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Let your speech be, “yes, yes,” “no, no”; whatever is beyond these comes from the evil one. (Mt. 5:37)

l

July 2007

Reprint #76

The modern-day Jesuits are
arguing that St. Francis Xavier
anticipated the teaching of Vatican
II on the salvation of unbelievers.
That teaching, according to Jesuit
Superior General, Fr. Kolvenbach,
is “that God will offer salvation to
those who did not come to know
Christ.” St. Francis believed no
such thing. Here’s why.
The April 2006 issue of 30 Days published an
interview with the Provost General of the Society
of Jesus, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, on the 500th
anniversary of the birth of St. Francis Xavier. He
was asked by 30 Days:
Cardinal Tucci has written that it would be easy to
see in Xavier the mentality of the conquistador of those
times. Whereas, the cardinal continues, what motivated
Xavier was the conviction that nobody can be saved
without having received baptism. What example and
teaching can one draw from that?

WAs sT. FRANCis XAViER A
FORERUNNER OF VATiCAN ii?
Superior general of the Jesuits,
rev. Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach

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Fr. Kolvenbach replied:
In many aspects Xavier was a child of his times. The
theology he learned in Paris and the religious milieu
in which he had lived, considered baptism an absolute
necessity for salvation. Xavier suffered greatly when he
saw the Japanese weeping after having told them that
their ancestors were damned to hell because of not being
baptized. As a result Xavier set more emphasis on the
mercy of God who would accept the righteous lives of
those who were blamelessly ignorant of the necessity
of baptism. Guided by the Church and by the Second
Vatican Council, we know today that the seed of truth is to
be found in all mankind, and that God will offer salvation
to those who did not come to know Christ. But that was
not the doctrine at the time of Xavier.

The Apostolic Tradition
We do not know exactly what theology St. Francis
Xavier learned in Paris (in any case, not the “New
Theology” of Vatican II) nor in what religious milieu
he lived, but it seems to us impossible that either he
or his Parisian professors would not have known (and
would not have cared) that
since antiquity, the Church has considered that baptism of
water (baptismus fluminis) can be supplied by martyrdom
suffered for Christ (baptism of blood–baptismus sanguinis),
as well as by the desire for baptism accompanied by
perfect contrition (baptismus flaminis).1

The Fathers of the Church, witnesses of the
Apostolic Tradition, combatted the abuse of those
who postponed baptism until the end of their
lives, counting on baptism of desire. St. Gregory
Nazianzen, for example, said that whoever in this
life has been content with baptism of desire, in the
next life will have to be content with the desire of
beatitude (Orat. 40, 23); and St. Augustine, citing
the Centurion Cornelius (Acts 10) as an example of
baptism of desire, remarks that he promptly received
baptism of water (De Bapt. 4, 22).
The abuse, combatted by the Fathers, bears
witness to the antiquity of the doctrine of baptism
of desire, and the Fathers’ combat bears witness to
the doctrine according to which whoever can receive
water baptism must receive it: the desire of baptism
cannot supply the sacrament when, being able to
receive it, one neglects to do so.
If, however, there is neither refusal nor
negligence, but a real impossibility (physical or
moral) of receiving water baptism, the Fathers
unanimously ascribe to baptism of desire the virtue
of making up for water baptism. Thus St. Ambrose
in his funeral oration for the Emperor Valentinian II,
slain by Arbogast when he was still a catechumen,
said:

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But I hear that you grieve because he did not receive
the sacrament of baptism. Tell me: What else is in your
power other than the desire, the request? But he even had
this desire for a long time, that, when he should come
into Italy, he would be initiated, and recently he signified
a desire to be baptized by me....Has he not, then, the
grace which he desired; has he not the grace which he
requested? And because he asked, he received.2

Elsewhere he says: “I have lost someone I was
going to regenerate, but he has not lost the grace
he requested.”3 We might add that the doctrine on
the limbo of children, which some today would like
to cast into oblivion, is connected to the doctrine of
baptism of desire: baptism of water is of an absolute
necessity for children precisely because, being
still without the use of reason, they are incapable
of baptism of desire, as Pius XII reaffirmed in his
famous allocution to midwives.

