Dr. David B. Hart

Dr. David Bentley Hart, Editor and feature writer for the journal - FIRST THINGS, is a man whose brain has been thoroughly scrambled, but whose basically uncorrupted mind is enabling him to make repeatedly valiant efforts to attain some clarity on the natural level. This may be for him, as it was, I suggest, for a man such as William Paley in the early 1800's - a prerequisite disposition for receiving the supernatural gift of divine Catholic faith. Please note well that I speak as the merest amateur.....amateur really means lover - though by temperament and my A.B.D. degree, as an academic. And I offer my remarks as the opinions of a reader who feels compelled to write - even though with the old...very old Parmenides, I firmly hold that there is but one Truth. All the rest is opinion. And so, I speak, however feebly and unauthoritatively, out of a tradition that holds onto truths of Faith and of Reason that are absolute, because objective and ultimately transcendent - making all else to be the merest opinions that can and do change with every changing fad of the culture.



As St. Thomas says in the very first question of his Summa, (ST., I, q.1, a6, ad 1 & 2) - theology is the highest of all the sciences. Science is knowledge and as such it belongs to theology - the highest science - to order all the other sciences, and to judge as to the truth and falsity of their conclusions. This judgment pertains, as well, to the natural sciences as to those of the supernatural Order of Divine Grace, where sin is concerned. The remaining articles of Question One concern methodology. I will only single out one point that I consider most relevant today. It is this: Authority



It is futile to argue in order to demonstrate with any person who will not accept at least one of the givens on which both the natural and the supernatural order are based. In the natural order, at least one, say the principle of contradiction - must be accepted before one can proceed to argue or to dialogue. In the supernatural order of Faith and Divine Grace, a person must accept at least one of the givens or First Principles. These givens are not susceptible of, or capable of, being demonstrated or proven in the sense of verification by empirical evidences. And St. Thomas adds that while the argument from authority is the weakest in the natural sciences, it is actually the strongest in the truths of faith. And this is the primary given that must be accepted before one can proceed to answer the apparent difficulties one may have. This given is that the truths of faith rest upon, and flow from the authoritative Word of God revealing, that is, Divine Revelation, as we say in the Act of Faith, "I believe all the truths that the Holy Catholic Church believes and teaches - because Thou hast revealed them Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived."



Note that this Act of Faith encapsulates the trio of Holy Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium.



In article 8 of Question One, St. Thomas cements, as it were, all the elements of his great Synthesis, by affirming that just as Grace does not destroy nature but builds upon, and is ordered towards, its perfection, so in the same way the natural sciences should support and minister to the Truths propounded by theology in all of its branches. Today we suffer from the fact that this great and wonderful synthesis of all the sciences, from the highest truths of mystical theology to the lowest level of particle physics, has come apart, not just at the seams, but in all the details of fabric, "solidarity," i.e., strength. I venture to point out that the shocking redundancy of the contradictory terms, "same sex marriage" is matched on the higher levels of intellectual science by the equally shocking oxymoronic term coined by Dr. David Hart, "metaphysical nihilism”.



The term nihilism is clear enough. It means nothingness. Specifically, the nothingness of everything. It is the ultimate denial of Creation. Creation affirms the ultimate and particular, concrete being of all things deriving their ultimately infinite value as existence participating, by created Grace, in the infinite life of God Himself. Even in the natural order, this existence of every individual being, by reason of its being created by the infinitely Good and Gracious Trinitarian God, possesses a value, a worth beyond human calculation. And the term metaphysical, referring to the science of Metaphysics, as the highest of the natural sciences, and their guiding light, refers primarily to natural existence, - to existing beings and so can, in no way, be used to qualify the word nihilism, which is the philosophy that negates all philosophy and creation itself. I trust no one will misconstrue my remarks to the detriment of Dr. Hart’s moral sense. Clearly Dr. Hart sees the nihilism that has overtaken the natural order, which includes the moral realm, in our society worldwide.



