Magisterium concerning Creation/evolution controversy

[Orogeny]

Well, Alec is an athiest. He doesn’t hold our teachings to be true. From a scientific standpoint, they are irrelevant. Science doesn’t say that we have to discard those teachings. Science would say (as if science were some kind of being that can say something) that those truths are outside the realm of science because they all invove the soul or sin or God or the devil. None of those are within the realm of science.

I accept the Church’s dogmatic teachings that you have listed, but I accept those things as a matter of my faith, not as science.

Peace

Tim

 

[steveandersen]

There might not be always a conflict between science and faith, but science these days takes considerably more faith than religion.

Science is demonstrable, observable, testable and repeatable.

Saying we all came from aomeba’s (forget about just apes) is faith.

Well…no

Some sciences like chemistry or certain branches of physics may conform with your expectations of a guy in a lab coat duplicating on a bench scale exactly what he expected to see in nature.

However, many sciences such as climatology, geology, certain fields of biology, and the human sciences like anthropology and history routinely rely on post priori explanations of observable conditions and adopt theories that are supported by the preponderance of the evidence.

Some things you just can’t put on a lab bench or control all the variables for.

Of course that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been many observed instances of speciation.

No faith about it. God made the world with rules.

 

[buffalo]

Well, Alec is an athiest. He doesn’t hold our teachings to be true. From a scientific standpoint, they are irrelevant. Science doesn’t say that we have to discard those teachings. Science would say (as if science were some kind of being that can say something) that those truths are outside the realm of science because they all invove the soul or sin or God or the devil. None of those are within the realm of science.

I accept the Church’s dogmatic teachings that you have listed, but I accept those things as a matter of my faith, not as science.

Peace

Tim

You know I agree. However hecd is validating his unbelief with his science, and I believe you (or someone else) validated science in a prior post as trumping the supernatural.

So we are now at the point (at least me and you) of again reconciling sciences claim that man evolved from a lower form with the dogmatic points you agree with. In your mind are they all harmonious or are there points of contention?

 

[buffalo]

No faith about it. God made the world with rules.

But which rule is He bound to?

 

[buffalo]

hecd,

Is there a supernatural realm?

 

[steveandersen]

But which rule is He bound to?

That one is beyond my job description

You’ll have to ask the Chaplain

 

[buffalo]

That one is beyond my job description

You’ll have to ask the Chaplain

Have we been talking to the wrong guy all along?

 

[Orogeny]

You know I agree. However hecd is validating his unbelief with his science, and I believe you (or someone else) validated science in a prior post as trumping the supernatural.

'Twasn’t me.

So we are now at the point (at least me and you) of again reconciling sciences claim that man evolved from a lower form with the dogmatic points you agree with. In your mind are they all harmonious or are there points of contention?

I don’t see any problems there.

Peace

Tim

 

[wildleafblower]

I add a Nobel laureate with a strong voice, who is a Pontifical Academy of Sciences ACADEMICIAN, to our list of scientists vs that of Kolbe Center’s Advisory Council for the Study of Creation.

Nobel laureate and Pontifical Academy of Sciences ACADEMICIAN Christian DE DUVE (1) of Christian de Duve Institute of Cellular Pathology participated in The Cultural Values of Science, Plenary Session, 8-11 November 2002, Vatican City, 2003. His article **THE FACTS OF LIFE **begins on page 71 of this pfd:

vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/archivio/s.v.105_cultural_values/part2.pdf

Here are two excerpts from his article :

Pg. 75: * In recent years, opposition to the notion of a natural origin of life has been voiced by a very small but vocal minority of scientifically trained persons who, while subscribing to the notion of a LUCA appearing de novo on Earth and evolving into present-day living organisms, claim that these phenomena could not possibly have taken place by purely natural processes, but required the intervention of some nonmaterial guiding entity that forced the raw materials of life to interact so as to produce the first living cells and also, as will be mentioned later, directed the further course of evolution (Behe, 1996; Dembski, 1998; Denton, 1998). Known under the name of ‘intelligent design’, this theory, which is close to vitalism, has been magnified much beyond its merits because of its alleged philosophical and theological implications . I shall come back to it when discussing evolution. Let me simply state now that serious flaws have been detected in the scientific arguments brought forward in its support.*

