Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Having been involved in the struggle to hold fast what was handed down, especially in regard to the sacred history of Genesis and the true Catholic doctrine of creation, for more than 25 years, I can say confidently that the decline in knowledge—especially expert knowledge—of Latin has contributed greatly to the current crisis of faith and morals. I could give many examples, but in this newsletter I will focus on one that goes to the heart of the current confusion over the interpretation of the Church’s most authoritative dogmatic decree on creation. Then I will tell you about a wonderful new resource that will help the rising generations of our children and grandchildren to reclaim their lost Latin heritage.
When Dr. Thomas Seiler debated Big Bang Cosmology with a priest-astrophysicist a few months ago, the majority of viewers going into the debate adhered to the Big Bang hypothesis. But by the time that the debate was finished, the majority had embraced the traditional reading of Genesis. One of the main reasons why more and more Catholic young people are abandoning theistic evolution for the traditional doctrine of special creation is their recognition that Catholic academia has allowed the father of lies to shift the burden of proof from the challenger of God’s Word to its defender. If the Guardians of the Faith had not allowed Satan and his agents to do this on a grand scale in the early days of the Evolution Revolution, evolution-based modernism would never have been able to take over most of our institutions. One Catholic intellectual who refused to be fooled by the devil’s tactic in the early days of the Revolution was perhaps the greatest lay apologist in American history, the self-taught New England convert Orestes Brownson (1803-1876).
Brownson entered the Church after having earned a stellar reputation as an original writer and thinker, a member of the intellectual circle that included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. His Review offered a bold and uncompromising defense of the Catholic Faith which earned the respect and admiration of the entire episcopate. On May 13, 1849, Brownson received a letter from Bishop Kenrick of Philadelphia, signed by the Archbishop of Baltimore and by all of the American Bishops in attendance at the Council of Baltimore in 1849, to encourage him by their "approbation and influence" to continue his "literary labors in defense of the faith." When Charles Darwin published his speculations on the origins of man and living things, beginning with his Origin of Species and continuing with the Descent of Man, Brownson recognized immediately that the Emperor of Evolution was naked but that his nakedness needed to be exposed swiftly, lest the world begin to admire the magnificence of the Emperor's New Clothes as described by the disciples of Darwin. Brownson's critique of Darwin's Descent of Man rings as true today as when he penned it 150 years ago.
Brownson begins his critique of Darwin by exposing his failure to provide any actual evidence for his hypothesis—in terms that remain as valid today as they were then. After exposing Darwin’s abject failure to provide any solid evidence for his hypothesis, Brownson takes the offensive and places the burden of proof where it should always be—on anyone who challenges the Word of God in Genesis as it has been understood in God’s Church from the beginning. Lest anyone think that Brownson's critique applies to evolutionary biology but not to Big Bang cosmology, please reflect on two statements that Fr. Boyd made during the debate with Dr. Seiler: 1) He said that he does not have an in-depth knowledge of biology, and 2) that he believes that Adam was specially created, body and soul, and that Eve was created from Adam's rib. Taken together, these two statements signify that Fr. Boyd has rejected the consensus view in academia in favor of the evolution of the human body without having acquired a thorough knowledge of biology. Why? Because Scripture, Tradition and authoritative Magisterial teaching, up to and including the PBC decrees of 1909, tell us that we must believe those things on the authority of God revealing them in the sacred history of Genesis. This is the position of the Kolbe Center as well—and we applaud him for it. On the other hand, he takes the Kolbe Center to task for NOT believing in Big Bang cosmology and its 13.8 billion year time-frame, in spite of the fact that the same PBC decrees that told us we must believe in the special creation of Adam and Eve also teach that we must believe that God created all things at the beginning of time. (This is a reaffirmation of the teaching of Lateran IV that God created all things “simul” “ab initio temporis” and of the Roman Catechism which teaches that “The Divinity created all things in the beginning. He spoke and they were made. He commanded and they were created”).
Fr. Boyd argued that Lateran IV does not teach that God created all things at the same instant or relatively instantaneously, because “simul” in the Firmiter can be translated "together," as in the Nicene Creed, "together (simul) with the Father and the Son He is adored and glorified." However, in a paper that Kolbe Center members submitted for approval to (and which received approval from) outstanding theologians all over the world, we have demonstrated that the greatest commentators on Lateran IV, like St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Doctor of the Church, for the 600 years from the time of the Council until the widespread acceptance of Lyellian geology at the end of the nineteenth century, consistently held that "simul" was intended by the Council Fathers and Pope Innocent III to be understood as "at the same time," which would be compatible with the Augustinian minority view of an instantaneous creation of all things and with the overwhelming majority view of the Fathers and Doctors, that God created all things in six 24-hour days, but not with theistic evolution or a progressive creation over long ages of time.