But I suggest that what perhaps, he fails to see is that because reality is hierarchically structured by Creation, (this is the importance of the Six Days) – what happens at the top in theology and metaphysics, and in physics and cosmology, especially trickles down – even rushes down into all the realms below. Thus, we see that all things begin to fall apart (as the poet John Donne observed and bemoaned), when Copernicus’ “hypothesis”, was taken seriously by Galileo, his popularize, and, despite the condemnation by the Church, via the Congregation for the – I forget which – the novelty took over, and now, some 500 years later, it has been morphed into a dogma, - a fact of “science”!



Well, it could not have happened if the Church had stood Her Ground on the facts of Divine Revelation, as she did in the Galileo case. (See Sungenis, op.cit.) (and the internet work of Redmond O’Hanlon.) But, She did not, and we see now, and suffer from the dissolution of all order, due to the loss of metaphysics as the natural support of theology. And it is in this field of metaphysics that Dr. Hart has lots of homework to do. Not to mention that of the Catholic physicists, especially the cosmologists, who must first of all look to the first principles of metaphysics and the categories of Aristotle, to find the formal objects of their respective sciences. But especially must they discover the substantial form – that is the Body of the Universe and the substance in which all the particle-atomic-accidental forms inhere.



It was Dr. Hart’s use of this term, Substantial Form – in the first paragraph of his article, “NO ENDURING CITY”, that alerted me to his lack of clarity regarding the Aristotelian-Thomistic science of metaphysics. Primarily, too, he must become aware of the Great Betrayal of the Neo-Scholastics who all, to a man, I believe, agreed to see the atoms of the periodic table as substantial forms, that undergo substantial changes in the chemical processes all high-school students perform every day. This was and apparently continues to be a colossal ERROR accepted as truth by Catholic scientists.



To be continued….

To Save Souls

 

It is often said by Traditionalist priests that the mission of the Church is to save souls.  This sounds great!  But what does it mean?  And what is its source?  (I suspect its source is Archbishop Lefebvre. )  I see that the advertisement for Dr. John Rao’s annual conference at Lake Garda, in Italy, speaks of “a desire to learn and preserve the Catholic, intellectual tradition.”  (Under the third picture from the top.)  I submit that this “intellectual tradition” does NOT begin with the Enlightenment and the 19^th century Catholic response to it.  Our “intellectual tradition” begins with the Deposit of Faith, dating from Pentecost, in the year 33, the year of the first Pentecost.  Any history of the world that denies or complicitly omits to take into account the biblical chronology of the Old Testament, is deeply guilty of refusing to acknowledge an essential part of Divine Revelation.  Pope Benedict XV, liberal and even modernist that he was, still wrote, or had written, SPIRITUS PARACLITUS, which condemned any division of Holy Scripture into “primary” and “secondary” meanings.  This condemnation, at least indirectly, also condemns the singling out of only certain meanings as pertaining to “salvation history”, or the saving of souls.  Who is to decide? 

 

The canon of scripture was determined by Holy Mother Church early in Her history.  And PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS, the encyclical on Scripture by Pope Leo XIII (1893) – even uses the words “written under the dictation of the Holy Ghost…..all the books…with all of their parts…are immune from absolutely all error…”  And all of Sacred Tradition confirms this.  It is a triumph of Modernism that allows the isolation of “salvation history” from the literal sense that is necessarily the basis of all the other senses. (Cf ST, I, q.1)  But St. Thomas has a remarkably prophetic classification in his DeVeritate, about the times and places of the world, when the Faith will be required only of the leaders, i.e., the priests who teach, but much less explicit knowledge of the truths of Faith on the part of the laity, due to social and cultural conditions of ignorance.  Somewhere in my papers, I presented this schema of St. Thomas, but it seems to be lost – however, it is there in the De Veritate.  And I seem to see in it some excuse for the young people of today who have been so effectively “dumbed down” by the educational methods to which they have been subjected, not to mention early exposure to the mesmerizing effects of the television and other media. 

