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Page 8

Chapter 13; Part 1 Continued...

"Evolutionary theories stress the continuity of development between the species from the lower to the higher, as well as a sufficient duration to permit the operation of natural or artificial causes according to the laws governing these. Catholic teaching stresses an essential discontinuity in the case of those essences, whose limits were fixed by the Creator and which cannot be modified by the intervention of natural or artificial agents of a finite power. [The Church] has never pretended in any instance of observable species, on the basis of revelation, to know what those limits are. But that there are such limits, even at the level of inanimate existence, sound science as well as philosophy has tended to confirm." ⁶

Fr. Fehlner also points out why Evolutionism cannot, by definition, be accepted by the Magisterium:

"Good arguments can actually be adduced in fact to show that evolution is simply not a scientific hypothesis. It is a dogma providing the context for all scientific endeavors. And it is just this assumption of evolutionism as the universal paradigm that directly conflicts with the teaching of the Church . . .

"The doctrine of creation, in general and in all its detail, is intimately bound up with the mystery of salvation. That is why no Catholic may call into question any aspect of the doctrine of creation which in fact the Church believes related to the mystery of salvation without also doubting that latter mystery." ⁷

In the light of Tradition, there can be little doubt that Adam was directly created when God made his body using the "dust" or "slime" of the earth. Eve was also directly created by God, using a portion of Adam's body around which the rest of her body was created. Their rational souls were also directly created at the same time as their bodies.

As Cardinal Ruffini strongly argued in his book (Ruffini, p. 120), it is known with certainty that Eve's body was formed directly by God and definitely was not the product of Evolution. Ruffini also argued that the Church Fathers unanimously interpreted the text relative to the formation of Eve in its proper literal sense (Ruffini, p. 121), even typifying the origin of the Church from the side of Christ crucified.

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⁶ Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, "In the Beginning" (Three-part series published in Christ to the World, Rome: Via di Propaganda, 1988), Volume XXXIII, Nos. 1-4, p. 243.
⁷Ibid., pp. 246, 247.