Persistent “Vegetables” Speak!

Vegstatetete-1  File this one under “Dr. Frankenstein’s Medicine Show.”

Let’s deal with the medicine part first and the Frankenstein part second.

On the medical front, good news! Researchers have found a way to communicate with patients who are in a “persistent vegetative state.”

Turns out that they, or some of them, ain’t so vegetable-like after all!

Here’s how it works: Hook the “vegetable” up to an MRI machine and ask the

vegetable

person to think about playing tennis. Note what areas of the brain light up.

Then ask the person to think about walking through their house. Note what areas light up then.

Then say, “I’d like to ask you some questions. If you want to answer ‘yes,’ think about playing tennis. If you want to answer ‘no,’ think about walking through their house. Do you understand?”

If the tennis-playing areas light up, go ahead and ask your questions. If the house-walking areas light up, explain again. (Or assume that the person is really smart and having a joke on you by thinking “no” when really he does understand.)

This really works!

At least with some patients. (Not with others, unfortunately.)

What it shows, though, is that these patients aren’t “vegetative” at all—at least mentally. They’re able to process and respond meaningfully to questions based on thinking about remembered/imagined actions.

That shows advanced cognitive functions! Remember: The person isn’t just thinking about saying “yes” or “no.” The person is thinking about other actions as a way of saying “yes” and “no.” That shows sophisticated mental processes in action!

So! Good news for the pro-life side, right?

Yesssss . . . but . . . here’s where Dr. Frankenstein—or at least Dr. Kevorkian—comes into the picture.

Already people are talking about using this technology to ask PVS patients questions like “Are you in pain?” and “Do you want to die?”

The first question is entirely legitimate! If someone’s in pain, let’s do what we can to alleviate it! By all means!

But let’s not proceed so quickly to the “Do you want to die?” question.

Other questions would be good ones, like “Do you need to change positions?”, “Are you hungry or thirsty?”, or “Would you like me to get a nurse?” or—once the immediate pain is dealt with—“Would you like me to get a priest to come pray with you and give you the sacraments?”, “May I squeeze your hand to show that I care about you?” (or even just do this one and don’t ask!), “Would you like me to turn the TV on?”, “Would you like to listen to some music?”, “How about an audio book? I could get you a subscription to Audible.com.” Or even, “Let’s use ‘yes’/‘no’ with the alphabet so you can tell me what you want. Think about what you’d most like, and we’ll spell it out.”

There are all kinds of compassionate alternatives to “Do you want to die?”

But folks are already noting that the new technique may put more pressure on people suffering from PVS to just go ahead and die.

So what can—and by rights should—be a vindication for pro-lifers may get twisted into a new way to promote euthanasia.

Hence: Dr. Frankenstein’s Medicine Show. . . . turning legitimate medicine to the service of evil.

Watch this one, folks. It’s going to be a BIG one as brain scanning technology becomes more common and more robust—allowing easier, richer communication with people in this state. It’ll be a major new feature of the discussion.

The work “changes everything”, says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who is carrying out similar work on patients with consciousness disorders. “Knowing that someone could persist in a state like this and not show evidence of the fact that they can answer yes/no questions should be extremely disturbing to our clinical practice.”

GET THE STORY.

Well That’s Cool (As Far As It Goes)

Christianity Today has a web article noting (and quoting from) our recent discussion of John Paul II’s practice of self-mortification.

The piece—written by an Evangelical—is noteworthy in that it doesn’t just lash out against the concept. (No pun intended! Honest! Didn’t even notice that until later!) Indeed, it devotes a significant amount of attention to understanding the practice from a Catholic perspective.

Though ultimately the author sees self-flagellation as “misguided,” he acknowledges and recommends the practice of self-denial, including fasting.

(So . . . why is self-flagellation “misguided” whereas fasting is to be recommended? As long as you don’t permanently injure your body with either—and both can be done in ways that do permanent damage—why is one more misguided than the other?)