 

So when we are told that the mission of the Church is to save souls, I think we must remember Our Lord’s words to go and teach….teaching all nations to observe all I have commanded you (Matt.28: 19-20).  Faith is in the intellect as the object of the intellect is TRUTH.  The object of the will is the good.  Our Lord is telling His apostles and their successors, so it seems to me, to teach the truths of Faith and the observance of – well, all that He has commanded, which, includes all the Gospel teachings from the Beatitudes to the Parables and the example of the events.  A good summary is in the Prayer after the Rosary:  “that we may imitate what these mysteries CONTAIN, and so OBTAIN what they promise.”

 

One of the saddest aspects of my life here in the nursing home is to see in Catholics – a loss – to all appearances – of the Hope of Heaven.  Please God, there is some vestige of Faith, of Hope and of Charity in souls that seem to have lost it all….

 

Kyrie, eleison.

The Three Great Catastrophes

    

There have been three great catastrophes in the history of the world: the Fall of the Angels – the Fall of Adam and the global deluge of Noah’s time. Even though we know of these catastrophes only from the Divine Revelation of Holy Scripture, all three of them left effects on the physical cosmos that may well and fairly be said to be observable to this present day. It is only the first, the fall of the angels, whose physical effects on the cosmos may be debated. However, consult the epic poem PARADISE LOST, by the 17^th century English Puritan, for the summation of traditional references to this historic event. As for the fall of Adam, preceded by that of Eve, we need only consult our own bodies and its extreme vulnerability to disease and injury, to experience first-hand the effects of the Original Sin. As for the effects of the global flood, the evolutionists work hard to obliterate these evidences, such as the Grand Canyon in America – the fossil graveyards found all over the world, and the geological strata themselves, while the Protestant Creationists, and most recently some French Catholic geologists, are demonstrating the strata of the so-called geological column to have formed very rapidly, at most in the space of one year, NOT over eons of time. Flood geology and studies revealing the serious flaws in the processes of radiometric dating of the rocks, the age of the earth and of the cosmos – all of these evidences have the evolutionists, and their worldview, on the defensive.

 

The biggest problem is the apathy and/or willing ignorance of those who should be defending the creationist cause. These persons are mainly, perhaps even exclusively, men of the Church who have been responsible for propagating those views of Holy Scripture that reduce,especially Genesis 1-11, to the status of non-literal fictions called myths. Since the rise of textual “criticism” – (scrutiny) and rationalism due to the rise of the empirical sciences under the influence of men like Galileo, Sir Francis Bacon, Rene’ Descartes, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, the entire bible, but especially the miracles and catastrophic events of the Old Testament – such as the Universality of the Noachian Flood and the miracles of the Exodus – all such historical events have been denied or explained away by sophistical reasons since the Renaissance, that great and prestigious watershed where all the classics of Greek and Roman literature mingled with the rising sciences of geology and archaeology – with the direct result of calling into question – the credibility of God’s inerrant and infallible Word of Divine Revelation. For such had Holy Scripture been revered by all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church –even by the three most notorious so-called “Reformers” of the Protestant Revolution. For Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, all accepted the plain, literal, historical sense of Genesis 1-11 and all of Scripture, for that matter, except for those parts concerning the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and Transubstantiation. And it was mainly Martin Luther, the former Augustinian Priest-Monk and pathologically deranged reformer, who instituted the Protestant hatred for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary in all of its un-bloody reality.

 

And such is the greatest evil of the evolutionary world-view –its detachment, even complete severance of the holy Catholic faith from its deepest roots in these three great catastrophic events recorded in Holy Scripture, especially that of the Original Sin, its connection with Genesis 1-3– and the punishment for consequent sin of the Global Deluge, recorded in Genesis 6-11. The denial of the literal significance of Genesis One cannot be overestimated as to its evil consequences. Not only has such denial deprived the ordinary Catholic of the full meaning of that first Article of the Creed: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth…..

