Continuing with the Baltimore Catechism lessons:

Lesson 5
ON OUR FIRST PARENTS AND THEIR FALL
39 Q. Who were the first man and woman? A. The first man and woman were Adam and Eve.
In the beginning God created all things; something particular on each of the six days of Creation. (Gen. 1). On the first day He made light, on the second, the firmament, or the heavens, and on the sixth day He created man and called him Adam. God wished Adam to have a companion; so one day He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, and then took from his side a rib, out of which he formed Eve. Now God could have made Eve as He made Adam, by forming her body out of the clay of the earth and breathing into it a soul, but He made Eve out of Adam's rib to show that they were to be husband and wife, and to impress upon their minds the nature and sacredness of the love and union that should exist between them.
40 Q. Were Adam and Eve innocent and holy when they came from the hand of God? A. Adam and Eve were innocent and holy when they came from the hand of God.
God placed Adam and Eve in Paradise, a large, beautiful garden, and gave them power over all the other creatures. Adam gave all the animals their appropriate names and they were obedient to him. Even lions, tigers, and other animals that we now fear so much, came and played about him. Our first parents, in their state of original innocence, were the happy friends of God, without sorrow or suffering of any kind.
*41 Q. Did God give any command to Adam and Eve? A. To try their obedience God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of a certain fruit which grew in the garden of Paradise.
He told them (Gen. 2) they could take of all the fruits in the garden except the fruit of one tree, and if they disobeyed Him by eating the fruit of that tree, they should surely die. God might have pointed out any tree, because it was simply a test of obedience. He gave them a very simple command, for if we are faithful in little things we shall surely be faithful in greater. Moreover, it is not precisely the consideration of what is forbidden, but of the authority by which it is forbidden that should deter us from violating the command and prove our fidelity. Thus disobedience to our parents and superiors, even in little things, becomes sinful. Someone might say: "Why did God not try their obedience by one of the Ten Commandments?" Let us examine them. "Remember the Sabbath." That one would be unnecessary: for every day was Sabbath with them; the only work was to praise and serve God. "Thou shalt not steal." They could not; everything was theirs; and so for the other Commandments. Therefore, God gave them a simple command telling them: If you obey, you and all your posterity will be happy; every wish will be gratified, neither sorrow nor affliction shall come upon you and you shall never die; but if, on the contrary, you disobey, countless evils, misery and death will be your punishment. The earth, now so fruitful, shall bring forth no crops without cultivation, and after years of toil the dead bodies of yourselves and children must lie buried in its soil. So having the gift of free will they could take their choice, and either keep His command and be happy, or disobey Him and be miserable.

Here, we move forward a little to what is the beginning of our own salvation history.

The Story of Adam and Eve: The Story of Us

What is the story of Adam and Eve supposed to mean for us? Well, it’s the story of man and his fall. You will see it replayed again and again throughout Scripture, how we keep falling away from God, and how He keeps calling us back to Himself through patriarchs and prophets, until finally, in the fullness of time, He gave us His only begotten Son in the flesh. And in His flesh, He makes possible the final and definitive reconciliation to God possible, even when we fall and sin again, through His Curch and Her Sacraments. It’s almost as if we didn’t get the whole point of the story.

