8000th Year of Creation?

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hmikell7 said:
mention something about this being around the time of the 8000th year of creation. That we had entered into the 8th day of creation or something very similar to that?
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The 8000th year of creation? That’s odd. The Church does not subscribe to “young earth” or any such invention of American protestants of the 19th and 20th centuries. hope you merely misheard or misunderstood or he mangled what he was trying to say.

However, the 8th day makes more sense. This is symbolic language referring to Christ and the new creation. Sunday is the first day of the week, Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) the 7th. Sunday came to be known as the “8th day” for early Christians in the a mystical sense regarding Christ’s Resurrection. Some of the Early Church Fathers refer to it thus.
hmikell7 said:
I’m very confused as to what he was talking about and haven’t been able to find anything online, mostly because I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for. Any help would be greatly appreciated
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See the Catechism under the Third Commandment:

2174 Jesus rose from the dead "on the first day of the week."104 Because it is the “first day,” the day of Christ’s Resurrection recalls the first creation. Because it is the “eighth day” following the Sabbath, it symbolizes the new creation ushered in by Christ’s Resurrection. For Christians it has become the first of all days, the first of all feasts, the Lord’s Day (he kuriake hemera, dies dominica) Sunday:

We all gather on the day of the sun, for it is the first day [after the Jewish Sabbath, but also the first day] when God, separating matter from darkness, made the world; and on this same day Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c1a3.htm

“And yet there will be more: an eighth and eternal day, when history will end, and “we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise” (St Augustine, City of God).
 
1ke said:
The Church does not subscribe to “young earth” or any such invention of American protestants of the 19th and 20th centuries
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You’re aware that that idea wasn’t invented in the 19th century, right?
 
Was he reading out to you the Chirstmas proclamation bychance?
 
The current “young earth creationism” is a reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. There are protestant fundamentalists who insist on dogmatic adherence to young earth, literal creation, etc.

The Catholic Church has never been so. While there certainly have been beliefs and theories about the earth proposed down through the ages, the Church has never taken such a stance as a dogmatic belief or position. Yes, before scientific exploration gave us more information about the earth and its age, there were certainly those in the Church that believed the age of the earth to be “young”.

One of my favorite quotes from Augustine is:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. … If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?”

He was talking on cosmological items, but his treatise The Literal Meaning of Genesis is brilliant.

No, no. We are not ignorant of the physical sciences, and the Church does not ask us to be. There is no dogmatic belief in an 8000 year old earth, or a 10,000 year old earth. There is no call to ignore science or cosmology. There is also no call to embrace Darwin’s theories or Neo-Darwinism dogmatically either.

The Church makes no dogmatic or doctrinal statement on the age of the earth or the mechanisms of creation other than special creation of the soul and statements on original sin and our first parents-- such as Pius XII’s Humani Generis.

An RCIA instructor standing up and saying the earth is 8000 year old and connecting that in any way to dogmatic teachings of the Church (which i am hoping this RCIA instructor did not do and it was simply a misunderstanding) does what Augustine admonishers against-- makes the person look foolish.

The Church neither embraces nor rejects any theory of the earth and its age-- it leaves matters of science to science and matters of faith to the Church.
 
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That’s probably what he was talking about. He’d been talking about the differences between Sunday and Saturday as Sabbath days, and the structure of the week.
 
jfz178 said:
What about the inquisition of Galileo?
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That involved Galileo crossing over from matters of science to matters of faith with his declarations regarding certain passages of scripture. That and a personality conflict with the Pope, and both of them being a bit stubborn, landed him in hot water.

The Galileo controversy is somewhat misunderstood. Here’s an article that’s pretty decent.

 
“Unfortunately, throughout Church history, there have been those who insist on reading the Bible in a more literal sense than it was intended”

Good to see that a lot has changed! NOT (in my best Borat voice)
 
1ke said:
An RCIA instructor standing up and saying the earth is 8000 year old and connecting that in any way to dogmatic teachings of the Church (which i am hoping this RCIA instructor did not do and it was simply a misunderstanding) does what Augustine admonishers against-- makes the person look foolish.

The Church neither embraces nor rejects any theory of the earth and its age-- it leaves matters of science to science and matters of faith to the Church.
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The Spirit of Wisdom has spoken through @1ke.

Let us attend!
 
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