Scientific Heresies and Their Effect on the Church: A Critique of: "The Realist Guide to Religion and Science"

Description

Scientific Heresies and Their Effect on the Church provides a detailed and comprehensive rebuttal to the scientific, theological and exegetical views held by Fr. Paul Robinson, including his views on: The Big Bang; long-ages for the Universe and Earth; progressive creationism; heliocentrism; a local Noachic flood; and current views on radiometry and sedimentology.

This book was written for two purposes: First, to educate the public at large by a critical examination of science and history, especially in the areas of cosmogony and cosmology. Although modern science purports to know the origin and operation of the universe, in reality it comprehends very little and actually spreads more falsehood today than it does truth. On its face, modern science is the last formidable bastion of secular society. It is touted as impregnable and invincible. Indeed, today’s scientists have the education, the grants, the sophisticated equipment, the iconic image, the universities, the newspapers and the general media on their side. Opposing voices can barely form a whisper of contention. It is truly a Goliath if there ever was one in our modern age and it is as big as the universe itself.

Second, this book contends with Catholics, and anyone else, who have accepted the major teachings of modern science and thereby have rejected either biblical revelation, the traditional ecclesiastical consensus, or the official magisterial statements that disagree with modern science’s theories or conclusions. As one can see by the title, I have chosen to focus on the recent book by Fr. Paul Robinson, The Realist Guide to Religion and Science. He is a priest of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a very conservative but embattled branch of Roman Catholicism. The reason he was chosen is normally we don’t see many examples of staunchly conservative Catholic groups being unduly influenced by the theories of modern science to the point they either reject or neutralize the biblical, traditional and magisterial teachings. If there is any group of Catholics from whom we could expect a rigid traditional Catholic view of either the Bible or its interpretation, it is the SSPX, at least in its beginnings under its founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. But like many conservative groups today, the inevitable tendency is to judge scientific issues according to the world’s “status quo” and to avoid being dubbed “Fundamentalist.” Fr. Robinson’s book, insofar as he represents the SSPX, has proven to be no exception.

Scientific Heresies and Their Effect on the Church provides a detailed and comprehensive rebuttal to the scientific, theological and exegetical views held by Fr. Paul Robinson, including his views on: The Big Bang; long-ages for the Universe and Earth; progressive creationism; heliocentrism; a local Noachic flood; and current views on radiometry and sedimentology.

Sungenis quotes extensively from Abp. Lefebvre's prophetic Open Letter to Confused Catholics (published the year of John Paul II's blasphemous interreligious "prayer" gatherings); e.g., on p. 27 he quotes from the Lettre ouverte ch. XVII:

Sur ce point, les modernistes ont obtenu ce qu’ils voulaient et au-delà. Dans ce qui tient lieu de séminaire, on enseigne l’anthropologie et la psychanalyse, Marx en remplacement de saint Thomas d’Aquin. Les principes de la philosophie thomiste sont rejetés, au profit de systèmes incertains reconnaissant eux-mêmes leur inaptitude à rendre compte de l’économie de l’univers, puisqu’ils mettent en avant la philosophie de l’absurde. Un révolutionnaire de ces derniers temps, prêtre brouillon très écouté des intellectuels, qui mettait le sexe au centre de toute chose, ne craignait pas de déclarer dans des réunion publiques : « Les hypothèses des anciens dans le domaine scientifique étaient de pures âneries et c’est sur de telles âneries que saint Thomas et Origène ont appuyé leurs systèmes. » Il tombait, aussitôt après, dans l’absurdité en définissant la vie comme « un enchaînement évolutif de faits biologiques inexplicables ». Comment le sait-il, si c’est inexplicable ? Comment un prêtre, ajouterai-je, peut-il écarter la seule explication, qui est Dieu ?

[In this respect, the Modernists have got what they wanted and more. In what passes for seminaries, they teach anthropology, psychoanalysis and Marx in place of St. Thomas Aquinas. The principles of Thomist philosophy are rejected in favor of vague systems which themselves recognize their inability to explain the economy of the Universe, putting forward as they do the philosophy of the absurd. One latter-day revolutionary, a muddle-headed priest much heeded by intellectuals, who put sex at the heart of everything, was bold enough to declare at public meetings: “The scientific hypotheses of the ancients were pure nonsense and it is on such nonsense that St. Thomas and Origen based their systems.” Immediately afterwards, he fell into the absurdity of defining life as “an evolutionary chain of biologically inexplicable facts.” How can he know that, if it is inexplicable? How, I would add, can a priest discard the only explanation, which is God?]

I haven't read Fr. Robinson, SSPX's actual book, but the quotes of in in Sungenis's are really strange. For example, Fr. Robinson calls the Protestant heretics "Reformers", and he argues that the Church tried to interpret Scriptures more literally during the Galileo affair! And Fr. Robinson distinguishes "supernatural" vs. "natural" history. In a letter to a certain Mark: "His death is something natural, His resurrection something supernatural." This can be interpreted Modernistically, as though His resurrection had no natural, physical effects. (I've heard Jesuits say similar nonsense, such as that the Galileo affair was only due to political issues!)

[PDF p. 93:] R. Sungenis: […] I know of no such distinction between “supernatural history” and “natural history” that the Church has taught regarding the history contained in the Bible.

Pascendi §6:

…infertur [by the Modernists], Deum scientiae obiectum directe nullatenus esse posse; ad historiam vero quod attinet, Deum subiectum historicum minime censendum esse.

Also, Pope St. Pius X quotes (Gregory IX Epist. ad Magistros theol. paris. July 7, 1223):

Quidam apud vos, spiritu vanitatis ut uter distenti, positos a Patribus terminos profana transferre satagunt novitate ; coelestis paginae intellectum … ad doctrinam philosophicam rationalium inclinando, ad ostentationem scientiae, non profectum aliquem auditorum. … Ipsi, doctrinis variis et peregrinis abducti, redigunt caput in caudam, et ancillae cogunt famulari reginam.

(I didn't know that the term "rationalism" (doctrina philosophica rationale) dates at least as far back as 1223!)

Ab Modernistis libera nos, Domine.