Pg. 76: *5. The Theory of Evolution Is More than a Hypothesis- In those words, Pope John-Paul II, addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in a solemn session, on 22 October 1996, expressed the acceptance of biological evolution by the Church. Considering the implications of this statement, the evidence that convinced the Pontiff must be truly decisive. And so it is. Actually, the Pope’s statement was overly cautious. **Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, implicit in the common descent of all living organisms and established with the same degree of certainty. **Thanks to the information provided by fossils and complemented by molecular phylogenies, we have a rough idea of the timing and manner in which evolution has proceeded. A schematic outline of its main steps is shown in Table 1. Bacteria were the sole representatives of life on Earth during more than one billion years. The first eukaryotes emerged around 2.2 billion years ago, probably as the outcome of a long evolutionary history of which no fossil trace has yet been found; they remained unicellular for more than another billion years. It is only after life had completed some three-fourths of its history on Earth that primitive multicellular plants, fungi, and animals first appeared, slowly giving rise to more complex forms. *
I read on wikipedia “De Duve proposes that peroxisomes may have been the first endosymbionts, which allowed cells to withstand the growing amounts of free molecular oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. Since peroxisomes have no DNA of their own, this proposal has much less evidence than the similar claims for mitochondria and chloroplasts.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_de_Duve

Dr. Alec MacAndrew wrote a splendid article **A different kind of transitional **which mentions endosymbionts! WOW! What a flash back in time for me.

evolutionpages.com/blog/2006_10_01_archive.html

P.s. Please note that George V. Coyne, S.J. (2) article MODERN COSMOLOGY AND LIFE’S MEANING appears on the above mentioned pdf which I located here:
vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/own/documents/rc_acdsci_doc_190999_publications_it.html

We love you Father Coyne! You are always in my prayers.

Peace, joy, and love to everyone ~

Wildleafblower

1. vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/own/documents/deduve.html

2)vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/own/documents/coyne.html

 

[buffalo]

'Twasn’t me.I don’t see any problems there.

Peace

Tim

I see conflicts. Perhaps you could take me through the dogmas I listed and show me how to reconcile.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

The trend of this thread is whether or not man has evolved. For a minute let’s stop fighting about evolution as applied to organisms other than man.

The real question is whether man has evolved from a lower form and what does the magisterium teach on this subject.

First off, no one was there to witness our first parents. The biological DNA tracks are compelling but still speculative.

A few questions to see if we can get consensus:

1. Do all here agree that we had only one set of parents?
2. Do we agree they possessed preternatural gifts?

Well done getting back to basics ​

1. Maybe - I don’t think it matters provided that whatever theory people teach or defend is not incompatible with the Faith. I would be completely untroubled if the late Sir Fred Hoyle were shown to be right in thinking that human origins were traceable to exrtra-terrestrial forms of life (if I’ve got what he said correct ).
2. I don’t see any reason to assert it.

• Were the first humans in communion with God (as it were) ? Yes.
• Was that communion broken ? Yes.
• Has every human being since suffered as a result ? Yes.
• Do I think there *must have *been a first human pair ? No - that’s not a question for dogma, but for palaeontology & the other appropriate sciences.
  IIRC, the words of Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950) don’t completely rule out polygenism - they strongly favour monogenism, but don’t close the door to the possibility thant polygenism & original sin may eventually be shown to be compatible. And a lot has happened, both in the understanding of the Bible, & in the life sciences, since 1950. Which is why the Pope’s address in 1996 is more up to date, & may be a better guide to how Catholics now should view the issue of evolution than letters written a fair while ago. ##

 

[buffalo]

Well done getting back to basics ​

1. Maybe - I don’t think it matters provided that whatever theory people teach or defend is not incompatible with the Faith. I would be completely untroubled if the late Sir Fred Hoyle were shown to be right in thinking that human origins were traceable to exrtra-terrestrial forms of life (if I’ve got what he said correct ).
2. I don’t see any reason to assert it.

• Were the first humans in communion with God (as it were) ? Yes.
• Was that communion broken ? Yes.
• Has every human being since suffered as a result ? Yes.
• Do I think there *must have *been a first human pair ? No - that’s not a question for dogma, but for palaeontology & the other appropriate sciences.
  IIRC, the words of Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950) don’t completely rule out polygenism - they strongly favour monogenism, but don’t close the door to the possibility thant polygenism & original sin may eventually be shown to be compatible. And a lot has happened, both in the understanding of the Bible, & in the life sciences, since 1950. Which is why the Pope’s address in 1996 is more up to date, & may be a better guide to how Catholics now should view the issue of evolution than letters written a fair while ago. ##

What I gather is you are willing to reverse these dogma in favor of science?

