Fr. Charron

Fr Casey Cole: Repent of your false teaching!
Fr. Jason Charron | 31 janv. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwychGLfFfg

Primum bonum matrimonii proles.

Would you agree that:

• a homosexual, that is a person with same sex attraction, is sometimes living the punishment for idolatry (Romans 1)
• that to repent, he would need to renounce the same sex relationship he has already entered in or to avoid getting into one, if he isn't already
• to do that there are two options:
  
  
  • 1) marrying someone of the opposite sex
  • 2) remaining celibate
  
  
  
• and the idea that only option 2 is correctly Catholic is dangerous, both because of homosexuals deprived of the easier way out of sin (which it would be for some) and because once you go there, you can prevent a heterosexual from marrying by stamping him as homosexual

or would you disagree on some point?

No fashionable sin ...

• like seducing a peasant's daughter among some knights of the Middle Ages (and then not marrying her)
• like duelling in the Renaissance to well into the 19th C
• like homosexuality today

Fr. Casey Reads Mean Tweets
Breaking In The Habit | 9 May 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0pphsUctm8

Speaking of things you actually believe, have you are have you not stated that the Bible doesn't adress monogamous homosexual relations?

I think Fr. Jason Charron deserves somewhat more credibility than an anonymous tweeter ...

[See above]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwychGLfFfg

Why Fr. Casey Cole is WRONG About the Bible and Homosexuality
The Counsel of Trent | 29 Jan. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOKiWvXVO3U

1:46 Well, actually, the Bible doesn't mention alcoholism.

It mentions drunkenness. That's an act. Alcoholism is a real or supposed medical condition. A somewhat objective measure of alcoholism is, you are alcoholic when after your tolerance has gone up it has plummeted, so you get soak drunk on the first glass.

If you have that condition, sure, don't drink alcohol.

Apart from that, "alcoholism" is just a red herring in deciding whether someone is a drunkard or not, especially like some Saudis would prefer to define alcoholism.

4:20 St. Thomas is very clear.

The sin of Sodom had three steps:

1) gluttony
2) pride and inhospitality
3) abomination. (Lev. 20:13)

Note, it does not say that everyone who committed the abomination was a homosexual. It is very probable that heterosexual men of Sodom (or predominantly such) committed it because it was a fashionable sin, a kind of rite of passage. I have a suspicion, Ishtar priests from Mesopotamia could have come to Sodom between Genesis 14, 19 years earlier, and the destruction. The male priests of Ishtar dressed up as women. As Sodom is destroyed, it may not be possible to get archaeological evidence for this, but it's not impossible.

Abraham foiled the military expansion of Mesopotamia, God punished the religious and depraved one, if this is true.

4:50 Speaking of Romans 1:

"and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them"

Does that mean I deserve death if I find a lesbian even in couple attractive, or does it mean I would deserve death if I had consented to ... well, being the passive partner?

6:18 You may have misconstrued what Casey Cole means.

As I see it, what the word homosexuality as such refers to is, as far as I know, mentioned one or two verses in the Bible. "Shameful affections", possibly "lust". Romans 1:26,27 actually mention the most voluntary and personal kind of motivation behind the act of sodomy and tribadic sex. He's simply right that the homosexual act is equally sinful whether entertained by a homosexual inclination or not (or the inclination can make it either better or worse depending on the case, as in prevenient and consequent passion).

However, the psychological use of the word "homosexual" would categorise someone as homosexual even if the desires or passions were very sublimated and well mastered, and in that case, not even Romans 1 directly adresses that. The word "homosexual" is coined 1886, in the German form "homosexuell" as "homosexuality" would in the same work be "Homosexualität" ... the intent of Krafft-Ebings work was not to serve as a manual for spiritual directors, but rather to help psychologists police diverse inclinations which, left to their full, could lead to things that in 1886 were illegal and punishable in Austria, and probably also to provide some kind of enforced treatment for people who had behaved criminally but [had] been handed over to psychiatrists instead of to what the law would normally have prescribed.

In other words, it is possible, and it is also not my case, it is however the case of one man I respect and another I respected more earlier, to describe oneself as "homosexual" and NOT mean sodomite, and even NOT mean burning with shameful passions.

I think he heavily overdoes it in glossing over that abomination is in fact worse than just adultery. God destroyed a city for the abomination, God made a child die before circumcision for an adultery. But while he overdoes it, he has a real point. The man I still respect is celibate and chaste. The man I used to respect more was married and had four daughters with his wife. Before he, being a psychologist, overanalysed his own relation to his own wife and decided he was inadequate and diverced and got ... well, decidedly sinful.

6:28 Looked up John Boswell.

He was most certainly wrong about the meaning of adelphopoiesis, and probably so is a Dominican in France, in good standing with your Church. He's obviously not practising that himself, but I hope he isn't too encouraging for wannabe "adelphoi" in the Boswell sense.

Hope he died in peace with God, RIP.

7:10 So, Boswell claimed going against one's nature by acts of sodomy was going against an individually heterosexual inclination.

He confuses what the French call nature (like being a human person) with what the French call naturel (like having a propensity for making friends with people less serious than oneself).

This idea of Boswell was prefuted by the condempnations of Bishop Tempier.

XX:1 (in Arundels reissue = 166 in Tempier's original). Quod peccatum contra naturam, utpote abusus in coitu, licet sit contra naturam speciei, non tamen est contra naturam indiuidui.

I think Tempier may have misunderstood someone he condemned, or someone may have introduced an abusive sense à la Boswell.

It is true that the good of procreation is primarily for the preservation of the species, the mankind, and not for the preservation of the individual, and this is the good of nature that these sins (including but not limited to sodomy) go against.

But what Tempier certainly intended to condempn was the idea that the sin would be sinful overall in mankind most of the time, but there could be individual exceptions, since the sin was not against their "natural" inclination.

Condempned it is. The form of Tempier's document is a Syllabus errorum, it was refined by Arundel who divided it into chapters (XX = Errores de uitiis et uirtutibus), and reused by Pope Pius IX and Pope St. Pius X.

And as to Boswell's position, I'll cite Groucho Marx: I'm against that.

11:02 I would consider that this was in fact not rape in the moral sense (it could be qualified as rape legally in order to exonerate victims from death penalty), I think some of them consented.

I am not sure there were any known pairings of adult male to adult male apart from Sparta. In a custom that was no longer there in St. Paul's day, presumably, since Sparta no longer had an army of its own.

The homosexual relations were often part of mentorship. Alcibiades wanted Socrates to attend to him that way, but Socrates was not seduced. (Conspiracy theory: Alcibiades cried his eyes out before a family member who decided to get Socrates out of the way).

In Rome, mentorships were supposed to be morally clean. In Athens, it's more like this was the ideal, turning it to sodomy was kind of shameful, but still pretty often done, so people doing it were not ostracised (in a city where ostracism was literally a legal procedure).

Now, the point Casey could be making is, it was not entirely optional for young men of a certain standing to have a mentor. This means, they could get one of the mentors who could ... well, "fall for" the beauty of the protégé. So, even if this was not a case of abuse of slavery, and when it was actually not always abuse of an age which in some US jurisdictions would be under age of consent, it was still an abuse of power.

In this connection. St. Paul has talked of the God known because, very presumably, inter alia at least, He turns the world around Earth each day, which unlike the complexity of DNA or irreduceable complexity of the flagellum of the bacterium was visible and known since Creation, and then some guys thought it fit to admire with adoration a man who had some problems killing a mere giant, and who, having two protégés, his nephew and Hylas, was considered as having abused at least the latter of them. I think even if Iolaus was never sexually abused, the relation was still not quite healthy. Well, if you worship Hercules, this extreme machism can turn you homosexual. And God allowed it.

In 1950, some priests took opportunity for one option Pius XII said one could discuss. They speculated on how God had been kind of mentoring Adam while getting him out of his ape origins. Some such priests also abused mentoring positions. Not least in at least one or two of the countries with episcopates on the winning side of Vatican II. Netherlands and France.

Now, with all that said for Casey, there is actually a parallel to Sodom, in the sense talked of in "abusus in coitu" in the 13th C. discussions where Bishop Tempier made a condemnation just cited. This proves that this context doesn't totally determine the meaning of St. Paul. Namely why God killed Onan. And no, contrary to what John Boswell might have argued, the thing Onan was killed for was his antiprocreative act, not the inclination of not wanting to raise a son for a dead brother.

15:11 Juvenal was writing decades after St. Paul.

Here it is a question whether:

• Juvenal was telling the truth or making an overdone exaggeration
• and whether what Juvenal depicts was already the case in the day of St. Paul or whether things had gone down since the pervert Nero martyred St. Paul.

15:17 The clearest evidence of lesbian sex among equals in the Roman Empire would come from Seneca the Elder (who was a tragedian, not the moral philosopher who was a Stoic) and from Apocalypse of St. Peter. In the latter case, it's about their punishment in Hell, and in the former of a husband killing a wife caught in lesbian adultery and calling it even more monstruous.

If you meant Alcman and Sappho, partly that was centuries earlier, partly Sappho deals with her passion for protégées (or mock passion for one, the poem is reprised in a heterosexual way by Catullus, and there his passion is genuine, he was never mentor, rather unsuccessful suitor to the one he pined for), and Alcman seems to be dealing with thirteen year old girls or sth. Which you presumably wouldn't classify as adult.

So, the actual evidence that Lesbian sex existed among Romans comes from Christians. One evidence for Christianity being true is, if no women had been lesbians, why would the Romans and especially women at all have joined a religion that insulted them by bringing this up?

