MISSIONARIES OF THE HOLY TRINITY
“LIVING IN THE DIVINE WILL”
Special Extended Edition December 2011—June 2012
Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).
With regard to Pope Benedict XVI, shortly before his papal election he released Luisa’s works to the Archdiocese of Trani to open the Church doors to her cause for Beatification. This effort marked the second time that a cardinal who would become pope would personally intervene in Church history to advance the private revelations of a mystic for the good of the universal Church. The first time ws that of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla (who would become Pope John Paul II) who personally intervened to advanced the cause and revelations of Faustina Kowalska.
For nearly two decades now, your prayers and support have kept the Church doors open and sustained my labors to help bring the gift of God’s Divine Will to such continents as Africa, America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Among the various places that received the good news, worthy of mention are nearly all US states, Mexico, Canada (5x), Denmark (3x), England, Ireland, Portugal, France, Spain (3x), Switzerland, Italy (12x), Holland, Croatia (4x), Greece, Turkey, Poland, Germany, Ukraine (2x), Russia (2x), India, Australia and the Philippines. More recently retreats to Brazil and Japan have been planned. I share this encouraging news to encourage your prayers and support upon which God depends in order to diffuse the good news of his Divine Will on earth; were it not for you, none of this would have been possible.
Fr. Joseph presents the gift of Living in the Divine Will to the Pontifical College of over 100 Priests , Seminarians and Religious Brothers and Sisters
God’s Inspiration and his Sacred Authors
It is my desire to share with you in this newsletter the thorny theory of Darwinian evolution and the origins of the universe ―within the context of the writings of Luisa Piccarreta‖ that are the subject of my doctoral dissertation.
Admittedly, this theory is subject to much anthropological and theological debate in Christian circles. More pointedly, I have chosen to address this theme on account of the odd views in this regard, which I encountered and that conflict with Church teaching.
I give special attention to the directives of Pope Pius XII who exhorted those entrusted with extrapolating the meaning of Scripture or of inspired texts on the origins of the universe to acknowledge the inspired author as a ―the living and reasonable instrument of the Holy Spirit‖ who uses the author’s ―faculties and powers,‖ so as to better understand ―what the inspired author wishes to express‖ (Encyclical Letter, Divino afflante Spiritu, nn. 33-34). Moreover, the culture, education and literary form of the Old and New Testament writers (sitz im leben) must be fully grasped in order to properly grasp their intended meaning.
Similarly, the Apulian culture, education and literary form of Luisa Piccarreta must be fully grasped in order to properly grasp her intended meaning. The very books of Sacred Scripture, although guaranteed as divinely inspired, contain many literary forms and sayings that are properly interpreted only through the inspired author’s setting in life (sitz im leben). Some examples may be found in the author of the Book of Genesis who reveals that ―the sky is a dome‖ (Gn. 1.8,15); in the author of the Book of Samuel who relates that ―the earth has pillars‖ (1 Samuel 2.8); in the Psalmist who affirms that the earth has ―ends‖ (Ps. 47.11); in the Gospel of John who appears to confound the Father with the Son: ―The Father I are one‖ (Jn. 10.30); in the epistle of Paul who also appears to confound the two Persons of the Trinity: ―The Lord is the Spirit‖ (2 Cor. 3.17). Inasmuch as the intended meaning of these sacred writers cannot be properly understood ―outside of the context‖ of their setting in life, one cannot ignore said context without completely misinterpreting their intended meaning, an error that is associated with the fundamentalist interpretation.
Accordingly, I present Luisa’s writings by interpreting not the pure letter that is devoid of its historical context (ad litteram), but the meaning and the intention behind her written word. This I have done by interpreting in light of the Deposit of Faith Luisa’s prophetic revelations in heroriginal Italian language, which, while adding nothing to the one Public Revelation of Jesus Christ, explicate in a new time and setting Christ’s Public Revelation.