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Well, of course, a literal six day creation is completely ruled out by the evidence unless one wishes to postulate a deliberately deceptive God. However, from a theological point of view, consider whether these church fathers dogmatically held to a literal reading of Genesis (in the sense young earth creationists use the term ‘literal’) and an insistence of natural 24 hours days in the six days of creation:

‘For as Adam was told in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years. We have perceived moreover that the expression “The day of the Lord is as a thousand years” is connected with this subject’ - Justin Martyr - Dialogue 82

‘That, then, we may be taught that the world was originated, and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: “This is the book of the generation; also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth”. For the expression “when they were created” intimates an indefinite and dateless production."’ - Clement of Alexandria - Miscellanies v1.16

‘The text said that “there was evening and there was morning”, it did not say “the first day”, but said “one day”. It is because there was not yet time before the world existed. but time begins to exist with the following days. For the second day and he third and fourth and all the rest being to designate time’ - Origen - Homily 1

'What man of intelligence, I ask, will consider a reasonable statement that the first and second and third day, in which there are said to be both morning and evening, existed without sun and moon and stars, while the first day was even without a heaven? And who could be found so silly as to believe that God after the manner of a farmer, “planted trees in a paradise eastward in Eden”… And… when God is said to walk in then paradise in the evening…I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history…’ Origen – First Principles Bk 4, Ch 3.

‘God created all things simultaneously at the beginning of the ages, creating some in their substance and others in pre-existing causes’ – Augustine - The Literal Meaniong of Genesis, vii; 42 (and if that’s not compatible with theistic evolution, I don’t know what is.)

FWIW, the words “God created…simultaneously” are from Ecclesiasticus-Sirach 18.1. So in the Bible itself, there is more than one tradition about creation. The same is true of the Fall, and of other things; there are variant traditions about the Flood, about Sodom, about the conquest of Canaan, & especially about the origins of tribes. The doublets in Genesis are not there to confuse people, but because they are different forms of the same tradition - like the different traditions about the death of Judas.​

So it is a mistake to take for granted that the Bible only ever gives one version of an event. It seems to read in a purely linear way - “first A then B then C happened” - only because of the way it is edited.

There are variant accounts of the Passion - why ever not ? So why can’t there be variant accounts of the Creation ? No reason whatever. Which IMO makes the Bible far more interesting & worthwhile than if it were the equivalent of a Divinely-inspired diary. ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

What I gather is you are willing to reverse these dogma in favor of science?

No, but I think the magisterium should avoid saying that event X “must have” happened, because doctrine Y requires it to have happened.​

Otherwise, both science & doctrine are falsified & distorted - doctrine because it is falsifying the facts; science, because because it has been falsified. Which means that doctrine is no longer truthful, so no longer a witness to revealed truth ##

 

[buffalo]

No, but I think the magisterium should avoid saying that event X “must have” happened, because doctrine Y requires it to have happened.​

Otherwise, both science & doctrine are falsified & distorted - doctrine because it is falsifying the facts; science, because because it has been falsified. Which means that doctrine is no longer truthful, so no longer a witness to revealed truth ##

Doctrine and dogma are different.

 

[PhilVaz]

I appreciate all the comments from the creation-evolution regulars in here (buffalo, SteveA, wildleaf, Hecd, Orogeny, and others I’ve missed). Not sure if PoG will choose to continue, but now he knows how these kinds of threads typically go. And we’ve had a lot of them since May 2004 !

One question I have, if one wants to believe we go back literally to a single couple (whether biologically or theologically or spiritually), how would one go about demonstrating that through science? It seems to me you can’t, it’s something that must be accepted by faith. So there’s no need to worry about it. One also can’t demonstrate “scientifically” the Fall, the soul, or miracles.

But I’ll tack these onto the thread (again), speculative but interesting. I like these articles because they don’t outright reject science like the Kolbe Center does, but try to harmonize science and faith.