 

These words single out God the Father as Creator based on what the early Fathers specified as the special mission of each of the Three Divine Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity. You will notice in the Apostle’s Creed and in the Nicene Creed, how the mission of each Divine Person is identified, even though all three Persons are present in Genesis 1-3. It is imperative that we regain these roots of the Faith in Genesis 1-11. Finally, this divorce of the divine Catholic Faith from its roots in Holy Scripture, has not only deprived the ordinary lay Catholic of knowledge, that is rightfully and even necessarily ours, it has also deprived the Catholic scientist of necessary clues about his physics, chemistry and cosmology. Clues he could not obtain from any other source – unless it be Tradition –especially the Tradition concerning the Geocentricity of the Universe. For this Tradition, we have the Galileo case and the infallible condemnation of the proposition that the earth orbits the sun as formal heresy. This is not only Tradition and Scripture, but also Magisterium, the Catholic’s trinity of certitudes about both the truths of Reason and of Faith.

 

*** See GALILEO WAS WRONG – THE CHURCH WAS RIGHT, in two volumes by Dr. Robert A. Sungenis and Dr. Robert Bennett. And the invaluable SYNOPSIS, and now a movie!

Murder In Academia

   

Someone, a Catholic, with talent for narrative, could re-write any one of Mary Higgins Clark’s suspense novels, with this kind of a plot: 

 

A professor of physics is murdered by the Dean of the College of Physics at the instigation of the President of the University. A cast of characters includes at least five full university professors in the science of Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Biochemistry and Microbiology. These men and women (must include at least 2 women) – discuss the evidences for and against the position of the murdered man. The murdered man was a professor of astrophysics, and had developed a detailed cosmology that unified all the sciences, and proved by evidential exposure, that evolution was false at every point and could no longer be sustained by anyone devoted to the truth. But this professor’s method over the years (he is now in his sixties when murdered) – had been simply to present a very positive cosmology –using the very discoveries – even of quantum theory – that had the side effects of making Einstein’s relativity un-sustainable.

 

But the truth must be supressed at all costs – thinks the president. Therefore, the murderer must be one of the major professors – the dean is the perfect one…a major professor of geology – historical geology –no admission of catastrophes – an expert in radiometric dating of the rocks. If he can be persuaded to commit the evil act and save the university with all of its research grants and reputation as a core facility for evolutionary biology. As usual in a Clark suspense story, there must be outsiders with some connection to the sciences or a connection acquired. Bring in either an aspiring student, female and/or standard Clark sleuths, Willy and Alvirah Meehan. It wouldn’t take Alvirah long to grasp the main theories – creationist vs. evolutionist, involved and to see their significance, not only for academia, but for the world at large. Why, what would the kindergarteners do without dinosaurs and the whole prehistoric world of the evolutionary vision of things?

 

The murder itself will have to be of the more subtle Agatha Christie kind, say, by some exotic poison concocted in the lab. The dean, by the way, is also the major professor of microbiology and ingeniously invents an absolutely non-detectable and non-traceable poison, that blends immediately with the digestive system, and causes massive and instantly lethal internal collapse, by explosion of the circulatory system of the major blood vessels. Death due to massive cerebral hemorrahage will be the irrefutable medical diagnosis from the autopsy. The poison was imbibed at a dinner of the professors to discuss some new theories having to do with membrane (M) theories in astrophysics, which the professor to be murdered is currently studying. (Dr. Stephen Barr would be a perfect consultant for this novel which, by the way, is guaranteed to be a great fund-raiser for the creationist cause – if we can get a publisher like Doubleday or Simon & Schuster to feature it.)

