Objection #5:

 YOUCAT teaches that God made an incomplete world filled with defects and deformities.

YOUCAT’s misrepresentation of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation continues in its summary of questions 47 and 51 where the authors show the consequences of their blind acceptance of Teilhardian uniformitarianism. In reply to Question 47: “Why did God rest on the seventh day?” YOUCAT answers:

God’s rest from his work points toward the completion of creation, which is beyond all human efforts.

In the whole history of the Church, no Father, Doctor, Pope or Council has ever taught that God’s rest from the work of creation “pointed towards its completeness,” in the sense that the original creation was unfinished or incomplete. On the contrary, the correct explanation of the “rest of the Lord” was well articulated by the Catechism of Trent which taught that:

the seventh day was called the “Sabbath.” because [God], having finished and completed the creation of the world, rested from all his work which he had done (emphasis added). ⁽³⁰⁾

This statement was a reflection of all the Church Fathers and of the Doctors including St. Augustine who wrote: “… God rested from all the works that He made in the sense that from then on He did not produce any other new nature…” ⁽³¹⁾ Similarly, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the Summa: “…the completion of the universe as to the completeness of its parts belongs to the sixth day, but its completion as regards their operation, to the seventh…Nothing entirely new was afterwards made by God, but all things subsequently made had in a sense been made before, in the work of the six days…“⁽³²⁾

The essential truth that God created a world that was finished and complete has been withheld from YOUCAT’s young readers who are told that “evolution takes place as God’s continuous creation in natural processes.” ⁽³³⁾ The YOUCAT view further rings of the Teilhardian vision of a monstrous god who deliberately created an incomplete world filled with physical evils like birth defects and natural catastrophes when it states:

God created the world to be good, but it is not yet complete. In violent upheavals and painful processes it is being shaped and moved toward its final perfection. That may be a better way to classify what the Church calls physical evil, for example, a birth defect, or a natural catastrophe. Moral evils, in contrast, come about through the misuse of freedom in the world. ⁽³⁴⁾

From the time of the Apostles until now, no Father, Doctor, Pope or Council in an authoritative teaching has ever taught or tolerated YOUCAT’s distorted implication that God created a world with birth defects before Original Sin. On the contrary, the unanimous teaching of all of the Fathers and Doctors is that God created all of the different kinds of creatures perfect according to their natures, in a state of harmony with man and with each other, and that all deformity and disease was a consequence of the Original Sin.

To summarize the very serious previous three objections, the authors’ ignorance of the fatal flaws with evolution theory and with the severe problems of Big Bang cosmology appear to have led to the false conclusion that Scripture contains errors. This is nothing more than a re-emergence of Modernism that has been repeatedly condemned. For example, in 1907, St. Pius X condemned the proposition that “scientific progress demands that the concept of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word and Redemption be re-adjusted.” ⁽³⁵⁾ This view also ignores the mandates of Humani Generis not to treat evolution theory as a certain proven fact, and to consider the evidence both for and against the theory.

Are the errors concerning creation really so important to correct given that so many good things are contained in YOUCAT? Let us not forget that the most sorrowful tragedies and developments of the 20th century had their basis in evolutionary thought; these include eugenics, birth control, abortion, Nazism, Communism, two world wars, and the rise of Modernism, post-modernism, humanism and New Age thought now dominating the West. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, “an error in the beginning is an error indeed.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that:

Catechesis on creation is of major importance. It concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life: for it makes explicit the response of the Christian faith to the basic question that men of all times have asked themselves: “Where do we come from?” “Where are we going?” “What is our origin?” “What is our end?”…The two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end are inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions.” ⁽³⁶⁾

Since the age of the Apostles and the early Fathers, the Catholic Church has never failed to defend the doctrines of creation or inerrancy…that is, until so many fell under the spell of Darwinism and its false scientific claims which strongly contributed to the rise of the Modernist heresy. It is the duty of all Catholics to defend the doctrine of inerrancy and the full doctrine of creation against any sort of compromise. If we now fail to do so, the problematic statements in YOUCAT will soon become “official Church doctrine” in the eyes of millions.