Feast of St. Adam and St. Eve
December 24, 2022
Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
As we celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the incorporation of the Kolbe Center on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Jubilee Year 2000, we are filled with gratitude for all that God has done to advance our mission throughout the world. Of all of our publications, internet articles, and videos, the one that has had the greatest impact has been our DVD series “Foundations Restored” which has been shown in numerous homes and parishes all over the world and which has recently been approved as a complete course on origins for Catholic catechists and teachers by the Bishop of the Soroti Diocese in Uganda.
In view of the impact that the DVD series has had and continues to have, we have decided to follow up with another DVD series specifically on the six days of creation, entitled “How the World Was Made in Six Days,” using a script written by Dr. Robert Sungenis. Readers of our newsletter know that one of the most important truths of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation is the Creation-Providence Framework. As described in more detail in the article “Creation and Providence” on the Kolbe website, all of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church made a distinction between the supernatural work of creation “in the beginning,” and the natural order, or the Order of Providence, which only began when the entire work of creation, the machina mundi, or “machine of the world,” was finished. This Creation-Providence Framework explains why Descartes, Kant, Spinoza and the rest of the Enlightenment philosophers who have shaped the thinking of the intellectual elite of the modern world were completely wrong to assume that “things have always been the same from the beginning of creation” (cf. 2 Peter 3) and that they could extrapolate from their observations of the present order of nature all the way back to the beginning to explain how everything came to be.
A question remains, however, as to what extent the various kinds of creatures acted and interacted according to their created natures during the Creation Week once they had been supernaturally created. The Fathers and Doctors had different opinions about this, but it is clear that they all held that creatures, once created, did act according to their natures but not in exactly the same way that they did once the entire machina mundi was completed on the sixth day of the Hexameron. St. Lawrence of Brindisi knew the entire Bible by heart, mastered all of the Biblical languages, and was familiar with the greatest commentators on the Bible in Hebrew, Latin and Greek—and he is the last Doctor of the Church to have made a detailed commentary on Genesis. In his Commentary on Genesis, St. Lawrence raises the question whether the light of Day One alternated with darkness by its own nature or whether it was moved directly by God until He created the sun “to rule the day” on the Fourth Day of the Hexameron. St. Lawrence discusses various opinions but concludes with St. Augustine:
that this light brought about day and night by its own movement. Since that light-filled substance, which we understand in this verse by the word light, was of a celestial nature, it certainly obtained that movement by which the primum mobile, made in the beginning, began to move itself from east to west by its own nature, for that movement brought about day and night as well as evening, morning, and noontide. Therefore, by such a movement, that light brought about the day by its presence and the night by its absence, while the atmosphere was deprived of its own light. Furthermore, it caused evening, and morning, and noontide just as now the Sun brings about these times of the day, except that now the day shines with simple light, by the agency of the Sun in our hemisphere, and at the beginning of time it shone with the light of which we just spoke.
In our new DVD series “How the World Was Made in Six Days,” we follow the approach of St. Lawrence of Brindisi and show how it is possible to explain the origins of man and the universe by positing that God created all of the different kinds of creatures supernaturally and then allowed them to act and interact according to the natures He had endowed them with. As Robert Sungenis explains in the Introduction to the DVD for Day One of Creation Week:
In our analysis of Genesis we have adopted as our uncompromising guide the literal interpretation of Scripture that was explicitly taught by the Catholic Church Fathers, the medieval theologians, and the Catholic Magisterium for the greater part of Church history. As we appeal to the Fathers and the medievals, there is one caveat, however. Although they were in consensus on many issues concerning the creation narrative in Genesis, these men sometimes had different views on the details.
Over the centuries, the Church has not determined who was correct on these details and has only made official decisions on some of the larger issues at stake, such as the fact that God created the universe from nothing and that God infused Adam with a human soul, among others. By the same token, although modern scientists use the same instrumental and mathematical tools to gather and decipher the data they analyze, they have different interpretations resulting in various models of the universe.
What we have done in this documentary is to take the best teachings of the Fathers and medievals, the best conclusions from modern scientific experiments and theories, and the best interpretations of Scripture based on a thorough exegesis of the original Hebrew and Greek texts, and we have put these all together to produce the most biblically sound and scientifically viable explanation of the origin and operation of the universe that we believe Christianity has ever offered to the modern age.
We are delighted to announce that the Introduction to the DVD of Day One of “How the World Was Made in Six Days” will be available for viewing at no charge on St. Stephen’s Day, December 26 at this link. The online streaming edition of the Day One video will be released on Friday January 13th, 2023 on the Commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord, for a suggested donation of $10. The physical DVD of Day One will be available for a suggested donation of $15 before the Feast of Candlemas at the end of the Christmas season, God willing. Subsequent DVDs for each day will be released as we finish production on them throughout the coming year. We believe that this DVD series will be one of the most powerful tools ever produced to strengthen the faith of Catholics in God’s Creation Revelation and to fortify young Catholics against the sophistry of evolutionary “science, falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20).
Through the prayers of the Mother of God and of all the Holy Angels and Saints, may the Holy Ghost grant us the grace to believe, defend and proclaim the whole counsel of God, now and always and unto the ages of ages!
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Dr. Cletus Fuhrmann’s monumental work Summa Contra Evolution is now available as an e-book or in a printed version. It has the imprimatur of Bishop Joseph Oliach of the Diocese of Soroti, Uganda, and is being published simultaneously in Uganda and in the United States.
P.P.S. The great Russian novelist Dostoyevsky prophesied that "Beauty will save the world!" And it is no coincidence that sacred art that celebrates the fiat creation of all things is especially beautiful. Keith Jones and his family have created an array of beautiful flags that can be used to adorn your home or garden, one of them is a Creation Garden Flag. Please visit their Catholic Flags website.