 

(Incidentally, we might also consult Mrs. Clark herself. At 85, she is still going strong and would only need to be supplied with the scientific evidences. The rest could be left to her very fertile imagination.) And there must be at least two sub-plots. These usually involve some long-lost or long-forgotten biological parents. But I am seriously thinking of ways in which to make a Clark novel REALLY Catholic. This could involve the return of some person to the Faith from which they had lapsed, (shades of Evelyn Waugh!) Real conversions, as to Catholic creationism, due to the discovery of how deceit has been used in the Church to cover up the real truths of real science. And we need some really Catholic death scenes and death anticipations, full of real fears and hopes concerning Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. Clark is simply non-Catholic when it comes to death! Also, Clark’s novels always have characters who are divorced and re-married and apparently in full communion with the Catholic Church. This novel must remedy that impression.

 

Some years ago, probably in the 2000’s, there was a mystery, suspense novel written and published by a Protestant author, wherein the head of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, was murdered because he had become a creationist and was going to go public with the evidences. Unfortunately, I cannot remember either the author or the title of the book – and it is in hardcover and it is somewhere in my library – which is in storage. Look it up.

 

This is the hottest issue on the current world stage, and is surely the most important one for Catholics. Otherwise, as pioneer Australian Wallace Johnson used to say, why the desperate efforts to keep it under wraps? An awful, awesome amount of money and power is at stake for an awful lot of people in high places….

 

If only Mrs. Mary Higgins Clark herself, would become an Apostle of Creation and make this kind of novel to be her Swan Song …her last Will and Testament as a Catholic in 2013-2017…the anniversary of Our Lady’s apparitions at Fatima!

 

A Short Story of Great Import - By The Lady of the Dumpster

 

 
One finds many treasures in the Dumpsters, - treasures such as aborted baby-parts, silken pyxes or pixes and old books, out of print. This story is of the latter category, though it never was in print.

Once upon a time, specifically in the very first instant of time itself, very early in the Morning of Day One, as if a Door had opened from the Eternal Day, the most gracious God, so good and so loving in Himself - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, - most freely, with no need whatsoever, - spoke into existence, humanly innumerable - but of a number known to Him alone, the Nine Choirs of Angels. Such a magnificent hierarchy of three glorious orders -- each angel a species in himself, and at the same instant of time there appeared, ex nihilo and in toto of all their numbers, finite but appearing virtually infinite, mirror images of the angels, all the atomic elements - in number, measure and weight, the PRIME MATTER of the hierarchical FORM of the Body of the Universe, corresponding to the highest spheres of Seraphim, with the fiery spheres - the spheres of Powers and Principalities surrounding the central - fixed Earth and the Obediential Orders of Earth and Water before their distinction on Day Two.

The elemental electrons of Light - (photons) - by a special relationship of likeness (analogy) to the Three Persons of the most awesome and august Trinity, are at home, as it were, in all of the innumerable but finite number of the Orders of the Elements, belonging to material being and form, wherever it exists, as reflecting the quality of lightsomeness in all the spheres of the Body of the Universe - as they rotate in their created periods around the Central Earth. But then came the War in Heaven, and Hell was created for all of those rebellious angels and their chieftain in Pride and Perversity, - Lucifer. But here is a wonder! While Heaven is a most pure empyrean of Light -- Hell is a black hole of matter-form transubstantiated from Light into Darkness - emitting only more Darkness and the perversity of Hate for all creation.

Deceit and hatred are the special qualities of each one of the substantial forms of the rebellious angels who followed the Dark Form of Lucifer - who fell from being the most brilliant of the angelic sons of God to being the most foul and loathsome Prince of Evil -- Lord of all those fallen spirits now known to learned men as demons, devils and - note well - as elves, gnomes, trolls, goblins - and fairies. The famous Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm and other compilers and literary luminaries, are stories of the earthly antics, often parodies of Our Divine Lord's own gospel parables. Do you not sense the mockery, the irony, the hidden deceit in all of the promises and attainments of earthly happiness.