Or perhaps Juvenal again ... I must admit, he was not my top priority when reading Latin. I was grossed out by Cena Trimalchionis. Petronius, unlike Juvenal, actually was on an exam.

16:52 Totally agree with the three of you.

1) Inclination not chosen is not mortally sinful, meaning "homosexual" is a bad translation
2) Grace and forgiveness are open.

Now, some want to make it a "scientific question" (and often on their view answered with no) whether a man with such attractions can manage to marry a woman and stay faithful (the psychologist I mentioned didn't), or whether a woman with such attractions can marry a man and stay faithful (one female pastor, I think, recently interviewed by Ru-Ru-Ru-Ruslan, did, so far). I'd say it is more like a question of the person's self estimate.

This being so, I'd probably also be adressed by St. Paul's words, if I married. "such some of you were" ... I note killers aren't mentioned, but railers are. People who want to a) stamp me as homosexual and b) therefrom conclude I couldn't or at least shouldn't marry, make me want to kill. They also make me rail, depending on the meaning St. Paul gave that word.

Apologia Naturalis Partly Fails For a Modernist

OK, Moral argument and Teleology are not totally bungled, Anselm is correctly seen as less of a proof than he first thought, or not the way he first thought, he both makes some ill considered admission that Atheists might be excusable, at 8:22, then makes at the beginning of the video a few bloopers on the Cosmological argument.

Is There Proof God Exists? Yes
Breaking In The Habit | 8 Febr. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXVPCm5ILyc

0:42—0:50
"In the absence of verifiable scientific evidence for God, theologians and philosophers have turned to logical arguments to prove God’s existence for centuries."

What is "absence of verifiable scientific evidence" supposed to mean in this context?

Prima Via, in the way St. Thomas Aquinas probably meant it and Riccioli certainly took it, means, we have daily sightings, not of God, but of his action.

A few years, perhaps even ten years ago, either in Summa Theologica or in Summa contra Gentes, I found ... wait, I do find it again in Contra Gentes:

Patet autem sensu aliquid moveri, * utputa solem. *

Quarum prima talis est: omne quod movetur, ab alio movetur. Patet autem sensu aliquid moveri, utputa solem. Ergo alio movente movetur. Aut ergo illud movens movetur, aut non. Si non movetur, ergo habemus propositum, quod necesse est ponere aliquod movens immobile. Et hoc dicimus Deum. Si autem movetur, ergo ab alio movente movetur. Aut ergo est procedere in infinitum: aut est devenire ad aliquod movens immobile. Sed non est procedere in infinitum. Ergo necesse est ponere aliquod primum movens immobile.

The Sun moves around Earth every single day 360°.

It's verifiable, since it is observed. Note, his intro is * Patet autem sensu * i e, you don't fiddle with sense perception, unless it is called for. If we see the Sun move and don't see the Earth turn, we better stick with it's the Sun that moves, unless we have very irrefutable proof, also from sense data, it's the earth that turns.

Sanguine

@EspadaKing777

I suppose you'd need recorded, verified evidence of a physical event or action that could not possibly have a natural explanation. I don't know what that would be or look like, i'm just attempting to answer your question.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

My criterium was not "could not possibly" @EspadaKing777, though human language in a non-eternal world would qualify.

My criterium was "could not as plausibly" or with as few non-apparent assumptions be so explained.

Assuming "God does not exist, therefore Geocentrism is impossible, therefore Heliocentrism is true even if Geocentrism is observed" seems more roundabout than "Geocentrism is observed, but would be impossible without God, therefore God exists" = the actual argument of St. Thomas.

Sanguine

@hglundahl I might have misunderstood, but I was more talking about the "we have daily sightings, not of God, but of his action".

To assume X is the action of God, you'd first have to show that X couldn't be explained with a non-God cause (application here of Occam's Razor), so suggesting we have daily sightings of God's actions seems question-begging to me.

As if to prove my point, of course St. Thomas was wrong and the Earth does move around the sun. His observations had another explanation that needed no God, and it turned out to be true.

If I were to rephrase it:

"1) Our observations are consistent with Geocentrism; 2) Geocentrism isn't possible without divine intervention 3)There are no non-Geocentrist models that would adequately explain our observations; C) There is a God."

So when Father Casey says "absence of verifiable scientific evidence", he's referring to data that strongly suggests the Divine to the exclusion of non-divine explanations.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@EspadaKing777 "To assume X is the action of God, you'd first have to show that X couldn't be explained with a non-God cause (application here of Occam's Razor),"

The Geocentric universe we actually observe is not explained with a non-God cause. There is a reason why Atheists are usually Heliocentrics.

"As if to prove my point, of course St. Thomas was wrong and the Earth does move around the sun."

You actually need to prove that, since that is not observed.

"His observations had another explanation that needed no God, and it turned out to be true."

It didn't — except according to Atheists and their run-alongs.

Part three of your rephrasing:

"There are no non-Geocentrist models that would adequately explain our observations"

I would say it's sufficient with "as adequately" ... which is true.

Heliocentrism takes an extra turn, which is contrary to the "razor" you just invoked.

@EspadaKing777 If you really want "adequately" period:

human language in a non-eternal world would qualify

2:16 When it stops is Adam was created by God.

Exactly where it stopped about Jesus ancestry in Luke 3.

The idea that "we evolved from the apes" (adressed on one of the slides) is not scientific, not proven, not proven possible, on at least one count I can mention, as amateur linguist, proven IMPOSSIBLE.

We have language. Apes have perhaps a total of 500 signals, and some of them involve sound, some don't. But the sounds are not phonemes, making up morphemes that can express concepts and metaconcepts, or morphemes making up phrases expressing eunciation on the relation of concepts. It's as impossible to get this from the 500 ape signals, as it is for literature to arise from smileys and traffic signals. In "ape" a given sound has a meaning in and of itself. Not a hieroglyphic meaning attached to the letter of the sound, but a meaning of complete message every time the sound is heard at all.

Imagine even one sound of English had a complete message meaning. Say, L.

Imagine even one sound of EngI-DON'T-LIKE-YOUish had a compI-DON'T-LIKE-YOUete message meaning. Say, I-DON'T-LIKE-YOU.

Imagine this were true for another sound as well, say N.

ImagiI-LOVE-YOUe eveI-LOVE-YOU oI-LOVE-YOUe souI-LOVE-YOUd of EI-LOVE-YOUgI-DON'T-LIKE-YOUish had a compI-DON'T-LIKE-YOUete message meaI-LOVE-YOUiI-LOVE-YOUg. Say, I-DON'T-LIKE-YOU.

Or even I.

I-HATE-YOUmagI-HATE-YOUI-LOVE-YOUe eveI-LOVE-YOU oI-LOVE-YOUe souI-LOVE-YOUd of EI-LOVE-YOUgI-DON'T-LIKE-YOUI-HATE-YOUsh had a compI-DON'T-LIKE-YOUete message meaI-LOVE-YOUI-HATE-YOUI-LOVE-YOUg. Say, I-DON'T-LIKE-YOU.

Now imagine every vocalisation possible from your experience already had a meaning.

That doesn't gradually evolve to language.

HarmonicaLuke

@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke

"It is not scientific"
— Would seeing peer reviewed science papers in support of it change your mind? I'm not saying that's proof it's true, but it's certainly proof it's science.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke In 1973, a French publisher translated a book about Homo erectus under the title Les Premiers hommes (the first men).

Today, Tomasello has not come much further. IT's like all they can say is "we are looking at the problem" ... they've been doing that for 50 + years and come no closer to a solution.

I would not be the least impressed by a peer reviewed science paper that said "apes communicate like this, men communicate like this, that's the gap to bridge" that's been said 50 years ago.

As far as I know, to this day, not a single paper is giving suggestions on how to bridge the gap. Actually, fancyful suggestions 100 years ago were more productive in scenarios. The problem is, since then scientists have realised why the scenarios don't work.

8:22 The Church has never posited that reason alone is enough to * know * God.

The Church has posited that Reason and Sense Data are enough to know God exists (and St. Paul agrees in Romans 1).

That is Reason and Sense Data are sufficient of themselves, but may not actually suffice for a man bred in a toxic culture. Like all the oxygen in a room may not help an asthma patient from suffocating.

Theo Skeptomai

@Theo_Skeptomai

Are you willing to answer some straightforward questions concerning your comment?

Hans Georg Lundahl

@Theo_Skeptomai I might be in need of a coffee break soon, but if I don't answer today, I'll be back before the computer tomorrow.

Second Thoughts on my Second Thoughts on my Initial Rejection

New Teaching on Marriage? No.
Breaking In The Habit | 19 Dec. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YbbFCRk5yI

Two comments that got lots of answer comments.

"As a Catholic homosexual even I know the truth. You can't bless sin in any way. You can bless the sinner but not any sin. You can bless the sinner individually but not as a couple."

"As a homosexual I chose the way to stay single. This is my moral choice because the church taught me to do so. Now people are trying to change the dogma, it’s really hard to accept. When I decided to obey the law of the church I thought at least I have church."

1) Very much prior to Fiducia Supplicans, there is a doctrinal confusion, shared by Joe Sciambra who recently "crossed the Bosphorus" (or the Volga, not sure which), and in the case of one honourable exception known to me, not shared by Charles Chaput, presumed ordinary emeritus of Philadelphia.

The confusion is the pretence that homosexual individuals are called to or required to stay single. Josh Weed has famously procreated with his wife four daughters (at least) before trying affairs with men. Svante Pääbo, like his wife, they have a son together, and they used to think they were exclusively homosexual which doesn't follow even from predominantly homosexual.

