Category Archives: Creation

Truth and Reality

Creation, Defending the Faith, Devils, , , , ,

The devil is a one-trick pony.  Everything he does to mankind is simply an echo of his original temptation to Eve, “you shall be like God.”  Throughout history he has dragged many souls into hell by coming up with creative ways in which he could coax men into usurping the role of God.  I say creative not in the sense that the devil can create anything.  He can only twist and distort what God creates by breathing lies into creation.  Only God truly creates while the devil fabricates, a fact that I want to spend some time focusing on.

God creates by simply speaking something into being.  He creates through His Word (c.f. Col 1:16).  Reality came into being not through some evolutionary process, but through God’s “let there be…”.  Mind you I am not saying that things don’t come into existence naturally, only that the different kinds of things (what we might call the different natures) and reality as a whole were spoken into being during the first six days of Creation.  It should not be a surprise that this foundational truth, the same truth we profess in the Creed that “through Him all things were made” is under attack.  And because it ultimately has its cause in the diabolical, it is so subtle that we might not even realize what is going on.

Lies and Reality

Human words are meant to describe reality, even if they inevitably short-change it.  The words themselves are said to be true only to the extent that the ideas they convey conform to reality.  To say “oranges are orange” conveys the truth about the color of oranges, but it does not fully describe what an orange is.  On the other hand, to say that “oranges are blue” is a falsehood because it does not describe the reality that is an orange in any intelligible way.

Now, admittedly the orange example isn’t real (as far as I know).  But it is illustrative of a larger, one might say, diabolical problem.  There are two possibilities at play here.  A person may be ignorant of the color of oranges or he may want oranges to be other than they are.  The first man is a fool and the second is a liar.  The folly of the fool can be remedied with the truth.  The liar is another story.

All lies are attempts to use words to change reality simply by declaring it so.  It is a poor man’s “let there be…”.  I say poor man, but it is really diabolical having its roots Satan who is the “Father of lies”.  He is always trying to upend Creation and make it appear to be something that it is not.  It is an attempt to “be like God” and make reality whatever you want it to be.  It is, to quote the diabolical Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood vs Casey, the freedom “to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” (Planned Parenthood vs Casey, 1991).

The Father of Lies in Our Times

I said at the open that the devil was always seeking to institutionalize his plan and develops unique strategies for particular ages.  He has been particularly successful in our age because we have failed to recognize the mechanism by which he is shaping the spirit of the world.  For most of us, Political Correctness is a minor annoyance that we do our best to avoid.  But for the devil it is the tool by which he blinds men to reality.

Notice how the term itself, Political Correctness, creates the aura of an alternate reality.  It creates a realm where words are correct, but not true.  It does this by politicizing, that is, making public, that which is personal and private.  It is made political because it must have the “power” to make other people conform to the alternate reality. 

There are many other examples, but the renaming of “Mother” to “Birthing Person” comes to mind because it is relatively new.  We laugh at the absurdity, but we fail to see the danger because we have grown so accustomed to it.  It is simply an attempt, albeit by employing the law of gradualism, to divorce motherhood from femininity and femininity from biological sex.  It is a (not-so) subtle attempt to overthrow reality by lying.  We intuitively grasp this, but instead of fighting back we laugh at the absurdity.  It is no longer funny.

Have you ever won an argument with a liar?  Of course not.  When someone is lying you do not use arguments to refute them.  You simply insist on the truth.  Yet many of us repeatedly resort to arguments to counter Political Correctness.  They are too adept at changing meanings of words to give any room for logic.  Can you deny that a mother is a “birthing person”? Instead we must insist on the truth through precision and clarity.  Simply refuse to adopt any of the Politically Correct language.  We must have the courage not to play the game and simply tell the truth regardless of the consequences.  Words not only convey reality, but they form our ideas about it.  Only the truth can set us free to roam throughout reality.  If we do not stop the abuse of language that abuses reality, then we risk the eternal abuse of many souls.  People end up in hell for bad ideas too, especially because it changes what they become through their actions.   

