Kolbe Center: Pope Pius XI’s understanding of the Catholic Doctrine of Creation

[Stone]

How Pope Pius XI defended the history of Genesis, special creation of St. Adam
Before becoming Pope Pius XI, Fr. Achille Ratti wrote a theological work supporting Adam’s special creation – an argument he upheld throughout his life, countering growing scientific and theological shifts toward evolution.

Jan 30, 2025
LifeSiteNews [Adapted and reformatted - The Catacombs]

Editor’s note: This article is Part 1 of a four-part study of Pope Pius XI’s understanding of the Catholic doctrine of creation as opposed to the modern scientific proposition of the evolution of mankind. 

(Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation) — One of the wonderful things about the Kolbe apostolate has been the way that members of our leadership team have been inspired to research different topics relevant to our mission, resulting in all kinds of fruitful discoveries.

In recent months, researcher Christian Bergsma has brought to our attention a document that highlights the Church leadership’s vigorous defense of the literal historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis well into the 20th century.

In this article we will focus on a treatise[1] written by the Rev. Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, toward the end of the 19th century. Though he wrote it before becoming pope, Pius XI defended this work during his pontificate, according to his close friend Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini:

Our Holy Father, Pope Pius XI, in private audiences, from time to time recalled with pleasure this work of his (“which cost him no little labor”), and reconfirmed his conclusions.[2]

Theological arguments for the special creation of Adam

Dr. Kenneth Miller is typical of Catholic intellectuals who teach our young people that the Fathers and Doctors of the patristic era did not read Genesis as history and that this is a recent, “fundamentalist” misinterpretation, stating:

Great theologians of the early centuries of the Christian era, like Saint Augustine, did not read Genesis as history. It’s only in the last hundred years, mostly in the United States, that you have people coming up with a radically different view.

As the recipient of the Laetare medal at Notre Dame University in 2014, “the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics,” according to Notre Dame’s president, Michael O. Garvey, one would think that Dr. Miller would be able back up his claims, but St. Augustine himself made clear that he agreed with the rest of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that Genesis is written “from beginning to end in the style of history.”

In keeping with this historical interpretation of Genesis, at the beginning of his treatise, the future Pope Pius XI sets forth his plan to demonstrate the direct and immediate creation of the body of St. Adam, first from theology and then from natural science. He asks:

What is to be held of the first origin of man as regards the body, according to faith and sound theology?

The answer is this: It is clear from divine revelation that the first parents, not only regarding the soul, but also regarding the body, were formed by God himself, not by simple concurrence, but by direct and immediate action, although not creative.

Explaining the phrase, “although not creative,” Christian Bergsma notes:

Ratti distinguishes the formation of the body as “not creative” in the strict sense that the body was not called into being out of nothing like the soul was, but rather was formed from the material of mud and the rib. St. Thomas Aquinas defines creation in the unequivocal sense as the original emanation of each thing into being from nothing:

“‘To create is to make something from nothing’… we must consider not only the emanation of a particular being from a particular agent, but also the emanation of all being from the universal cause, which is God; and this emanation we designate by the name of creation … it is impossible that any being should be presupposed before this emanation. For nothing is the same as no being. Therefore as the generation of a man is from the ‘not-being’ which is ‘not-man,’ so creation, which is the emanation of all being, is from the ‘not-being’ which is ‘nothing.’[3]

However, per Aquinas, the whole man, as a composite of both body and soul, can be said to have been created out of “not-man” in that immediate and simultaneous action, as he was brought from a state of non-being into being in all of his principles:

“Creation does not mean the building up of a composite thing from pre-existing principles; but it means that the ‘composite’ is created so that it is brought into being at the same time with all its principles … for creation is the production of the whole being, and not only matter.”[4]

The literal and obvious sense of Scripture must be believed

Like the Fathers and Doctors before him, the future Pope Pius XI takes as his starting point that the sacred history of Genesis gives a divinely inspired account of the creation of the first human beings in which the literal and obvious sense should be believed unless it would detract from “purity of life or soundness of doctrine.” In the words of St. Augustine:

In the first place, then, we must show the way to find out whether a phrase is literal or figurative. And the way is certainly as follows: Whatever there is in the Word of God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as figurative.[5]

Using these criteria, Christian Bergsma rightly poses and answers a critical question:

Is the formation of the body from mud impossible to reconcile with purity of life or sound doctrine? Certainly not. Pope Leo XIII likewise cites “the rule so wisely laid down by St. Augustine – not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires…[6] Does reason or necessity compel us to believe that an all-powerful God could not create a body from mud? Certainly not! Therefore, we ought to take the words literally.

