Try this: The “causation” referred to in this passage from the Catechism is not bound by time. The cause does not have to precede the effect in normal time. For this reason we can say that death entered the world long before man was placed here in normal time because of the sin the man committed. Thus there were animals dying before man sinned because man did sin.
This notion of cause and effect being uncoupled in time is further confirmed by our understanding of Jesus’s sacrifice to redeem sinners. Jesus died on a cross in the physical world 2000 years ago because of my sins today. Cause does not have to preceded effect.
Makes sense. If I may elaborate on what you say.
Causation to my mind is ontological, arising as it does outside time, in each and every moment of existence.
Temporally there may be a series of events whereby a preceding event leads to another, such as the wind “causing” a tree to fall. The process is like the trajectory of the earth around the sun and the moon around the earth that resulted in yesterday’s blood moon. The cause in these cases is the rational structure of the physical universe, eternal in the sense that it is at the core of every instance in time and encompasses all time.
Our free will is also a cause, as a component of the universe created by God. The will, with our capacities to know and act, enables us to love and thereby commune with what is the Ground of all being - Divine and infinite Love.
We can think of scripture as one event - the presence of the Word in the creation, as He who brings it into existence and He who became on of us that we might be saved. The Garden scene and the crucifixion can be understood as being one. The wood of the two trees is the wood of the cross. The hand that brought the fruit of the tree of good and evil to our mouth in Adam, is that which drove the nail into our hand in Christ. The fruit of the tree of eternal life is the Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus who died for our sins and was resurrected.
The fall can be understood as happening ontologically at the beginning of time, where it is all brought forth from nothing, at the centre of everything that happens. I would agree with the idea that death would then enter the world from the beginning to the end once the original sin was commited. This sin and the resurrection are points on a timeline that cause what occurs within that entire timeline.
This is how I would put this all together, at least now. It does tie in with a creationist view of Life on earth.