The Notion of Evolution and Luisa’s Revelation
Onto the idea of Darwinian evolution, which affirms that rational modern-day man derived from an ape ancestor (―missing link‖). Oddly, to Darwin’s embarrassment, all of science’s impressive advancements and discoveries in the far reaches of space and in the deep sea have not yielded a shred of concrete evidence to support the existence of Darwin’s missing link. Darwin also affirmed that evolution is a process in which all creation is caught up in a struggle for survival (which, later in this newsletter, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger calls ―a blood-thirsty ethic‖), that out of this struggle the strongest send into extinction the weaker species, and that over time and due to environmental changes, animal life-forms adapt and transform (―evolve‖) into superior life-forms.
In response to Darwin, I present Christ’s Public Revelation and Luisa’s writings on the origins of the universe. First Luisa. To Luisa Jesus reveals that all creation was made out of ―love‖, from the bosom of the Trinity and, in ―one Fiat‖ and one ―Word,‖ God gave origin to this great universe of ours:
HOURS OF THE PASSION “My daughter, surely in My Will there is the creative power. Billions and billions of stars came out from one single Fiat’” (Luisa’s pro-manuscripts, February 2, 1921).
“The word is the crown of the works. In fact, who formed and crowned the work of Creation? The word of our Fiat. As it spoke, the portents of our works came out, one more beautiful than the other” (Ibid., November 6, 1929).
“The word had its divine field when, in Creation, with the word Fiat I issued the whole Creation. I could have created it remaining silent also, but I wanted to use the word Fiat so that the word too might have divine origin…” (Ibid., March 2, 1926).
“Among ourselves, the Three divine Persons, We had no need to speak in order to understand One Another.
However, in the Creation I wanted to use the word, so I said, Fiat, and things were made” (Ibid., November 4, 1921).
Consistent with the Book of Genesis, which states that God made the universe in 6 days and that on the 7th day he rested, and consistent with St. Peter’s 2nd Letter, which relates that ―with God 1 day is as a 1000 years‖, Jesus tells Luisa, paraphrasingly, that it has been 6,000 years since rational man has been on earth. On January 12, 1921, he tells her that it took mankind 4,000 years (nota bene: since 4,000 B.C.) to prepare and dispose itself for the Redemption, and 2,000 years have passed since the Redemption (nota bene: 2,000 A.D.), thereby putting us at the end of approximately 6,000 years since the creation of rational man, Adam (Ibid., November 12, 1925).
Furthermore, the early Church Fathers St. Methodius of Olympus (d. 300 A.D.), Lactantius (250-317 A.D) and St. Hippolytus of Rome concur with Luisa’s teaching on rational man’s creation that occurred about 4,000 B.C. In commenting on the Letter to the Hebrews that speaks of God’s 7th-day Sabbath rest, St. Hippolytus of Rome (170-235 A.D.) states:
“And 6,000 years must be accomplished, in order that the Sabbath may come, the rest, the holy day „on which God rested from all His works.‟ For the Sabbath is the type and emblem of the future kingdom of the saints… as John says in his Apocalypse: for „a day with the Lord is as a thousand years.‟ Since, then, in 6 days God made all things, it follows that 6,000 years must be fulfilled. And they are not yet fulfilled” (St. Hippolytus, The Fragments from Commentaries on Various Books of Scripture, in ―The Anti-Nicene Fathers,‖ Vol. V authorized edition, WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 1978, Ch.4, p.163).
Creation ex-nihilo
While God tells Luisa that he made the universe with his Word Fiat, he reveals that Adam and all the elements were made out of nothing (ex-nihilo); they did not evolve from other life-forms:
“My Will manifests itself and calls things from nothing, forming beings” (Ibid., October 30, 1924).
Moreover, the Lateran Council IV relates that God created everything in the beginning and ―in its whole substance‖ from nothing (ex nihilo), and the Vatican Council I reaffirms that God produced all things existing in the world out of nothing (ex nihilo). Sacred Scripture further ascribes the creative act to God alone: “I am the Lord, that make all things… and there is none with me” (Isaiah 44:24; cf. 40:25; Psalm 135:4).