The Battle Over the Origin of Species

Anthropology, Creation, Creed, Evolution, Science, Scripture, , , , , , ,

Writing in his journal in 1873, Charles Darwin said “I have lately read Morley’s Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity (even when written with the wonderful force and vigor of Voltaire) produce little permanent effect; real good seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.”  Using his slow and silent theory of Evolution as his side attack, Darwin decided that he would reimagine the Book of Genesis.  The original Origin of Species speaks of the supernatural beginnings of all of creation and it was to be replaced by a completely naturalistic explanation for the origin of all that is.  Darwin’s Theory of Evolution started a revolution, first by consigning the first three chapters of Genesis to “myth” and then systematically deconstructing each of the tenets of the Creed.  The Church was certainly caught flat-footed when the attack began and the Faithful made compromises with Darwinists that can be labeled as “theistic evolution.”  But this compromise does not just remake the beginnings but removes the supernatural from nearly every element of the Faith.  It is high time then that we reconstruct a theology of Creation which starts with a proper understanding of the opening chapters of Genesis.

Before diving into the specifics, we must first admit that the use of figurative language has as its goal to make the truth clearer.  Those who attempt to reconcile the two Origin of Species accounts often speak as if Genesis is using figurative language to convey the truth that God created all things, but that it is not intended to explain how He did so.  Nevertheless, the account does in fact reveal how He made things.  Genesis speaks very clearly that the animals are made from the clay(Gn 1:24), Adam from the slime of the Earth (Gn 2:7) and Eve from the rib of Adam (Gn 2:23). 

The Figurative Catch-22

It is often contended that the author of Genesis is merely using figurative language thus opening the door to an evolutionary explanation.  The problem with this interpretation is that there is no need to use figurative language; ordinary language will do.  Darwin did it and didn’t need the Holy Spirit’s help.  If Theistic Evolution is true, then the figurative language makes this less clear, not more, and violates the sole purpose of using figurative language to begin with.  No one would read “Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds” (Gn 1:23), and think this is simply a metaphor for one living species becoming another.  It is quite clear, even if we admit that it is figurative language, that the author is saying that the living animals all came directly from inanimate matter.  Likewise with man who God “breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” If man’s body came from animate being, then “breathing the breath of life” into the man so that he “became a living soul” may be figurative language, but the figure does not actually point to reality.

This also invites the more fundamental question as to why God needs to use figurative language to begin with.  Certainly, there are truths that are beyond human understanding and thus only a metaphor or the like will do.  But when speaking of God’s actions in Creation, the Omnipotent God, can do things in such a way as to make them explainable.  In other words, why would God need a metaphor to describe how He created—couldn’t He just create in a way that enables Him to also describe it in relatively simple terms? Why do we default to thinking that “the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth” isn’t actually how God actually did it?  The only reason why we wouldn’t read that literally is because we a priori remove any supernatural action on God’s part and assume that it is a metaphor for some natural explanation.  Again, why would God then use a metaphor when there is a natural explanation that could be explained using clear language?  The ancient peoples knew of different theories of evolution, so it would have been intelligible to even them.  “Slime” or “dust” (depending on your translation) is not a metaphor for ape, even for the most inarticulate person you could imagine.

That it should be read with a supernatural interpretation is clear from the fact that things are created by God’s Word—“through Him all things were made.”  How can we reconcile God’s “let there be” and evolutionary construction of the universe by natural processes?  The only way is through a Deistic conception of God by which He speaks not directly into creation (i.e. supernatural creation and miracles) but through some Divine blueprint by which the universe reaches its completion without any direct intervention on His part.