In any event, I’d like to kudos CT and the author of the piece—Collin Hansen—for seeking to explore the issue in a fair-minded way!

GET THE STORY.

Filed under

 

Blog Status Update

I've been studying a question for some time, and I'm still working out the answer, but I thought I'd give a status update.

The question I've been working on is this: How can I best use this blog and integrate it with other online activity I'm working on.

As alert reader Paul H notes down yonder, I'm doing some blogging over at the National Catholic Register.

HERE'S THE LINK.

But though I am blogging there, I don't want to shut down this blog, for a number of reasons. One of them is that here I can do posts that don't fit the word count or subject matter parameters of the Register gig.

So I've been trying to figure out the best way to let folks know where and when I'm blogging, regardless of the venue.

I've settled for the moment on at least posting here links to what is going on there. So if you come here, you'll find out what's going on on this blog and what's going on on my Register blog. 

If you're into RSSes, you can also just subscribe to the RSSes for the two blogs.

I'm also looking into additional forms of notification.

For example–after several decades of resisting–I have now joined Facebook and Twitter.

HERE'S MY FACEBOOK PAGE, IF I UNDERSTAND THINGS ARIGHT.

(AND HERE'S MY FACEBOOK PROFILE; THANKS FOR THE CORRECTION IN THE COMBOX!)

AND HERE'S MY TWITTER FEED.

I'm taking baby steps at this point with these media, but the goal I'm pursuing is to try to provide more, better, and better-linked online content for folks.

Advice very much appreciated, particularly on how to get these different things to work together.

And others; e.g., I know Google has some social networking doo-dads that have cross-service functionality I'm interested in trying.

Pet Phrases

JohnLAllen I very much like and respect the work that John Allen does for the National Catholic Reporter (the same cannot be said for the rest of the paper).

But Allen has a waggish tendency that sometimes manifests in the form of a tin ear.

I still cringe whenever I remember a piece he did a while back in which he said that "some people" referred to the 2004 controversy over pro-abortion politicians (esp. John Kerry) receiving Communion as "the 'wafer' wars."

Whenever Allen says "some people" refer to some thing by a joking name of this sort–or that "a wag" might refer to it as such–I can't help thinking that he's just playing with a pet phrase he's come up with.

It brings to mind the classic piece of writing advice: Kill your darlings.

"Wafer wars" is just too unserious a phrase to use when discussing if Our Lord should be received in Holy Communion by people that advocating the mass slaughter of babies (or that the mass slaughter of babies should be legal–if you want to let them use the "Personally opposed but" dodge).

Now Allen's come up with another one.

Can your heart stand the shocking truth about . . . "TALIBAN CATHOLICISM"?

Whoa, Dude!!! Taliban Catholicism?!?!

File this one under the heading “defending the indefensible.”

Author and blogger John Allen, of the National Catholic Reporter (not the Register, just to avoid any misunderstanding), is a competent and insightful journalist whose pieces I enjoy reading.

Mostly.

A thing that occasionally mars them is his desire to play waggish phrasemaker, a role in which he can display a tin ear.

For instance, in today’s column he writes:

I may have inadvertently added fuel to the fire by introducing something new to fight over: My phrase “Taliban Catholicism” to capture a certain trajectory within the church. (At least I think I coined the term, though for all I know somebody else got there first.)

In my brief remarks Monday night, I applauded [Bishop Kevin] Farrell’s vision, underscoring it with a bit of rhetoric that’s become part of my standard stump speech. A defining challenge for the church these days, I said, is to craft a synthesis between entirely legitimate hunger for identity on the one hand, and engagement with the great social movements of the time on the other.

That synthesis, I said, has to involve striking a balance between two extremes. Here’s how I described them:

“On the one extreme lies what my friend and colleague George Weigel correctly terms ‘Catholicism Lite,’ meaning a watered-down, sold-out form of secularized religiosity, Catholic in name only. On the other is what I call ‘Taliban Catholicism,’ meaning a distorted, angry form of the faith that knows only how to excoriate, condemn, and smash the TV sets of the modern world.”