There are similar stories from Philadelphia under Charles Chaput, but for other dioceses, or under his pro-LGBTQ successor who apologised for him, the marriages of Weed and Pääbo are due to the men not being in the Catholic Church.

If my take is traditionally speaking wrong, someone show me a document from prior to 1950 (Humani Generis) which says so. Otherwise, I think the modern ideology is fulfilling 1 Timothy 4:3.

2) Fiducia Supplicans could probably be implemented in a correct way, if the gay couple is in one of the following situations:

• looking for an extra apartment so they can break up (cease sinning) without one of them becoming homeless
• looking for a lesbian couple to effect a partner exchange for the Chaput solution (in that case, one of the men could enter the appartment of the women, one of the women the apartment of the men)
• fighting a fight for sth even more important than avoiding sodomy, like temporarily as a couple saving a baby from impending abortion
• being unable to leave each other, but asking the strength to live like Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in the works of Conan Doyle (keeping separate bedrooms separate, I suppose some of that "community" have done fan fictions on Doyle where this is not the case, as they are presumably also doing on the Dynamic Duo).

However, it struck me, Ratzinger once spoke out about male prostitutes who would begin a kind of moralisation process if insisting on condoms.

I differed from St. Nicolas du Chardonnet (FSSPX) on that occasion. Such a person would not be more contraceptive bc of the condom, which means that it doesn't add to the sinfulness of the act. Therefore it subtracts from it by decreasing a certain risk.

The problem I begin to sense with this document is, someone could reason about two gay men beginning a kind of moralisation process by being faithful to each other. And a priest reasoning like that could bless "their fidelity, if not their sin" and such a blessing of their fidelity could, precisely like gay marriage, be an obstacle to them looking for or finding the Chaput solution, as obviously for them really trying the single solution.

3) Just in case someone assumes I take an interest in the question bc I'm somehow supposed to be HS, no, not the case. I have gratitudes to some HS men (notably to someone who took care of ma the latter part of my pregnancy). I come from a country where "homophobia" is legally a crime (Åke Green got in trouble, I didn't double check his actual words, so I presumed he had deviated from charity and even doctrine in a way he hadn't, he had just been using HS as a euphemism for active gay lifestyle). I try to both defend the doctrine and stay out of legal trouble.

A N D ... I have a similar interest in promoting a lowering of the marital age. Some have stated "it's unfair if God doesn't allow homosexuals to have sex" -- I say with Chaput God hasn't forbidden them normal sex, and God has also forbidden heterosexual people to have gay sex. Some have stated "it's unfair that we have to wait to marriage, when puberty is so much earlier" and I reply that marriage at the age of puberty was in practise available to lots of girls, plus the boys who had no financial troubles barring them from being breadwinners, i e royalty or peasants. Men have changed laws in evil ways. God did not say marriage had to wait to 18 or 21. Progressive Era and Prussian and Risorgimento men in politics did.

I'm as apologist refusing to stamp a man-made problem as a fault in God's law.

4:39 Wait ... when hearing Mark Goring, I actually was nearly endorsing it as conditionally well applicable, after reading §§31--41.

I should have read 31 a bit closer:

"so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel, that they may be freed from their imperfections and frailties, and that they may express themselves in the ever-increasing dimension of the divine love."

Now, this could correspond to the situation I considered as licit:

• being unable to leave each other, but asking the strength to live like Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson ...keeping separate bedrooms separate.

But it could also correspond to:

• The problem I begin to sense with this document is, someone could reason about two gay men beginning a kind of moralisation process by being faithful to each other. And a priest reasoning like that could bless "their fidelity, if not their sin" and such a blessing of their fidelity could, precisely like gay marriage, be an obstacle to them looking for or finding the Chaput solution, as obviously for them really trying the single solution.

I think I should reject the document after all.

Lesbian Activist Reacts to Same Sex Blessings
Reason & Theology | 3 Jan. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZZ1fKD_W8k

I am however somewhat concerned about § 31.

According to some theological positions, a homosexual who refuses to be promiscuous, who decides to remain in a faithful couple, certainly is still sinning, but is doing a step in the right direction.

The problem I have is, I see an attempt to shoehorn people with SSA into either that or celibacy.

I e, still no appreciation for Chaput (against whom LGBTQ-activists were scathing) and that means:

• people are still being excluded from marriage (as in one man, one woman) as per a prejudice someone with SSA could not validly will that union,
• and people unjustly reputed to be of SSA are still collateral damage to that policy.

Consider me collateral damage, sir ...

Fr Casey Cole considered St. Thomas Aquinas as a Muslim (by Implication)

Scholars Don't Think Moses Wrote the Torah. Who did?
Breaking In The Habit, 8 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIYWSbY5VLY

1) Genesis 1 and 2 — panorama and closeup.

Genesis 4 and 5 — some were called after others, directly or with evasion of identic name. The man who went up to God without dying was arguably named after the man who was honorary city founder (the real founder being his father). One would need to be a Hindu and call them Bharat instead of Henoch to confuse them!

Flood — the call for one pair of each = when God told Moses to build the Ark, the call for seven (pairs?) of clean animals = when Noah was taking them aboard. Anachronism? If meant as about written revealed legislation by God, yes, but if it meant customs on sacrificial animals after Abel, no, not necessarily. Abel sacrificed either a sheep, clean, or a goat, clean, or sth ancestral to both, also clean.

Two different lengths? Not really. There is a difference between up to when one could look out and up to when one could step out.

Joseph sold into slavery two different reasons? I saw one in Genesis 37, Judah wanted him to remain alive and told his brothers he'd be off their back anyway. So, one for Judah, and one for the brothers hearing him.

Moses is very arguably editing the material for Genesis. Only six days was his own observation in a vision (Genesis 2 gives us the creation of Eve as observed by Adam). But less according the "Documentary Hypothesis" and more according to the "toledoth hypothesis" (or hypotheses) or Haydock's final words on Genesis 3.

2) 3:45 Pretty obviously, there are students with that exact range of vocabulary. You are one, you made up the example.

3:56 A handful of recognisable voices neither proves diversity of authors, nor split personality. It's a question of moods.

Moses definitely had the term Adonai (as in tetragrammaton) from God, and Elohim from his source material. Exit JEPC hypothesis.

4:15 You were yourself writing this video from two different eras. I guess "this song slaps" is fairly recent, never heard of it. I know for a fact "groovy" was used in the Hippie era. So, you were exposed to at least two cultures. How many was Moses exposed to?

Egyptian + Captivity Hebrew + Madianite pastoral + Desert walk Hebrews — Moses was exposed to at least four different cultures. And on the Desert walk, he was exposed to everyday, to sacrificial, to prophecy, to marital troubles — there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that he should write everything with a single unified voice.

3) 4:59 "This is the Catholic Church"

Except, no, not quite. Cardinal Suhard was not just Cardinal Priest of San Onofre del Janículo. He was also Archbishop of Paris. He was writing this after he had sent a query as Archbishop of Paris and was getting either a slap on the fingers or a bit too much encouragement from Rome in 1947. In 1950, Humani Generis, he definitely got a slap on the fingers. He had presumed in the query one could just assume Adam had not quite human parents.

There is, from your viewpoint, a cardinal in Stockholm. If he continues to speak of "the pope" (the man he holds to be so) as "my colleague in Rome" (which his predecessor as ordinary of Stockholm did), this does not reflect the usage of the Church Universal, it reflects an agenda of the diocese of Stockholm to boost ecumenism by downplaying papal supremacy. Btw, I don't know he did repeat such a thing, I only know Hubertus Brandenburg did so, so I am not saying this as accusing Anders Arborelius. It's just an example.

Paris had had a purely regional agenda, not the one of the Church universal, all since 1920, to downplay the inerrancy of Genesis. An article from then, in a publication from Institut catholique de Paris, enumerates previous positions on the Exameron work held by Catholic authors since Lyell and up to mid-1890's, these being:

• young earth
• day age
• gap theory

THEN the author himself introduces the theory that's usually credited to 1924 to a Calvinist, namely literary frame work thesis.

That Suhard makes a fool of himself 28 years later is not exactly totally surprising to me.

4) Developed in different eras ... I would say the text received linguistic and terminological updates after Moses wrote it, as when a city is renamed after the Ramesses pharaos, the new name is inserted into Exodus 1:11. And obviously, how much a redactor redacts is up to his own zeal or otherwise.

5) Why the mouth of Moses, unless you add the pen of Aaron? Why not the pen of Moses?

Actually, when he writes of himself in the third person, I get an impression, some guys surround him, he asks them what they saw, they speak — and Moses writes it down. A bit the reverse of what St. John does when lending his pen to someone who can affidavit that they know his testimony to be true.

6) Moses certainly told stories, but probably, for Genesis, if he didn't receive it from Jethro, as he probably did with either the story or the full text of Job, he would in huge part have received it from people telling the stories of some great-great-great-grandfather 215 years before the Exodus, and taken down their story. He would have been to the stories from Abraham to Joseph and his brethren what St. Luke was to the biography of Jesus — someone taking up testimonies from others.

Or he inherited the basket of papyry the Beduin tribe had been collecting since Abraham wrote down the very early chapters (except the six day account).

"Handing on the experiences that only he would have known about"

a) the burning bush
b) the things received on Sinai (open question if it includes only the two versions of the Decalogue, and the six day account as it stands, or whether he had a fuller account of the six days preserved in Jubilees)
c) ...?

Apart from these two, his life was very public.

"certainly not the words he spoke"

Again, why not "mostly the words he wrote, except when updated" instead?

7) A thousand years of handing down ...

Shucks!

