Divino Afflante Spiritu- Divining Spiritual Flatulations

The Wolf Takes Pius XII to The Woodshed.

In His Summa Theologica, St Thomas Aqunias took St Augustine to the proverbial woodshed.  Alone among the Church Fathers, St Augustine had postulated that God had not created the world in six literal days, but rather instantaneously, while showing the angels figurative days.  (Proponents of "Theological Darwinian Evolution" have long cited St  Augustine as a reason why the "days" in the Genesis creation account can be taken figuratively for long epochs.)  St Thomas explains, after hearing the arguments, that St  Augustine was dead wrong.  Finally,  and subsequently, we now know why St Augustine adhered to this opinion-  he was reading an erroneous version of the scriptures, tainted with a gnostic slant in the Latin translation.

This example is cited to stress the importance of possessing the correct translation of the Holy Scriptures, and of reading it with the mind of Holy Mother Church.  And this Catholics did for over a millennia.  About 350 AD the Holy Scriptures were compiled by St Jerome from the original sources used and written by the Apostles and those written in Greek and Hebrew and faithfully translated, with his gift for linguistics, into Latin.  These texts were shortly thereafter "canonized" by the Council of Ephesus.  And this "Latin Vulgate" was the ONLY recognized and approved text of the Holy Bible authorized for study and as a source for sermons and exegesis, until Martin Luther had the temerity to question the veracity and the venerable history of this book.

Since then, Protestant "exegetes" have been constantly attacking the Vulgate, which was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent.  In spite of this, cracks started to appear in the Catholic bulwark that surrounded the venerable scriptures.  The situation was not helped by the popes and cardinals themselves. The Leuven Vulgate was published in 1547 by order of the Council of Trent.  However, biblical scholars wrangled over translations, comparing it with the older Vetus Latina, which predated St Jerome.   Pope Sixtus approved a publication of the "reformed" Vulgate in 1590, which apparently caused an uproar.   A measly two years later, Pope Clement would have that version significantly, and hurriedly revised, and order all copies of the previous edition confiscated and destroyed.  Pope Clement's work, which appears to be largely a restoration of Leuven Vulgate, would then become the official Catholic version of the Bible, which would remain unquestioned until relatively recent times.

Unfortunately, the exegetical dust had not properly settled.  Scholars would continue to compare the Vulgate to other texts, such as the "Hexaplar Septuagint", the translations of Theodotion circa 150 AD, and the Greek Hexapla Septuagint, just to name three.  The Holy Seat, rather than putting an utter kibosh on all this and rather proclaiming that the translations of St Jerome were the Received and  Approved version of Holy Scripture sanctified by the Holy Ghost over the centuries, tragically allowed this "scientific" chicanery to simmer just below the surface.

Meanwhile, Protestant Rationalism would continue to drip like acid on the Rock of St Peter, eroding its utter adherence to the absolute inerrancy of every jot and tittle of scripture.  Finally, a very subtle crack appeared.  In 1902, Pope Leo XIII, by the Apostolic Letter Vigilantiae, published on October 30 in the year 1902, founded a Council (or Commission, as it is called), of eminent men, "whose duty it would be to procure by every means that the sacred texts may receive everywhere among us that more thorough exposition which the times demand, and be kept safe not only from every breath of error, but also from all inconsiderate opinions."

Just a little later, in the year 1907, with the benign approval of Pius X "of happy memory," Benedictine monks had been committed the task of preparing the investigations and studies on which might be based a new edition of the Latin version of the Scripture, commonly called the Vulgate.  Ladies and gentlemen, the very fact that a "new" version of Sacred Scripture is "needed", implies the older version is somehow deficient.  Obviously, that would contradict the notion the Sacred Scriptures are absolutely inerrant.  The crack had become wider.

