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).

[Stone]

Pope Pius XI refuted Darwinism 100 years ago, but his lessons have not been learned
In assessing natural selection, spontaneous generation, and the evolutionary mechanisms expounded by Charles Darwin, Pope Pius XI found they fail under scrutiny, highlighting gaps and debunking falsehoods created by its proponents to prop up the evolutionary theory.



Charles Darwin
ShutterStockStudio/Shutterstock

Jan 31, 2025
LifeSiteNews [Adapted and reformatted - The Catacombs]

Editor’s note: This article is Part 2 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) — Having established the theological case for the special creation of Adam, body and soul, the future Pope Pius XI turns his attention to the hypothesis of human evolution:

The theory of Transformism or Evolutionism conflicts with the expounded points of doctrine because, as we have said, it is produced to explain the origin of man. This theory, not unknown to the old materialists, was reawakened at the beginning of the present century by the Frenchman Lamarck (1741-1829), cultivated and embellished by the Englishman Darwin (1809-1881), and amplified by the German Häckel. But for brevity and clarity’s sake, some things must be distinguished, namely: the theory itself of the transformation of species; the reasons by which it is said to be supported; the means by which transformation has occurred; finally, the suppositions from which the whole theory proceeds.

The substance of the theory itself, as it is taken here, is reducible to the transformists’ claim that man, at least regarding the body, had his first and immediate origin not from a certain direct action of God, but from a lower animal through the successive and progressive transformation or evolution of species.

The future pope correctly identifies the principal arguments in favor of human evolution:

The first reason is anatomical-physiological, and it is based on the similarity between the human body and the bodies of animals (a unit of configuration and arrangement, commonly known as a floor unit). “Nor,” says Darwin, “is it right to believe that so many individuals of the largest of each natural class were created with such apparent, but deceptive, indications of the common filiation of all from one progenitor.” The transformists also combine anatomical similarities with physiological similarities. The second reason is embryogenic; for it is sought from the development of the human fetus (ontogeny), as it recapitulates in its different stages the longest epochs of transformation from species to species (phylogeny). This is that fundamental biogenetic law, thanks to which Häckel congratulates himself, as if he had laid a new foundation for Darwinism and discovered the true efficient causes on which the evolution of all individuals depends. Finally, the transformists draw a third reason from the presence of certain parts in the human body, which, when appearing completely useless and considered as remains or rudiments of organs that once existed, should be explainable only by admitting the derivation through the transformation of species.

But if one looks for means by the aid of which a transformation of this kind has occurred, the transformists assign more. Indeed, as Lamarck says, along with Häckel, living beings begin from brute matter by spontaneous or heterogeneous generation, and from this they try to explain the first beginning of life in nature. Darwin, however, admitting that he knows nothing about the first beginning of life, refrains from this point. Lamarck teaches that in order to explain the successive evolution, new organs, whose development and active power are always adequate for exercise or use, should be produced by means of the modification of adjuncts arising from new needs and corresponding efforts; but what has once been acquired in any organism is transmitted and preserved through generation; for life itself always tends toward the growth of living bodies.

Darwin did not reject the means of this kind of evolution, but added several more: namely, natural selection, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest: also, sexual selection, combined with the laws of correlation, heredity, divergence, and permanence.

All of these, however, have been seen by some as insufficient, since they present the transformation of species as accomplished only gradually and under the influence of external agents. Retaining the origin of all species from a few primitive forms, these say that new species sometimes appeared suddenly and as if by leaps from the lower ones, and not without the influence of external agents, but mainly due to certain unknown changes inherent in the individuals of a species.

Finally, the suppositions of transformism, insofar as it is extended to man, are two, namely: the variability of species and the enormous, even indefinite antiquity of man; furthermore, it is clear to everyone that these two [suppositions of the] transformists are utterly wanting.

Now, it seems that these can be said of the expounded theory, namely: there is nothing to prove its reasons; the means are in part arbitrary, in part absurd, but altogether insufficient and inept; the suppositions are either gratuitous or false; finally, the whole assertion of the theory contradicts the certain principles of philosophy and facts discovered in the natural sciences themselves.

Therefore first, the reasons of the transformists prove nothing: The first reason proves nothing; for the similitude, whether anatomical or physiological, between man and brute, is not as great as the transformists say; and what this similitude really concerns is not scientifically explained through some original typical unity of shape, but both by the conformity of the two into one genus, and also by the different application of the same mechanical laws according to the requirements of diverse cases.

Here the future pope makes the same observation that biologist Pamela Acker has made on many occasions – namely, that form follows function, so that similar features in diverse organisms, like five-digit extremities in humans and whales, can be explained more reasonably as evidence of a common designer than as evidence of common descent from a one-celled organism.

