Did Sheen Embrace Heresy? Plus, I'm Back With the Benedictines!
Christine Niles | 27 Sept. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC-vdy_5OYw
24:16 Let me break it down a bit.
1) Six literal days contiguous with the first moment of time or one single moment = fully traditional, unproblematic.
After this, Biblical chronology ensues, and Abraham, contemporary with some kind of Egyptian Pharao, is 2 to 3+ millennia after Adam. Depending on text. Fully traditional, unproblematic.
2) Six literal days after a gap, after a vastly longer pre-"creation" time period, or six long periods. Both have been accepted by some scholars, and are not condemned per se.
After this, either Biblical chronology ensues, as per previous, or, Fulcran Vigouroux suggested the post-Flood genealogy could contain some more gaps than just the second Cainan. Again, not condemned per se, and not very problematic in the less traditional setting.
3) No literal Adam = a nono, and it has been voiced by an Assumptionist in Paris. He's probably campaigning to get me stamped as mentally ill for calling him out on my blog. Some things have been done which could be vile steps going that direction.
4) Adam existed, but was born to non-human progenitors. Pius XII was weak on this. He was clear that him being Adam meant they had to be non-human. But would God have put an as yet sinless Adam into the care of non-human beasts, albeit such that have lots in common with us anatomically?
I'd suggest, even if this wasn't condemned, it is fully condemnable.
5) "mankind has existed for 40 000 / 90 000 / 300 000 years" again, I'd suggest this is fully condemnable.
a) because the number of generations between Adam and Abraham, therefore Adam and Moses would have been too long. Genesis 3 could not have been transmitted as oral history with fidelity in this case.
Or, if you place Adam in or much nearer the Biblical timeline:
b) because of this involving Adam after all not being the actual first man.
Now, so far, this was theology. There is some science to it as well.
IF the world is 6000 years as Hugh Owen thinks or 7200 years old as I think (chronology of traditional Christmas martyrology, based on a variant of LXX in Genesis 5 and 11), then a carbon date for a human skeleton saying "40 000 years ago", including for a Neanderthal skeleton ("42 000 years ago") can be explained by a rapid rise of carbon 14 levels in the 2000 years after the Flood, we are wrongly comparing the sample's carbon 14 content with the now current atmospheric level.
IF however the world is billions of years old, so is the atmosphere. That means a carbon 14 date of "42 000 years ago" needs to be taken more literally.
This is not just about the first eleven chapters of Genesis, but the carbon date for Chalcolithic Engeddi sets a conundrum for it for Genesis 14. We know from Chronicles, Engeddi is Asason-Tamar. But Engeddi has no population between the Chalcolithic and the Iron age, the latter being obviously too late. So, either the Bible's c. 2000 BC is somehow carbon dated to 3500 BC (my position, it goes perfectly well with Young Earth Creationism) or Genesis 14 contains a historical error. This is however a big no no. Especially given the central place of this chapter in Catholic theology, in connection with the Psalm Dixit Dominus and the comment thereon in Hebrews.
So, if Fulton Sheen embraced Theistic evolution, he was in error. One which has increasingly grave consequences today.
24:43 "this would include man"
Sorry, this is unacceptable.
It involves either Adam having non-human progenitors or Adam not being the actual first man or not even existing individually.
The first of these is a blasphemy against God's goodness, probably behind some of the earliest cases of childabuse late 40's or early 50's. The other two are directly against Trent Session V.
25:33 No. He very much didn't directly affirm that Adam having non-human ancestry was acceptable for Catholics to hold.
He did, and I made a close reading of the encyclical's text at this point, allow for debate behind closed doors and defenders of the non-traditional view needing to withhold a kind of final assent to it.
Now, one could read, but this would make Pius XII a heretic in 1950, that he required also defenders of the traditional view to withhold a kind of final assent. They had never done so previously, and the wording applies within the context of this debate behind closed doors. In other words, they were just required not to alert the general community of the faithful that some people were discussing Adam could have had ape ancestry.
25:39 Would the first of these "multiple popes since then" be one Wojtyla in 1992, whom for this precise reason I count as a non-Pope?
26:40 Let's check the wording of Pius XII again.
and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.
Under normal circumstances, one would take this as a future judgement of the Church. One can't. And one needn't. I'm submitting to Trent Session V, which clearly implies the impossibility of Theistic Evolution as applying to man.
29:51 Your prediction was fulfilled within 11 hours. Here I am, admit I'm punctual!
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