Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Pax Christi!
As we approach the great feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we are reminded of the central importance of the Incarnation, of mankind, and of our earthly home in God’s providential designs. Theistic evolutionists like the American physicist Dr. Stephen Barr and the Italian theologian Monsignor Balducci assume that life can evolve from non-life through a material process, so they believe that there are intelligent extraterrestrial organisms (i.e., extraterrestrial non-human, corporeal creatures) elsewhere in the universe. This is also why Dr. Barr believes that if the ET's fell on Planet X, Our Lord Jesus Christ would have taken a Planet X ET corporeal nature to redeem them, just as He took our human nature to redeem us. He proclaims this to Catholics wherever he goes. But it is a blasphemy.
To refute the blasphemous thesis of Monsignor Balducci, Dr. Barr, and their like-minded colleagues, aerospace engineer Eric Bermingham and I have posted a summary and a critique of their principal arguments. In this newsletter we will just address the worst blasphemy—the claim that Our Lord Jesus Christ assumed (or could have assumed) more than one created nature through more than one mother—to redeem the various races of evolved intelligent corporeal beings throughout the universe. The article on the Kolbe website refutes this blasphemy but also refutes the rest of the principal claims of Monsignor Balducci and his school of theologians.
One Incarnate Word through One Immaculate Conception
It is a dogma of the Faith that Our Lord Jesus Christ has TWO natures--a divine nature and a human nature. Any deviation from that doctrine is heresy, pure and simple. To allege that Our Lord took a Planet X or Planet Y nature would contradict the dogma of the two natures. It is incredible that one never hears of any theologian calling Dr. Barr out on this point. The two natures of Christ is a dogma of the ORTHODOX faith that every Catholic should know and defend.
Indeed, the dogma of the two natures of Christ is sufficient to refute all of the wild conjectures about Our Lord incarnating Himself in non-human corporeal natures on planets elsewhere in the universe. But these conjectures are also quite unconvincing for other reasons. In the first place, there is not a single testimony in favor of his hypothesis from any Father or Doctor of the Church, or even from any theologian of note from before the sixteenth century. Is it probable that God would allow the Church to be ignorant of such an important point for 1500 years before revealing it—not to His saints or to his Doctors, but to speculative theologians? Indeed, all but one of his testimonies are taken from theologians who lived in the period when evolution and long ages of time were generally accepted by Catholic intellectuals.
This leads to another disturbing observation, namely that Mons. Balducci’s hypothesis is almost always presented in the context of cosmic evolution and is used to bolster faith in the evolution of life on various planets through natural processes. Indeed, as Gary Bates documents in Alien Intrusion, faith in non-angelic intelligent beings is almost always associated with New Age errors and heresies of all kinds. If Mons. Balducci’s hypothesis is correct, why is this so? Why do the mystical writings approved by the Church—St. Hildegard of Bingen, St. Bridget of Sweden, Venerable Maria of Agreda, and Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich—say nothing of these hypothetical non-angelic intelligent beings?
“By Your Fruits You Shall Know Them”
These reflections lead to a final observation.
Jesus said that a tree should be judged by its fruit. But what kind of fruit has Mons. Balducci’s hypothesis produced? It would seem that Mons. Balducci’s hypothesis has demeaned the importance of man and of his earthly home in comparison with some purely hypothetical “superior intelligences” in outer space. On the other hand, the Bible and Catholic Tradition have always maintained that the Incarnation of Jesus Christ on earth has made man and the earth the center of the created universe and of all history. Sadly, Mons. Balducci’s hypothesis strengthens faith in the bankrupt evolutionary hypothesis and distracts human beings from their primary duty which is to do the Will of God ON EARTH as it is in Heaven. For all of these reasons, we believe that Catholics should regard his hypothesis as a diabolical distraction from their daily duty to work for “peace on earth” by doing the Will of God “on earth as it is in Heaven.”
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. We have decided to hold our 2022 annual leadership retreat at the headquarters of the Apostolate for Family Consecration in Bloomingdale, Ohio, again this year, from Sunday, August 28, until Saturday, September 3. For more information or to obtain a registration form, please email me at howen@shentel.net
P.P.S. From approximately March 25 until April 7, I will be giving seminars in the Midwest again. I have definite commitments to speak at a school in Kansas on Wednesday, March 30, and in a parish in the Detroit area for four days (almost certainly in the first week in April), but I would be able to go to a wide range of places between Kansas City and Virginia on my way to or from Kansas if I have enough advance notice. If you would be willing and able to organize a Kolbe talk or seminar somewhere in the area between Virginia and Kansas between March 25 and April 7, please let me know as soon as possible, and we will plan accordingly.