Here are excerpts from the commentaries of Cornelius à Lapide and St. Lawrence of Brindisi in which they explicitly state that Lateran IV defined that “simul” in the Firmiter means “at the same time” and rules out the view—held by a number of Church Fathers—that the angels might have existed for a long time before the creation of the material universe. First, Lapide:
You will ask, where and when were the angels created? Some have thought that they were created before the world. This was the opinion of Origen, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome and St. Hilary. Others such as Acacius and Gennadius have also thought that they were created before the world. However, I hold that they were created together with the world in the beginning of time, and that their creation took place in the empyrean heaven, for they are its citizens and inhabitants. So teach St. Bede, Peter Lombard and the scholastics along with St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and Rupert. St. Gregory of Nazianzus writes: “The angels came forth from God like the rays from the sun.” Moreover, as St. Gregory the Great says: “They broke forth like sparks from flint.” To be sure, the [Fourth] Lateran Council under Innocent III declared: One must believe with firm faith that from the beginning of time God created from nothing both spiritual and corporeal creatures, viz., the angelic and the mundane. This declaration is properly said against Origen, who thought that souls were created before bodies, [but] the Council’s words seem too well expressed and clear as to be able to be twisted into another meaning. Wherefore, my opinion is no longer just probable, but is both certain and de fide, for this is what the Council itself declares and defines.
The next quotation is taken from St. Lawrence of Brindisi’s Commentary on Genesis, which the Kolbe Center arranged to be translated into English for the first time. Like Lapide, he addresses the question of when the angels were created, in view of the different opinions recorded by the Church Fathers, some of whom held that the angels had been completed long before the material universe. He writes:
If, however, we accept the sense of the third explanation that in Genesis the empyrean heaven was created at the same time as the angels in it, everything is plain and every question arising theretofore is silenced. Thus the first, more powerful, and the highest spiritual and corporal creatures—the angels and the First Heaven (which the Saints called by the Greek word empyrion)—are not missing from the catalogue of creation. It is called empyrion or “fiery” because of the prominence of the place and the splendor of its light. This explanation, embracing both spiritual and bodily creatures, comprises everything within the other two opinions. It contains the thesis of St. Augustine, who was mindful of only spiritual creation, and it embraces the opinion of St. Basil, who supposed only a bodily creature.
This opinion was ratified by the Fourth Lateran Council held under Pope Innocent III. The Holy Roman Church professes that, from the beginning, God at once created corporeal creatures (those belonging to the world) and spiritual creatures (the angels). We find the same doctrine in the Decretals. Even the original Hebrew text of Genesis seems to be in agreement with this belief, where for heaven it reads hashamayim, a noun in the dual number, as if there were two kinds of heavens, to wit, a spiritual heaven and a corporeal heaven.
In other words, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, the last Doctor of the Church to write a detailed commentary on Genesis (with a specific reference to Lateran IV), confirms the truth of Dr. Seiler’s argument that “simul” in Lateran IV, in the context of a paragraph that contains two other terms that pertain to time—“ab initio temporis” and “deinde”—means “at once” in the sense of “at the same time.” However, as we document in the article at this link on the Kolbe website, in the Latin Vulgate in use at the time of Lateran IV there are numerous passages in which “simul” has the meaning of relative simultaneity, so that “simul” in its temporal meaning can mean “at the same moment” or “more or less, at the same time.” For example, Joshua 10:5 reads:
“Congregati igitur ascenderunt quinque reges Amorreorum rex Hierusalem rex Hebron rex Hieremoth rex Lachis rex Eglon simul cum exercitibus suis et castrametati sunt circa Gabaon obpugnantes eam.”
“So the five kings of the Amorrhites being assembled together went up: the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jerimoth, the king of Lachis, the king of Eglon, they and their armies, and camped about Gabaon, laying siege to it.”
In other words, the five kings went up together (simul) not at the same instant but in a coordinated series of movements. In the same way, God made all things simul in a coordinated relatively simultaneous series of creative acts.
Similarly, in Numbers 6:17, Moses writes:
“Arietem vero immolabit hostiam pacificam Domino offerens simul canistrum azymorum et libamenta quæ ex more debentur.”
“But the ram he shall immolate for a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord, offering at the same time (simul) the basket of unleavened bread, and the libations that are due by custom.”
In this instance, these items are not offered at the same instant, but in a coordinated series, with relative simultaneity, like the fiats of the Hexameron in Genesis Chapter One.
