An age of billions of years for the Universe has serious theological and scientific arguments against it. Since naturalistic evolution is rejected, it becomes necessary to resort to countless divine interventions to account for how life-forms kept coming into being. In contrast, Tradition holds that the Creation events reached finality soon after the events of Creation. The interdependence within diverse bio-systems necessarily requires fairly rapid creation. Fruit trees created on Day 3 need birds and bees to arrive on Day 5, not millions of years later. Why the quest to supplant direct creation with direct intervention, and which Scripture passages can be cited in support? “A day is as 1,000 years” (2 Peter 3:8) refers to timeless eternity rather than to the Creation events. We know that God instantly created space, time and matter, and instantly turned water into wine and instantly brought the dead back to life. In keeping with Scripture passages, why not allow Him to instantly stretch out the heavens (i.e., the Universe) and lightwaves on Day 4, less than 10,000 years ago?
It seems likely that, at the tiniest level of matter, God keeps sub-atomic particles coming and going all the time, while allowing us to exercise Free Will. But the teaching on Secondary Causes (CCC 306,308) holds that God acts through his created life-forms and does not constantly intervene to tinker with Creation and produce new species by direct guidance. This is not to deny miracles; we know that they occur but few would argue that they occur in the multitudes required for the concept of Progressive Creation.
The global Flood of Noah is usually denied by advocates of Progressive Creation in favour of local floods. But this means that God’s “rainbow” promise, to no more destroy mankind through a flood, has been broken many times. (eg The Bangladesh tidal wave flood of 1971 killed 300,000 people.) How can Catholics loyal to the Church founded by our great Creator/Redeemer Himself, ignore or revise the words of Christ about the Genesis revelation, and similarly ignore the Scripture statements of the first Pope, St Peter, about the reality of Noah’s Flood? If a global Flood were to be conceded, the next question waiting to be addressed is this: did it occur before or after the sin of Adam? Genesis reveals that it occurred after Adam’s sin, thus it must have occurred less than 10,000 years ago. The strata and fossils thus cannot be any older than 10,000 years.
Those who favour eons of time have to address Leo XIII’s benchmark teaching in Providentissimus Deus (1893). He taught that there are various senses used in Scripture but insisted that the literal, obvious sense must hold ground until shown to be disproven. Since a meaning of 24 hours natural days was held by most of the Fathers and was permitted by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1909 as the proper sense and thus is unlikely to be overturned, the onus of responsibility of proof lies entirely with those who prefer eons of years. It may not be possible to prove a young Universe scientifically but I contend that, ultimately, the long ages view is contradictory of Catholic Tradition.