Adam, Eve, and the Hominid Fossil Record (by evangelicals and a Catholic philosopher)
Hominization, On the Origin of Mankind and A Story of the Fall or “Adam was a Neandertal” (by a Catholic physicist)
In Search of Historical Adam and Part 2 (by an evangelical)

Phil P

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

You are mistaken. His Holiness did not say this. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote it. You are confusing the office of Pope with that of Cardinal. His Holiness Pope Leo XIII, for example, plainly and authoritively stated in *Arcane Divinae Sapientiae *that:

We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of Creation, having made man from the slime of the Earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep.

…

The Roman Theological Forum is also “a group of theologians” - so the attempts of some among them to defend a Fundamentalist understanding of Genesis are (by parity of reasoning) equally without magisterial status. “They are reporting their understanding” of Genesis 2, & of the doctrinal weight of Arcanum (1880). What goes for the ITC, goes equally for the RTF.​

…The Catholic position appears to be that as there was no unanimous agreement amongst the Fathers on whether the six days held a symbolic value or not, it is an open question. There appears to be, however, unanimous agreement amongst the Fathers, that the period of Creation took no longer than six days.

If people are going to say that God created all things in six days, how does this differ, in principle, from saying God lives in a tent, has a beard, a sword, a net, a spear, & rides in a chariot ? All of which is in the OT. The NT adds a horse - prompting the question, “What breed is it ?”​

Did God have a tea-break every day, or need a bath after work ? If one is going to insist that God took 144 hours to create the cosmos, one is entitled, almost obliged even, to ask such questions. And if one can treat the days as long periods of indefinite length, there is in principle no reason to deny that the creation may have taken 13 thousand million years, or four & a half thousand million for earth.

And that’s another thing: to insist on the six days means one must treat the creation of the universe & of the world as the same; for modern science distinguishes the two, & Genesis 1 does not. Genesis 2 becomes nonsense if treated in the Fundamentalist way some Christians insist on.

All those are ways of speaking of God which are ridiculous if treated as timeless truths - they are not truths, but they reflect the cultures in which the Bible grew up; for these picturesque images were used in those cultures. Why is imagery of God resting any different ? Men rest, & men live in time - so God accommodates Himself to men’s ways of thinking & speaking. It is necessary for us that He should, for He is Himself too excellent to be described in words or thoughts; so He gives us Scripture & His Spirit & His Son to assist us in our weakness.

If He is to accommodate Himself to men in “speaking” to them, this “speech” cannot be with man-in-general, but with particular men - IOW, His chosen people. So they have to set down the words of God in the words of men - in theirs. Which makes it likely that men of other cultures, who think in different ways, will misunderstand what God said to Israel. Why is it so important to use mythological language about God, when we can affirm what Genesis 1 affirms without doing so ? Nobody insists that the Last Judgement is going to involve killing a sea-serpent, despite Isaiah 27.1 - so why must one insist that God planted a garden, or rested like a man tired from work ? “God is Spirit”, not a man.

Insisting on the six days, quite apart from making the Faith look ridiculous when this is avoidable (sometimes it is not), leads to mangling the meaning of the text to make it support all manner of readings which distort it. Which is no different from treatments of the Prophets which see in their words predictions of the invention of the motor car & the telegraph; or which imagine that Jeremiah spoke against Christmas trees (but not it seems against Wal-Mart or Macy’s).

We may find it essential that God created everything in six days exactly - but why should our ideas be right ? The author was not addressing us, but narrating traditions for Bronze Age folk in a Near Eastern country 3000 years ago. One might as well insist that “Catcher in the Rye” is a textbook on growing corn, as torment Genesis 1 into meaning what we think it has to. UK & US corn are different foods - a Fundamentalist would insist they are the same, & make no allowance for differences between UK & US. Fundamentalist Christians do this to the Bible. ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

My post got corrupted. I will try to reconstuct below.

In principle I agree with his paper. He is leaving an opening that I believe will eventually be totally reconciled. I will note a few points:

1. Secondly, the creation accounts in Genesis make it clear that man is not created as an isolated individual:
   God placed the first human beings in relation to one another, each with a partner of the other sex. The Bible affirms that man exists in relation with other persons, with God, with the world, and with himself. According to this conception, man is not an isolated individual but a person – an essentially relational being. Far from entailing a pure actualism that would deny its permanent ontological status, the fundamentally relational character of the imago Dei itself constitutes its ontological structure and the basis for its exercise of freedom and responsibility.
2. **Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention. **Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called “an ontological leap…the moment of transition to the spiritual.” While science can study these causal chains, it falls to theology to locate this account of the special creation of the human soul within the overarching plan of the triune God to share the communion of trinitarian life with human persons who are created out of nothing in the image and likeness of God, and who, in his name and according to his plan, exercise a creative stewardship and sovereignty over the physical universe.

