364 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



writes : " One may not be of your opinion, because 

 there is question of but an opinion only, but I do not 

 see in what anyone can find fault with your ortho- 

 doxy. Science progresses and its discoveries permit 

 us to see better every day the grandiose unity of 

 creation. Whatever be its progress, it will never 

 efface from the first pages of the Bible these two 

 truths: all creation is the work of God ; and there are 

 in this creation acts of such transcendence that they 

 can be attributed only to the immediate and effect- 

 ive intervention of an Infinite Power." 



From the foregoing it is evident, that whatever 

 may be the final proved verdict of science in respect 

 of man's body, it cannot be at variance with Cath- 

 olic Dogma. Granting that future researches in 

 paleontology, anthropology and biology, shall dem- 

 onstrate beyond doubt that man is genetically 

 related to the inferior animals, and we have seen 

 how far scientists are from such a demonstration, 

 there will not be, even in such an improbable event, 

 the slightest ground for imagining that then, at last, 

 the conclusions of science are hopelessly at variance 

 with the declarations of the sacred text, or the 

 authorized teachings of the Church of Christ. All 

 that would logically follow from the demonstration 

 of the animal origin of man, would be a modification 

 of the traditional view regarding the origin of the 

 body of our first ancestor. We should be obliged 

 to revise the interpretation that has usually been 

 given to the words of Scripture which refer to the 

 formation of Adam's body, and read these words in 

 the sense which Evolution demands, a sense which. 



