Wow. There are many questions here. Perhaps you should break down each question into a separate thread–there’s really too much to answer succinctly.
But I will try to answer what I can find, in abbreviated form.
- Aquina’s view on natural law is supported in the Catechism apparently as a doctrine.
Your sub-question “how do we reconcile ourselves to the fact…” is using
weasel words, using the question to assert an undocumented fact to support the question’s premise. You need to give specific instances where (1) the Magisterium has done what you purport and (2) where they are wrong, with theological and scientific proof to support it. As a Catholic, it’s weird that you would question the Magisterium in this way, to me at least.
**I know that Leo XIII and St. Pius X both ordered that Thomism be used as the foundation for all Theological inquiry in the West, and the social theories expounded by 20th century Popes have been based on the Natural Law.
“The idea of the natural law presupposed a concept of nature in which nature and reason overlap, since nature itself is rational.
With the victory of the theory of evolution, this view of nature has capsized**: nowadays, we think that nature as such is not rational, even if there is rational behavior in nature.” - Josef Cardinal Ratzinger
thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/is-natural-law-extinct.html
Evidently the incumbent pontiff agrees that the Natural Law as commonly and historically understood has been rendered invalid by current scientific discoveries. I’m just wondering how we square this with the traditional praise of the Natural Law which was (and is) so fundamental to Catholic ethics.
- The question uses weasel wording again, stating something as fact without documentation. I can’t answer this question without your source.
It is common knowledge that most professional psychologists and biologists are atheists. In fact, 93% of the National Academy of Sciences is heathen. They are all materialists, who profess no belief in transcendent or immaterial explanations for the consciousness or existence of man, and their non-belief is evidently backed by their own intellectual inquiries and reasoning. Now, if the experts on human consciousness see no room for an immaterial soul, indeed, if they do eventually prove that there is no room for a soul in the workings of the human mind, where does that leave us? I’m not attempting to assert anything, I’m just asking a question.
- At least based on this Wikipedia article, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI saw Father Chardin’s work as insightful–but neither pontiff nor the Magisterium as a whole require any Catholic to support–or even know–about the priest’s work.
What I was asking was, if Chardin’s theory of becoming is found to be acceptable by the current pontiff, which is has been, then how do we reconcile it with original sin? If man is in a constant progress of spiritualization, as Ratzinger seemed to posit in Credo for Today, then that seems to leave little room for the story of the Fall as recorded in Genesis or as it has been traditionally interpreted by almost all preceding generations of Church Fathers and theologians. What is the orthodox Catholic response to this question?
- The creation of Adam and Eve as the original parents of men is a dogma of the Church. Catholics are bound to that belief. But we can accept or reject any elements of evolution that support the science that would allow the growth of the human population without an issue. As a Catholic, you should be mindful that you tow a delicate line when you call Scripture solely as “myth.” Doesn’t mean we have to take it as literalistic, but we do accept Scripture for the meaning it gives.
**I’ve heard from my Monsignor that Pius XII in *Humanis Generis ***left the door open for polytheism, and that the CDF actually issued a document permitting such a belief during the 1990’s. While I have been unable to find evidence for either of those assertions, I am fully aware that monogenism as supposedly “required” by the Magisterium has been definitively disproved by evolutionary and genetic research.
As per regarding the majority of scripture as myth, the fact remains that myth can still contain a moral and a spiritual truth, and I want to stress that I’m not in any way denying the *spiritual *innerrancy of scripture. What I’m questioning is the historicity of figures such as Moses and Abraham, of whom we have no literary or archeological evidence prior to the Babylonian exile. By all accounts they appear to be scholarly fabrications meant to bolster Jewish identity in a time of cultural and spiritual crisis. This is evidenced by the fact that the texts themselves contain gross anachronisms and historical innaccuracies, which would be all fine and dandy if the vast majority of believers didn’t regard them as infallible historical fact. But they do. How many sermons and theological treatises produced by the Church contain references to the Patriarchs as if they were real, historical figures who had an actual impact on salvation history? This is more than foolish, it is dangerous. It hurts the credibility of the faith and impedes the proclamation of the true, unencumbered Gospel of Jesus Christ which is the heart of the Church.
- OK. Here you are using questions with weasel words almost just to be argumentative or clever. I’m assuming you’re asking purposefully, however.
(cont.)
I’ll have to check them out some time.