Catholicism & Creation

Me when I find the most amazing quote to post but I look up the author and they're a Jansenist so I have to delete the source off my phone.

Made a couple small edits for precision, may be worth a re-read.

Going death con 3 on DEI VERBUM, Part 3: https://integritymagazine.org/2026/09/08/dei-verbums-crafty-attempt-to-redefine-church-teaching-on-the-inerrancy-of-scripture/ I encourage you all to carefully read this, even the footnotes, after having read Part 2. This defect of intent to preserve Catholic teaching on the part of Dei Verbum's authors cannot be ignored.

When the earth, together with the seed, actively produces a plant, it does so through a succession of time, which cannot have a place in the beginnings of things.

- Jordano Preingué, O.P., Theologia Speculativa et Moralis, Vol. I (Ghent, 1744), p. 326.

Wishing you all a blessed feast of St. Moses, the author of Genesis. He is a biblical creationist's greatest patron and intercessor. I pray to him today that our people may be brought out of their slavery to naturalistic philosophy and shoddy scholarship, and into the freedom of pious exegesis true science.

Don't miss tonight's show on Integrity, hosted by me. Bring your thoughts to the chat and let's have a good time.

To the second I say that every physical production, and every production by secondary causes, necessarily takes place through motion, because various dispositions must first be present in the subject before the form is introduced. But this is not so with the operation of God, who by His omnipotent power can bring forth His effects in an instant, as the Royal Prophet says: He spoke and they were made: He commanded and they were created.

-Rev. Fr. Claude Frassen, O.F.M., Disquisitiones Biblicae in Universum Pentateuchum (Paris, 1705), Q. V, p. 9.

In his 1981 book Original Unity of Man and Woman: Catechesis on the Book of Genesis, John Paul II claims that the early chapters of Genesis are mythical in genre. While he distinguishes this supposed primitive genre from a fabulous fairy tale, in the footnotes he provides several ways of understanding myth in its modern usage - NONE of which are appropriate to say of the genre of Genesis.  John Paul II is gravely wrong. There is NO meaning of the word myth which is appropriate to describe the early chapters of Genesis. It does not deal with symbols and archetypes, but true history.

And thus God, by the choice of His will, could produce whatever things from whatever element He pleased. For, since He immediately reaches the very essence of matter, He can immediately introduce whatever form He wishes into it... And because Sacred Scripture says that birds were produced from the waters according to the first production, we ought to say that they were produced in this way.

- Giles of Rome, O.S.A, Opus Hexaemeron (Rome, 1555), Ch. 38, p. 53.

If you were able to count all the different kinds of fish, from the smallest even to the largest, they would be almost innumerable. And who could possibly count the multitude of birds that come forth from those same waters? Consider how swiftly such an enormous multitude of creeping creatures and birds came forth. Did not God say, “Let the waters bring forth creeping creatures and birds”? What is surprising, then, that so great an abundance of animals should have originated from this command? For the word of God is supremely powerful, and their their production is its effect.

- Rev. Fr. Jean de la Haye, O.F.M., Commentarii Litterales & Conceptuales in Genesim, Vol. I (Paris, 1651), p. 104.

All the elements, plants, animals, and heaven itself, and whatever is beautiful, precious, and marvelous in heaven, came into existence at God's command by one word or another, in a moment of time. God exercised His power throughout the entire fabric of things, which was wrought with such little effort, almost as if He were playing.

- Rev. Fr. Benito Fernandez, S.J., Commentariorum atque observationem moralium in Genesim, Vol. I (Lyon, 1618), p. 87.

[T]he Lord wished to show how, without intermediate causes, He could produce all the effects of intermediate causes perfectly and in an instant, being omnipotent and acting from His will, not from any necessity of nature; just as He also willed to form man by Himself, and all the kinds of animals perfectly... Therefore the Lord commanded concerning both, namely the herbs and the trees, that they should immediately germinate from the earth and come forth. And because He commanded it in this way, so it happened... For the Lord wished, as we have said, to show that He can do all things and is not bound to the order of nature which He Himself established.

