A goal of the Catholic media is to teach what the secular media will never understand. One example of this can be found in the latest secular reports on the Pope’s Easter Homily. Here in the United States what I read indicates a complete misreading of the homily focused on the one line the Pontiff said that included the word evolution. The Pope’s homily was filled with a profound philosophy that looks at Easter as a new creation.
The AP for example reported the following: “Pope Benedict XVI marked the holiest night of the year for Christians by stressing that humanity isn’t a random product of evolution. Benedict emphasized the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily Saturday, saying it was wrong to think at some point ‘in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it.’ “
Benedict XVI’s words do not emphasize the creation account over evolution account. In fact, he criticizes creationism with these words. “This is the liturgy’s way of telling us that the creation story is itself a prophecy. It is not information about the external processes by which the cosmos and man himself came into being. The Fathers of the Church were well aware of this. They did not interpret the story as an account of the process of the origins of things, but rather as a pointer towards the essential, towards the true beginning and end of our being.”
The Pope makes it clear that the biblical account is not a scientific treatise on creation, but rather something deeper. He develops this theme so that we see creation in Genesis become a new creation in John.
Benedict XVI expounds on the fact that the creation account in Genesis is one that is filled with profound truths that touch the core of our being as humans. “We relate to God as Creator, and so we have a responsibility for creation. Our responsibility extends as far as creation because it comes from the Creator. Only because God created everything can he give us life and direct our lives. Life in the Church’s faith involves more than a set of feelings and sentiments and perhaps moral obligations. It embraces man in his entirety, from his origins to his eternal destiny. Only because creation belongs to God can we place ourselves completely in his hands. And only because he is the Creator can he give us life for ever. Joy over creation, thanksgiving for creation and responsibility for it all belong together.”
This image is what he contrasts with evolution in the only time the word is cited in the entire treatise. “If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature.” He criticizes that concept of evolution described as a random accident of the universe, but does not in the process emphasize a literal interpretation of Genesis.
When we look at the homily, we can see that the Pope uses the context of creation to explain that Jesus’ resurrection is something that radically changes our being from that time previous to the salvific event.
“This revolutionary development that occurred at the very the beginning of the Church’s history can be explained only by the fact that something utterly new happened that day. The first day of the week was the third day after Jesus’ death. It was the day when he showed himself to his disciples as the Risen Lord. In truth, this encounter had something unsettling about it. The world had changed. This man who had died was now living with a life that was no longer threatened by any death. A new form of life had been inaugurated, a new dimension of creation. The first day, according to the Genesis account, is the day on which creation begins. Now it was the day of creation in a new way, it had become the day of the new creation. We celebrate the first day. And in so doing we celebrate God the Creator and his creation. Yes, we believe in God, the Creator of heaven and earth. And we celebrate the God who was made man, who suffered, died, was buried and rose again. We celebrate the definitive victory of the Creator and of his creation. We celebrate this day as the origin and the goal of our existence. We celebrate it because now, thanks to the risen Lord, it is definitively established that reason is stronger than unreason, truth stronger than lies, love stronger than death.”
It is wrong to indicate that the Pope’s homily teaches us to embrace creationism over evolution. He does no no such thing, but teaches us that everything that can be said about the creation of the universe and of humanity cannot be summed up in a simplistic understanding of the first chapters of Genesis nor in a description of human development as nothing more than a random process devoid of any meaning.
Rather the Genesis account of creation sets the stage of the salvific event in which a new creation happens and we are saved in the freedom from a loving God who creates and acts in pure creative reason and in pure love.
Fr. Robert J Carr
Click here to read the Pope’s homily
Click here to read the AP account of it.
Fr. Carr is an alliance member of the New Song Community (Canção Nova). He is the pastor of St. Benedict Parish in Somerville, MA and is the editor of this blog. You may also find his videos in English at Gloria.tv.