To Luisa Jesus reveals this truth when adding that God made man, not from another life-form, but with ―his omnipotent breath‖ (Ibid., February 24, 1919). In the following passage Jesus illustrates the manner in which the Trinity without any intermediaries created Adam, i.e., ―with his own hands‖:
“Now, after I created everything, I formed the nature of man with My own creative hands; and as I formed the bones, extended the nerves, formed the heart, so did I centralize My Love. And after I
clothed him with flesh, forming as though the most beautiful statue that no other artisan could ever make, I looked at him, and I loved him so much that, unable to contain My Love, it overflowed; and breathing on him, I infused life in him.
But We were not content. In an excess of love, the Sacrosanct Trinity wanted to endow him, giving him intellect, memory and will; and according to his capacity as a creature, We enriched him with all the qualities of Our Divine Being. The fullness of the Divinity was wholly attentive in loving man and in pouring Itself into him. From the very first instant of his life, he felt all the strength of Our Love, and from the depth of his heart, he expressed, with his own voice, love for his Creator. Oh! how happy We felt in hearing Our work, the statue made by Us, speaking, loving Us, and with perfect love. It was the reflection of Our Love that came out of him” (Ibid., October 29, 1926).
Creation of the Human Race
From the preceding sources of our Catholic faith, one may infer that the first rational man (Adam) was created by God about 4,000 B.C., and that all creation was created before him out of nothing (ex nihilo). In this regard, Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis, 37, 1950 sheds light on the origins of the human race, which he formally states, came from Adam:
“For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own” (Cf. Romans, 5:12-19; Council of Trent, Session V, canon 1-4).
Creation of the Universe
As for the creation of the universe that preceded Adam, and with him occurred in ―6 days‖, Luisa makes it abundantly clear that these 6 days are not a literal rendering, that is, they are not literally 6 24-hour days, but 6 ―ad extra works‖ (6 external creations) in the material order that are generated from God’s aforesaid ―one single Fiat,‖ that is, 1 ―ad intra operatio‖ (one internal operation).
Otherwise put, God’s one Word ―Fiat‖ generated 6 external creations in the material order, bringing into existence this great universe and cosmos of ours and man.
Many fundamentalists have insisted on the 6 days of creation in the literal sense (ad litteram), but Jesus challenges this literal notion in Luisa’s writings. Pivotal to the ―internal operation‖ of God (ad intra operatio), which underlies the operation of the Divine Will in the human soul, is the understanding that God’s internal operation constitutes ―one eternal operation.‖
In God, who is a ―simple substance,‖ there is only one operation, one act without beginning or end, and without any succession of acts. Unlike we mortals who are ―composite substances,‖ comprised of a soul and body that move from potency to act through a succession of acts, God is always in act. We rediscover this truth when Moses asks God, ―who shall I say sent me?‖, to which God replies, ―I Am, who Am.‖ For God who
has no potency but is always in act, reveals himself to Moses as the God who ―IS‖. Accordingly, God tells Luisa that the three Fiats of Creation, Redemption and Sanctification came from ―one single Act‖ and that all of creation came from ―one Will:‖
“Creation, Redemption and Sanctification are one single Act for the divinity” (Ibid., October 24, 1925).
“My daughter, in creation, one was the Will that entered the field in creating all things, and, by right, to it alone belonged the dominion, the regime and the carrying out of its very life in each thing and being created by it” (Ibid., March 26, 1927).
In sum, the ―one ad intra operatio‖ of the Trinity’s one Divine Will generated six “ad extra” creations that are effects or emanations of his one Divine Will, and that were filled with God’s divine Life that contain the ―generative, communicative and preserving virtue‖ and the ―creative power‖ of his ―one Fiat.‖ Here we come to an interplay on the ―Fiat‖ and ―Fiats‖ Luisa employs to express this reality. Here Jesus reveals to her that with 6 ad extra Fiats (creations), he made the universe:
“With the work of six Fiats that We pronounced, the whole great machine of the universe was formed, including man, who was to inhabit it and be the king of our so many works” (Ibid., February 13, 1931).