The Traditional Doctrine
Defended and Expounded
by the Scholastics
The doctrine of the Fathers was defended, at Paris
in fact, against Abelard by the first Schoolmen, in
particular by Hugh of St. Victor and by St. Bernard,
who wrote: “By simple faith and by desire of baptism,
a man can be justified” (Ep. 77, 8). The major
Scholastics (especially St. Thomas) deepened the
Patristic doctrine on baptism of desire:
The sacrament of Baptism is said to be necessary for
salvation in so far as man cannot be saved without, at
least, Baptism of desire; “which, with God, counts for the
deed” (Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 57).4

that

Baptism of desire essentially consists in the fact

a man receives the effect of Baptism by the power of
the Holy Ghost, not only without Baptism of Water, but
also without Baptism of Blood: forasmuch as his heart is
moved by the Holy Ghost to believe in and love God and
to repent of his sins.5

Here St. Thomas appeals to the authority of St.
Augustine and St. Cyprian:
Thus, therefore, each of these other Baptisms is called
Baptism, forasmuch as it takes the place of Baptism.
Wherefore Augustine says (De Unico Baptismo Parvulorum
iv): “The Blessed Cyprian argues with considerable
reason from the thief to whom, though not baptized, it
was said: ‘Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise’ that
suffering can take the place of Baptism. Having weighed
this in my mind again and again, I perceive that not only
can suffering for the name of Christ supply for what was
lacking in Baptism, but even faith and conversion of heart,
if perchance on account of the stress of the times the
celebration of the mystery of Baptism is not practicable”
(De Baptismo contra Donatist., c. 22).6

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From the same passage of St. Augustine, Peter
Lombard concluded: “It is evident that some can be
justified and saved without baptism [of water]” (Sent.
d.4, c.4).
The Church has thus always taught the necessity
of baptism, but she has never taught (except for
children without the use of reason) the absolute
necessity of water baptism for salvation in the case
of a genuine impossibility, physical or moral, of
receiving it.

The Magisterium
Innocent II, called upon to resolve the case of
an unbaptized dead person, refers to St. Augustine
and St. Ambrose, and recommends preserving the
doctrine handed down by the Fathers on baptism of
desire (Dz. 388). Innocent III, in his turn, declared
that no one can baptize himself, even in a case of
necessity, but in a case of necessity a man can be
saved by faith in the sacrament even without the
sacrament of faith: “Propter sacramenti fidem, etsi non
propter fidei sacramentum” (Dz. 413). This doctrine
was defined by the Council of Trent, which taught
that one cannot be justified “except through the
laver of regeneration, or a desire for it–sine lavacro
regenerationis eius voto fieri non potest” (Dz. 796.
If there were a novelty at the time of St. Francis
Xavier, it was this: until the great geographical
discoveries, it was believed that the gospel had been
preached to the entire world; then many peoples
were discovered to whom the gospel had not been
preached. Even so, all their ancestors should not
have been consigned to hell; rather, the missionaries
should have applied the ancient teaching on baptism
of desire, a doctrine the Fathers of the Church had
already applied to the pagans who had not been able
to hear of Christ.
In this case, one cannot speak of negligence
or contempt of the sacrament, but invincible
ignorance, and hence a real moral impossibility
of receiving water baptism, which is why it is
necessary to attribute to baptism of desire (if this
desire is present by an action of grace) the virtue
of making up for water baptism. The desire for
baptism can be explicit, as for catechumens who
die before being baptized, but it can also be
implicit in the general desire to accomplish in all
things the will of God.7 What remains a secret of
God is the number of those who are saved by this
extraordinary means (the ordinary way is that of faith
received through hearing: fides ex auditu, whence
the need of missionaries), and it is certain that in
this extraordinary way, they are deprived of the
assurance of salvation and the ordinary means of
attaining it dispensed by the Church.8
Thus those who would exclude from salvation
men united to the Church by baptism of desire

(explicit or implicit) are condemned, as well as
those who affirm that all men can be saved by their
natural rectitude in all religions (indifferentism).
Considering what Fr. Kolvenbach asserts, at the sight
of the tears shed by the Japanese, St. Francis would
have gone from the first error to the second error,
and this second error...would be the “fruit” ripened
by Vatican II, the ecumenism which in practice
unconditionally and without distinction extends
baptism of desire to all the infidels, rendering water
baptism and the missions unnecessary.