The age of the universe

Having established that the direct and immediate creation of Adam, body and soul, must be believed as, at a minimum, Catholic doctrine, if not, as some authorities believe, Catholic Faith, Ratti addresses the question of the timing of Adam’s creation:

It remains to say a few things about the antiquity of human origin. Holy Scripture nowhere expressly presents a complete chronology which extends to the creation of Adam; but what it sparsely reports presents no little difficulty, especially if one considers the discrepancies between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint and Samaritan versions; but the Vulgate version follows the Hebrew text.

Even greater and far more numerous discrepancies occur among the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers. Cardinal Meignan counts one hundred and fifty different calculations, none of which can be called reprobate; in fact, Des Vignoles collected more than two hundred different indications of the time from Adam to Christ, the minimum of which he counts as 3,483 years, the maximum as 6,984. It is true that in all the aforesaid calculations, a common foundation was sought in the Holy Scriptures themselves. For, after certain minor difficulties, it was seen that the following numbers of years could be gathered from inspired books.

From Adam to Noah’s flood:

according to the Vulgate and Hebrew text… 1,656

according to the Samaritan text… … … … 1,306

according to the Septuagint… … … … … … 2,242

From Noah’s flood to Abraham’s birth:

according to the Vulgate… … … … …292 or 293

according to the Samaritan text… … … … … 942

according to the Septuagint… … … … … … 1,183

From Abraham to Christ’s birth:

with hardly a few decades of difference… 2,190

Having said this, it follows that neither Holy Scripture nor Tradition contains a chronology of the human race that is at least completely defined. Here again, it is certainly possible to follow any of the chronologies received here and there in the Church.

This is a remarkable passage – remarkable because we find the future Pope Pius XI defending the common teaching of all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that the Scriptures provide a basis, though not a precise formula, for calculating universal chronology, when Catholic intellectuals were abandoning this teaching in droves in the name of “science.” As Christian Bergsma observes:

Though they posited various dates for Christ’s birth, all the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers who mentioned the subject taught a recent creation as a matter of faith in Scripture, in opposition to the old-earth mythologies of the pagans (not, as some have said, simply due to their ancient scientific conceptions). The Church teaches:

“In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the Fathers. [7]

Even modernist bible scholar M.J. Lagrange had to admit the substantial sensus fidelium on the young earth within the Church over the centuries, regardless of the differing proposed dates. Lagrange found himself arguing that the ancient Fathers had been right to interpret Genesis 1-11 as teaching a young chronology, because the text indeed does teach it, even though it is not true, and that God intentionally used their errant belief in the historicity Genesis 1-11 to bring them to spiritual truths, as they would not have otherwise been able to grasp them if he had explained them at that time in a manner fitting with what we now “know” through science.

This is heresy, because we are bound to hold that whatever Scripture teaches is inerrant, and that such inerrancy extends not just to spiritual truths but also to statements touching history and the natural world[8]. However, in defending this position Lagrange aptly exposed the ridiculous inconsistency of those “concordists” who try to defend one tenet of Scripture (i.e., the universal flood) by denying that another tenet (i.e., the young chronology) was ever upheld by the Church:

“Then came the turn of the philologists. It seemed to them that there would never have been time enough for the formation of languages had the Deluge swallowed up all mankind … but, in point of fact, the arguments of the scientists were only conclusive if biblical chronology were upheld…And so, when the universality of the Deluge was defended by this [concordist] school, they held that biblical chronology was non-existent. They went so far as to foster the delusion that Catholic opinion had never admitted a chronology, because it did not agree as to its limits: as though the differences of opinion, reached as the result of so much painful effort, did not suppose a common groundwork known to all.“[9] (emphasis added)

By the very admission of this preeminent modernist, to believe that the tradition of the Church on the biblical chronology was either non-existent, insubstantial, or due to mistaken exegesis, is delusional, but to accept an old universe is to believe that Scripture teaches falsehood. Therefore, the best option for a pious Catholic is to believe in the young universe – “young” only in relation to the uniformitarian extrapolations of naturalists, and not in relation to any objective chronology of the world.

Part 2 of the series on Pope Pius XI’s study of creation can be found below.

Reprinted with permission from the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation.



References
↑1 De hominis Origine Quoad Corpus, in Msgr. Frederick Sala, Institutiones positive-scholasticæ Theologiæ Dogmaticæ Tomus II: De Deo Uno et Trino – De Deo Creatore (1899), pgs. 197-211. For the original Latin see here. For English and Latin side-by-side, see here.
↑2 Ruffini, The Theory of Evolution Judged by Reason and Faith, trans. Francis O’Hanlon (Joseph F. Wagner, Inc.: New York, 1959), 135–37.
↑3 [St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1, q. 45. art. 1.]
↑4 Ibid, Part 1, q. 45, art. 4.
↑5 St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Ch. 10.
↑6 Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 15.
↑7 Vatican Council I, ch. 2 On Revelation, 9.
↑8 Benedict XV, Spiritus Paraclitus, 19-26.
↑9 Lagrange, Historical Criticism and the Old Testament (1905), Lecture IV, pgs. 134-135).