The Mind of the Church

It was mentioned above that the Church was caught somewhat flat-footed in its response to Evolution.  That was not the case initially.  A local synod was held in Cologne, Germany in 1860 to specifically address Evolution. They sought to respond to the release of Origin of Species in Germany and nip any attempt to say humans were subject to evolution in the bud.  Although it was a document of a local Church it did receive the unreserved acceptance of Rome because it contained the ordinary Catholic teaching.  Likewise, Vatican I declared that all things were created directly “according to their whole substance” by God.  Pope St. Pius X also commissioned the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC), giving them Magisterial Power to declare the truths about Genesis.  In his 1907 Motu Proprio, Praestantia Scripturae, he declared that “all are bound by duty of conscience to submit to the decisions of the Biblical Pontifical Commission, both those which have thus far been published and those which will hereafter be proclaimed.”

Related to the specific question at hand, the PBC issued the document “Concerning the Historical Character of the First Three Chapters of Genesis” in 1909.  The question that was posed was “[N]otwithstanding the historical character and form of Genesis, the special connection of the first three chapters with one another and with the following chapters, the manifold testimonies of the Scriptures both of the Old and of the New Testaments, the almost unanimous opinion of the holy Fathers and the traditional view which the people of Israel also has handed on and the Church has always held, may it be taught that: the aforesaid three chapters of Genesis contain not accounts of actual events, accounts, that is, which correspond to objective reality and historical truth, but, either fables derived from the mythologies and cosmogonies of ancient peoples and accommodated by the sacred writer to monotheistic doctrine after the expurgation of any polytheistic error; or allegories and symbols without any foundation in objective reality proposed under the form of history to inculcate religious and philosophical truths; or finally legends in part historical and in part fictitious freely composed with a view to instruction and edification?” to which they answered, “In the negative to both parts.”

Genesis, according to the mind of the Church then, contains actual events “which correspond to objective reality and historical truth” and is not “allegories and symbols without any foundation in objective reality proposed under the form of history to inculcate religious and philosophical truths.”  Genesis is true history from “the beginning”.    

If the modern Church that has been steamrolled by the slow and steady onslaught of Darwinian Evolution it is because these teachings have been mostly forgotten.  If we are to reverse the tide, then we must reassert our confidence in the truth and meaning of God’s Word.  We have abandoned it for dubious science and the fallout has been great.  Only by reasserting the Traditional understanding of the Church can we restore a belief in the supernatural action of God.

Confronting the Mass Identity Crisis

Angels, Church and State, Creation, Culture, Devils, , , , , ,

When Our Lord and His Apostles came to the great rock of Caesarea Philippi, He asked a poignant question about His personality: “Who do you say that I am?”.  Only Simon, enlightened by Divine grace, saw Our Lord for Who He really was: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).  Once Peter identified Our Lord, Our Lord in turn gave him his true identity as the Great Rock upon which the Church herself would be identified.  Peter was not alone in this regard.  Our Lord came to bestow our identity upon each one of us.  He identified with us in order that we might come to share in His identity as “sons in the Son.”  Modern man, perhaps more than any other ailment, suffers from a great identity crisis that makes this moment in Our Lord’s Life particularly important. 

The First Identity Crisis

Lucifer had the greatest natural endowment of all creatures.  In this way he was entirely unique and, created in a state of grace, he was the most like God.  This was his true identity. Rather than receive this identity as a gift, he instead chose to create his own.  Lucifer became Satan and lost his true identity forever.  He became, in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger an “Un-person”, corrupted beyond any personal recognition.  Out of envy, Scripture says, Satan then became an Identity Thief attempting to steal everyone else’s identity.  He began by coaxing a third of the angels to follow him in asserting their own identity.

Misery loves company and so Satan set his sights upon mankind.  Ultimately his temptation of Eve amounts to questioning her true identity as a beloved daughter of God.  He tells her that she will become like God.  The problem, of course, is that she already was like God.  God had gifted her with sanctifying grace which already made her “like God”.  Satan tempts her to see her identity as something she must grasp, rather than receive and so simultaneously attacks her femininity.  Likewise, with Adam, both his identity as being like God and being a man.  It was the man who was commanded to protect and till the Garden. 

