Mike, I admire your honesty, but perhaps you’re being too scrupulous. Loads of Catholics accept evolution. My priest scientist friends have dedicated their lives to the church, and yet they are not conscience-stricken that they cannot read “Adam” and “Eve” as historical individuals.
My problem isn’t so much with whether Catholicism and evolution are reconcilable. Any two conflicting ideas can be reconicled if you have sufficient motivation. The doctrine of the Trinity is paradoxical as all-get-out, but if you accept its individual claims and recognize that Christians have always held these truths in spite of the apparent contradictions, then it’s easy to throw up one’s hands and say, “It’s a mystery, but that’s okay by me.” Heck, I’ve done that for years with the doctrine of the Trinity, the free-will/predestination paradox, etc., etc., and never had a problem.
When you start dealing with “Adam and Eve” as being symbolic of the original human community, though – indeed, when you start dealing with heliocentricity, Big Bang theory, psychiatry, evolution, and all the other scientific advances that have caused us to look back at scripture somewhat askance – you have to recognize that this isn’t so much a matter of accepting a contradiction that has been held and reverenced from the beginning as it is a genuine conflict of doctrine with previously unknown evidence. Prior to 200 years ago, no Christian would have dreamed of disputing the literal existence of Adam and Eve as humankind’s first (and only) parents. Now that is changing. Likewise, no one prior to 200 years ago was likely to question whether people or even animals died prior to the Fall. Now one has to wonder if there ever truly was a Fall!
No one with a good head on his/her shoulders can deny that the Bible contains a LOT of truth. But that’s not the position that was preached from the pulpit for the first 1800 years of Christianity. The position of old was, “The Bible IS truth. The Bible was written by God, who cannot lie.” I can say, “Well, so much for that position!” but the moment I do I feel as though I’ve detached myself from all who have come before and staked their lives upon the Bible as holding the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about who we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. I’m not one of them. I don’t want to join the Church today just so I can
pretend to be one of them. And I think, in reality, that’s what I’ve been doing for some time, now. I can recall at least one occasion from my Protestant years of looking into the eyes of a member of the church I was attending and realizing, “He really believes this. He doesn’t have to justify it to himself with any convoluted logic of how sin and grace and Christ all interrelate with one another to form a plan of salvation. He just buys into it hook, line, and sinker –
and I’m not like him!”
That’s what hurts the most in reading the Fathers…the knowledge that
I’m not like them…and never will be, it looks like, because they’ll never know what we now know, and they’ll never see the things we’ve seen. They are fixed in their bliss, while I feel just as fixed in my discomfort, because
I can’t be like them – I’m tempted to continue, “…not without sacrificing my integrity,” but that would imply that I could ever make such a sacrifice for the sake of being “one of the fold,” and I know that’s just not true. If I have to stand apart till I die, then I’ll stand apart – not because I want to, but because I have to. (Although I do wonder if someday I’ll find myself wanting to, also. Interesting thought…) Maybe the best that I can hope for is that God will say to me, “Dude, no big deal. That whole ‘Church’ thing was only supposed to last for so long, anyway…”
–Mike
eace,