So the war in Heaven continues and intensifies - even as it has extended geographically and especially geopolitically as time draws near its final era. The lines of battle were first drawn by God Himself - not very long after Day Six of the First Week of the World and the First Day of Rest and Worship. The battle lines were spoken by God and recorded in Genesis 3:15, wherein there were established the eternal ----enmities between thee - the Serpent and the Woman and thy seed and Her Seed. She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for Her Heel. (Gen. 3:15). That most infamous, wicked, malicious and evil head has been exposed many times - especially during the last two centuries - as the "Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy." It has been repeatedly condemned - most recently by Pope Leo XIII in Humanum Genus and by eminent prelate-theologians such as Msgr. George Dillon and Father Denis Fahey - to their eternal honor. But they failed on one crucial point - the rise of the empirical sciences, especially with the Galileo case ending in 1633 and in the compromising permissions of Pope Benedict XIV in the 1700's. The Inquisition under Pope Urban VIII rightly and truly condemned Copernicanism -- the earth orbiting the sun - as formal heresy and the diurnal motion of earth as erroneous in Faith. At issue was the verbal accuracy and inspired veracity of the Sacred Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God.

Well, there begins a very long story, told in brief many times in this writer's efforts at defense of Holy Mother Church and Her Mission as Guardian and Teacher of the Truth. This present story, promised to be brief, and from the depths of the Dogmatic Dumpster, merely emphasizes that our present woes began, not with the late 18th century Enlightenment, although that boast is obviously Luciferian in origin - but with the attempt of Galileo to replace the authority of Holy Scripture with the fallible words of an empirical science. Now that is, indeed, a long story, briefly told many times by this present writer and now, since 2005 (or thereabouts), fully and masterfully exposed most thoroughly from the empirical and magisterial aspects, by Dr. Robert A. Sungenis and Dr. Robert Bennett in their monumental (2) volume work, GALILEO WAS WRONG, THE CHURCH WAS RIGHT. I must also mention the, as yet, unpublished work by lay scholar Redmond O'Hanlon - entitled: THE EARTHMOVERS, (see internet). O'Hanlon's work is most noteworthy for exposing those hidden connections with occult forces emanating from the Judaeo-Masonic forces ever at work to destroy the Church since their first success in the Garden of Eden. Even then, it may fairly be said, that Lucifer aped God in his infernal plan to upset God's entire Creation by lies about God's Word, by lies about the consequences of sin, promising earthly happiness and success (monetary), and finally by lies about the natural order of things and how creatures came to be - the Great all-encompassing LIE of evolution.

Historically, it may be said to have begun in that Great Watershed - the Renaissance where the seeds, both of the doom and the salvation of mankind were sown - in the interpretation of Holy Scripture - in the rise of the empirical sciences, and in the gradual perversion of the natural order, - commonly discussed as "the Culture." And that is the long and the short of it. Let me close this short story on a note of great cheer!

We have at hand a complete Catholic Cosmology, all drawn from our specifically Catholic Tradition, (i.e., Aristotelian-Thomistic Science) - all the elements of this new-old cosmology, in combination with the discoveries and demonstrable evidences of physics, chemistry and the earth sciences - especially the Flood Geology and Earth-Universe Age studies of the Protestant Creationists. There is at hand NOW...the perfect replacement of the heretical evolutionary Modernism with a truly Catholic Cosmology. This Catholic Cosmology also has the power - the power of Grace and Truth - to heal the cancerous diseases of the culture....if only Catholic philosophers, theologians and scientists will seize the opportunity and build upon it.

Kyrie, eleison!

The Third Secret

 

 

There is a great deal of "news" these days on EWTN about Pope Pius XII - probably in preparation for his beatification and canonization to follow upon that of Pope John Paul II. Now we know that Pope Pius XII read the Third Secret and consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And I think this Pope's definition of the Assumption of Mary, Body and Soul into Heaven, upon her Dormition, could also be related somehow to the Third Secret. It is well known, also, that Pope Pius XII was urged to call an ecumenical council, in order to combat the evils of the day, but he refused to call such a council..?