Our identity crisis has its roots in the Fall then.  Original Sin removed sanctifying grace, which forms our true identity, our God-likeness if you will.  But it also wounded us in our sexual identity, the manner in which we individually image God.  Not only does the distinctly feminine power of childbirth become labor for the woman, but, because man will be tempted to lord over her, she will be tempted to seize masculinity.  Likewise, for man, the uniquely masculine way of working also becomes labor and he will be tempted to seize the feminine.  Not only was God-likeness lost, both forgot what it meant to image God in their masculinity and femininity.

The crisis would grow until the New Adam and his suitable helpmate, the New Eve came. Satan could not steal either of their identities.  He tried to steal Our Lord’s when He went into the desert.  The enmity between him and Our Lady made her immune to Satan’s wiles.  Our Lord and Our Lady then, each in their proper way, cooperated in restoring us not just as children of God, but sons and daughters. 

Our Identity Crisis

Satan may have lost the war, but he is still engaging in the Battle across the centuries, trying to keep us from our true identity.  He has had varying degrees of success but has been particularly successful in our own age.   His battle plan remains the same as always by destroying the image and suppressing our desire for the true likeness of God that lies at the root of our real identity.

Rather than accepting God-likeness as a free gift that comes only through Baptism, we chase immortality through technology.  The Covid crisis has been particularly eye-opening in this regard in that we are all expecting a technocratic Messiah to save us.  Technology can make us like gods.

The Church has not been immune to this attack either, putting bodily health before spiritual health.  One soul, dying in a state of grace, is far greater than 1000 people “safely” locked in their houses without any access to the gift of true God-likeness in the Sacraments.  Christ instituted the Church, so that, throughout all-time, His unique power to bestow our true identity might be made available to all.  When the Church forgets her true identity, then a mass identity crisis is sure to follow.    

While technology is the weapon of choice to suppress our desire for true God-likeness, intersectionality, rooted in identity politics, is the weapon of choice to suppress our identity as being made in the image of God.  Intersectionality attempts to root our identity in victimhood.  Christ became a victim so that we could overcome this temptation and clear the way for our real identity.  Sex, masquerading as gender, rather than being a way in which we individually image God, is simply a social construct made malleable (through technology) according to personal whims.  This Great Lie destroys our identity rather than restoring it.  It sits at the heart of today’s mass identity crisis and is nothing more than a ploy of the Evil One. 

Genesis tells us that the Serpent, in attacking Adam and Eve’s identity was the most subtle of all the wild animals (Gn 3:1).  What makes our age unique is that he has thrown subtlety out the window and has chosen to unmask himself.  That is why we must be prepared to fight the identity crisis by refusing to be a party to any of the lies that have enabled the crisis to become so deep.  Too often we simply go along to get along.  The Devil has been hard at work stealing people’s identities, we need to be equally hard at work helping them find their true one.

Darwin and Intellectual Racism

Anthropology, Atheism, Creation, Evolution, Faith and Reason, Science, , , ,

When you are in the habit of setting days and months aside to celebrate everything and everyone, you are bound to have some rather odd coincidences.  Today, February 12th, might be one of them.  In the midst of Black History Month, we take a day to “celebrate” Darwin Day.  Chosen to coincide with the birthday of Charles Darwin, the day is set aside to highlight Darwin’s unique contributions to science and to promote science more generally.  A strange coincidence because Charles Darwin single-handedly gave the world a theory that, at its very core, gives intellectual justification for racism.