Were one to interpret literally these 6 Fiats as though God had in 6 24-hour days and in six separate eternal acts created the universe, it would contradict the Catholic Church’s conciliar teaching that God is one eternal Act who has no succession of acts, and is without beginning or end. More evidence to support the reality that God’s 6 Fiats are not to be intended ―ad litteram‖ is discovered in the following excerpt where Jesus tells Luisa that God did not limit himself to his Fiat ―for 7 days‖ (nota bene: not 6 days), but pronounced it for as many times as the human will puts itself aside and lets God operate within it:
“I would not have to pronounce My Fiat for seven days, as when I created the universe, but for as many days as the life of man contains, and for as many times in which, putting his own will aside, man would let Mine operate within him” (Ibid., January 2, 1923).
If the following excerpt were taken literally, it would erroneously imply that God pronounces 7 Fiats, whereas in point of fact he rested on the 7th day. Also, such a literal interpretation would erroneously suggest that there are far more than 6 Fiats, as the preceding quote states that God pronounces his Fiat for ―as many days ―as the life of man contains,‖ and for ―as many times‖ as the human will lays itself aside, a notion that
contradicts God’s one eternal operation.
In conclusion, the aforesaid ―6 Fiats‖ cannot be taken in the literal sense, but, in accord with Catholic teaching on God’s one eternal operation, they are to be understood as signifying the 6 divine-life bearing emanations of God’s ―one single Fiat‖ that created the universe. I cannot overemphasize the net distinction between God’s one ―ad intra operatio‖ (1 Fiat) and his ―ad extra operatio‖ (6 Fiats). It is not until we have grasped this truth that the Darwinian theory of evolution emerges as a baseless theory.
The Soul and God’s One Eternal Fiat
Noteworthy is how the soul that ―Lives in the Divine Will‖ partakes of God’s one eternal operation, and co-creates with him. It does so by bilocating itself in God, and in all the acts of rational (man) and irrational (elements) creatures, which God issued forth through 6 ad extra works:
“Now, one who lives in My Will possesses this single Act, and there is no wonder that she takes part in the pains of My Passion, as if they were in act. In this single Act, she finds her Creator in act, who is creating the universe, and, forming one single act with her God, she creates along with Him, flowing as one single act in all created things, and forming the glory of Creation for her Creator. Her love shines upon all created things; she enjoys, she delights in them, and she loves them, as things which belong to her and to her God.
In that Act, she alone has a note which echoes all the divine works. And in the intensity of her love, she says: „What is Yours is mine, and what is mine is Yours. Let there be glory, honor and love to my Creator!‟ In this single Act, she finds the Redemption in act. She makes it her own, she suffers My pains as if they were her pain, she flows within everything I did - in My prayers, in My pains, in my words - in everything, and she has a note of reparation, of compassion, of love and of substitution for My life. In this single Act, she finds everything, she does everything, and places her return of love everywhere. This is why living in My Will is the prodigy of prodigies, it is the enchantment of God and of all heaven. For creation beholds the littleness of the creature flowing in all the things of their Creator, and like a solar ray bound to this single Act, it extends itself everywhere and in everyone” (Ibid., October 24, 1925).
In this text, the expression that the soul ―creates together with‖ God, again is not to be taken ―ad litteram‖ (which would suggest evolutionism), for the soul does not ―add‖ anything to the works God issued forth with his Word Fiat; ratherthis text expresses the soul’s ability in the Divine Will to bilocate in all the works of creation. Jesus tells Luisa:
“My daughter, I love the creature so much that if, in creating the heavens, the stars, the sun and all nature I left them no freedom - the heavens cannot add one star or remove one, nor can the sun dissolve or add one more drop of light -in creating man, I left him free. What is more, I wanted man together with me, creating the stars, the sun, in order to embellish the heaven of his soul. As he would do good and exercise himself in the virtues, I would give him the power to form his own [spiritual] stars and the brightest [spiritual] suns. The more good he would do, the more [spiritual] stars he would form; the greater the intensity of his love and sacrifice, the more splendor and light he would add to his [spiritual] suns” (Ibid., December 6, 1919).