Is it not highly possible, and even probable, that the reason he refused was because the Third Secret warned of an evil council? I think it less probable that Our Lady was any more specific than that. But what was the rest of the 25 lines about? Could Our Lady have been so specific as to mention a false science, - as St. Paul does in his first letter to Timothy, Chapter 6, verse 20? I think she might have referred in a general way to certain Scriptures, as Sister Lucy did to chapters 8 through 13 of the Apocalypse.

Only time will reveal it all to us, as God and Our Lady allow.

Kyrie, Eleison.

The Light of Day One - Att: Dr.Jason Lisle

 

  
Thanks to Dr. Lisle's article on the sun in the current, July issue of ACTS AND FACTS, a problem of mine has been solved. I have never been entirely happy with my explanation of the light created on Day One (Genesis 1:3) as the electro-magnetic spectrum. Now I see just how and why this is the truth. The light created on Day One was a maximum light, the hydrogen and helium were created in their maximum functionality of FUSION. The light of Day One was, therefore, the maximum of light of which the Body of the Universe was capable. As such, it needed to be moderated in order to fit exactly as it does, the requirements for the first forms of life to appear in the Plant Kingdom on Day Three. Or I should say, as it DID then, on Day One, when everything was at the maximum of created goodness; when every gene pool of plant, animal and man contained the maximum potential, the potential for every change that would occur over the generations of time - during the Order of Generation - mostly changes to less.

The potential is virtually infinite for the number of possible arrangements that the elements can take in their interactions with one another. If this is so among the sounds of the notes in music and amongst the phonemes of even one language, how much more so for the elements and particles of the physical universe? And yet everything is decreasing according to the Second Law. We cannot even imagine what that Original Maximum of "very good" must have been!

This also explains why it was necessary that there be a special Day for the making - (as opposed to creating ex nihilo) - the sun, moon and stars on Day Four. The light of Day One would have obliterated in its heat and excessive light, the plants - even though they, too, were far more robust than any plant of today. The more I learn about REAL SCIENCE, the more I see the necessity for the literal Six Days of Genesis. This necessity is theological, metaphysical, physical, chemical and biological. I will try to demonstrate this if God gives me the grace to do so.

As St. Thomas says, light is (was on Day One) - a quality of the First Sensible Body. That body was the Universe. Water and all the physical-chemical elements - quantitative units, accidental forms - were the first quantities, constituting the Body of the Universe, - the first Substantial FORM created on Day One.

An Open Question to EWTN

 

Eternal Word Television Network.....since a great deal of your programming consists of interviews by such prominent hosts as Marcies Grodi, Johnette Benkovitz, Colleen Campbell, Father Mitch Pacqua, Father Andrew Apostoli, and others....WHY do you not make it a point to air extensive interviews with representatives of the Traditionalists - of the Protestant Creationists - of the Catholic Creationists - and of the Geocentrists? It seems to me you are failing to report or to represent the REAL state of the Church. In fact, EWTN represents a rather small fraction of the Church, and yet a viewer is given the impression, for example, by Raymond Arroyo, that his news program, THE WORLD OVER, truly gives us a fair view of the entire Catholic world. And yet, this is very far from the truth! 
 

Traditionalists alone, taking into account members of the SSPX, the SSPV, CMRI and the FSSP, must represent at least 50% of people who call themselves Catholic, and who now are recognized as such, since Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI. How can you ignore such a great number of Catholics, never allowing them to appear on your talk shows. I have given all of your programs a good sampling and I can say, and must say, that they are all incredibly BORING.

 

I use EWTN - and with gratitude - solely for the Chaplet of Saint Michael with Mother Angelica, the chaplet of Divine Mercy every time it is on, and the rosary, preferably with Mother Angelica, but with the others also...though I do not care for the rosary in English being interrupted by persons speaking in another language. I greatly resent the occasions when these devotions are pre-empted by the filming of the installation of a bishop, or by a foreign cinema. I imagine there are many elderly people like myself - who even depend upon these devotions and greatly miss their absence for the long and tiresome ceremonies of an installation.

