Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
My wife and I recently returned from our annual visit to one of our daughters who is a member of the Benedictines of Mary, a wonderful congregation, full of joyful, dedicated, faithful, obedient, and charitable Brides of Christ who fully embrace the traditional reading of the sacred history of Genesis. Just three days before our visit, the Church celebrated the Birth of St. John the Baptist on the 24th of June, exactly nine months after the ancient feast which celebrates his conception in the womb of St. Elisabeth. St. John the Baptist is the only saint besides Our Lady whose conception is honored by an ancient liturgical feast, bearing witness to the mystery of his sanctification in the womb of St. Elisabeth at the Visitation.
According to Aristotle, human life begins when fetal movement is detected, an hypothesis called progressive animation, later adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas. The wide acceptance of this hypothesis may explain why the feast of the conception of St. John the Baptist was removed from the Roman Martyrology in the 15h century after having been honored liturgically for a thousand years. But what is certain is that the early establishment of this feast exemplifies the way that Scripture and Tradition, especially as expressed in the Sacred Liturgy, trump the speculations of fallible human science. Indeed, the liturgical feasts of the conception of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of St. John Baptist powerfully testify to the existence of a human person from conception. This trifold liturgical tradition ought to have trumped the speculations of natural scientists, even geniuses of the highest order, like Aristotle. Had Catholics upheld the principle of “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” as firmly as our first fathers in the Faith, we would never have allowed the legalization of abortion or abortifacient contraception, and we would have fought harder to protect the life of every human being from conception to natural death.
“Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” : “The Law of Praying is the Law of Believing”
If the sacred liturgy proclaimed the truth that human life begins at conception almost two thousand years before the scientific confirmation of that fundamental truth of biology, how much more does it proclaim the truth about things that God has revealed about the supernatural origins of man and the universe. While we were visiting at St. Joseph’s Priory, my daughter drew my attention to the section of Dom Gueranger’s The Liturgical Year in which he correlates the events of the days of Holy Week with the days of the Hexameron. For example, from the prayers of the Mozarabic Liturgy for Easter Monday, Dom Gueranger quotes this beautiful prayer:
O Christ our God, who by creating the firmament on the second day, didst prefigure the solidity of the Scriptures on which rests Thy Church; and Who, by separation of the waters from the waters, didst designate the separation of the heavenly choirs of angels from man, the weak and inferior creation: O Thou, the Author of the two Testaments, who didst fulfill the figure of the ancient sacrifice by the new covenant of the immolation of Thy Body; grant that by understanding and wisdom we may be associated to the angelic powers, as to the waters that are above us, and may ever tend to heavenly things. May the solidity of the two laws be so fixed in our hearts, that the power of Thy Resurrection lead us to infinite joy.
On Easter Tuesday, Dom Gueranger once again correlates the supernatural work of the third day of the Hexameron with the third day of Holy Week. He writes:
On the third day of the creation, the waters, which covered the earth, were gathered together at the Word of the Son of God, and flowed into the hollows prepared for them. The seas thus formed, the surface of the earth became habitable for those beings that were soon to be called forth from nothingness. On this day, then, the angels beheld the place where we are to have our temporary sojourn. The time will come when this very Son of God who now separates the waters from the earth, will himself inhabit it, after having assumed our human nature. Let us offer him our earth, as his rightful domain, over which, as over heaven, all power has been given over to him. The Mozarabic breviary gives us the following beautiful prayer, in which are explained the mysteries hidden under the text that describes this third day’s creation:
O Almighty God, the Father! Who on the third day didst vouchsafe to separate the dry land from the briny waters that were on the earth, hereby prefiguring how, at a future time, Thou wouldst separate the people that thirsted after the fount of faith from them that had unbelieving hearts: grant that we who are freed from the fetters of unbelief may proclaim without doubting the resurrection of Thy Son, that He that rose from the dead on the third day give us to rise by the union of three virtues : and that thus made strong by faith, hope, and charity, we may merit the eternal happiness of the resurrection.
Can anyone doubt that the Servant of God Dom Gueranger and the whole liturgical tradition of the Church bears witness to a literal six-day creation, brought to its fulfilment in the work of the six days of Holy Week? Isn’t it high time that we begged Our Lord to deliver us from centuries of brainwashing and slavery to the wild speculations of fallible and arrogant human beings about our origins and to give us back the faith of our Fathers so that we can rejoice in the truth of all that He has revealed to us?
Young Traditional Catholics: The Future of the Church and the Hope of the World
On our trip to Missouri to visit our daughter, I was privileged to be able to speak to a group of about twenty Catholic young adults in Nashville, Tennessee, about creation and evolution. The friend who organized the event confirmed what I have heard from members all over the world, but especially in North America, Europe and Oceania, that during the recent Coronamania many young adults learned how far from trustworthy were so many of the scientists and policy makers who used the mantra “follow the science” to impose all kinds of mandates that contradicted sound science and common sense.
In the wake of the horrific consequences of the Covid mandates, many young adult Catholics have learned to do their own research and to examine the evidence for and against competing explanations of the evidence before reaching their own conclusions. In the process, they have learned that traditional teachings of the Church on faith and morals, abandoned by so many of their teachers, actually have a much better basis in reality than the relativistic modernist version of Catholicism that has been inflicted upon them. Many of these young adult Catholics have discovered the roots of the current crisis of faith and morals in the abandonment of the Church’s traditional teaching on creation and more and more of them are banding together to help to restore the true Catholic doctrine of creation as the foundation of our Faith and as the only firm foundation for a culture of life.
At the forefront of the young adult Catholic movement to defend and restore the traditional teaching of the Church is a group of young Catholic Creationists who have launched a new server on the internet. In the words of one of the founders:
The Catholic Creationists server is a new and growing initiative dedicated to proclaiming and defending the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation—faithfully, boldly, and without compromise.
Though still under development, the server is already open for those who wish to be part of a vibrant community centered on the truth of God’s creation, as taught by the Church from the beginning. Rooted in the firm conviction that Genesis is real history—interpreted literally in accordance with the unanimous teaching of the Fathers—the server seeks to equip Catholics to resist the errors of evolutionism and reclaim a fully Catholic worldview.
The vision for the server is inspired by the work of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation to affirm the compatibility of sound theology, authentic science, and Sacred Scripture. Members can expect faithful catechesis, thoughtful discussion, valuable resources, and a community of like-minded Catholics who share a love for truth and the glory of God’s creation.
We invite all who are interested to join us in building this digital stronghold for creation truth—one that we pray will serve as a source of light, clarity, and conviction for years to come.
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth…” (Exodus 20:11)
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
Join us here: https://discord.gg/creationist
I hope and pray that as many of our members as possible will support this new initiative by your prayers and by your participation in the development of this new community.
Through the prayers of the Mother of God, and of all the Holy Angels and Saints, may the Holy Ghost guide us all into all the Truth!
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Today is a First Saturday. Please be sure to answer Our Lady’s appeal for the First Saturday devotions as described by the Fatima Center at this link.
P.P.S. Greg Clovis, Dr. Marco Fasoli, and I will be giving a series of Kolbe presentations in the United Kingdom from July 12 to July 20. We have one or two openings, so, if you would be able to organize a venue for us somewhere in the UK between those dates, please contact Mr. Greg Clovis at Family Life International as soon as possible: gregfli@protonmail.com.
