefore in 1951 actually losing papacy.
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