You DO have pretty much over a millennium from Adam to Abraham. The chapters 2 and 3, as well as the ensuing ones up to 11 read like passages (not necessarily one and only one per chapter) that are very short and contain very little reflection, except that done by the characters.

This means, even if they were handed down orally, they could have been composed as we have them, and Abraham would still have them pretty fresh with only ever so slight a word change, apart from the linguistic development going on (which the oral tradition hides).

But speaking of a thousand years FROM Moses on, no, that's Suhard, or uncomfortably close, that's not Pope Pius X.

8) All stories 6:18 "can grow and adapt"

Folklorists collecting the Sagen aus Österreich (divided into the "Sagen" from each of the nine lands of Austria) have found very short texts that have not grown. Pretty close to early chapters of Genesis in length.

The later and more detailed ones, I think Abraham used papyrus or clay from some point on.

9) Verbatim dictation is a strawman if not for the word choice process, at least for the epistemic process.

Moses for Genesis (except the six days) and for most external action in Exodus through Deuteronomy had normal, human sources for what he wrote down.

It is however probable that God preserved his word choices from misleading imprecisions even with actually talking to his inner mind, but it is at least certain that God providentially preserved Moses' even word choices from containing any error, either doctrinal or purely factual.

10) 7:03 W H A T ... so presumably St. Thomas Aquinas wrote some time after 1823?

But some are [of the faith] only "per accidens", namely insofar as they are transmitted in Writ, which Faith presumes to be promulgated by dictation of the Holy Spirit: which on the one hand can be ignored without danger by those who are not obliged to know Writ, like many historic things: and in these also the saints have sensed diversely, exposing divine Writ in different ways.

my translation of

Quaedam vero per accidens tantum, inquantum scilicet in Scriptura traduntur, quam fides supponit spiritu sancto dictante promulgatam esse: quae quidem ignorari sine periculo possunt ab his qui Scripturas scire non tenentur, sicut multa historialia: et in his etiam sancti diversa senserunt, Scripturam divinam diversimode exponentes.

Reference his comments on the Lombard, II Sent. Dist. XII q.1, a.2.

"quam fides supponit spiritu sancto dictante promulgatam esse" means precisely "which Faith presumes / supposes to be promulgated / to have been promulgated by dictation of the Holy Spirit"

And dictation is usually thought of as precisely word by word dictation.

"This is more of a Muslim way of approaching Scripture"

Nothing like "more of" but Mohammed plagiarised the Christian concept.

11) You just (7:14) limited inerrancy to what is necessary for salvation. Something which Galileo was precisely condemned for doing. Yes, he was condemned for Heliocentrism, which has bad ramifications of its own, but a wider issue clearly visible to his judges was that precise tendency, and as you know from the Summa, even a thing which need not be believed if one doesn't know it's in Scripture, must be believed as soon as one credibly learns it is so contained.

No, you are not speaking for the Church now.

12) Ah no, you are even misquoting (or misinterpreting the exact words of) Dei Verbum.

"Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings (5) for the sake of salvation. Therefore "all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind" (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text)."

So, the teaching is for our salvation. But the inspiration of the Holy Spirit also extends to the facts, notably historic, by which the Church came to know this teaching, not just to the teaching itself, if the facts are also in the Bible. Without error does not just mean "without error as far as the teaching goes" but also "without any error surrounding the teaching on any side" ... the opposite of the one would be "with substantial error" and the opposite of the other would be "with accidental error" — what you cite denies, as much as St. Thomas did, both.

7:42 The 1906 answer is perfectly acceptable in so far as Moses was not the first to pen "Heber begat Peleg", as Moses did not pen the story of his death, and as Moses did not pen the name "Ramesses" but an older name, but temple scribes changed it in copying in the times of the Ramesside pharaos, and dito for linguistic updates — I love to give the spelling of Tegnér as an example, since Sweden underwent a spelling reform in 1906, but since "Frithiofs saga" is metric, the wording is not changed. I'd prefer to give examples on how wordings or even phrases can be changed in editions of Gulliver's Travels or Robinson Crusoe to make the edition understandable for an audience a few centuries longer. Moses obviously did not pen changes that Cohanim decided after his death, but they still did so on his authority.

13) Wait, when and where did St. Jerome say he believed any part of the Pentateuch to be more than slightly reformulated by Ezra?

He was not first to translate the Hebrew Bible into Latin, he was first to translate it directly into Latin, if as much.

Vetus Latina was translated from some version of the LXX, and some scholars believe that St. Jerome never got good enough in Hebrew to translate directly, but got it via Aquilas.

Nevertheless, I am wary, not of St. Jerome, but of people citing him without verbatim quotes. CSL miscited "in the words of a popular poet" as implying the presence of "myth" as opposed to straight facts. It only implies the dismissing of unnecessary footnotes.

14) "It is a bit foolish to believe Moses wrote every word as we have it today"

It is technically true he didn't, but too insignificantly deviating from the reality of how he didn't to make it foolish to believe he did, even just a bit.

Your resumé of "faith" is a bit foolishly minimalistic.

Under the same video by Casey Cole

Real Priest Answers Questions about Confession
Breaking In The Habit, 17th March 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRLZ_94eQss

My comments directly to the video on the previous post Fr. Casey has his sides, but these two videos are good.

Kristina L.

While I am not Catholic, my in-laws are. I appreciate this channel so much as it's helping me understand where they are coming from regarding their religious faith. Thank you for the clear explanations, and God bless you in your ministry.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I don't think he is Catholic on all subjects, but on this one he is.

Dark Angel

@Hans-Georg Lundahl he is a catholic priest and he is catholic on everything

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Dark Angel No, even Trent Horn could correct him on historicity of the Gospels, where he had pretended (Fr Casey, not Horn) that the memories of the disciples could have been distorted after decades.

I think I have heard him defend the Theory of Evolution as well.

Calvin Coolidge Simp

@Hans-Georg Lundahl the theory of evolution is not incompatible with Catholic teachings

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Calvin Coolidge Simp Is your criterium on Catholic Teachings from Trent Session IV or from CCC § 283?

If the former, you cannot back your claim about "not incompatible" and if the latter in preference over the former, I will not buy your claim to be Catholic. You are obviously free to reciprocate the sentiment.

Other Comments Under His Video

Casey Cole Poked Fun at Pope Michael · Other Comments Under His Video

The previous dialogue between me and Casey Cole is still there, I can still look it up when going by the notification of his answer. But if you want to scroll for it, you won't find it attached in chronological order with the other comments by me, it was posted the previous day.

3:40 1798 Was it an apostolic vicariate before that, or was it under the Douay - Rheims mission (people like Challoner and Witham being bishops)?

4:47 Thank you very much for showing an argument against His late Holiness unfounded.

The duty to be in seminary is actually not de jure divino, and can therefore be dispensed with

6:28 1563 and the Council of Trent may have involved other reforms of the calendar, but the switch from Julian to Gregorian came twenty years later.

If ten days hadn't been missing that year of 1583, Teresa of Avila would have died October 5th ... but she "went to bed" on St. Francis' day alive and was founded dead next morning 11 calendar days later, so St. Teresa is celebrated 15th of October.

9:04 thuribulum would be "too-REE-boo-loom."

First oo long, the other ones short.

Alternative for last syllable, pronounce Latin -um as nasal -oo.

11:14 Obviously, quite a lot of Sedes and I think Pope Michael too, though I haven't checked, would disagree.

The Catholic understanding of the sacraments in question is not enough, if one intends to remain in Communion with a Protestant community, should one survive.

11:28 And Pope Michael made married priesthood generally available in the Latin rite too.

Father Francis Dominic is married.

12:42 Speaking of thrillers with connexion to NS Germany, have you considered the Austrian nun, who was arrested after Mass, she had written a poem lampooning Hitler, she was offered to have her life spared.

When the White Rose was executed in Munich it was exactly one year after her arrest, and she had obviously been praying for Germany to be liberated from deception and tyranny. She was executed later - still refusing to give up her monastic or religious vows.

16:07 Nobody has read all of them ....

Well, same goes for my blogs or at least blog posts, I'd say. 10 000 + posts.

I bet Rahner, less orthodox than myself, was better paid though, than I have been so far.

16:25 What about IHC?

Uncial sigma looks like a C.

Ttt Erg

“C” is the capital letter of the minuscule sigma for a word’s ending

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ttt Erg Uncials were before you had capitals and minuscules.

Capitals are basically the ancient letters, they changed ductus via uncial and semi-uncial to minuscule (both Greek and Latin alphabets) and later capital and minuscule were repurposed so both are used together.

Ttt Erg

@Hans-Georg Lundahl that is purely wrong because Greek already had them and even the transition between IHS to IHC happened a few years after IHS had come to use

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ttt Erg Would you mind clarifying:

"Greek already had them"

Greek already had WHAT and before WHAT?

If you meant minuscule sigma before uncial sigma, you are dreaming.

Uncials are found in very early texts while minuscules becomes the norm in c. 800 AD.

[added] If you simply meant the C form existed before the full transition from capitals to uncials, you might have a point, but if so, the original comment was somewhat badly worded.

17:30 Does a bishop use his crozier when visiting another diocese?

I had knowledge of bishops in the diocese and abbots in the abbey holding croziers opposite directions - the bishop ruling outward, into the world in his diocese, the abbot ruling inward, over his own monks ...

Casey Cole Poked Fun at Pope Michael

Casey Cole Poked Fun at Pope Michael · Other Comments Under His Video

18 MORE Minutes of Useless Catholic Information
Breaking In The Habit, 19 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIY2i8TlWes

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1:17 "real popes"

OK, as an adherent to the late Pope Michael, the other ones you mentioned before him, weren't.