But with the publication of Divino Afflante Spiritu in 1943, that crack would now become a chasm.  The first pregnant line is that document is the following: "Nor is the sacred writer to be taxed with error, if 'copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible,' or, 'if the real meaning of a passage remains ambiguous.'"  Was one of those "copyists" St Jerome?  Leaving that question aside, one must ask how the Holy Ghost could allow a "copyist" to make a mistake that would alter the meaning of a passage, or void content.  This Wolf suggests the very notion is blasphemy.  Meanwhile, how could any passage of scripture be ambiguous?  Does not the Holy Ghost inspire men to say what they mean and mean what they say?

But this train wreck is just getting started.  Now we have to thread our way through some blather obviously inspired by the "scientific" gnosis of our day.  "There is no one who cannot easily perceive that the conditions of biblical studies and their subsidiary sciences have greatly changed within the last fifty years... hardly a single place in Palestine had begun to be explored by means of relevant excavations... more precise methods and technical skill have been developed in the course of actual experience, giv[ing] us information at once more abundant and more accurate.  How much light has been derived from these explorations for the more correct and fuller understanding of the Sacred Books all experts know.   The value of these excavations is enhanced by the discovery from time to time of written documents, which help much towards the knowledge of the languages, letters, events, customs, and forms of worship of most ancient times.  And of no less importance is papyri which have contributed so much to the knowledge of the discovery and investigation, so frequent in our times, of letters and institutions, both public and private, especially of the time of Our Savior."

Obviously, Pius XII believes in the march of scientific progress, which defines the "scholarship" of our modern world.  But this Wolf will half jokingly ask:  Is there some sort of litmus paper one can use to determine the veracity of any given archeological find?  In other words, how do we know an ancient manuscript is being written by a saintly man, or some heretic with an intent to deceive?  Were there no wicked and malicious men before the Protestant Revolt?  Many people are under the impression that just because something is old it must be venerable.

This Wolf is not going to belabor the point by continuing to wade through this techno-babble.  Perhaps the most troubling sentence is this: "How difficult for the Fathers themselves, and indeed well nigh unintelligible, were certain passages, is shown, among other things, by the oft-repeated efforts of many of them to explain the first chapters of Genesis."  This is sheer poppycock.  The Church Fathers were quite lucid in insisting that the First Chapters of Genesis are literal history.  Moreover, various Church Councils roundly condemned even the most subtle efforts to alter this ontological fact.  Hugh Owen, of the Colby Institute, does a magnificent job of showing how the 4th Lateran Council upheld the literal inerrancy of the Creation Account in Genesis contra the Albigensians.  

No, Pius XII, your "exegesis", which is trying to square the Creation Account with Darwin and Lyell, is why you are finding Genesis, "well nigh unintelligible".  Perhaps if you had just simply used the Chair of Peter to uphold the Latin Vulgate, and anathematized any who would dare question the inerrancy of scripture, and Darwinian Evolution, you could have slain a lot of dragons with one stroke of the Sword of Christendom.

The damage?  In the Knox Bible, authorized by Pius XII and completed in 1949, we have the following replies of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Last Chapter of St John after Peter is asked three times if he loved Our Lord: "Feed my lambs," "Tend my shearlings,"
"Feed my sheep."  In the Latin Vulgate, they read as follows: "Feed my lambs," "Feed my lambs," "Feed my Sheep."  The Knox Bible explains that change: "Some of the Greek manuscripts here have ‘my sheep’, others ‘my little sheep’; it would seem that the second reading was accepted by the Latin, which translates ‘lambs’, here as in verse fifteen.  Probably our Lord meant yearling sheep, which would need to be tended, that is, led out to pasture, with greater care than the others."  Nothing like putting words in the mouth of Our Lord and Savior.  How is that for "Exegesis"?

If the reader is confused, that is the point.  Faith and confidence in the utter inerrancy of Holy Scripture as the Inspired Word of God, for all time, has been undermined.  The Scriptures can now join the Great and Triumphal March of Progress to the Halls of the Workers' Paradise.  And we have made a giant leap forward to the Ecumenical Dream of the Masonic Lodges.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us. You are our only hope!