I have maintained and the bolded language seems to back me that God could have inserted Adam and Eve in the timeline whever He wished regardless of what may have been happening on the earth at the time.

IMHO, this is not quite adequate; simply because God’s activity is never merely a display of naked power.​

Now he is in conflict with earlier magisterial teaching when he speaks of polygenism.

That section you put in bold type is interesting.​

More basically - is it your understanding that theistic evolution is ruled out by the words in the section you emphasised ?

I am absolutely not a scientist (alas) - but ISTM that, in principle, one can perfectly well have both evolution of (what is now) the human body, &, have divine intervention. I don’t see any contradiction. Any more than there is a contradiction in attributing transubstantiation both to the person making the hosts, & to the priest who consecrates them. Both are causes of the final effect, but in different ways. And in both cases, the totality of all the causation involved at every stage of what ends in transubstantiation is caused by God. So by parity of reasoning theistic evolution is totally the work of God, with a bit of causation from secondary causes of various kinds as well - none of which could be causal at all, without God.

If God’s activity, & that of secondary causes, were opposed, that would cause a problem - but since all causes are forms of God’s activity, no problem arises.

What might make theistic evolution untenable is not the presence of the working of God, but lack of the sort of evidence which would make it coherent, possible, honest, valid as to methods, & truthful, to talk of theistic evolution. ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

**FAITH & REASON **- next section

…Theistic evolutionists are mistaken in this regard because none of the Fathers believed that the Creation period was of a duration any longer than six, natural days. The sought for consensus lay in that respect and constitutes the traditional belief of the Church throughout the ages; a belief proclaimed by Popes, Doctors, Scholastics and the humblest peasant.

Misunderstandings that are not corrected don’t cease to be misunderstandings, whoever utters them.​

What the Fathers or others thought doesn’t matter - they were not dealing with the questions we are, so it’s bad as a method to invoke what they say. It’s not as if the Fathers could even read Hebrew - almost none could. Modern commentators are worth many Fathers, because they are properly equipped to talk about Genesis. Tradition is dangerous if it gets in the way of the real meaning of the text. ##

Likewise, paragraph VIII is also claimed by theistic evolutionists to allow leeway for an unorthodox belief in billion year ages for the Earth, an absolutely necessary requirement for the evolutionary concept within the natural sciences.

Something is wrong if orthodoxy is allowed to dictate scientific findings. For it to do so is illegitimate, because it is intellectually unsound for doctrine to encroach on other sciences.​

It is a failure of faith to falsify the sciences for the sake of doctrine - real faith would be humble enough to listen to others for a change. Which is why palaeontology mustn’t be muddied by nonsense from a Church. Christians have a weak faith if the sciences can overthrow it. The sciences can be good science only if they are let alone & not interfered with. ##

It is clearly the consensus of the Fathers that Creation took no longer than six, natural days and so the claim is without Patristic foundation and therefore invalid.

This is the kind of dead Traditionalism that makes Catholic doctrine a laughing-stock. They had no knowledge of science in 2006 - so they were in no place to comment on it. If they had been alive in 2006, they might well have accepted evolution. So it is historically absurd, & irrational, to quote them as witnesses against evolution - one can do so only by a trick of perspective.​

…

The most conclusive evidence that the word “day” in Genesis 1 is to be interpreted literally as a 24-hour period is confirmed by the consistent use of the phrase “and there was evening and morning,” which appears in each of the days of Creation (cf., Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). The use of “evening and morning” in Scripture shows that it always refers to the sequence of darkness and light comprising a single period of a day, a 24 hour period. Outside of Genesis, there are only eight appearances of “evening and morning” in Scripture (cf., Ex 16:8-13; 27:21; 29:39; Lv 24:3; Nm 9:21; Dan 8:26).

