September 22, 2009
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Question 181 - Headcoverings and Evolution
Question 181 - Headcoverings and Evolution
Hello Dr. Sungenis,
Greetings in our Lord, Jesus Christ.
I am not sure if you remember me, but my name Ed Schneider and we spoke last December. I was born a Roman Catholic, became a staunch Calvinist for 15 years, and now my family and I came back to the Catholic Church last Easter. I am technically in the Roman Rite, but my wife and children are in the Byzantine Rite and we attend a Byzantine Catholic Church. Could you please help me with these two questions?
1. Do the eastern Catholic Churches still require headcoverings for women? You mentioned this on page 10 of your recent letter "Letter to the Vatican on Women's Head Coverings", dated July 11, 2009. I looked through the "1990 Oriental Code of Canon Law", but I cannot find it. My wife and daughters wear head coverings in the Church and they stick out like sore thumbs and an unorthodox Byzantine Catholic Priest said headcoverings were no longer required. Please help me out here by providing the Cannon Code?
R. Sungenis: Ed, I don't know whether eastern Catholic Church "require" headcoverings, but it is a fact that most women in such churches wear headcoverings. I also know that the 1983 Code of Canon Law does not disallow head coverings, and, in fact, the Congregation for Divine Worship still considers it a noble practice by women. I do not know what the 1990 Oriential Code says, however. I am still waiting for a reply from Fr. Ward of the CDW at the Vatican. As soon as I receive a reply, I will post it on our website.
2. Does the Catholic Church officially believe in Evolution? My Protestant friends have been sending me "official" quotes from Pope John Paul II, Paul VI, and Pope Pius the XII stating that the Catholic Church now officially believes in macro Evolution. Such as, that monkeys evolved into humans, then God took just two monkeys (Adam and Eve) and gave them a soul. Is this true? I always thought the Catholic Church officially gave people the liberty to believe in a literal six day, 24-hour, creation or a day-age (Old Earth) as some make out St. Augustine to promote. I'm very confused and stumbled on this issue because it seems like the "official" writings of the new Popes seem to contradict "official" writings of previous Popes. Please help me out here.
R. Sungenis: Ed, there is no "official" statement from any pope of the Catholic Church which says that the Catholic Church believes in Evolution, or one that says it has rejected Six-day creationism. In order to be an "official" teaching, the pope would have to state specifically in an encyclical or some other venue with similar authority, that the Catholic Church believes and promotes Evolution and has abandoned creationism. Moreover, statements by a pope which may seem to casually lean toward or favor evolution in one form or another (e.g., Pius XII's statement in Humani Generis or John Paul II's statement to the PAS in 1996 saying that "evolution was more than a hypothesis") are not "official" teachings of the Catholic Church. They are merely personal opinions of the pope that are often confused as official teachings. In order to be an official teaching the pope must make it clear that he is binding the Catholic faithful to accept the teaching, to which they must now give either their full allegiance or their intellectual assent, depending on the authoritative venue that the pope chose to disseminate the binding teaching. Just for the record Pius XII's reference to the Big Bang theory means nothing, at least as far as being some "official" teaching. What IS official in Pius XII's Humani Generis are the following warnings about Evolution:"Scientists of repute have pointed out that...we know of no natural process by which one being can beget another of a different kind. The process by which one being can beget another is altogether unintelligible, no matter how many intermediate stages are supposed. No experimental method for producing one species from another has been found...There is nothing definitive about present day theory. Some, however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question."
As for John Paul II's unofficial statement in 1996 that "evolution is more than a hypothesis," although the pope should have been more discrete, the fact is, a hypothesis is on the lowest rung of authority, for it means that, to explain the evidence, someone hypothesizes an answer, but the answer has no evidence to support it. The next stage of certainty is a "theory," which is a little more than a hypothesis since it tries to propose an answer by claiming that it has at least some evidence to support its contention. So, in that sense, yes, the pope could legitimately say that "evolution is more than a hypothesis" because that brings it up to the level of a "theory," or what we commonly understand today as "the theory of evolution," not "the hypothesis of evolution." But in allowing it to be a theory, the pope did nothing to promote evolution as a fact or something that the Catholic Church now "officially" accepts. It is still a theory, and Pope John Paul II confirmed this in 1996.