The Expanding Universe
Jesus’ above teachings to Luisa are bolstered in the brilliant discovery of the Jesuit Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître’s teaching on the ―expanding‖ (note: not ―evolving‖) universe which he called ―the hypothesis of the primeval atom.‖ In my last newsletter I shared with you Monsignor Lemaître’s hypothesis that is consistent with Luisa’s teachings and with today’s scientific discoveries on the expanding universe. The creations God made in 6 Fiats do not evolve, but they expand, multiply and spread One of science’s contributions to our faith is that the universe is far from static. On the contrary, science has demonstrated that the universe is not only expanding, but its rate of expansion is actually increasing. This consistently translates into Luisa’s teachings. Although the creations God made with six ad extra Fiats (external to the Trinity of divine Persons) from his one internal ad intra Fiat (internal to the Trinity of divine Persons) are for all times established and to them nothing may be added, the human creature nevertheless bilocates into the acts of all creatures with its ―Rounds‖ and multiplies, expands and spreads these acts on their behalf, thereby forming its own ―spiritual suns‖ and ―Spiritual stars.‖ The increasing number of galaxies that are well over 170 billion, and the present formation of stars in our universe are further proof of the expanding universe that God had created as a telltale of the soul’s inner ―expansion‖ as it progressively ―deposits‖ and contains within itself the acts of al creatures.
God and Mary’s One Single Fiat
In Luisa’s book entitled, The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will, Mary reveals to Luisa that ―the 6 steps‖ in her soul ―symbolize the 6 days of creation.‖ Among these six steps in Mary’s soul, the ―5th step‖ constituted her ―one single Fiat‖ to God that produced ―billions and billions of acts of grace‖ that continue to “communicate themselves to souls” today. In the following excerpt Jesus likens God’s one single Fiat to the one Fiat of his Mother Mary, both of which continue to communicate themselves to us today:
“My daughter, surely in My Will there is the creative power. Billions and billions of stars came out from one single Fiat. Billions and billions of acts of Grace, which communicate themselves to souls, come out from the Fiat Mihi of My Mother, from which Redemption took origin. These
acts of Grace are more beautiful, more shining, more varied than stars… Ah! If creatures could see the supernatural order of Grace… It is the Fiat that acts [nota bene: “acts” is in the present tense], and therefore you too can say in My Omnipotent Fiat: „I want to generate so much love, so much adoration, so many blessings, so much glory to my God as to compensate for everyone and for everything‟” (Ibid., February 2, 1921).
Given the foregoing, the ad intra ―one single Fiat‖ of God that issued forth 6 ad extra Fiats – the symbol of Mary’s one Fiat and 6 steps – continues to communicate itself to us today. To underscore the reality of the ongoing communication of God’s one single Fiat, which Jesus describes to Luisa as an ongoing ―expansion,‖ noteworthy is the expanding or ―spreading‖ nature of God’s works through Adam and Eve:
“Know that I begin all of my works between Myself and one creature; and then they are spread. In fact, who was the first spectator of the Fiat of my Creation? Adam, and then Eve. It surely wasn‟t a multitude of people. Only after years and years did crowds and multitudes of people become spectators of It” (Ibid., January 24, 1921).
One can readily admit that if God made trees, trees make other trees; if God made flowers, flowers make other flowers; if God made 2 humans, 2 humans made other humans; if God made Jesus, Jesus makes other Jesus’s today through the gift of Living in the Divine Will.
