By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
In the book, Repairing the Breach, the authors John M. Wynne and Stephen A. Wynne track the work of scientists, as well as thinkers of all kinds, behind what has come to be known as “intelligent design” and other intellectual inroads against the accepted default position today in academe and institutions generally in favor of evolution and against creation.
Their deconstruction of evolutionary theories originating with Darwin revisit and refashion the roots of modern thought and life. The consequences of their counter-revolutionary revisionism impact the lives of all of us, and especially our children being formed to accept or reject the faith of their parents.
Is the battle simply between creationists and evolutionists, which can conclude only with one side claiming total victory over the other? Or is the reality more complicated?
Pius XII taught us about the priorities for the Church within the study of human origins in a document, Humani Generis, which made clear what we are to believe about the subject based on Revelation, which cannot be altered. Over other areas the Church remains silent, giving science its proper scope in which to operate within its area of competence.
Scientists, as recounted in Repairing the Breach, independently came to an agreement which unintentionally aligned with the teaching of the Pope. They determined that it was “unscientific” to eliminate God from theories about the origin of man and the universe.
Among other demonstrations to back up their work, they mathematically excluded the theory of the random building of cells. With the tools of science they debunked the fraud of autonomy and certitude in science. Many of our readers have already become familiar with these theories. Their proponents are brought together in a single source in the volume previously mentioned which was recommended to me by a medical doctor.
The doctor to whom I refer tells of the inroads of evolutionary thinking within his own family. A granddaughter once repeated, in his presence while on a visit, the oft-cited trope that we are all descended from apes. Normally a quiet man, in reaction he raised his voice and declared with no uncertainty in response, “No, you can’t say that: it’s wrong.” She was predictably taken aback.
However, it is precisely within the safety and security of family relationships that such discussions should take place. He no doubt, as a scientist himself and at the same time a faithful Catholic, left a deeper impression and planted a more effective seed than other adults might who are spreading errors among the young and impressionable.
The root of evil is evolutionary thinking. Much of the shocking disregard for human life confronting us today in the abortion-tainted vaccines, the trafficking in, and experimentation on, aborted babies finds its beginnings in crediting our random development from apes rather than the loving and creative hand of God.
Without respect for the roots of human life in the will of God there can be no secure basis for the dignity of every human life from conception. At the same time that science can leave room for God in its theories, faith can find a harmonious and symbiotic fruitfulness together with science. There cannot truly be any conflict among any of those things which come from God and all such gifts can together lead us back to Him.
Parents have been forced to increasingly have recourse to home-schooling in order to better protect their children from the host of errors multiplying in the schools, as everywhere else in public life. Faith is increasingly relegated to silent spectator status, a kind of mute and intimidated consumer willing to believe that what is “other” is necessarily better.
Home-schooling, on the other hand, enables an immersion for the child in the wealth of Catholic thought and life, granting the child an independence and self-confidence which better enables a mature and necessary engagement with the world as an adult protagonist.
We have all been exposed recently to the gaslighting media and self-anointed “experts” who superciliously informed us that any theories proposing the escape of COVD-19 from a lab in China must be summarily dismissed as hysterical conspiracies. Emails now reveal that these same societal betters privately worried from the beginning of its spread that just such damning facts might come to light
In addition to this we learn that the very same scientists chosen to lead the fight to save lives may have in fact endangered lives by funding or supporting “gain of function” research, which intensifies the damage and potential fatality of viruses upon their human victims.
This recent history-altering experience brings up once again the need to revisit the relationship between faith and reason, using faith as a guide to make clear from the beginning the proper scope and mission of each.
Common sense, and the questioning borne of it, is never inappropriate. No discussion of faith or reason can ever proceed without it.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of theologians, employed the method of question and answer in his Summa Theologiae. This remains the model for pursuing the life of the mind. One error in the beginning of the process of thought and research, as in the case of evolution which unscientifically excludes God, will result in error at the end. Thorough debunking of all ideas and theories without prejudice against any among the possible hypotheses is the only scientific method worthy of the same.
Many of our young people today have not been given the tools for thought and inquiry. Having the proper means to engage in theological thinking is the missing element in many discussions of faith with young people who more often learn the reasons for doubt before they appropriate faith handed on by the convincing testimony of believers.
Philosophy is a necessary stepping stone for theological discussion and many home-schoolers are adding it back into the curriculum. The Church will benefit greatly from the individuals thus better prepared to evangelize and convert their peers by education, action, and prayer.
Many of us felt instinctively the insult perpetrated by the frauds who pretended that the science of studying the origins of COVID-19 proceeds only along the lines of denying it could have come from the lab where we knew it was being cultivated. So too, in the Church we also can become more convinced and convincing that God need not, and shall not, be eliminated in any dialogue with scientific inquiry into the origins of man.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ now and forever:apriestlife.blogspot.com
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