Naturalism
Fr. Kolvenbach attributes to St. Francis Xavier
the error of holding that “God would accept the
righteous lives of those who were blamelessly
ignorant of the necessity of baptism.”9 On this point,
too, there is a constant teaching of the Church: since
man’s final end is supernatural, it is impossible for
him to be saved by natural rectitude alone (which
undoubtedly disposes man to receive grace, but
which cannot replace it); to be saved, supernatural
faith is necessary. That is why, while water baptism
in given circumstances can be supplied by baptism
of blood and of desire (even implicit), for adults
supernatural faith cannot in any instance be supplied
(it is only for little baptized children that it is
supplied by the faith of the Church).
Holy Scripture and the magisterium are
categoric: “But without faith it is impossible to please
God” (Heb. 11:6); St. Clement of Rome declared that
no one has ever been justified without supernatural
faith (Epist., I ad Cor. XXIII). The doctrine of St.
Cyprian, of St. Ambrose, of St. John Chrysostom, of
St. Cyril of Alexandria, of St. Gregory the Great, etc.
is the same. The Council of Orange (529) requires a
supernatural faith for our regeneration that, from the
outset, is the work of grace (Dz. 178), and the Council
of Trent affirms that “without this [supernatural] faith,
no one was ever justified” (Session 6, Chapter 7), and
anathematizes anyone who would dare maintain that
justification is the fruit of human efforts and does not
proceed first from the inspiration of the Holy Ghost
(Canon 8).
In this regard, one finds in the decrees of
the Council of Orange a definition which is an
anticipated condemnation of today’s ecumenism:
Canon 5. If anyone says, that just as the increase [of
faith] so also the beginning of faith and the very desire of
credulity...is not through the gift of grace, that is, through
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit reforming our will from
infidelity to faith, from impiety to piety, but is naturally
in us, he is proved to be antagonistic to the doctrine of

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the Apostles, since blessed Paul says: ...“By grace you
are made safe through faith, and this not of yourselves;
for it is the gift of God” [Eph. 2:8]. For those who say
that faith, by which we believe in God, is natural, declare
that all those who are alien to the Church of Christ are
in a measure faithful.10

And is not this the abnormal conclusion the
ecumenists draw today from their fundamental
naturalism? The absolute necessity of supernatural
faith was reiterated by the dogmatic Vatican Council
I:
But, since “without faith it is impossible to please
God” [Heb. 11:6] and to attain to the fellowship of His
sons, hence, no one is justified without it; nor will anyone
attain eternal life except “he shall persevere unto the end
in it” [Mt. 10:22; 24:13].11

It should be noted that the Council continues by
affirming that it was for this purpose that the Church
was founded, “that we may satisfactorily perform the
duty of embracing the true faith and of continuously
persevering in it.”12
Moreover, it is certain that God gives all infidels
without personal guilt (infideles negativi) grace
sufficient for their salvation. The universality of the
divine salvific will and the [objective] universality of
redemption render inadmissible the fact that a very
large part of the human race would be refused the
necessary and sufficient grace for salvation. That
is why Alexander VIII, in 1690, condemned the
propositions of the Jansenists according to which the
pagans, Jews, and heretics receive no influx of grace
from Christ.13 The Holy Spirit thus acts outside the
visible boundaries of the Church in order to push
souls towards the Church, if they do not resist, at
least by desire.
This Catholic doctrine on the necessity of
supernatural faith for the salvation of adults was
reaffirmed and defended by the Roman Pontiffs until
Vatican II. Thus Pius IX (Quanto Conficiamur Moerore,
August 10, 1863), speaking of infidels who by
misfortune, without personal fault, find themselves
in a state of invincible ignorance with regard to our
holy religion, but diligently observe the natural law,
clarifies that they can attain eternal life, not in virtue
of their natural righteousness, but “by the operating
power of divine light and grace,”14 (to which their
natural righteousness disposes them).
Later, Pope Pius XII in the Letter of the Holy
Office to the Archbishop of Boston (August 8, 1949),
speaking of baptism of desire, clarified:

