News flash: “Catholicism is “Bull#!*%” Hmmm…news to me, but apparently not to one of our followers:
The reason? The Church teaches, “Death was contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1008).
Why is this teaching so foul? “Scooby MIKE” argues that it runs contrary to the creation of human beings via evolution, which presupposes death.
Fortunately for “Scooby MIKE,” and all of us Catholics, there’s no stench here for us to worry about. Evolution indeed involves death. But when it comes to the creation of human beings, that is, beings with spiritual souls, evolution is hands-off. As Pope Pius XII stated in Humani Generis, the creation of a spiritual soul and its union with requires a direct and immediate act by God (sec. 36). Thus, the creation of human beings lies outside the material mechanistic processes of evolution.
This doesn’t mean, however, that God couldn’t have directed evolutionary processes (which would have involved death) to develop non-rationalanimals that would eventually become apt for union with a rational soul. Pope Pius XII teaches that when it comes to “inquiries into the origin of the human body,” it could have come from “pre-existent and living matter” (Humani Generis 36). Of course, this origin would have been under the governance of God.
That pre-existent and living matter very well could have been an animal somewhat like us in its biological makeup but lacking a rational soul. Therefore, the first true human being would only have come about upon the union of a rational soul with such matter.
But note that, before this union, such an evolutionary process wouldn’t have been the evolution of a human being. Rather, it would have been the evolution of a non-human being.
So, contrary to our friend’s claim, there’s no stench in the Church’s teaching that death entered human history after Adam’s sin in light of evolution.
***This article was originally published by Catholic Answers Indulgences on May 24, 2023.