{"id":5993,"date":"2005-07-13T08:34:29","date_gmt":"2005-07-13T13:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2005\/07\/13\/freedom-in-the-church\/"},"modified":"2005-07-13T08:34:29","modified_gmt":"2005-07-13T13:34:29","slug":"freedom-in-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2005\/07\/freedom-in-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom in the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the heels of Christoph Cardinal Schönborn’s letter on evolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick says Catholics don’t have to believe in Creationism — the Bible’s account of God creating Adam and Eve and the universe in six days.<\/p>\n

McCarrick told reporters at the National Press Club that instead of what he called "the beautiful story of Genesis," Catholics can believe in evolution — as long as it’s understood to have been guided by God rather than chance.<\/p>\n

The archbishop of Washington said that was the view of the late Pope John Paul, which was echoed last week by a leading European cardinal.<\/p>\n

Cardinal McCarrick said the church cannot accept the belief that "this is all an accident." But he added that "as long as in every understanding of evolution, the hand of God is recognized as being present, we can accept that." [Source<\/a>]<\/p>\n

One thing cool about being Catholic is that I am free to believe in a literal six day creation or a God guided evolution. Or if another new and better scientific theory comes out I am also free to accept that too. I was a lot less free and more dogmatic when I was an atheist. Meaningless random evolution was pretty much all I was allowed or allowed myself to believe. As a Catholic I am free to believe in miracles and in certain Church approved apparitions, though I am also free to disbelieve those apparitions. As an atheist I was not free to believe in apparitions or miracles. Yet it is generally Catholic who are called dogmatists. Chesterton said that man is a creature who creates dogmas and that is certainly true since everybody holds to dogmas, they just vary on what are to be held as dogmas. Or they at least hold to the dogma that there are no dogmas.<\/p>\n

One quibble that I have with with what Cardinal McCarrick said is "the beautiful story of Genesis," which might have not been the most enlightening or prudential choice of words in front of the National Press Club. The modern idea of story is mainly confined to fiction and using story in this context can be misleading. The Genesis account is likely a story in the mode of the story that the Prophet of Nathan told to King David about the rich man who took the poor man’s ewe lamb. The story represented the factual truths of what King David had done by having Uriah killed and taking Bathsheba as his wife in a figurative way. The Genesis account also relates factual truths in the mode of a story of what could be called true myth. But unfortunately the word myth has also come to mean totally not real and we have mainly lost the concept of true myth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the heels of Christoph Cardinal Schönborn’s letter on evolution. WASHINGTON Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick says Catholics don’t have to believe in Creationism — the Bible’s account of God creating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}