implicit desire produce its effect, unless a person has
supernatural faith.15

Now, according to Fr. Kolvenbach, what is
the novelty which, “guided by the Church and by
the Vatican II Ecumenical Council,” we would
have discovered? It is this: “The seed of truth is
to be found in all mankind, and that God will
offer salvation to those who did not come to know
Christ.”
Now, if that means that the infidel possesses in
himself a natural light (moral and religious) which,
if he does not extinguish it by his personal sins but,
on the contrary, regulates his life according to it, it
already leads him toward salvation because God,
who desires that all of us be saved, does not refuse
His grace to one who does what he can to be saved,
then we are in the line of Tradition, and Vatican
II teaches us nothing new. But if that means that
the infidel in good faith is saved in virtue of his
own natural righteousness (without grace, without
supernatural faith, and without the Holy Spirit), then
Vatican II would be teaching us something new,
but not something good; rather, it is something the
Church has already condemned several times, and
which we cannot accept; something that St. Francis
Xavier could not have taught (and certainly did not
teach) without betraying his mission.
Hirpinus
Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from Courrier de Rome, February
2007, pp.6-8.

1

This is the way B. Bartmann expresses it in his excellent Manual of Theology
(Ed. Paoline), III, 89. The adjective “excellent” does not apply, however,
to the additions to the Italian version made by Natale Bussi.
2
De Obitu Valent., 51.
3
Ibid.
4
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, Q.68, Art.1, ad 3.
5
Ibid., Q.66, Art.11.
6
Ibid.
7
Pius XII, Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, August
8, 1949. [This letter has been reprinted in both Latin and English as an
appendix in Baptism of Desire: A Patristic Commentary (Kansas City:
Angelus Press, 1999), pp.65-73.–Ed.]
8
Pius XI, Singulari Quadam; Pius XII, Mystici Corporis
9
“It’s the Lord who makes the difference,” 30 Days, April 2006, p.14.
10
Dz. 178.
11
Dz. 1793.
12
Ibid.
13
Dz. 1294-95.
14
Dz. 1677.
15
Baptism of Desire: A Patristic Commentary, p.72.

But it must not be thought that any kind of desire of
entering the Church suffices that one may be saved. It
is necessary that the desire by which one is related to
the Church be animated by perfect charity. Nor can an

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Msgr. gianfranco
Basti

Paul Cardinal
Poupard

Dear Editor,
Once again I am sending you a few
newspaper clippings. In one of them
(Il Giornale of November 4, 2005),
Cardinal Poupard and Msgr. Gianfranco
Basti accept evolution–quite wrongly,
in my opinion–by citing, among other
things, the words of Pope John Paul II:
“Evolution is more than a hypothesis.”
I seem to recall that in that speech,
the late Pope referred to a declaration
by Pope Pius XII while turning his
thinking upside down. As you can
read for yourself, the article concludes
with these words of Msgr. Basti: “For
decades science has gotten beyond
the scholastic-type [?] thesis of pure
chance, abandoned because it does not
hold up scientifically.”
Dear Editor, things are going from
bad to worse: the silent apostasy is
invading the whole world despite the
vast crowds that applaud Pope John
Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. What an
illusion!

A Priest

NEOMODERNisTs
DEFEND
EVOLUTiON
Pope Pius XII
and Evolution
The statement of Pope John Paul II
to which Msgr. Basti refers is taken from
his Message to the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences on October 22, 1996.1 We shall
see if it was used judiciously.
We looked at this message in a
previous number of Courrier de Rome.2
At that time we remarked that this text
simplified Pope Pius XII’s teaching,
and made him say something which
in reality he never said on the subject
of evolution. He simplified it, because
in the Encyclical Humani Generis Pope
Pius XII 1) unconditionally condemned
atheistic, materialistic evolution; and 2)
denied the conclusiveness of the scientific

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proofs of theistic evolution, which, by admitting the
direct creation of the soul by God and His direct
or indirect intervention in evolution, laid claim to,
and still claims, a “Christian baptism” of the theory.3
That is why Pope Pius XII postponed the Church’s
judgment on theistic evolution until the time when
science would be able to provide “clearly proved
facts.” Here is the passage of Humani Generis that is
concerned with theistic evolution:
It remains for Us now to speak about those questions
which, although they pertain to the positive sciences,
are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths
of the Christian faith. In fact, not a few insistently
demand that the Catholic religion take these sciences
into account as much as possible. This certainly would
be praiseworthy in the case of clearly proved facts; but
caution must be used when there is rather question of
hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation,
in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or
in Tradition is involved. If such conjectural opinions are
directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed
by God, then the demand that they be recognized can
in no way be admitted.
For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the
Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the
present state of human sciences and sacred theology,
research and discussions, on the part of men experienced
in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of
evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the
human body as coming from pre-existent and living
matter, for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that
souls are immediately created by God. However, this
must be done in such a way that the reasons for both
opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable
to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary
seriousness, moderation and measure, 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.4

