In Catholicism
The Pontifical Biblical Commission issued a decree ratified by Pope Pius X on June 30, 1909 that special creation only applied to man, not to the other species. In 2004, the International Theological Commission, then under the presidency of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, published a paper in which it accepts the current scientific accounts of the history of the universe commencing in the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago and of the evolution of all life on earth including humans from the micro organisms commencing about 4 billion years ago. The Vatican teaches that God acted indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, which prepared the way for the moment of transition to the spiritual with the special creation of the human soul. This special creation, the Vatican says, established the basis for a divine intimacy which embraces every single human person from the first moment of his or her existence.
Read more about this topic: Special Creation
Famous quotes containing the word catholicism:
“When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft. Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being too much like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all. Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics.”
—C.S. (Clive Staples)
“Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)