Now how does God’s one single Fiat that produced the universe continue to ―communicate‖ itself to us, or ―spread‖ or ―expand‖ today? The expanding universe, while not adding anything to God’s creations in 6 Fiats, multiplies the works he already made by virtue of his ―generative virtue‖ that he himself placed in the laws of nature. This multiplication (not evolution) and therefore, expansion of existing creations that naturally tend toward reproduction, constitutes the teaching contained in Luisa’s writings and in those of Monsignor Lemaître on the expanding universe, and that is not remotely associated with Darwinian evolution.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on Darwinian Evolution
I wish to conclude this newsletter with the position of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) on Darwinian evolution. While admitting in 1999 the teaching of ―micro-evolutionary processes‖, the cardinal refrained from endorsing the theory of ―macro-evolution of Charles Darwin and his disciples.‖
Micro-evolution is a process of variation and development that enables living systems - predominantly irrational creatures – to adapt to varying circumstances and changes at the microscopic level. Macro-evolution, on the other hand, is the teaching of Darwin and his disciples, which claims that rational creatures (humans) have evolved from an ape ancestor, that all living systems struggle to survive, and out of this conflict the strongest emerge. In the following quotation from Cardinal Ratzinger, he makes it abundantly clear that the Church does not teach the Darwinian survival of the fittest as an explanation for our existence or for the origins of the universe, but teaches that God made man and woman in his own image and likeness with intelligence, reason and free-will, and that creation was subject to them.
The following text, delivered in 1999 as part of a lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and subsequently published in the 2004 book ―Truth and Tolerance,‖ offers key insights into the Holy Father's thought. I have slightly adapted the length of the paragraphs for easier reading.
“The separation of physics from metaphysics achieved by Christian thinking is being steadily canceled. Everything is to become „physics‟ again. The theory of evolution has increasingly emerged as the way to make metaphysics disappear, to make „the hypothesis of God‟ (Laplace) superfluous, and to formulate a strictly „scientific‟ explanation of the world. A comprehensive theory of evolution, intended to explain the whole of reality, has become a kind of „first philosophy,‟ which represents, as it were, the true foundation for an enlightened understanding of the world. Any attempt to involve any basic elements other than those worked out within the terms of such a „positive‟ theory, any attempt at „metaphysics,‟ necessarily appears as a relapse from the standards of enlightenment, as abandoning the universal claims of science.
Thus the Christian idea of God is necessarily regarded as unscientific. There is no longer any „theologia physica‟ that corresponds to it: in this view, the doctrine of evolution is the only ‘theologia naturalis,’ and that knows of no God, either a creator in the Christian (or Jewish or Islamic) sense or a world-soul or moving spirit in the Stoic sense. One could, at any rate, regard this whole world as mere appearance and nothingness as the true reality and, thus, justify some forms of mystical religion, which are at least not in direct competition with enlightenment.
Has the last word been spoken? Have Christianity and reason permanently parted company? There is at any rate no getting around the dispute about the extent of the claims of the doctrine of evolution as a fundamental philosophy and about the exclusive validity of the positive method as the sole indicator of systematic knowledge and of rationality. This dispute has therefore to be approached objectively and with a willingness to listen, by both sides - something that has hitherto been undertaken only to a limited extent. No one will be able to cast serious doubt upon the scientific evidence for micro-evolutionary processes. R. Junker and S. Scherer, in their „critical reader‟ on evolution, have this to say: ‘Many examples of such developmental steps [microevolutionary processes] are known to us from natural processes of variation and development. The research done on them by evolutionary biologists produced significant knowledge of the adaptive capacity of living systems, which seems marvelous.’
They tell us, accordingly, that one would therefore be quite justified in describing the research of early development as the reigning monarch among biological disciplines. It is not toward that point, therefore, that a believer will direct the questions he puts to modern rationality but rather toward the development of evolutionary theory into a generalized ‘philosophia universalis,’ which claims to constitute a universal explanation of reality and is unwilling to allow the continuing existence of any other level of thinking. Within the teaching about evolution itself, the problem emerges at the point of transition from micro to macro-evolution, on which point Szathmary and Maynard Smith, both convinced supporters of an all-embracing theory of evolution, nonetheless declare that: ‘There is no theoretical basis for believing that evolutionary lines become more complex with time; and there is also no empirical evidence that this happens.’
The question that has now to be put certainly delves deeper: it is whether the theory of evolution can be presented as a universal theory concerning all reality, beyond which further questions about the origin and the nature of things are no longer admissible and indeed no longer necessary, or whether such ultimate questions do not after all go beyond the realm of what can be entirely the object of research and knowledge by natural science. I should like to put the question in still more concrete form. Has everything been said with the kind of answer that we find thus formulated by Popper: „Life as we know it consists of physical 'bodies' (more precisely, structures) which are problem solving. This the various species have 'learned' by natural selection, that is to say by the method of reproduction plus variation, which itself has been learned by the same method. This regress is not necessarily infinite.‟ I do not think so. In the end this concerns a choice that can no longer be made on purely scientific grounds or basically on philosophical grounds.