At this point in the letter, Pius XII
parenthetically references his Allocution to the
members of the Academy of Sciences of November
30, 1941, in which he had said:
The many investigations in the domains of
paleontology, biology, and morphology into other
problems concerning the origins of man have not yet
returned anything positively clear and certain. There
remains nothing else to do than leave to the future the
answer to the problem, should science, enlightened and
guided by Revelation, one day be able to give certain
and definitive results on a subject of such importance.

Continuing (in Humani Generis), Pius XII then
deplores that “some rashly transgress this liberty of
discussion” [this is all that the Encyclical conceded],
when they act as if the origin of the human body from
pre-existing and living matter were already completely

24

certain and proved by the facts which have been
discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts,
and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine
revelation which demands the greatest moderation and
caution in this question. (§36)

This last phrase clearly shows that Pius XII’s
reserved judgment on “theistic” evolution was more
negative (non licet) than positive.

The Reversal
In Pope John Paul II’s Message to the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences, one reads:
In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor
Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition
between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about
man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose
sight of several indisputable points....Taking into account
the state of scientific research at the time as well as of the
requirements of theology, the encyclical Humani Generis
considered the doctrine of “evolutionism” a serious
hypothesis, worthy of investigation and in-depth study
equal to that of the opposing hypothesis.5

That is how Pius XII is made to say what he did
not say. Everyone can see for himself that, contrary
to what the Message says, in Humani Generis Pius
XII absolutely did not say that the doctrine of
evolution is a “serious hypothesis”; rather, he said
that it is a hypothesis that must be “weighed and
judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation
and measure” (which is obviously not the same
thing); he does not say that it is a hypothesis
“worthy of investigation and in-depth study equal
to that of the opposing hypothesis,” but on the
contrary he finds fault with the theistic evolutionists
who consider “the origin of the human body as
coming from pre-existent and living matter” as
something clearly demonstrated, “as if there were
nothing in the sources of divine revelation which
demands the greatest moderation and caution in this
question” (§36). This is tantamount to saying that
the “opposing hypothesis” is more in conformity
with the sources of divine Revelation than theistic
evolution, hence the injunction to ponder the
evolutionist hypothesis “with the necessary
seriousness,” since the evolutionist hypothesis,
even when it is theistic, requires that “the former
convictions, based upon the Bible, the doctrine of
the Fathers, and the usual teaching of the Church”6
be set aside.

A First Step in
Favor of Evolution
Having understood Pius XII’s Encyclical Humani
Generis in this way, Pope John Paul II’s Message
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takes a step forward in favor of evolution: “Today,
almost half a century after the publication of the
encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition
of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.” And
after gratuitously asserting that this “theory” has been
accepted because of “the convergence, neither sought
nor fabricated [really? but isn’t it within the habits of
evolutionists to bend the facts to fit their theory, even
resorting to fakery–a temptation from which even the
Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin was not exempt], of the
results of work that was conducted independently,”
the Pope then wonders:
What is the significance of such a theory? To address
this question is to enter the field of epistemology. A theory
is a metascientific elaboration, distinct from the results
of observation but consistent with them. By means of

and eventually “rethought,” it does not seem to us
that evolution has gained much by this promotion
from hypothesis to theory. The only result is to
encourage the press to publish headlines like “Faith
and Science/ Appreciation of the Pope’s Words
Rehabilitating Darwin’s Theory/ Soul or Not, Thanks
to the Monkey!”7

Another Step Forward
and Another Reversal
Based on this fragile premise, Msgr. Basti felt
authorized to take another step. John Paul II, he says,
defined the principle of evolution as “more than a
hypothesis”; now, “a hypothesis,” Basti explains,
can be true or false, and to say that it is more than