Which is why​

• 1. It tortures the text to make it mean six ages (for example)
• 1. It is impossible to accept the notion of a 144-hour period of creation.
     The meaning of words, important as it is, does not of itself suffice to show what the passage they are used in means - which is why theology by dictionary is so misleading. The word “cat” denotes a small feline quadruped mammal with whiskers & tail in the phrase “It’s raining cats & dogs” - but the phrase is not giving information about felines, or even saying anything about them at all; for that is not the sense of that idiom.

So with yom. The appearance of the word no more guarantees that it is being used to affirm that creation took place in 144 sequential hours, than the idiom just quoted has to be talking about cats. Idioms point beyond themselves not to themselves - it is a mistake to stop with the words of the idioms. “It’s raining cats & dogs” points to the meaning that “It’s raining very heavily” - it is excessive literalism to interpret it according to its words as meaning “felines & canines are dropping from the sky”; for the usage of the words in that idiom also has to be taken into account.

Fundamentalists are at last waking up to the truth of things which Biblical scholars have known for 150 years; & for which they have been blamed, not least by Popes. ##

 

[PoG]

Posted by PhilVaz
PoG citing Pius XII << Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled >>

This is the key phrase.

Phil, I agree that it is a hard hitting phrase. As you indicate, it is hard hitting because His Holiness does not see how this philosophical conjecture could possibly reconcile with Revealed Truth. But you are attempting to use this sentence in isolation in the hope that it could, maybe, accomodate polygenism. The fact that you can not do this - “the faithful cannot embrace that opinion” - is stated plainly in the context of the paragraph that you cut out. The preceeding sentences below are key to the whole paragraph:

When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.

Do you agree that His Holiness states very clearly that the faithful have no liberty to, and can not embrace the conjectural opinion of polygenism? Or is there a subsequent Magisterial pronouncement that I am not aware of that says that the faithful may now do so?

I’ve linked my own article, which states these are De Fide:

– God was moved by His Goodness to create the world. (De Fide)
– The world was created for the Glorification of God. (De Fide)
– The Three Divine Persons are one single, common Principle of the Creation. (De Fide)
– God created the world free from exterior compulsion and inner necessity. (De Fide)
– God has created a good world. (De Fide)
– The world had a beginning in time. (De Fide)
– God alone created the world. (De Fide)
– God keeps all created things in existence. (De Fide)
– God, through His Providence, protects and guides all that He has created. (De Fide)
– The first man was created by God. (De Fide)
– Man consists of two essential parts – a material body and a spiritual soul. (De Fide)
– Every human being possesses an individual soul. (De Fide)
– Our first parents, before the Fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace. (De Fide)
– The donum immortalitatis, i.e. the divine gift of bodily immortality of our first parents. (De Fide)
– Our first parents in paradise sinned grievously through transgression of the Divine probationary commandment. (De Fide)
– Through the original sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the anger and the indignation of God. (De Fide)
– Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the Devil. (De Fide)

Can we agree these are De Fide?

Absolutely. But it appears obvious that there is more. In your referenced article you state that:

If truths are defined by a solemn judgment of faith (definition) of the Pope or of a General Council, they are “de fide definita” (or simply De Fide).

His Holiness Pope Leo XIII appears to do this when he declares that:

We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of Creation, having made man from the slime of the Earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep.

Would you agree with this? If not where in the hierarchy of doctrine does it seem to you that it should be held?

It sounds very obviously like Dogma to me. If you disagree do you, or any of your apologist colleagues know of any theologians who have given their opinion on this Declaration of Faith?

Yes, there are some theological difficulties with evolution, we’ve dealt with all of them in here in some detail (death before sin, Adam/Eve and original sin, how to interpret Genesis, human evolution and hominids, randomness and God’s providence, etc), but you also need to deal with the fact the modern Popes accept evolution and apparently see no conflict with modern science.

If it is true that the past few Popes have accepted macroevolution on the advice of the PAS do you agree that such is only their personal opinion? Or have there been any Magisterial pronouncements addressed to the Church that allow the faithful to believe in common ancestry with non-humans?

Are you saying you know more than the Popes? Are you saying the Popes are completely ignorant of previous teaching?

No, of course not. I very much doubt that I know more about anything than most people do. But I do know enough about the Faith to know that we must hold fast to that which has been handed down to us. I also know that Modernism has spread its deadly pathogen very efficiently and that the Catholic formation of many of us has been seriously deficient because of it.