The Atoms, and the Birds and the Bees

Why not just spell everything out, and give us an account of what exactly happened? I think sometimes we’re a little too clever for our own good. “In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 109). All the historicity of our first parents and how God came to be involved are not, again, the point. When we were children and asked our parents where we came from, did we give them the whole story of the Big Bang and human history? We as children are really asking of us a story, not just the facts but the why, which, as parents know all-too-well, is a child’s favorite question.
Young children are not asking for a graphic sexual education, but rather the very human question, as very young scientists, of how and why we came to be. Even children want a why. I am guessing that wild beasts do not ask a why; rather, they have a inborn and genetic disposition to continue their species and an instinct of self-preservation to try to extend the life of their species or kind as long as possible.
Even something as basic as atoms, we begin with what we can widely call the Bohr model in elementary school. We either represent that as a kind of ball with spokes sticking out of the center to attach electrons, or in two-dimensional space, as a neutron ball surrounded by “rings” where electrons dwell. Here, those young scientists in class might again ask why, to which an exasperated teacher might just say, “It’s the best model we can use right now, okay? And ask your parents where and why everything came from.”
It’s as if we’re asking two different questions, and giving two different answers. The modern historical-scientific mind wants every detail right and perfect, and then we end up getting overwhelmed, save for a few very specialized academics. But the ancient world was not asking that question. The question for the modern historical mind remains, what did the ancients believe?
What a Week it Was! Or… Was It?
Let’s start in the beginning… What did the Church Fathers believe about a literal seven-day Creation? Here, there is a wide range of beliefs. There was some divergence on the “day” as being either a twenty-four hour period as we define it, or as we hear in Scripture, to the Lord “a day is as a thousand years” (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8). St. Augustine gave, in my opinion, the most finessed explanation, writing that, “With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation” (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 2:9, via Catholic Answers).
Our First Parents, Our First Co-Conspirators
Now, let’s move on to our first parents, Adam and Eve. The names are not that important, as their names are in themselves symbolic, “Adam” meaning “man”, and “Eve” meaning “mother.” Were they real people? Yes, insofar at least that there were two first humans. As Pope St. John Paul II noted, “[M]y predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points” (Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: On Evolution, 22 October, 1996). For our purposes, we can limit Pope Pius XII’s points to these:
• The exact manner of evolution is up for debate, but a Catholic can believe in it. That much is a question of science.
• God is the immediate creator of the human soul, and the soul is not materially generated through the parents (cf CCC, 366).
• The idea of polygenism (human origin from more than one set of ancestors), is erroneous. There was one first set of human parents. We, as we are, in the image and likeness of God, come from these. Later intermingling is not, as far as I can discern from the texts, excluded.
• Scripture is divinely inspired and not in conflict with scientific truth, and is always the basis for dogmatic teaching. Any method of scriptural interpretation that seeks to make dogma obsolete is false.
The problem always comes in erroneously applying the senses of science and Scripture. While Charles Darwin is credited as the Father of Evolution, we cannot forget his contemporary, the Augustinian monk Gregor Johann Mendel, Father of Modern Genetics. We know that Mendel read Darwin (even annotating a German translation of Origin of Species), although we don’t see any direct connection of Darwin reading Mendel, perhaps because of the lack of translation from the original German. Charles Darwin famously disliked German, calling it Verdammte, that is, “damned.” He could struggle along with it, as many of us do with various languages, but it was “nacht jemands Geschmack,” (not “according to his tastes,” or “his cup of tea”). But together, they are truly the fathers of the modern life sciences.
So, theologically speaking, we have one set of first parents, who were the original source of our race and creation in the image and likeness of God. The image and likeness consists, not in the physical body, but in the eternal soul. That original holiness, by sin, was marred, not only for our first parents, but for all of us. Our human nature is thus forever weakened, and in need of God’s constant grace to build upon it, and to save us not only from the domain of material death, but spiritual death (eternal separation from God). Note that the remarks here in the old Baltimore Catechism do not exclude an allegorical tree – representing something that was forbidden to us. The idea is that God asks obedience of us, and when we disobey, when we cease to listen to God, we separate ourselves from God, and suffer from those consequences, whose ramifications go far beyond what any book of Scripture would be able to speak of. The modern Catechism of the Catholic Church adds that, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (390, emphases mine).
The question arises: Could there have been other proto-humans without the rational soul in the image and likeness of God? That is certainly possible and plausible. Science is still fleshing out exactly how we came to be and our lineage as homo sapiens. But their condition and history are not as much our concern, except for scientific research, and perhaps some anthropological studies and theories. One could engage in some theological speculation, but it would remain that – speculation.
So can one believe in a literal seven-day Creation? One could, but in part because that’s not what Scripture is trying to tell us. There, one is asking questions about science. The question Scripture is answering is Who and in the end, the Why. The Who behind it all is God. The Why behind it all is to show forth the glory of God, and for God to bestow on His people His grace and everlasting life with Him, to save them from their sin, their spiritual death from God.

SAVE THE DATE: ROSARY PILGRIMAGE WEST 2027

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, prayer warriors one and all: I am pleased to announce our inaugural Rosary Pilgrimage West, Saturday, September 25, 2027, at Our Lady of Lavang, Happy Valley, OR (near our shrine in Portland).

Our inaugural keynote speaker will be Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP, Promoter General of the Rosary for the Dominican Order, and well-known and loved for his appearances on EWTN, and his beautiful Catholic art and beauty books, focused on the Rosary and the Blessed Mother.

This will be an all-day event focused on Our Lady and Her Rosary, with the whole Dominican Order represented. Additional language tracks and speakers are being planned, as well as entertainment for all after the event. More details to follow.

Please pray for the success of this event, that it may be the glorious launch of a new Rosary movement, here in the Western US and beyond.

All to praise, bless, and glorify His Holy Name, in veneration of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary!

The Rosary  is one of the most powerful devotions entrusted to us by Our Lady, and in these turbulent times, it remains a sure path to peace, conversion, and deeper love of Christ.
Pope Leo XIV

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Dear faithful supporters of the Rosary Center & Confraternity, THANK-YOU! to all who have already donated to help us. We cannot do this without you! We rely on your ongoing support. May God bless you for your generosity!
Fr. Dismas Sayre, O.P.

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