What if Adam had remained obedient? The question of animal death in a state of tranquillity and of the present predatory behaviour of wild creatures remains a mysterious area awaiting further clarification from the Magisterium. The notions of “kill or be killed”, “red in tooth and claw”, and of sharks killing seals in frenzy right next to non-fallen human beings swimming in the sea all seem most inconsistent with what we know about our gracious Creator/Redeemer.
Because non-human creatures do not possess rational souls, Catholics need not hold that they were not intended to die, but perhaps their death would have involved peaceful processes if Adam had been obedient. Regarding predatory behaviour, it is possible that the behaviour of wild creatures was affected by the Fall; wounded in their natural powers while their intrinsic nature remained intact. Just as the bodies of human beings were made with the possibility of death yet this would have been overridden by grace, perhaps the possibility for vicious behaviour would also have been overridden by grace had Adam remained obedient. As indicated in Genesis, we all could have lived together happily as vegetarians.
Pius XII declared in Humani Generis that evolution must not be taught as though proven fact, and the 1994 CCC (389) warned that, “we cannot tamper with the revelation of Original Sin without undermining the mystery of Christ”. Theistic Evolution does tamper with this central doctrine; it should be regarded as impermissible belief for Catholics. In view of the strong link between the spread of Modernist beliefs and the teaching of evolution as fact in so many Catholic schools since the 1960’s, and the massive falling away from practice of young Catholics after leaving school, it is no wonder that the theologian Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner FFI described evolution as, “a doctrinal error parading in scientific guise”.
Progressive Creation
The third alternative concept, Progressive Creation, holds that God created the Universe billions of years ago and much later specially created each kind of life form with repeated divine intervention, at great intervals of time apart, and set genetic variation into operation to allow subsequent changes within kind.