Neither are three evolution believers on the physical place of the Vatican since 1978. Not referring to Luciani, not sure I can indict him on that one. And Wojtyla only made his coming out after the election of Pope Michael made him a formal schismatic.

Breaking In The Habit

We can trust in the Holy Spirit and the authority of the Church... or we can be the arbiter of truth ourselves and decide who is good and who is not. I'm not sure I want to be with schismatics in the latter, believing that the Church could somehow be corrupted. That's a sad, and Protestant, view of the Church.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Breaking In The Habit Is that supposed to be a summing up of the lines between Catholic and Protestant?

Would you mind referring back to the exact text in Trent and Vatican (1869 - 1870, obviously)?

Because, a clearer example of Catholic than either of us said this of Protestants:

"Now the modern Protestant applies this absolute idea of amputation to all parts of problematical human nature; to all popular customs or historic traditions. He does not mean that men should be restrained in them just now; he means that men should drop them for ever, like the monkey’s tail. When puritans abolish ritualism, it means there shall be no more ritual. When prohibitionists abolished beer, they swore that a whole new generation would grow up and never know the taste of it. When Protestants look to the solution of Socialism, most of them do not merely mean to attack the contemporary congestion called capitalism; they mean to abolish for ever the very idea of private property."

The point being, that's how you seem to react to using one's own judgement.

There have been High Church Anglicans who have accused anyone swimming the Tiber of Protestantism, since converting from one's own previous Church implied using one's own judgement instead of that of the said Church.

So, snappy as your resumé is, I prefer the full version with the fine print, if you don't mind!

Trent, Vatican, perhaps you might think Unigenitus applicable as well, even if it was directed against Jansenists and not Protestants?

Franciscan Casey is Half-Right and Half-Wrong in Explaining the Bible

Franciscan Casey is Half-Right and Half-Wrong in Explaining the Bible · Debating the Take of Casey Cole

The Two Ways to Read the Bible
Breaking In The Habit, 22 Febr. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm9ugJjpbnY

1:20 "the fallible human author" / "the infallible divine author"

When I explain to Protestants how Papal infallibility works, I tell them "as we agree, Luke and Mark and the other guys" (all the way from Moses to John) "were habitually fallible, could be in error, as humans, and even so God preserved them from error when writing those books - so, why not the Pope in interpreting them?"

It seems, to you I have to turn this around.

As we agree, Peter, Linus, Cletus, Clement up to Pius XI and probably Pius XII, and again (on my part) possibly in a secret Siri papacy and then the late Pope Michael, or (on your part) "John XXIII through Francis" are personally fallible men. Nevertheless, God grants them identifiable infallibility, for instance in signing Nicaea I or II or in partly confirming Constantinople II about Honorius or in writing and signing Ineffabilis Deus, so - why not grant the Biblical authors even more, also on limited occasions, namely inerrancy as to every fact in the original manuscript.

Speaking of inerrancy and infallibility, Ineffabilis Deus seems to have as infallible, quite a lot with Genesis 3 as inerrant. The most basic definition of Mary's complete sinlessness is Genesis 3:15 along with Luke 1:28 and 1:42. Given, obviously, that the Blessed Virgin is the third person called in some form "blessed among women" (though the two former with some restriction as to locality), and the two previous ones had killed, that is utterly destroyed and "crushed" the heads of Sisera and Holophernes. Credits to Patrick Madrid for pointing out this Jael / Judith connexion, I have used it more than once.

1:38 "at face value without the use of reason"

I'm sorry, but Ken Ham was not on the index librorum prohibitorum, and his view of Genesis most certainly was not condemned in Trent Session IV.

Besides, "without the use of reason" is not a good paraphrase of "at face value" ... it is even reminiscent of a straw man.

It could also be seen as an expression of detecting a certain naiveté.

But taking things you otherwise trust at face value (Bible, senses, traditions about authorships, original genres or other events) is the default. Not doing so is the exception which needs a motivation.

2:56 What you have outlined is properly speaking called the "philological" method. The "historical critical" is later. It involves idiotic statements like "the pentateuch had several different authors" (apart from last chapter~s of Deuteronomy being written by Joshua and apart from Genesis being based on earlier accounts to which Moses had access, apart from the six day account which was granted himself on Mt Sinai).

3:10 Yes, Antipope Ratzinger when speaking of "historical critical" is indeed speaking of "such reconstructions" - i e like Jahwist and Elohist and Priestly Codex and like Isaiah with Deutero-Isaiah - and it is bad of him to ascribe to them even "relative certainty" - they more properly have no certainty at all, or even they do have a certainty of being wrong when conflicting with tradition.

From your part, it is very unwary to conflate this with taking figures of speech like figures of speech. Or things of that nature.

6:22 For the three spiritual senses, you were basically right.

I don't agree with changing the literal for the anagogic sense in Joshua's conquest, just because the modern reader can feel uneasy. And the twist you put on it, some cynics (I have a particular one in mind) might feel "great, instead of a past genocide, we get the promise of a future one - hooray!"

But, you now say the human author cannot have comprehended everything that's in the text at the time.

The Bible is great, but to my knowledge not infinite.

Finite number of passages, each has a finite number of senses, and each author is responsible for only a finite number of the texts - a Protestant who believes in 66 books would claim 40 authors, and we claim that's 7 books short of the Bible, so, perhaps 47?

Hence, any particular passage can have been fully understood, both literal and all three spiritual senses when the human author was writing. St. Thomas says they were given the gift of prophecy - so, Moses, and before him even Abraham and Isaac, would have known the Via Dolorosa was implied in Isaac carrying the firewood for the holocaust.

Also, that another parent would consent to the sacrifice in which a Son died. The Mater Dolorosa is part of what Abraham signifies typologically.

The serpent's head was crushed by both the woman and her seed.

7:05 Why would St. Luke not have understood what St. Augustine did?

Casey got Galileo Wrong

Fr. Casey's Somewhat Off · Casey got Galileo Wrong · On Friar Review & Babylon Bee

The Galileo Myth
Breaking In The Habit | 21 March 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxddfx-qX1c

1:20 OK, what exactly is ridiculous about Nye and Ham doing a scholastic thing like a Disputatio?

1:28 Contrary to Marr and the pastor, Nye and Ham didn't speak about "religion or science" but about creation or evolution, or possibly flood geology vs billions of years geology.

2:03 He's omitting that there were scientists stating the world was as Tycho Brahe said it was.

2:10 There wasn't enough evidence at the time to prove Heliocentrism.

There still isn't enough evidence now to prove an updated version of Heliocentrism.

But the statement this amounts or amounted "not enough to know which was true" presumes Heliocentrism in some form is true.

Geocentrism has the prima facie case, and that should prevail, as long as there is no conclusive evidence to the contrary.

Prima facie, the universe is as big today as it was yesterday. One could theorise the universe were constantly shrinking every single day, and how this could work out so there was no seeming trace of that shrinking. The reason we do not use that model is, while it is contrary to what appearances prima facie tell, it has no solid evidence to trump the prima facie.

The same is true for Heliocentrism.

2:51 Bosworth is basically pretending the Church of the time was sufficiently corrupt to sentence a man to abjuration and lifelong house arrest for suspicion of two heretical statements, simply because one got angry.

Apart from the idea that 1633 could have dogmatic value and (according to some) be wrong at that, that is about the worst thing one can say about the Church, it paints Pope Urban VIII as a very cynical man. Pretty much the equivalent of politicians today.

3:00 Presenting a new theory for which he did not have sufficient evidence would perhaps be a major no no at a modern faculty of science.

May I remind you, what he got in trouble about was not his scientific credentials, but the very status of being a Catholic Christian.

3:06 When told not to teach things he couldn't prove ... and which contradicted the Bible.

He attacked the Church? The Pope?

Er, no.

He attacked a man known in his work as Simplicio. Pope Urban VIII privately knew this was a portrait of himself, but as he had no twitter account and didn't make any airplane interviews, it would definitely not be easy for the common reader to identify Simplicio as the Pope. Furthermore, if Urban VIII was possibly angry or suspected of being that, he precisely for that reason did not himself participate in the deliberations of the Inquisitors.

As to attacking "the Church" - I don't know what you are talking about.

Fellow scientists? So what? Back then, science did not have a status of sacrosanctity, and neither attacking fellow scientists nor presenting theories he couldn't prove (if that was the sole trouble) would have landed him in trouble with the Church.

The theory about the case here presented paints the 17th C. Church as having Science as their religion and Inquisition as Political Psychiatry, Soviet style. Whatever the merits of such a comparison about the Inquisition, it was at least reserved for things like heresy, sodomy (in the Spanish version), black magic or superstitious oracles. Not for questions of the mere sciences.

3:38 Quotemining. [From St. Robert Bellarmine, about revising the Bible interpretation, if proof necessitated it]

His words continue "but I do not think that such a proof is possible" - and he was so far proven right in that prediction.

3:45 "because his scientific findings were very unscientific"

Definitely not all of them.

Does the Milky Way contain many small stars? Yes.
Does Jupiter have four moons (visible to that telescope)? Yes.
Did he correctly describe a passage of Venus? Yes.

Was he condemned for any of that? No.

Two theses were condemned, as contradicting specifically Joshua 10 and commenting passages in Psalms and Habacuc.

They still do.

They most specifically contradict Joshua 10:12 plus the miracle happening - it would be the only time in the Bible a miracle worker were wrong about what he was supposed to adress with an order from God, and the miracle happened.

3:59 The promise before the court was before the court of St. Robert Bellarmine.