Allen then recounts how he was politely taken to task by a member of the audience he was addressing and offers two defenses of his use of the term “Taliban Catholicism.”

First, he says that he uses the terms “Catholic Lite” and “Taliban Catholicism” not to describe specific people but states of mind. Second, he says that he doesn’t use them to refer to the left or right portions of the theological/political/whatever spectrum and that both exist on both sides of the spectrum.

These are pretty weak excuses to my mind.

Unless one has the linguistic bullheadedness of Humpty Dumpty, it should be recognized that words do not just have stipulative definitions where you get to use them the way you want to, with no thought to the real-world consequences.

Words are used by communities, and when you create compound terms like “Catholic Lite” or “Taliban Catholicism,” they’re going to suggest particular things to the community. In this case, no matter what Allen might subjectively mean by these terms, they’re going to be taken by contemporary English-speaking Catholics of the type found in his audience as references to the Catholic “left” and the Catholic “right.”

That’s what the audience is going to automatically assume.

Perhaps, with a lot of explanation and exposition and disclaimers by Allen, he could overcome that initial perception, but that’s what the initial perception is going to be.

But there’s an even more fundamental problem.

There is just no parity whatsoever between Weigel’s term “Catholic Lite” (incorporating a reference to low-calorie food products) and Allen’s own “Taliban Catholicism” (incorporating a reference to murderous thugs with whom we are at war).

It is as if Allen had used the phrase “Al-Qa’eda Catholicism” or “Nazi Catholicism.”

Now matter how many Humpty Dumpty games you play with these terms, they are just going to generate more heat than light.

Allen is smart enough to know that.

I chose the picture that I did for this post to call to mind the kind of murderous thugs that the Taliban are. But this picture doesn’t tell the half of it. In searching for it, I came across far more disturbing and violent pictures of the Taliban. People they had killed. People they were about to behead. People about to be shot in the head. I don’t suggest that anyone go looking for such pictures, but they underscore the force of the word “Taliban” and just the kind of evil with which it is associated.

Allen’s “Taliban Catholicism” is said to “excoriate, condemn, and smash the TV sets of the modern world.” The real Taliban has done far, far worse acts than that, which is precisely why his use of the term to refer to people who—however much they rage against certain things in the modern world—do not actually commit Taliban-like atrocities is disgusting.

Filed under defending the indefensible, george weigel, john allen, taliban

Vatican Vs. Killer Robots!

Opinionated Catholic asks: In 25 Years Will There Be A Papal Statement on Robots?

Who can say? Always in motion, the future is.

But this one seems a pretty sure bet, in part for the reasons that Opinionated Catholic cites:

What happens when warfare can be conducted just by robots. . . .
It appears this world is fast approaching. That is one reason when I hear of aircraft that have no humans, tanks that have no commander, and ships with no crews I start wondering if we want to go down this road.

What about new Just War theory issues? An inequity between nations that can have robots do the dying for them and those that have to use real live human beings?

However there is no stopping it. Soon we will have to deal with the moral and ethical questions involved here.

It’s a sure bet that the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace will be all over the issue of battlefield robots, with papal comments to follow, and perhaps even a whole papal document devoted to the subject, though that’s more iffy.

I would guess that we won’t be seeing full armies of autonomous droids in twenty-five years, though we already have a variety of battlefield robots, and their presence will increase over time.

And yes, technologically and economically developed countries—like ours—will have more and better robots than other countries, with poor ones not having any.

This disparity will be noted and will be part of the inevitable discussion—which will be prompted by the just as inevitable use of robots.

When I first saw the headline wondering whether there would be a papal statement on robots in twenty-five years, though, it wasn’t battlefield robots that my mind first turned to: It was ordinary robots whose job isn’t to kill people . . . but to kill jobs.

