Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Pax Christi!
In this newsletter I would like to renew our appeal to our readers to find opportunities for Sister Rose Thumitho of the Little Sisters of St. Francis in Uganda to give presentations on her work with the poor and needy in Jinja, Uganda, and how it relates to the legacy of the Holy Uganda Martyrs and their willingness to lay down their lives for the literal historical truth of the sacred history of Genesis, especially as it relates to the origin of Holy Marriage. If you would be willing and able to arrange a presentation for Sister Rose in your parish or in another Catholic venue, between the 31st of May and the 15th of June, please contact me at [email protected] as soon as possible.
St. Marcella and the Errors of Origen
One of the tragic consequences of the widespread acceptance by Catholics of theistic evolution is that, having assumed what has never come close to having been demonstrated—the evolution of a microbe into a human body through hundreds of millions of years of the same material processes that are going on now—they then presume (again, without proof) that we have “progressed” far beyond our “primitive forebears,” in knowledge as well as in technology, so that the study of history has little relevance for us at our advanced stage of evolution. In reality, the historical past contains the lessons that we need to face reality here and now, not the mythical past of a non-existent evolutionary history.
One of the crises in the history of the Church in which a papal error of judgment played a part was the Origenist controversy of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. Origen was a brilliant theologian and teacher in the city of Alexandria, one of the greatest Christian centers of the patristic era. Unfortunately, Origen’s fondness for Platonic philosophy led him to mix the doctrines of Christianity with the doctrines of Plato in a way that undermined some of the fundamental dogmas of the Faith. In particular, Origen held that God had originally only created spiritual beings and that the existence of material bodies was a consequence of the Fall. In his view—or, at least, in a view widely attributed to him—even inanimate creatures like the sun had once been spiritual beings, and the human body was itself the consequence of a primordial fall from grace. Many of the Church Fathers of the third and fourth centuries were strongly influenced by Origen and drew heavily from his multi-lingual edition of the Holy Scriptures and his voluminous exegesis of many parts of the Bible. However, by the end of the fourth century, St. Jerome and many other Church leaders began to speak out strongly against the errors in Origen’s work, especially in relation to creation, the Incarnation, and the place of spiritual and corporeal creatures in God’s plan for the universe.
At the end of the fourth century, St. Jerome’s former friend Rufinus arrived in Rome with a translation of one of Origen’s works and received a letter of blessing from the Pope, St. Siricius, to speak about Origen’s writings. One of St. Jerome’s spiritual children, the laywoman St. Marcella (whose feast day is January 31), was living a consecrated life in Rome at the time, and when she learned of the errors that were being propagated from Origen’s writings, she protested to the Pope. St. Jerome, though hardly an unbiased commentator, describes what happened in this way:
the muddy feet of heretics fouled the clear waters of the faith of Rome. No wonder that in the streets and in the market places a soothsayer can strike fools on the back or, catching up his cudgel, shatter the teeth of such as carp at him; when such venomous and filthy teaching as this has found at Rome dupes whom it can lead astray. Next came the scandalous version of Origen’s book On First Principles, and that ‘fortunate’ disciple [a Roman Christian named Macarius] who would have been indeed fortunate had he never fallen in with such a master. Next followed the confutation set forth by my supporters, which destroyed the case of the Pharisees [i.e., the Roman clergy who sided with Rufinus] and threw them into confusion. It was then that the holy Marcella, who had long held back lest she should be thought to act from party motives, threw herself into the breach. Conscious that the faith of Rome – once praised by an apostle – was now in danger, and that this new heresy was drawing to itself not only priests and monks but also many of the laity besides imposing on the bishop [Pope St. Siricius, the successor of Pope St. Damasus] who fancied others as guileless as he was himself, she publicly withstood its teachers choosing to please God rather than men.
In short, a mere lay woman dared to criticize the Pope and the Roman clergy for allowing Rufinus to spread a doctrine that contradicted the sacred history of Genesis as it had been understood in the Church, generally, up to that time. According to St. Jerome, Rufinus began to get the worst of it in the debates that flared up over Origen’s writings but asked and obtained letters of commendation from the Pope before leaving Rome for Aquileia. St. Siricius died in 398 A.D. without having withdrawn his permission for Rufinus to teach on the writings of Origen, but his successor, Pope St. Anastasius withdrew the permission and condemned them. St. Jerome asks rhetorically:
You will say, what has this to do with the praises of Marcella? I reply, She it was who originated the condemnation of the heretics. She it was who furnished witnesses first taught by them and then carried away by their heretical teaching. She it was who showed how large a number they had deceived and who brought up against them the impious books On First Principles, books which were passing from hand to hand after being ‘improved’ by the hand of the scorpion [Rufinus]. She it was lastly who called on the heretics in letter after letter to appear in their own defense. They did not indeed venture to come, for they were so conscience-stricken that they let the case go against them by default rather than face their accusers and be convicted by them.
Final Condemnation of the Errors of Origen
For a long, long time, men of great learning and virtue maintained a good opinion of Origen, focusing on what was good in his work and remaining in the dark about the serious errors in some of his writings. This, in turn, was aided and abetted by men like Rufinus who seem to have suppressed the blatantly erroneous parts of Origen’s writings while extolling other parts of them. However, this could not continue forever, and, with the condemnation of Pope St. Anastasius, the tide definitely began to turn. However, it took a long time for the serious errors in Origen’s work drawn from Platonic philosophy to be formally condemned and rejected by the whole Church at an Ecumenical Council. Indeed, this did not occur until the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the Third of Constantinople, in 553 A.D.