The question is whether reason, or rationality, stands at the beginning of all things and is grounded in the basis of all things or not. The question is whether reality originated on the basis of chance and necessity (or, as Popper says, in agreement with Butler, on the basis of luck and cunning) and, thus, from what is irrational; that is, whether reason, being a chance by-product of irrationality and floating in an ocean of irrationality, is ultimately just as meaningless; or whether the principle that represents the
fundamental conviction of Christian faith and of its philosophy remains true: „In principio erat Verbum‟ -- at the beginning of all things stands the creative power of reason. Now as then, Christian faith represents the choice in favor of the priority of reason and of rationality. This ultimate question, as we have already said, can no longer be decided by arguments from natural science, and even philosophical thought reaches its limits here. In that sense, there is no ultimate demonstration that the basic choice involved in Christianity is correct. Yet, can reason really renounce its claim to the priority of what is rational over the irrational, the claim that the Logos is at the ultimate origin of things, without abolishing itself?
The explanatory model presented by Popper, which reappears in different variations in the various accounts of the „basic philosophy,‟ shows that reason cannot do other than to think of irrationality according to its own standards, that is, those of reason (solving problems, learning methods!), so that it implicitly reintroduces nonetheless the primacy of reason, which has just been denied. Even today, by reason of its choosing to assert the primacy of reason, Christianity remains „enlightened,‟ and I think that any enlightenment that cancels this choice must, contrary to all appearances, mean, not an evolution, but an involution, a shrinking, of enlightenment.
We saw before that in the way early Christianity saw things, the concepts of nature, man, God, ethics and religion were indissolubly linked together and that this very interlinking contributed to make Christianity appear the obvious choice in the crisis concerning the gods and in the crisis concerning the enlightenment of the ancient world. The orientation of religion toward a rational view of reality as a whole, ethics as a part of this vision, and its concrete application under the primacy of love became closely associated. The primacy of the Logos and the primacy of love proved to be identical. The Logos was seen to be, not merely a mathematical reason at the basis of all things, but a creative love taken to the point of becoming sympathy, suffering with the creature. The cosmic aspect of religion, which reverences the Creator in the power of being, and its existential aspect, the question of redemption, merged together and became one.
Every explanation of reality that cannot at the same time provide a meaningful and comprehensible basis for ethics necessarily remains inadequate. Now the theory of evolution, in the cases where people have tried to extend it to a ‘philosophia universalis,’ has in fact been used for an attempt at a new ethos based on evolution. Yet this evolutionary ethic that inevitably takes as its key concept the model of selectivity, that is, the struggle for survival, the victory of the fittest, successful adaptation, has little comfort to offer. Even when people try to make it more attractive in various ways, it ultimately remains a bloodthirsty ethic. Here, the attempt to distill rationality out of what is in itself irrational quite visibly fails. All this is of very little use for an ethic of universal peace, of practical love of one's neighbor, and of the necessary overcoming of oneself, which is what we need.”
Conclusion
It is my hope that the Catholic sources reported in this newsletter may assist you in appreciating God’s loving design that accompanied his Fiat in the origins of our expanding universe. As our pontiff illustrates, faith and reason, and God and science need not be at odds with each other. Science, when seen as the passive observation and inquiry into the laws of that which God created and put in motion, must embrace God as the prime motion and reason for the universe. As children of the Divine Will, may we make it our aim to live a life of faith and reason and live the teachings Jesus shares with us though Luisa. May his kingdom come, may his Will be done on earth as it is in heaven!
+ Rev. Joseph Leo Iannuzzi
MISSIONARIES OF THE
HOLY TRINITY
P.O. BOX 8484
CRANSTON, RI 02920
(RECCOMENDED DONATION $12/YEAR)