And the words of the saint do not support he made such a promise, but the verdict of the saint as judge is that the two theses are heretical.

4:30 Where he finally produced the evidence we use today to support his system?

More like, where he finally wrote a sincere heartfelt support for his already given retraction.

What you just said sounds like a myth calculated to boost him as a scientist.

The evidence misused today is actually from later people, like Newton or Bradley, von Struve and Bessel.

4:40 Voltaire.

Wiki places him in these categories:
"Personnalité de la franc-maçonnerie française"
"Personnalité de la franc-maçonnerie initiée avant 1800"

This is not without bearing.

Freemasonry thought of itself as a "third party" to avoid the wars between Catholics and Protestants, it began in Protestantism, and it involved early on a fan of Newton. Desaguyliers.

Freemasonry has a cult of "great personnalities" that reminds of Catholic veneration of saints, and from the start, not just Galileo but also Bruno were among them, and consequently the adhesion to Heliocentrism.

Protestantism just before Freemasonry was involved in a similar cult of "martyrs to Papism" (Albigensians and Waldensians figuring as honorary Calvinists for the cause, and war criminal Coligny and son killer Colas added to the list) and in this atmosphere it was very easy to sell Galileo as yet another item. It only required to present Heliocentrism as proven scientific truth, why not one more pious fraud in favour of Protestants? Well, they got what they wanted.

5:42 Let me break this down ...

"St Augustine understood that the story of Genesis shouldn't be taken literally at the expense of empirical observation"

De Genesi ad litteram libri XII says no such thing.

He did support empirical observations over wooden literalism of expressions - like heaven being a vault or a tapestry ... but he did not attack the literality of the six day account. Except on one point, and that was God taking as long as six actual days as opposed to one single moment to create. And that was not due to empirical observation, but to taking a word from Wisdom or Maccabees "omnia creavit simul" as it sounded in his dialect of vernacular Latin (He created all simultaneously, simul retains the Classic sense) instead of what it meant in St. Jerome's (simul or even more vulgar insimul replacing classical iunctim).

6:08 You presented Lamarck as a proponent of Evolution. True enough - but while he was not a freemason, did probably not leave the Church, he was probably a Deist.

His mechanism for evolution is also thoroughly debunked. Except perhaps for very small scale micro-evolution.

Phenotypal qualities you acquire over the course of your life do not pass into the genes of your offspring. Epigenetics has some hereditary qualities, but are very inadequate to explain different species or let alone kinds.

7:01 What Neil deGrasse Tyson means by fully embracing science involves Big Bang, billions of years, Heliocentrism for each solar system, several such in a galaxy, ours being the Milky Way, other galaxies also existing ... and obviously Evolution.

What he calls "most religious people in America" would therefore be most syncretists in the US.

7:11 "applies to a small fraction"

Yes, its predicted apostasy will be prevalent and faith dwindling in the last days ...

8:46 "while it is poetry and theology"

A Vulgate has 1184 chapters.

680 of them are history. Or 673, if you deduct the prophetic chapters in Daniel, which are half of the book.

Prophecy (including 7 from Daniel) is 264 chapters.

Poetry is 150 + 8 (Psalms and Canticles). 158.

Probably all of the rest is theological essays.

1184 - (673 + 264 + 158) = 89 (Solomon, Syrach and St. Paul plus other epistles ... just 89?)

158 + 89 = 147. 147 / 1184 = 12.4 %.

Sorry.

Theological essays are:
31 + 12 + 19 + 51 + 16 + 16 + 13 + 6 + 6 + 4 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 6 + 4 + 3 + 1 + 13 + 5 + 5 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 233 chapters

This would mean my total was too small:

673 + 264 + 158 + 233 = 1328

10:17 If it seems they contradict, there is, as David Bosworth said, some problem in the understanding of either science or revelation.

I agree with that.

But, here is more. If an understanding of revelation on some point is simply one held by all Church Fathers or all of them who touched the point, then it cannot be the understanding of revelation that is wrong. This means, Young Earth Creationism and Geocentrism are part of Revelation. Geocentrism is also part of directly empirical science. So, that being so, there are lots of people who have the wrong understanding of Science these days - no doubt because they make it their god, or their sole oracle, to the exclusion of revelation and of history.

10:44 reasoning and dialoguing and observing are certainly an incredible resource.

It is as certainly a strawman of Young Earth Creationism to pretend we deny it.

And it is equally wrong to tie this up with Science. You know, Registered Trademark.

I have several reasons against the late Rob Skiba II's Flat Earth model. That it contradicts scientific consensus is not one of them.

So, if you love reasoning, if you endorse dialogue, what's up with your refusing to dialogue with a Fundie?

"the luck to trust the right people ... the tough luck to see the worst of the wrong people."

The Trick to Converting Conspiracy Theorists and Evangelization
Breaking In The Habit | 23 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOEtzwsSTF4

1:33 I actually did change my mind at least once in my life because I lost an argument.

One day in 1990, I was talking to a convert whom I had welcomed in, since he had converted that year.

I tried to defend Vatican II and the establishment resulting from it. And I couldn't.

Since then, I am a trad. Very largely described. By the way, the guy who had humiliated me had done so before this - namely two men. Two priests I had had as father confessor.

5:17 This is why I think my debates on the internet are at the heart of whatever mission there might be for my apologetics.

I give some people a chance to be a jerk against the creationist, and some fall for it.

I also give them equally and preferrably a chance to come with facts.

And to get a bit more silent when I have given my answers.

Sure, if I have a debate with Dick Harfield, as currently is the case, where he impugns the historical reliability of Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther and Acts, republishing this debate in commercial format should in fairness of simple copyright issues depend in part on his admission for such reuse. Actually, I think it would be fair enough if he were offered a part of the proceedings, alternatively an equal right to publish it on his part with those doing so for me, but he might get lawyers on his side. So, my essays, where no one else's words are extensively involved in about equal proportions to mine actually are a big investment. Plus, I don't have a debate everyday.

BUT it will be a fairly edifying spectacle for our readers - his and mine - on the republication (for free) I do on my blog, to see him go from confidently factual to being snarky at my supposed impudence in not bowing down to experts ... you know Liberal to non-believing "Biblical scholars" plus those of natural sciences.

Trey Smith is not my greatest social asset, when he takes jabs at Darwin that are morally wrong as well as factually wrong (distrusting someone because he "doesn't have a real work" or "real degree" and this on top of it not being Darwin's case on the Beagle). But he certainly beats people who try to "educate" me on the "actual" meaning of the word "legend" and on trusting "appropriate" expertise (including Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier), as is the case with Dick Harfield.

8:06 Your list:

"Taylor Swift"

I think it is a good thing to avoid her songs, because of her endorsement of GLAAD. Credits to la Reezay for bringing this up.

Up to that, she had been pretty marginal after I tried to contact her for getting me artists to play my compositions, which she didn't do. I have no dislike of her style apart from message.

"Pumkin Spice"

Is that a Starbucks drink? Think I like it.

"the Latin Mass"

Was my first mass, when ma went from Vienna to Södertelge, she stopped in Munich and assisted a Mass in late 1968, perhaps around the 6th of October. Before the Liturgic Reform.

What I was convinced of, the day I lost an argument in 1990 was to avoid the New Mass.

"Boston sports teams"

I don't do sports.

"the Marvel Cinematic Universe"

I prefer the Marvel Comics universe as it was before X-Men came in ...

8:19 I can't answer, since none of these are things I really hate.

8:27 No amount of discomfort with people who go to St. Nicolas du Chardonnet and look down on me, it doesn't change the preference for the Mass of the Patristic, Scholastic and Second Scholastic times of the Latin Patriarchate.

By the way, since Pope Michael allowed it to be said in English (1958 books, presumably from the translations provided in "My Sunday Missal"), I prefer calling it Tridentine Mass.

It wasn't exclusively Latin before that either, the Glagolitic in Croatian, and an Huron version by Jesuit missionaries already existed. Who am I to disagree with St. Jean Bréboeuf?

8:38 I think you have just made the case Belloc made.

Impoverishing Catholics and Catholic clergy (insofar as it wasn't hanged, drawn and quartered) was a great way to make the English feel bad about Catholics and hence not listen to them.

I see some similarity to a tactic by some Catholics, who want this proponent of "Catholics should be Young Earth Creationist, and they would do very well to be Geocentric too" to look bad.

It is also a tactic by some Muslims who want this proponent of "Muhammed, Joseph Smith, Hesiod and Numa Pomilius had a thing in common" to look less than attractive.

And some Jews who don't like "Jesus is the true Messiah, Isaiah 11 already is fulfilled, Palestinians are Juda and Ephraim reunited" - and who would just love to reeducate me, and to make me "admit"' that all of this was a very absurd "conspiracy theory" ...

10:29 "is a huge social risk"

Which I took.

12:25 Distinguo.

If I were working primarily to influence Dick Harfield, it would not make sense to double down on facts or distinctions.

But if I hope a third party will be enlightened on what he and I say, and how each of us says it, perhaps it actually does make sense.

It's exactly one area, where I have hopes of still looking pretty good to people who in advance are as unbiassed as I was against any of your given list. Taylor Swift. Pumkin Spice. Marvel. Boston.

I'm obviously highly biassed for the Latin Mass or rather, as said, the Tridentine one.

13:23 Antipope "Paul VI' - Commies are right that Pentecostals are convincing and Scholastics aren't .... a résumé.

The fact of the matter is - "modern man" doesn't exist.