- Bishop Ambrosius Catharinus, O.P., Enarrationes in Quinque Priora Capita Libri Geneseos (Rome, 1552), pp. 51-52.

[T]he Lord wished to show how, without intermediate causes, He could produce all the effects of intermediate causes perfectly and in an instant, being omnipotent and acting from His will, not from any necessity of nature; just as He also willed to form man by Himself, and all the kinds of animals perfectly... Therefore the Lord commanded concerning both, namely the herbs and the trees, that they should immediately germinate from the earth and come forth. And because He commanded it in this way, so it happened... For the Lord wished, as we have said, to show that He can do all things and is not bound to the order of nature which He Himself established.

- Bishop Ambrosius Catharinus, O.P., Enarrationes in Quinque Priora Capita Libri Geneseos (Rome, 1552), pp. 51-52.

A very perceptive argument worthy of consideration.

Furthermore: God brought all the animals of the earth and all the birds of heaven to Adam, so that he might see them and name them. What is the meaning of this naming? This naming with a name corresponding to their nature seems to us to express not only Adam’s dominion over them, but, in view of similar biblical occurrences, to indicate that they had immediately beforehand come into existence, and that only now were they beginning to fulfill the purposes corresponding to their nature. What purpose would this naming have, if they had already existed for thousands of years previously (in their ancestors) and had fulfilled the purposes corresponding to their nature? This view of ours concerning the significance of the naming may be further confirmed by the circumstance that what happened with the animals also occurred with the first woman. God brought the woman to Adam, and Adam first called her Virago, later, after the Fall, Heva, i.e. mater omnium viventium (“mother of all living”). But before Eve received her name, she was certainly not yet actually mater; only after the naming did she become this and fulfill the purpose assigned to her by the Creator. Likewise, in the naming of the holy Apostle Simon as Peter, we see that the Apostle only after being given the name which expressed his office entered into this calling.

- Rev. Fr. Alois Trissl, Das biblische Sechstagewerk vom Standpunkte der katholischen Exegese und vom Standpunkte der Naturwissenschaften (Regensburg, 1892), pp. 17-18.

Fr. Trissl's point is that if OECs like Fr. Hummelauer admit creation ex nihilo and an immediate formation of Adam, they should not balk at creation in six days.

Fr. Hummelauer, in his frequently cited work, finds a creation in six days too wondrous to be readily accepted. To this, one can reply that throughout all of creation, one magnificent miracle surpasses another; that creation from nothing is a far more astonishing miracle than the development of plants from seed to maturity; that the wonderfully constructed human body, on whose formation God did not spend several years, proclaims God's power far more clearly than the structure of a fully grown tree; that, moreover, the holy fathers were not troubled by these wonders, such that St. Augustine even had everything created in a single instant.

- Rev. Fr. Alois Trissl, Das biblische Sechstagewerk vom Standpunkte der katholischen Exegese und vom Standpunkte der Naturwissenschaften, Regensburg, 1892, pp. 10-11.

Rather, it might be objected that an excessively short period of time is being made to contain a multitude of works requiring much more than a single day: the creation of the terrestrial animals, that of Adam, his introduction into Paradise, the precept given to him, the presentation of the animals before him and the names given to them, the sleep induced in him, and, during that time, the formation of Eve... I will say, however, that we must not judge of God's working by the slowness of our own: in God, all the things enumerated above, one after another, require only a few successive instants.

- Rev. Fr. Alfonso Niccolai, S.J., Dissertazioni e Lezioni di Sacra Scrittura, Vol. II (Florence, 1757), pp. 479-480.

Fat guy aura. Plutonists seething rn.

In another lesson we have already shown that the elevation of the primordial mountains on the third day of creation by means of subterranean fire is insufficient. We have from Scripture that God used no other means than His omnipotent Fiat. God, unlike men, does not need instruments to operate: the whole series of creation does nothing other than place before our eyes the marvelous work of the divine will.

- Rev. Fr. Alfonso Niccolai, S.J., Dissertazioni e Lezioni di Sacra Scrittura, Vol. IV (Florence, 1760), pp. 237-238.