To be fair, Charles Darwin himself was vehemently opposed to slavery.  He came from a long line of abolitionists.  The problem is that he also came from a long line of atheists so that his hatred of God was greater than his love of slaves.  His justification of slavery and many other genocidal practices was not merely an unintended consequence of his theory but a result of a willed obstinance.  His co-discoverer of the theory of evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace warned him that it was insufficient for explaining man and his friends, including Samuel Wilberforce, the son of the great British abolitionist, warned of the brutality his theory justified.  Darwin, in a moment of brutal honesty once wrote, “I have lately read Morley’s Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity produce little permanent effect: real good seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.”  In short, he was willing to accept any collateral damage in his “slow and silent attack on Christianity.”

Even Evolutionary Ideas Have Consequences

If we look closely at the theory of evolution itself, we will see why racism necessarily follows.  The Theory of Evolution is based on the relatively straightforward principle of Natural Selection—“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”  Colloquially known as “Survival of the Fittest”, Darwin’s model is rather intuitive until he posits that it explains everything.  The principle is without limitation and any species, given enough time and interaction with the environment, might evolve into any other species.  It is endless evolution with no room for distinctions between micro- and macro-evolution even though Darwin never uncovered evidence for the latter. 

Had he simply put forward the theory of Natural Selection to explain the origin of non-human species like he did in his first book On the Origin of Species, then it is very likely that the microevolutionary aspects would have been accepted and the macroevolutionary rejected, or at least severely modified.  But Darwin had intrinsically connected his scientific theory to a materialist worldview.  To consummate the wedding, he slipped humans into the theory in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

After Evolving into a rock, Charles Darwin hangs out with the author at the Museum of Natural History in DC

Despite making numerous connections between the rudimentary forms of morality and intelligence in animals and human beings, Darwin was plagued by what appears to be an uncrossable chasm—the difference between the highest animal and the highest human.  But if he was to apply Natural Selection to the “descent of man” then he could allow for a slow and steady evolution which posits that there is not just a difference between animals and men, but between gradations of men as well.  As he puts it in The Descent of Man “Some of these, for instance the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species.”

For Darwin evolution is an ongoing process.  This means that it continues down to our own day and that various species are continually fighting for survival; humans included.  Governed by the first evolutionary principle of Survival of the Fittest, Natural Selection has favored certain races over others.  Race is pitted against race and tribe against tribe so that the only way we know which is the most fit of them is by their continued survival and destruction of other races and tribes.  So then evolution not only scientifically justifies slavery and racism, but also genocide.  As Darwin himself put it in Decent of Man:

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [like the gorilla, orangutan, or chimpanzee] . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

An Inherent Contradiction

Modern men are unique in their ability to hold contradictions together in their head, but it is impossible to hold them together in practice.  Either racism, slavery, and genocide are wrong and Evolution is a false explanation for the origin of man or Evolution is true and racism, slavery and genocide are justified.  There can be no intellectual racism without actual racism emerging.  No amount of “sympathy” (to use Darwin’s term) or “woke” condemnation can overcome “scientific fact.”  When science is all you got for truth, then you have to accept the consequences of that.   

We have spoken on any number of occasions previously on why Evolution is both bad philosophy and bad science.  Nevertheless it is accepted as fact because it is the only explanation that eliminates God.  Darwin knew that and his intellectual progeny know it as well.  The problem is that any worldview that eliminates God ultimately ends up justifying the elimination of men.  If Man really came from below, then we might treat him as we see fit.  Might makes right.  But if man came from above then every man is intrinsically valuable regardless of whether he is a savage or civilized.  In fact, as history has borne out, it is Christianity and not some blind process of evolution that raises man from savage to gentleman.  

God’s Salt

Bible, Church, Creation, Grace, Martyrdom, Scripture, Spiritual Life, The Life of Jesus, ,

In his extended commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, St. Augustine says that Our Lord has laid out for us “the perfect standard of the Christian life.”  Prepared from all eternity, it is the most perfect sermon.  We should be hanging on the Word’s every word.  From beginning to end Our Lord has one goal in mind, to give the blueprint for sainthood.  The outline is made in the Beatitudes and the “how-to” follows.  The first words then of the “how-to” section are vital to understanding what it means to be a Christian and therefore merit our close scrutiny.

