Matt16_18: From Genesis 1
29 Then God said, **"I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. **30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food."
Most seed-bearing plants require destruction in order to eat them. Furthermore, some green plants must be consumed whole for any kind of nutritional value, yet they were ALL given for food. The plants were to die, and God specifically gave them over to die for the cause of eating. This happened long before the fall.
As for your Catechism quotes, remember that the Catechism itself is not infallible, and must be understood in the context of infallible decrees of the Church. Every such decree by the Church relating to the the quotes you used have to do with human death and decay, and heresies related to them. The Catechism is simply a guidepost to those doctrines. Reading Paul’s writings, for example, it is clear that he’s speaking of human death, and when he states that Creation is caught in the bondage of decay, he leaves no room for any alternate universe that is not in such bondage, as Creation refers to
everything God created.
As for the Pope’s letter:
Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition in the theory of evolution of more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.
This would have been the perfect opportunity to highlight the heresy of evolutionary theory, but instead he even goes so far as to call it more than a hypothesis. If you are familiar with the evolutionary theory as it is formulated (in its ccientific form, not its philosophical form, which the Pope rightly states contains more than one version), then you know that evolution, and therefore death, must have occured before the Fall, and the Pope has just called it more than a mere hypothesis, not a heresy.
Incidently, this is where your idea falls apart. You state that death occured after the Fall, yet you admit to an alternate universe, to Paradise, in which we now dwell. Man did not create this world, God did, and it is filled with death. If what you say is true, then God specifically created a new universe apart from Eden filled with death in order to contain the fallen humanity. This is not a mere corruption of an already existing world according to you, as we can see through evolutionary science and physics that this universe has had persistant “contamination” by such negative forces, but rather a universe created from the word go to contain death and decay in the broadest sense, making God the direct author of death, which you say is heretical. If man’s sin brought death into the world, then man’s sin also
created the universe in which we dwell. This seems to contridict every sentiment of the Church. The only other possibility I can see is that this universe IS the one physical universe, and it contained within it a special place removed from the negative forces of the universe. This possibility fits much more closely with what’s described in Genesis.
If our vehicle is the Internet then watch out we’ll have minds crashing in the etherland! Let’s hope for the best and forge ahead either way.