Nor is the embryogenic system more valid. In the first place it is gratuitously asserted that the evolution of the human embryo is a short repetition of the long evolution of the species, from which man was finally sprung.

Häckel, who had already arranged the genealogical tree of man (after his own method, of course), discovered so many gaps and contradictions that he was forced to resort to certain falsifications or innovations of embryonic development, which nature itself makes so frequently that indeed Ontogeny itself may be said to consist of a kind of Palingenesis and Cenogenesis (2).20

Next, it is asserted no less gratuitously, but rather completely falsely, that the human embryo undergoes true metamorphoses from one animal form to another, and that true identities prevail between its different successive forms and the final forms of the lower order of animals. In reality, what is being and what can only be affirmed is the gradual development of the embryo and certain successive analogies, which were not unknown to the old Aristotelians. Furthermore, the animal organism, which according to the present natural economy is not suddenly produced perfect, but gradually by concurring secondary causes, from the beginning only predominates the more general characters of animality, and is successively adorned with specific ones; this, being easily understood, suffices to explain the aforementioned similitudes and analogies. Rather, he who admits these true metamorphoses and identities supposes an indifference in the human germ toward the production of any animal; but this is completely at odds with continuous experience. Of course, there is no sufficient explanation of this experience, unless some principle of specific difference is posited in the germ itself.

Hence, if even the greatest embryogenic similarity is admitted, it can only be material and, so to speak, superficial.

Truly, such a similitude as the transformists boast is not to be admitted, as is clear from the most accurate experiments, with several done not many years ago (1876) by Th. Bischoff in the Münich Academy. It is also clear from the many forgeries which the most skilled men of natural science have discovered in Häckel’s painted tables.

Commenting on the fraudulent character of Häckel’s “proof” for human evolution, Christian Bergsma observes:

Ratti is one of the earliest contemporaries of Haeckel to call out his fraudulent paintings and sketches, along with Carl Semper and Wilhelm His. Ratti also cites the German Jesuit philosopher Fr. Tilman Pesch, who wrote scholastic and interdisciplinary critiques of Haeckel. Many other contemporaries would follow suit. In 1911, Haeckel responded in a tirade mainly directed against his Catholic critics, writing:

“They charged me with willful deception and falsifications, because I schematized the pictures of the embryos. By ‘schematize’ I mean I omitted unessential adjuncts and strongly emphasized essential form relations. I also filled in deficiencies here and there by comparative synthesis.” [1]

Of course, Haeckel essentially admits in saying this that he exaggerated parts of the embryos to make similarities appear obvious where they would otherwise not have, added in features from other embryos where they were absent to give the impression of similitude, and erased certain features that he felt would weaken his argument; in short, he engaged in falsification. By “unessential,” “essential,” or “deficiencies,” he means only what is thus in terms of his own presupposed argument. In 1915, Jesuit biologist Fr. J. Assmuth published a comprehensive review of Haeckel’s distortions up to that point.[2]

The Catholic retaliation against Haeckel was not unprovoked. Haeckel, with Darwin’s permission[3], used Darwin’s theory as tool for anti-Catholic polemics in the context of the German Kulturkampf, a period where Catholics were persecuted by the state:

“We do indeed now enjoy the unusual pleasure of seeing ‘most Christian bishops’ and Jesuits exiled and imprisoned for their disobedience to the laws of the state … In this mighty ‘war of culture,’ … no better ally than Anthropogeny can, it seems to me, be brought to the assistance of struggling for truth.[4]”

“The history of evolution is the heavy artillery in the struggle for truth. Whole ranks of dualistic sophisms fall before the monistic philosophy, as before the chain shot of artillery, and the proud structure of the Roman hierarchy, that mighty stronghold of infallible dogmatism, falls like a house of cards. Whole libraries of church wisdom and false philosophy melt away as soon as they are seen in the light afforded by the history of evolution. The church militant itself furnishes the most striking evidences of this, for it never ceases to give the lie to the plain facts of human germ-history, condemning them as ‘diabolical inventions of materialism.’”[5]

Darwin remained a close friend of Haeckel and thought highly of Haeckel’s The Evolution of Man, considering it comparable to his own The Descent of Man.[6]

References
↑1 Haeckel, Answer to the Jesuits (1911), pg. 4.
↑2 Assmuth and Hull, Haeckel’s Frauds and Forgeries (1915).
↑3 See Darwin, Letter to Ernst Haeckel, 29 April 1879, for example.
↑4 Haeckel, The Evolution of Man, preface to the 1st Edition, 1874.
↑5 Ibid.
↑6 Darwin, Letter to C.E. Ferguson, 12 January 1880.