After defining Christians as those who find their joy in being persecuted, Our Lord tells His disciples they must be salty; “You are the salt of the earth.  But if salt loses its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?  It is good for nothing anymore but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men” (Mt 5:13).  To modern ears the Saline Commandment might strike us as a bit odd, especially because we only think of salt as a seasoning.  But Our Lord had something deeper in mind making this a most perfect metaphor for the Christian mind, something that we can begin to grasp more clearly if we look at salt itself.

The Master of Metaphor

First, we must admit that Our Lord was a master of metaphor and the reasoning for this is simple.  Our Lord did not need to search for a metaphor to describe the Christian, He simply created the metaphor.  Salt may have plenty of practical uses (all of which could be accomplished another way if Our Lord so decreed), but salt is what it is precisely because Our Lord wanted to use it to reveal the truth to His disciples.  In this case the truth of what it means to be a true disciple.  Catholics used to grasp this intuitively because they had a sacramental vision of reality.  Thanks to an unhealthy scientific excess, we have lost that ability and need to regain it.  That begins by resisting the temptation to simply say salt is “nothing but” Sodium Chloride and to probe deeper into its meaning. 

Salt itself is formed by the evaporation of salt water.  The process of evaporation involves two outside elements—sun and air or wind.  Salt cannot escape the sea water without these two things.  Now in sacramental language, the seas water is associated with chaos.  The Sun is Christ and the Wind is the Holy Spirit.  Putting them all together we find that His disciples cannot escape the chaos of the world without Our Lord and the Holy Spirit.  This is to make sure that the “try-hards” recognize that the Beatitudes are absolutely impossible without the infusion of grace.  Salty Christians then are formed.

The Real Saline Solution

We can glean more of Our Lord’s meaning, especially what He means when He calls them “salt of the earth” by examining how salt was commonly used.  Prior to refrigeration, salt was the primary preservative for food.  By reducing the water molecules in the food through osmosis, bacteria had no medium in which to grow.  What little bacteria did land on the food would die because it attacked their DNA.  In short, salt was used to stop decay.

So too it is with the Christian in the world.  Our Lord is saying that once they become salt, the disciples keep the world from decay.  This role of Christians is one that is easily overlooked but one that is worth examining more closely.

When God saw all of the evil that was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, He told Abraham that He was going to destroy it.  But it wasn’t just as a punishment for the evil that He threatened to destroy it, but because there was no salt to keep it from decaying.  He could find no righteous men to preserve it.  Sodom and Gomorrah were fully decayed and their destruction was inevitable.  Had their been salt, they would have been preserved.

Christians are “salt of the earth” precisely because they preserve it and enhance its flavor.  All around us we see signs of decay, but true Christians can slow that decay by their very presence.  It is saints that change the world, not primarily by their actions, but by their sanctity.  The solution to our cultural crisis is simple—be a saint.  It is saints who have turned every culture around and it is saints that will turn ours around.  Saints are those who are committed to God’s will no matter what and those are the ones that He uses to season the world. 

Because of its dehydrating qualities salt was often used in war as a means of destroying crops.  So too God will use some of His salt to destroy the crops of the Evil One.  As His salt we must, each and every one of us, be prepared to be poured out on the ground.  Martyrdom is never really that far away for the Christian and we must be prepared for it to come.  But even if it doesn’t God’s salt must continue to keep the bacteria from spreading from within their own sphere of influence.  The thing about salt is that we immediately recognize its presence as well as its absence.  We must be salty then.

Before closing, let us take to heart Jesus’ words regarding losing our savor.  For salt cannot actually lose its savor without ceasing to be salt.  Despite the fact that we no longer use this language, it is important for us to do everything we can to stay in a state of grace.  If we lose our savor, it can be restored by becoming salt again, but we are at a great risk for being trampled underfoot.  All the saints prayed for the gift of perseverance so let us join their litany to stay salty.