The "modern man" who dislikes Tridentine liturgy because it is impressive doesn't exist. Some may personally prefer it when it is less impressive. But to imagine either 1969 or 2022 this is the taste of all the masses - fiddlesticks (thanking CSL for providing a word that is less offensive than a certain US American one). It's like hanging around with lots of shrinks and then conclude "modern man believes in psychoanalysis" - when it's probable lots of young who are forced to it agree to it to avoid bad consequences, but don't really believe it.

13:50 "and care about the same things that they care about"

Even when they care about useless or hurtful things like "access to abortion" or "democracy" ...?

That's trying to be a convincing messanger, by forgetting the actual message.

What did a certain Bernadette Soubirous say?

"It's my task to transmit, not to convince"

Mutatis mutandis, I am not a prophet, it is my job to argue, whether I convince the other person or not.

14:22 "interested in nothing but money" (/fame)

Nice way to discredit an apologist who is poor and needs a publisher and some more viewers to start interesting one.

14:29 I am not the Church Universal.
It is not my duty to discard no one from listening to me. There are other ways into the Church than I am.

But, there is a certain type of intellectuals whom I could be really useful to - as CSL, even in his dryer moments, was to me.

If I believe I am right, it is not because I always have the facts on my side. About 10 years ago, I could make a blunder like attributing the 80 000 or 800 000 date of skeleta in Atapuerca to "carbon dating" which is not used for that far back. And argue on carbon buildup instead of the definitely other factors that fudge the probable Flood date for Atapuerca.

If I believe I am right, it is because I had the luck to trust the right people, starting with mother and grandpa, at first also grandma, and going on to Jesus and the Gospellers, to C. S. Lewis, to J. R. R. Tolkien, to G. K. Chesterton, to St. Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Newman, and to Hilaire Belloc.

And the tough luck, but for my intellect still luck, to see the worst of the wrong people.

Fr. Casey has his sides, but these two videos are good

That's why I find it right to ask him about things I have suffered from other Catholics. Well, not sure if a Novus Ordo who believes the Gospels can involve bad memories on part of the disciples is a Catholic, but on these topics he actually is Catholic.

Real Priest Answers Questions about Confession
Breaking In The Habit, 17th March 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRLZ_94eQss

One question you didn't answer.
What if I'm afraid of going to a confession bc the father will so priorise our relation and my relation with God that it becomes once again impossible to get me a wife while having a confessor, and what if I would prefer getting a wife first, even if we have to marry at the Church door, so the next time I get to confession, there is no longer any singlehood the father confessor can be tempted to prolong, to "work on me"?

One of your answers kind of tells the penitent to turn himself in, not to the police, but to things like shrinks.

You recommended serious scrupulosity to get "professional help"

Now, there is a communication problem. I have been through. Yes, there were indeed things I was unduly scrupulous of back when I converted, but the number one reason the fathers confessor kept calling me scrupulous and telling me to shut up was basically:

• last confession I hadn't managed to get through, that WHILE I had pushed myself to in principle be willing to regret the desire to marry as a sin against a vocation, I most certainly would have PREFERRED to get no vocation, to get about getting married
• and I was blaming myself for not having clarified this
• while the priests for two different reasons and in two different ways shut out all of my attempts to wheedle myself out of a vocation OUTSIDE of confession

Priest A - "be brave"
Priest B - turns this "confidence" into a confessional conversation, ending in absolution and therefore in this preferrence getting stamped with the seal of confession, so everyone could go on and on an on considering me as a vocation - and I had to get along with it.

Real Friar Answers Questions about the Vows
Breaking In The Habit, 25th Nov. 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahBWHJOf2k

1:53 Quick calculation you make for your house 2333 USD per month and you get 200 USD in your hand per month, that is you are earning 11 2/3 times as much as you control yourself (unless you are the father guardian).

Yep, not a way to get rich, especially if you are a Franciscan.

2:46 Precisely as St. Francis of Sales told a Calvinist.
"You are right that this chariot is princely, it was provided me by the prince of Savoy for this trip"

He didn't own it.

3:47 Fine, you made this vow.

Peter Kreeft, Matt Fradd, and on certain other channels than your favourites' Taylor Marshall, Kennedy Hall, Robert Sungenis didn't.

When I am complaining around the neighbourhood that the "Catholic" omertà about what I am writing is stopping me from earning my money to get a wife, what I get is people trying to reduce me to living your vows, which aren't mine.

How can you be in communion with people who:

• treat my work, as a private person and public since self published author as on par with your ministry engaged under your vow of poverty
• justify this by my not being married
• and every time I complain about this make token arrangements for me to : a) get a chance to get to know a girl, b) make sure the girl ditches me or behaves in a manner I need to ditch, over my staying attached to my actual work?

These people are doing evils like:

• forbidding me both marriage and fasting
• stealing away my work.

Their head in Paris is a certain Laurent Ulrich, headed himself by a certain Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who succeeded the successor of the man who headed Hubertus Brandenburg, under whom I had the two confessors who neither allowed me marriage nor monastery.

And before you or they tell me it is perhaps FSSPX who I should be complaining about, since I share so many of their positions, I have complained there too, and most especially by accepting Pope Michael. Which they wouldn't.

But whether FSSPX or Novus Ordo, I do Catholic apologetics, if you think it stinks theologically, it's your duty to argue against it or even condemn it, not to use omertà to silence the fact.

For 15 days in a row I have had 42 343 visitors. It is not as if my blogs where so unread that no one had any responsibility to condemn what's bad in them, if there is anything.

5:57 Just in case the fact that your calling may demand limited time for consuming the internet, I have mentioned that a priest who would want to read part of what I wrote and make an assessment if very free to:

• ask a layman to do the scrolling
• ask him to print specific things out on paper (yes, it could cost like 10 € or 15 USD - not sure of exact currency)
• then read on the paper.

8:45 You justify a Church laicizing men who actually made eternal vows.

How do you see a Church who can't let a man off from preliminary vows - the kind that Luther did in the storm?

I did by the mid of 2000 all that according to St. Thomas Aquinas I would be required to do to get an automatic dispensation from them.

I did NOT do any such vows again.

But I am treated as if I had done precisely that.

Yes, I Think "Pope Francis" Does Contribute to Confusion

The CONFUSION of Pope Francis
23rd Febr. 2022 | Breaking In The Habit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwQYefFrki0

6:02 Are you suggesting that when "Pope Francis" seems to very clearly and black and white answer the debate question given by Humani Generis in the pro-evolution way, he's with some ambiguity just trying to teach the controversy and is perfectly ready to dogmatise Young Earth Creationism if it comes out on top?

Because, I am arguing for Young Earth Creationism and I do not see a lot of those faithful to "Pope Francis" very eager to even allow me the debate on this one.

It seems some seek issue with my things being less tidy than they like, where I live as a homeless, and they are not too eager either to let me earn money on a writing dedicated, in some important part, to that debate - as long as I am on the YEC side.

9:33 "who prefer conspiracy theories to testimony of experts"

Excuse me, but would you consider Young Earth Creationism a "conspiracy theory"?

Would you consider an Evolutionist arguing for Evolution as "testimony" (not just opinion) of experts?

And, as I wrote in a so far unanswered mail to Jimmy Akin, are you aware, Latin, the official language of the Church, actually has no word that literally means "expert"?

A medicus was a physician, one of the statuses we would refer to as expertise, but there was no word for "expert status" - and Humani Generis mentions "periti" - "knowledgeable men" and not "philosophiae et theologiae doctores" - the kind of thing where Jimmy Akin sees "experts" as being such.

10:21 As to Viganò, he is, according to the Vatican II Sect, in a place of authority.

The rest of the people you present do NOT present themselves as wielding authority, which is not exactly what you said, but you allow lots of people to conclude it.

In other words, we have a case of a "Pope Francis" defender coming with unfounded accusations - if only by innuendo - against people who can be labelled as "enemies of Pope Francis".

I consider someone my enemy - he's blocking me from my livelihood hoped for as a writer - who makes some kind of gatekeeping against what I write.

But as for people who call me out (for my theses, not for things that can legitimately be allowed for in a homeless man lacking sleep), I consder them my friends. Are you OK with covering up for "Pope Francis's" lack of thick skin? Does it never bother you, yourself, to be actually tough skinned about what comes your own way, but present your "Pope" as a man who never learned to take knocks? Come on, the man has a background as a bar bouncer!

Angelic Doctor

People who lie about you are not your friends.

I am tired

and in Swedish they don't say "lie about you" but "lie about one" when speaking in general. So I first answer about myself.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Angelic Doctor Not if they lie behind my back, no.

If they say untruths to me, they could be honest if mistaken.

I'd not consider them friends as in close friends, just compared to those who:

• go behind my back with what they say
• attack me for how my luggage looks like garbage when someone takes off the blanket and makes a mess before "taking a look" or even a picture.

I had my luggage stolen yesterday.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Angelic Doctor Oh, when it comes to Antipope Bergoglio ... I don't think people should be considered as lying about him, if they happen to judge that his "magic wand" speech in 2014 was an actual apostatic thing or his honouring Pachamama.

It's about where one draws the limits and obviously some of us don't have those of Bergoglio, and that's a bit like when it came to obeying and trusting God, some Hebrews didn't have the same limits as Nimrod and his croneys - that's why God let them keep their language unconfused.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Angelic Doctor "This Channel will hopefully help my brothers and sisters return to the Catholic Faith."
"Actif depuis le 6 déc. 2014"

Did you judge people as having "left the faith" if they rejected Bergoglio? This came pretty close after the magic wand speech!

Angelic Doctor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl A rejection of papal teaching is a leaving of the faith to a certain degree of course. It's a defect in faith and an offense against God.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Angelic Doctor Yeah, Bergoglio rejected the teaching of quite a lot of Popes, councils and both Fathers and Scholastics.