Fr. Boyd implied that the leaders of the Kolbe Center are being disobedient to the 1909 decrees of the PBC by holding that Catholics are bound to interpret “day” in Genesis One as a 24-hour day. But that is not true. We are adhering faithfully to those decrees, which place the burden of proof on those who challenge the literal and obvious sense of Genesis 1-3, NOT on those of us who defend the literal and obvious sense of the text, as did all of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Indeed, we confidently expect a restoration of the Catholic Faith throughout the world, to the extent that clergy and laity alike once again place the burden of proof where it should always have remained—on those who question the Word of God as believed in the Church from the beginning, and NOT on those who defend it!
Had Fr. Boyd interpreted the key term “simul” in the Firmiter of Lateran IV in light of the context of the decree, the use of the term in the Latin Vulgate and in other theological texts of the same period, and in light of the greatest commentators on the Firmiter like St. Lawrence of Brindisi and Cornelius a Lapide, he would never have concluded that the mere fact that “simul” can mean “together” without a temporal meaning in certain contexts disqualified the obvious temporal meaning of the term in the Firmiter. An extremely intelligent and well-intentioned priest like Fr. Boyd would only make such an egregious error because he had not been given a thorough enough mastery of the Latin language in his theological formation and because he allowed his prior commitment to Big Bang cosmology to determine his interpretation of a key Latin term in a 13th century dogmatic decree!
Latina Ecclesiae Per Genesim Data
The only way to restore a proper understanding of our Latin heritage among clergy and laity is to provide much better instruction in Church Latin, beginning at the elementary level. When St. Robert Bellarmine’s Jesuit superiors ordered him to teach Hebrew at a school run by the Society of Jesus, St. Robert had to first learn the Hebrew language! Then he was inspired to use the Hebrew text of the sacred history of Genesis as the basis for his introductory course in Biblical Hebrew. Acting on a similar inspiration, my wonderful wife and help-mate, Maria, has developed a fantastic Latin textbook for children (or child-like adults!) based on Genesis entitled Latina Ecclesiae Per Genesim Data.
Our grandchildren and other home-schooled children in our area who have used these materials have enjoyed them immensely and have made remarkable progress in their study of Latin, while being deeply inspired by their intimate contact with the Latin Vulgate text of Genesis and delightfully entertained by the drawings of our grandson, Rodney McClain. Expert Latin teacher Jonathan Arrington has taught Hebrew to homeschoolers, Latin for Thomas More College and Newman College Ireland, Roman and Early Church History for Christendom College, and Ancient Greek for the "Angelicum" (Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas). After reviewing and making use of Maria’s textbook, Jonathan wrote this remarkable recommendation:
Not intending any irreverence, I am thankful to God and to Holy Virgin, yes, but now also to Maria Owen for this contribution to Catholic Latin learning. I have been looking for something like this during my 22 years of teaching Latin to Catholics. I can’t even say that one finds bits and pieces of this great work in other curricula or books: Maria has truly *co-created* a Latin program that is both full of grace and full of authentic Latin at appropriate levels for beginners. I’m thrilled to be using this book to teach at Ite Domum and I’ll be recommending this book to all who sought something similar to it: we can now enjoy a Sabbath’s rest, thanks to Maria’s creative opus.
Mother Mary Josefa, the Prioress of the Priory of St. Joseph of the Benedictines of Mary, has also written a rave review of this work which she uses to teach Latin to her sisters.
Maria Owen provides a refreshing approach to Latin study, patterned on the natural way of language learning. Beginning with simple sentence structure and limited words, explained by charming pictures rather than English text, she gently draws her students to think directly in Latin without the tedious and time-consuming effort of translation. With the gradual introduction of more complex grammar and vocabulary, Mrs. Owen's method immerses the students in the original Vulgate text of Genesis, enabling them to read Holy Scripture in the sacred language with ease and fluency.
The first volume of Maria’s Latin textbook series is now available on the Kolbe website. I am confident that this textbook and the other textbooks in this series will make a significant contribution to the restoration of the study and appreciation of Latin as the official language of the Church, of authoritative theological texts, and of the traditional liturgy of the Roman Rite.
Through the prayers of the Mother of God and of all the saints, may the Holy Ghost lead us into all the Truth!
Hugh Owen
P.S. The 2025 Kolbe leadership retreat will take place at the Catholic Conference Center in Hickory, North Carolina, from July 31 to August 6. The retreat will equip attendees to defend and promote the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation in their spheres of influence as the foundation of our Faith and as the only firm foundation for a culture of life. For more information and to register for the retreat, please contact Hugh Owen at howen@shentel.net.
P.P.S. There is an upcoming livestream conference (see flyer below) on February 15th which will be shown on Robert Sungenis' YouTube channel at this link.