It is not hard to see many similarities between the case of Origen and that of Teilhard de Chardin. For a long time, men of learning and virtue, like Archbishop Fulton Sheen, maintained a good opinion of him, but this was largely the result of the efforts of Teilhard and his disciples to use “orthodox terminology” with a heterodox meaning. Like Rufinus in his day, they suppressed the blatantly erroneous parts of Teilhard’s evolutionary pseudo-science and spirituality, and even blasphemously promoted his false theology under the banner of the “primacy of Christ.” Indeed, we should take heart from the fact that it took more than 150 years for the Church of Christ to finally and definitively condemn the errors of Origen, so that subsequent authorities, like St. John of Damascus in his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, confidently condemned the “ravings of Origen” in regard to the origins of man and the universe.
Most of all, we should take heart from the example of St. Marcella, a mere lay-woman who organized an effective resistance against a false philosophy that threatened to corrupt the very foundations of Church teaching on the origins of man and the universe. In her day, there was no formal condemnation from a Pope to support her polemic against the errors of Origen. The Roman clergy and many of the most learned theologians of the age stood aloof or even supported the position of Rufinus. Yet St. Marcella and her allies effectively combated the errors of Origen in regard to the origins of man and the universe by appealing to the sacred history of Genesis as it had been understood in the Church from the beginning.
We who have the whole patrimony of the Fathers, Doctors, Popes, and Council Fathers, and their unanimous testimony to the literal truth of the sacred history of Genesis, have no excuse to shrink back from the fight to combat theistic evolution. But we must also learn from St. Marcella’s example how to attain victory in the combat. Recall that St. Jerome tells us that St. Marcella
called on the heretics in letter after letter to appear in their own defense. They did not indeed venture to come, for they were so conscience-stricken that they let the case go against them by default rather than face their accusers and be convicted by them.
Is there a lesson here for us?
Again and again, we have invited Catholic theistic evolutionists all over the world to join us in public debates so that the faithful, from the bishops to the laity, have an opportunity to hear the arguments for and against the hypothesis of theistic evolution, from the perspective of theology, philosophy, and natural science. Not only have we found only a handful of Catholics willing to accept our invitation during the last 25 years. We have also run into quite a few situations where we have been invited to give a seminar in a parish (or other Catholic venue) and someone from within (or even from outside) the parish contacts the local pastor or other decision-maker and gets us “cancelled,” often at the last moment.
A few years ago, I was approved to speak at a parish where, unbeknownst to me, a man who gives lectures on theistic evolution was a parishioner. Shortly before my scheduled presentation, the layman who had obtained approval from his pastor for me to speak at the parish told me that the theistic evolutionist lecturer had gone to their pastor to get me cancelled. The pastor, an African priest, told him that his predecessor had approved me, and that he had to respect the previous pastor’s decision. In the meantime, my contact in the parish introduced me to the theistic evolutionist speaker by email, and I offered to use the time allotted for my presentation to have a public debate with him so that the parishioners could hear the arguments on both sides and decide for themselves where the truth lay. The theistic evolutionist replied that he did not think that it was good for Catholics to debate with each other, so he declined my invitation. I was frankly amazed that he did not think that it was good for a Catholic to debate with his brother, but that it was perfectly fine for a Catholic to go behind his brother’s back to get him cancelled!
A Grass-Roots Approach to the Origins Debate
In recent months, a number of Catholics have used their internet presence to try to silence our message, so I was very grateful when one of the members of our leadership team suggested that we take a more “grass-roots” approach to encourage open and honest debate on the origins of man and the universe within the Catholic community. She suggested that we appeal to our membership to encourage debates on the origins of man and the universe in the universities, high schools, home-school coops, and other groups their children and grandchildren are involved in. One example of a simple resolution that could be proposed and debated would be:
Be it resolved that Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, authoritative Magisterial teaching, and sound natural science confirm the special creation of the first man and the first woman less than ten thousand years ago.
In the meantime, we renew our invitation to any theistic evolutionists to contact us to arrange a public debate on the following proposition:
Be it resolved that the traditional Catholic doctrine of special creation—the fiat creation of all of the different kinds of creatures by God for man less than ten thousand years ago—is a much better explanation of all of the facts of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, authoritative Magisterial teaching, and natural science than theistic evolution—the view that God used hundreds of millions of years of the same kinds of material processes going on now to evolve the bodies of the first human beings.
We will provide a theological speaker and a natural science speaker, and we invite our opponents to do the same. We can then agree on a time, a place, a moderator, and rules for the debate. In this way, we can all finally obey the exhortation of Pope Pius XII in Humani generis to conduct a thorough examination of the arguments for and against the evolutionary hypothesis. Indeed, we are confident that, as it was in the days of St. Marcella, so in our day, an open and honest debate will clearly demonstrate the truth of the traditional doctrine of creation and expose the fatal flaws in alternative accounts of the origins of man and the universe.
With gratitude for your faithful prayers and support, I am
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata, in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. The Kolbe leadership retreat will take place from the afternoon of August 1 until the morning of August 7. For information about the leadership retreat, please go to the Kolbe Center Events page at this link.
