[196 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



by God out of the dust of the earth, before, in 

 the beautiful Scriptural figure, He breathed into 

 it an immortal soul, made to His own image and 

 likeness. 



The Rev. Walter Drum, S.J., professor of 

 Scripture at Woodstock College, thus briefly de 

 scribes the Church s position on this entire sub 

 ject: 



True, the Church has not defined that God formed Adam out 

 of the soil as a material. But she has defined again and again 

 that the soul of man is created. And the Vatican Council (Ses 

 sion iii, 24 April, 1870), repeated the definition of the Fourth 

 Lateran (Chapter i, On Catholic Faith, against the Albigenses, 

 A. D. 1215) : &quot;By His omnipotent power, at the very beginning 

 of time, He made out of nothing both handiworks, the spiritual 

 and the corporeal that is the angelic and the mundane ; and 

 thereafter the human, as composed alike of spirit and body.&quot; 



Here the Biblical Commission comes to our assistance. It has 

 decided that the first three chapter of Genesis are historical; 

 and that one may not call into question the historical worth of 

 the literal meaning of those facts, herein related, which have 

 to do with the very foundations of the Christian religion. One 

 of these facts, which Catholics may not discard as figurative or 

 otherwise lacking of historical worth, is &quot;the peculiar creation 

 of man&quot; (Decree of 30 June, 1909). What is this &quot;peculiar 

 creation of man&quot;? It is the formation of man in the manner 

 of the Mosaic fact narrative. The body was formed out of 

 dust. The soul was created out of nothing; and, by divine 

 omnipotence, vivified the previously formed body. 5 



The thorough consistency of the Church s atti 

 tude with that of true science has been made suffi 

 ciently obvious. But what, it is occasionally asked, 

 would the Church do if a &quot;missing link&quot; were ac- 



5 The Queen s Work, May, 1919, p. 132. 