Accepting Polygenism

Creation, Evolution, Magisterium, , , , , ,

Benjamin Franklin once quipped that nothing was certain but death and taxes.  If Mr. Franklin were alive today, he would add evolution to the list of certainties. The theory has become fact and has won uncritical acceptance from nearly everyone, Catholic or not.  Having become adamantine, this theory has broken Adam’s family into pieces with dire consequences both for the Faith and for the world because of one particular aspect, polygenism.  Polygenism, put simply, is the belief that, rather than tracing our human origins back to a single couple, we came from multiple couples.  Rather than look at each of the different theories in particular, we will examine the idea based through philosophical and theological lenses.

First it is worth mentioning that the Magisterium has cautioned the Faithful about accepting polygenism in any of its forms.  In his 1950 Encyclical, Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII spoke of the liberty the Faithful have in discerning the origins of the human body.  But,

“When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own”

Humani Generis, 36-37

It takes a bit of theological gymnastics not to read this as a blanket rejection of polygenism, but nevertheless some theological contortionists have posited that the door is still open.  What is clear however is that any polygenetic theory would have to maintain two truths about Adam.  First, that there are no men on earth that did not take their origin from him.  Secondly, we cannot see Adam as somehow an icon or symbol for a bunch of first parents.  Hard to imagine that any theory of polygenism could maintain this since it seems to assert its opposite, but even if the Pope did leave it open, there is no theory as of yet that meets this criteria.

Pius XII mentions the theological interest in the question as it relates to Original Sin.  It leaves open the possibility and historical reality of an unfallen race at various time points throughout history.  Even if all mankind eventually fell, there would have been a time when unfallen and fallen men lived together.  That means there may have been unfallen men who were conceived of unfallen parents.  This would then call into question the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by which Our Lady is said to have received a “singular grace”.  It also leaves open the possibility that men died without falling and thus would not be in need of redemption.  If all men did not sin in Adam then all men are not redeemed in Christ.

This is not the only way that polygenism tugs at the thread of the seamless garment of the Faith in ways we do not initially grasp.  It also puts in jeopardy the dogmatic truth of the special creation of Eve.  It is a matter of dogma taught through the Ordinary Magisterium, and first affirmed Pope Pelagius I in 561 and reaffirmed by Pope Pius XII in the aforementioned Encyclical that Eve was literally created from the rib of Adam.  This belief is protective of the equal dignity of men and women because they come from the same origin.

It turns out that polygenism not only leads to inequality between the sexes but between races as well.  The evolutionary model rests upon a progressive view of beings.  Things are always adapting and getting better.  From a philosophical perspective, evolution is the tool by which the rungs of the Ladder of Being are being added.  Beings on the same rung are equal in dignity, those above or below have more or less dignity.  Human beings are equal in dignity because they occupy the same rung of the Ladder of Being.  Under the model of polygenism this ceases to be the case.  With different evolutionary origins, different races occupy different rungs on the ladder.  In short, it gives both biological and philosophical justification for some human persons being more equal than others.

This is why the Francis Galtons, Margaret Sangers and Hitlers of the world have always loved the Theory of Evolution.  It justified their eugenic madness.  Under polygenism, some races would necessarily be inferior to other races.  This would justify their extermination and there would be no disputing them.  This is why Pope Pius XII thought it necessary to safeguard not just Revelation, but man’s unique place within visible creation against the threat of uncritical acceptance of Evolution.  Ideas have consequences and all of us, especially Catholics, need to be more critical in their acceptance of the Theory of Evolution.

Before closing, it is worth mentioning that many well-meaning Catholics accept polygenism because it seems better than accepting incest among Adam and Eve’s children.  Rather than revisiting that question here, I will simply point you to a previous post that deals with that objection.