Paul Cardinal Poupard (b. 1930) was named cardinal by Pope John
Paul II in May 1985. He served as President of the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with
Non-Believers until April 4, 1993, when this Council was incorporated in the Pontifical
Council for Culture, whose mission is “to foster relations between the Holy See and the
realm of human culture, especially by promoting communication with various contemporary
institutions of learning and teaching, so that secular culture may be more and more open
to the Gospel, and specialists in the sciences, literature, and the arts may feel themselves
called by the Church to truth, goodness, and beauty” (Pastor Bonus, 166), of which he became
President in 1988. In 2006 he was also appointed President of the Pontifical Council for
Interreligious Dialogue. Cardinal Poupard is a prolific writer and the recipient of a knighthood from the Legion of Honor.
Msgr. Gianfranco Basti is Professor of the philsophy of nature

and science at the Pontifical Lateran University and Director of the Science, Theology and
the Ontological Quest Project (STOQ, also SROQ), which was created by the Pontifical
Council for Culture, the Lateran University, and the John Templeton Foundation “to illustrate
the deep harmony between science and religon based on principles outlined by Pope John
Paul II in such documents as Fides et Ratio and Veritatis Splendor” (National Catholic Reporter,
November 18, 2005). The STOQ can be found online at stoqnet.org.

it a series of independent data and facts can be related
and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory’s
validity depends on whether or not it can be verified;
it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can
no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and
unsuitability. It must then be rethought.

The speech is not the clearest, but we believe
we have correctly understood it to say that “the
theory of evolution” must no longer be considered
as a hypothesis, but as a “theory.” But since the
theory, as the Message acknowledges, must also,
like a hypothesis, be verified “against the facts”
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THE ANGELUS • July 2007

a hypothesis means that proofs [sic] exist in favor of
evolution which “tend towards the consolidation of a
scientific theory.” That is how John Paul II’s Message,
which reversed Humani Generis, is itself reversed by
the interpretation given it by Msgr. Basti. Evolution
becomes a solid “scientific theory” based on who
knows what “proofs.”

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Desperate Recuperation
of a “Shattered Myth”
But even a Pope’s word cannot create ex nihilo
scientific proofs in favor of a hypothesis which
foundered long ago on the barrier of the fixity of the
species:
The absence of links from species to species is not an
exception: it is the universal rule. The more researchers
have looked for transitional forms between species, the
greater has been their disappointment.

This was the admission of the 160 evolutionists
from all over the world who met at Chicago for a
congress in 1980.8 And more recently, on August
25, 1992, the Corriere della Sera published a report
from London entitled “Scientists at Congress: We
Do Not Descend from Monkeys/Darwin Challenged
on Evolution.” It involved the yearly meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science,
an association at which the theory of evolution was
first presented. The challenge was thrown down by
the English scientist Richard Milton, author of The
Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. The
Corriere della Serra added: “Milton is not alone in his
challenge. Many other scientists have put in doubt
Darwin’s thesis.”
It is in this “post Darwinian” atmosphere that
churchmen, afflicted with “teilhardosis” (Teilhard de
Chardin, recall, was one of evolution’s mythmakers),
believe they are opening the Church to the world by
gathering the shards of a “shattered myth.” Geneticist
Giuseppe Sermonti rightly wrote:
Modernism’s temptations are dangerous. One risks
surrendering to modernity just when it has seen its day,
of becoming a Darwinian for love of the world just when

Society of Saint Pius X
District of the United States of America

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Darwin is on his way out, and of basing ethics on the
descent of man from the monkey just when this theory
has been definitively rejected.9

Hirpinus
Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from the French edition of SiSiNoNo,
Courrier de Rome, November 2006, pp.4-6.

1

		English version: English Edition of the Osservatore Romano, October 30,
1996, available on line at www.newadvent.org /library/docs_jp02tc.htm.
		Published in the English edition of SiSiNoNo, No. 25, March 1998.–Ed.
3
Dictionnaire de théologie dogmatique, ed. Parente, Piolanti, and Garofalo,
s.v. “Évolutionisme.”
4
		§§35-36.
5
		§§3-4.
6
E. Ruffini, “The Responsibility of Catholic Paleoanthropologists,” Osservatore
Romano [It. ed.], June 3, 1950.
7
La Nazione, October 25, 1996.
8
Newsweek, November 3, 1980.
9
Il Tempo, July 10, 1987.
2

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