 

As for the Creationists, I can think of no better way to enliven your programming - than to feature some of the popular and fully credentialed scientists from the Institute for Creation Research or Answers in Genesis on some or one of your talk shows. Not just once, but as a continuing series. Contact Hugh Owen of the KOLBE CENTER and Hugh Miller, the paleontologist expert on Carbon 14 dating. Both of these men are devout Catholics. How can EWTN overlook such newsworthy scientists? One segment with Hugh Owen and/or Hugh Miller would be worth far more than a year's worth of programming with those monkeys from the football world called Crossing the Goal. These are grown men?!

 

God help us!

Marriage and Creation

 

Everything presupposes Creation. But especially, I am devoting these last days in our attempt to show that the Six Days of Creation are necessary - absolutely necessary on the basis of Theology, of Metaphysics and of all the natural sciences - for a proper understanding. In this one note, it is plain to me, with all the talk about marriage these days, that the literal days of Genesis are necessary in order for marriage - as a divine institution - to exist. As a consentual union between one man and one woman, for the purpose of procreation primarily, but secondarily for mutual help and companionship - and thirdly - for the assuaging of concupiscence - this marriage of one man and one woman has existed - as a God-instituted contract of vows, since the very beginning of human existence.

The institution of marriage is in no way a human invention. Wherever human society has been found by the anthropologists, there has been found the family based on monogamy - one man and one woman.

The evolutionists will be quick to point to the very rare instances of monogamy amongst some animals and birds. But, it is a case of the exception proving the rule. And this proves and clearly manifests, moreover, that marriage - as found amongst humans, is like language....a given. It is not of human invention. It is a divinely given institution presupposing creation. Fields and Topics of Research for the Catholic Scientist.

From St. Thomas and A Challenge to All Catholics

 

St Thomas says (ST I, q.108, a3, + ad 2) - that each angel has his own office and order, plus other things, even more so than any star, but this knowledge is hidden from us. I suggest that the virtually infinite number of possible arrangements that the atomic elements can take even in one order of their being - for this is said of protein synthesis - is a mirror-image of the angelic nature and interactions described by St. Thomas as hidden from us. But due to the instruments, such as the electron microscope - such marvels of nature are not hidden from us! Just look, for example, at pages 8-9 of the special edition of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN - entitled EXTREME PHYSICS. Here, the motions of the sub-atomic particles as traced by the super-microscope, reveal - not a disordered, random, or even an evolutionary "pathway" - but the most delicately - intricate of geometric patterns!

Surely God - is the ultimate, infinitely wise Artist! Words fail! It is reserved for a poet of super-genius to sing His praises in anything remotely approaching a humanly worthy manner! And notice the circularity around a central point! This is because the universe is geocentric. All motion is ultimately circular.

A CHALLENGE TO ALL TRADITIONALIST CATHOLICS as well as all others, who call themselves CATHOLIC - OR ROMAN CATHOLIC

I challenge all of you to take your moral/ethical issues back to the first three chapters of Genesis. If you cannot find their solution there, please send your objections to me. I guarantee - the answers to all moral/ethical problems are there. I do not wish to steal or in any sense - to plagiarize Ken Ham's - ANSWERS TO GENESIS logo and publishing company. The Protestant (even anti-Catholic) Creationists are doing what we Catholics should have been doing, also, even since Copernicus and the Galileo case. And now, Ken Ham is building an ark to scale! I support and have sent a necessarily very modest but heartfelt contribution to this work which must be seen, in my opinion, as a warning not unlike that first one that is reported in the 6th Chapter of Genesis. Go and visit the Creation Museum situated on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River - just across from Cincinnati. Catholics so very much need to be educated in the evidences against Evolution, as Evolution is being taught in the schools today.