The Six Days of Creation
Introduction by Frank Morriss
I
don’t know any better
Introduction to this second edition of The Six Days of
Creation than to repeat the remarkable
review of the first edition of this work, which Frank Morris
did for The Wanderer in the summer of 1985.
“This is not merely a good book; it is a remarkable one. It is remarkable
in a number of ways – the vast data on evolutionary claims and their answer,
the ingenious format of a dialogue between fictional defenders of a variety of
positions, the deftness of handling such a format, and the fidelity to logic
to which Br. Thomas Mary holds his spokes-persons. It is undoubtedly the first
major Catholic effort of recent years to force evolutionists into an honest confrontation
concerning their claims. I am tempted to say that Brother has put the evolutionists
into the dock; but more in keeping with his format he has forced them to the
round table. The verdict or the outcome is left to the readers, and truly so
because of the scrupulous fairness and completeness of this confrontation. As
one who has long found evolutionist claims unsatisfying, I find my own conclusions
most gratifying. With this work in hand no one need be abashed by evolutionists’ boldness
and dogmatism.
The
11 “meetings” are each tied by theme to
the six days of creation described in Genesis. The unbeliever,
a Jewish secular humanist, is too liberal to object to this
arrangement, hastening to distance himself either in favor
or against God, citing Carl Sagan for the courage and open-mindedness
of such a position. Fr. Robert A. Staatz, a liberal Catholic,
hastens to comfort him with quotations from Fr. Bruce Vawter
and others of Modernist orientation to the effect that even
the Church itself is no longer dogmatic enough to speak of
an agnostic approach to Scripture and the origin of things.
In this manner a great deal of actual dialogue is incorporated
into the imaginary – and deliciously so, I might add.
It is left to Mrs. Maria Stepan, a conservative Catholic
historian, a Rev. De Verne Swezey, a Protestant university
chaplain and a creationist, to defend any reality and literalness
regarding the Genesis account. I must say they do a wonderful
job, not because of any lack of objectivity, but because
their creator, Br. Thomas Mary, is so well informed and incisive
of thought. If Dr. Schonfield and Fr. Staatz come off looking
somewhat wimpish, it is not, I assure you, that Br. Thomas
Mary has purposely made them so, but because he has been
so honest about their type. It is genuine and not fictional
Modernist argumentation that leaves Fr. Staatz defending
an almost completely un-literal Scripture, in which venerable
Catholic teaching is so diluted as to be of little or no
annoyance to either a Dr. Schonfield or a Carl Sagan.
If it is art to hold the mirror up to nature, then Modernist
Catholics are going to have to turn out looking more like
agnostics than true believers. Blame the mirror, not the
holder of the mirror, who is merely pursuing his vocation
to present such reflection.
I
was delighted to read Mrs. Stepan’s demolition
of the faddist humanist arguments for animal consciousness
based on so-called language experience (recently popularized
in the case of Koko, the kitten-loving gorilla). I had from
pure logic and my own small knowledge of Thomistic psychology
presented much the same argumentation to my high schoolers
against the conclusion that brutes can be taught to communicate
even very simply, by sign language.
You
should take form this review that I consider Br. Thomas
Mary’s book a delightful
treasure. I think if you read it you will agree.”
~
Frank Morriss