Hence his defect not in but from faith is an offense against God.

10:37 I feel indirectly pointed at myself.

I don't ask someone to call out against "Father Casey OFM who accuses me without naming me" I stand up to the criticism.

Here. You can accuse Luther for having spread confusion among Catholics for ... 10-11.XI.1517 to 15.VI.1520. That is 2 years, 7 months, 4 days. Or 5, depending on what exact hour around St. Martin's Mass he nailed the theses.

After that, yes, he spread lots of confusion among disaffected and disobedient Catholics. But not among those heeding Exsurge Domine.

Why? Because of the famous dictum "Roma loquuta est, causa finita est".

Catholics had their life, Luther had his, it has involved lots of conflict, but not so much confusion - among Catholics. Actually, Lutherans back then liked to claim the title for themselves, calling themselves Catholic and us Papists.

But if "Pope Francis" actually took a cue from Pope Leo X, some confusion would cease. We would know if Viganò, Burke, and a few laymen you have told of were in communion with "Pope Francis" or not. If he did "excommunicate" them, he would normally have some kind of doctrinal issue to back this "excommunication" up with. And we would see in a very formal way what his dogma is. As it is, people who take issue with the infamous "magic wand" speech - yes, I looked it up fairly carefully in context and am aware it has backing by "Pope Emeritus Benedict" - can continue to consider him Pope on the excuse that the occasion was not a magisterial one. Not an encyclical, not a dogmatic bull, not even the doctrinal part of an excommunication.

I get a feeling, while you agree more doctrinally with Viganò and Burke than with Lutheran Satire (Hans Fiene is hilarious when making fun of "Pope Francis" and Patriarch Bartholomew or Kirill), you have less charity for them. Would you have more charity if they went off to submit to Pope Michael or he submitted to one of them, if elected in an imperfect ecumenic council, as recommended by van Noort?

You tell everyone and the world that Viganò and Burke are sufficiently your brothers to be responsible to your critique (while "Pope Francis" isn't to theirs, hierarchy suddenly back in place, it was only absent for a moment when a priest (?) critiqued two archbishops (?)...) and that they are your internal affair, and then you use the presumption of brotherhood to heap abuse on them and on laymen I respect, and by implication on me too. Does it strike you as somewhat inconsistent?

11:31 Are you admitting that Wojtyla "more than a hypothesis", Ratzinger "against a fundamentalist exegesis", Bergoglio "magic wand" and similar support for Evolution were courting a kind of clarity, even at the cost of reason?

11:56 If you tout a theory that shilly-shallies between alternative impossibles, without showing any possible between, like:

• was God allowing Adam to grow up as a feral child? (against God's goodness)
• were Adam's parents really human? (against Adam being the first man)

... or like:

• did Adam live 7000 years ago and were some Aborigines and pre-Columbians not descended from him, because they reached disconnected continents before his lifetime? (against monogenism)
• did Adam live 40 000 - 250 000 years ago and is Genesis 3 dubiously transmitted as history or pretended to be, contrary to traditional stance a vision of Moses (like six day account was)? (against the privileges of the Blessed Virgin, which are stated in Genesis 3:15)

... if you commit to neither (in either pair) and also don't show any logical way in which a tertium daretur, you clearly show a lack of candour about your orthodoxy. The suspicion of your being, if so, a heretic, is not grossly uncharitable. And since Wojtyla, Ratzinger and Bergoglio were all arguably, the latter two certainly, Evolutionists before their supposed conclaves, I think the falsehood of their papacies actually does follow.

To a Young Earth Creationist, obviously, tertium datur, but that is the exact position they exclude, all three.

12:17 I am basically choking from all attempts to get me a more "balanced" and mainstream news source.

Your recommendation is one thing, but some people around where I am are de facto making this a kind of sectarian harrassment, while pretending to be caring about me, pretending to be concerned.

The part about choking does not include the actual debate I get with Evolutionists like Kevin R. Henke.

Wrong-Believing Franciscan, Second Part of His Video

Franciscan (Or Something) Wrong on Creation Evolution Issue · Wrong-Believing Franciscan, Second Part of His Video

We are still on this video:

Can a Christian Believe in Evolution?
22nd Oct. 2018 | Breaking In The Habit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXM5Qk_XsXk

I

4:30 In fact, all of Scripture needs the literal interpretation, while all or parts also need each of Allegoric, Moral and Anagogic. The famous quadriga Cassiani.

II

4:43 "both written in the style of myth"

You misrepresent mythology by taking "myth" as a style or genre.

Some of it, like much of Hesiod's Theogony is only and all of it is presented as "prophecy" - Hesiod meets the nine Muses.

But tragedies about Oedipus or epics about Ulysses (both Iliad and Odyssey include him) are presented as "history". Actions done by and to men, and visible to men surviving them and hence told.

Now, Genesis 2 is fairly obviously autobiography of Adam, hence history.

Genesis 1 is, most of it, Moses' vision of creation, hence prophecy.

BOTH involve creation of male and female and their vocation to fertility, and therefore both are consistent with as second is saying, man was created in one primordial couple. We need to take this as a historic and also dogmatic or dogmatically relevant datum.

4:53 If neither is scientific, both are historic.

Genesis 1 is history reached by prophecy, namely Moses' prophecy.

Genesis 2 is history directly accessible to a human observer, namely Adam.

Scientific or not is a red herring. Historic is the important point to keep in mind.

III

5:01 "allegorical in nature"

You are misrepresenting the historic Catholic reading of Genesis.

Sensus allegoricus is an extra on all of OT history, as prophetic about Our Lord, Our Lady, the Church, their enemies. The kind of thing Jesus exposed to Apostles during 40 days, after Resurrection, and which Bereans checked very carefully, if it fitted or showed a discrepancy.

The idea of Origen and St. Augustine of Hippo to not take the word "day" at face value was a minority position.

IV

5:12 I note your quotemining leaves out whether the problem to St. Augustine is, as you state, a literal reading or sth else.

V

5:56 "but saw no intrinsic conflict between the theory and Scripture"

I think you miss several important nuances. He didn't say there was no conflict, he also foresaw a debate (which people like you by misrepresenting Humani Generis have foreclosed) between both those seing a conflct and those not seeing it, both those defending the traditional position and those accepting evolution.

VI

6:06 Ratzinger's position was not held by Pius XII in Humani Generis.

He refrained from holding a position either favourable or unfavourable to evolution, and allowed the exact debate which you are still stifling. And antipope Ratzinger ignoring.

VII

6:48 Yes, indeed, God created. Past tense.

Challoner on Genesis 2:2 states:

[2] "He rested": That is, he ceased to make or create any new kinds of things. Though, as our Lord tells us, John 5. 17,"He still worketh", viz., by conserving and governing all things, and creating souls.

6:58 God is still upholding His work and He is still creating souls.

Even more, while God is inherently capable of creating, He is freely so, He is not inherently obliged to create.

He created us because He wanted to, not out of some kind of incontinence.

B U T suppose you had a point, God could if so be creating universe after universe, there could be a "wood between the worlds" and if you go up from the pool connected to our world, you can go down the one leading to Charn or to Narnia ... on the other hand, even that vision seems flawed, since the vision of Charn, with a sun hundreds of thousands of years old and therefore red, and a "Harmageddon" showdown between two evil and corrupt representatives of the Charn dynasty and the most evil of them destroying her own world, and the evil having lasted generations and generations with no counter-balancing good ... I can't see God having upheld that.

VIII

7:17 While the genetic code may not have existed before, or may have done so, it is not created out of nothing, but out of that of the two parents.

But the problem is, you are reducing the credenda to "God creates" - as opposed to believing also thereabout "in perfect goodness, omniscient wisdom, and He followed a certain order involving angels and men, some of the angels falling and soon after that man fallen, and man was promised a redeemer from the first year or the first few years of the universe."

IX

7:38 Karl Rahner - haven't read.

Teilhard de Chardin - famously said "before there was life, there was pre-life, before there was consciousness, there was pre-consciousness" and I forget whether it was C. S. Lewis or Rev. Bryan Houghton who replied in his books that one could parody it as "before there was light, there was pre-light" with the remark "which normal people call darkness".

Oh, by the way, Teilhard de Chardin also hailed the Piltdown man.

He was either incompetent as palaeontologist, or accomplice to this fraud.

X

7:54 "truth cannot contradict truth"

And the Bible, unlike the conclusions of philosophers, is guaranteed to be God's truth, so the choice between two contradictory options is easy.

And I do not find myself the least wading in waters of uncertainty on that one.

8:05 And what exactly did St. Augustine mean by empiric evidence in this context?

He actually meant evidence that was actually empiric.

"the earth is flat"
- Eratosthenes showed it was bent
"the stars are glued to the disc of heaven"
- at least those called planets, as well as sun and moon (also called planets back then) seem to move with some freedom against the zodiac.

You do NOT have anything remotely equal to such empiric certainties in the evolutionary reconstruction of a millions or billions of years long past.

"denying what the whole scientific community accepts"

He very obviously used no such words, because "the entire scientific community" didn't exist then. It only became a community through universities founded by Roman Catholics who were both Young Earth Creationist and Geocentric.

Besides, you do not even now have an entire scientific community accepting millions and billions of years, or heliocentric acentric Newton cum Big Bang cosmology.

All the team on CMI are Young Earth Creationist, and a majority of them are scientists. One friend of Robert Sungenis in Croatia is both physicist and Geocentric - I think his name is Luka Popov.

But even if you had, a consensus of all of a community concerning themselves with empiric evidence is not the equivalent of actually having such empiric evidence.