Given the Holy See’s concern for ordinary workers, the impact of robots on the workforce would also be likely to occasion papal remarks.

In fact, I thought, I’d be surprised if there weren’t already papal remarks on job-killing robots.

So I Googled the Vatican web site,

AND LOOKEE HERE.

There are already a number of hits. Mostly they aren’t statements issuing from the pope but from different Vatican dicasteries.

There are, however, a couple of statements from John Paul II that deal with—surprise, surprise—the impact of robots on the workforce.

Unfortunately, the Holy See doesn’t have English translations of these addresses up on its web site, but here are Google’s translations:

Address given during a 1983 papal visit to an Italian glass factory.

Papal audience from 1984 on Labor Day.

NOTE: If you’re good with Italian, you can help improve Google’s translation by mousing over the text.

Filed under

How Much Freedom of Religion Do You Have?

This is a chart showing the fifty largest countries by population and the religious freedom they offer.

The chart was prepared by the Pew Forum, and it measures religious freedom along two axes. The first—the horizontal axis—is the amount of freedom allowed by law, with the most freedom on the left and the least freedom on the right.

The second—the vertical axis—is the amount of freedom allowed culturally (i.e., how much social hostility you are likely to meet apart from the law), with the most freedom at the bottom and the least freedom at the top.

The size of the circles represents the number of people living in the country.

When I first saw this, several questions occurred to me.

One was: “Where is Saudia Arabia? It ought to be in the extreme top right of the diagram.” The answer is that it’s not one of the top fifty countries by population, so it’s not on the chart. However, in the Pew Forum report that the chart is based on, Saudi Arabia is the only country listed in the “very high” category for both social hostilities (6.8) and government restrictions (8.4) to freedom of religion.

Another question was: “Why is the U.S. ranked the way it is?” It turns out that the government restrictions score the U.S. has (1.6) includes the fact that it requires religious organizations to apply for a special status (c3 non-profit) to obtain tax-exempt status, and there are strings attached to that (e.g., limits on what pastors can say about politics).

Fair enough.

I’m less sure about the social hostility score the U.S. is given (1.9). Certainly there are people in the U.S. who are hostile to different religions, and there are even crimes committed against people because of their religion, but I’m not sure that the Pew researchers have ranked things properly.

If you look in the full report, the U.S. is classed as having “moderate” social hostilities toward freedom of religion, with an overall score of 1.9. The Pew report justifies this by saying: “In the United States, law enforcement officials across the country reported to the FBI at least 1,400 hate crimes involving religion in 2006 and again in 2007.”

Okay . . . but it then immediately says that Belgium is a country with “low social hostilities” (it’s score is 1.3) and justifies that by stating: “In Belgium, for example, 68 anti-Semitic incidents were reported in 2007 and 31 in the first half of 2008, but none involved physical violence.”

But wait. Belgium has a population one thirtieth that of the U.S. if you took Belgium’s anti-Semitic incidents and scaled them up by a factor of 30, you’d get 2,040 for 2007 and 930 for 2008. And that’s just anti-Semitic incidents, not anti-Muslim or anti-Christian.

That’s not looking so different than the U.S. It may be looking even worse.

You could fix on the phrase “but none involved physical violence” to explain the difference in rankings. Presumably some U.S. incidents did include physical violence, but many no doubt did not (e.g., spraying anti-religious graffiti on churches or synagogues). And if you scaled Belgium up by a factor of 30, you might get some physical violence appearing as well.

In any event, I suspect that the ranking here is something of an apples-to-oranges comparison that has more to do with how the two governments classify, report, and track such incidents.

It’s still an intriguing way of measuring global freedom of religion.

MORE

FULL REPORT (.pdf)

Your thoughts on the state of freedom of religion—here or abroad?

Filed under freedom of religion

STUNNER! Pope Practiced Self-Mortification.

So various circles have been atwitter about news reports that Pope John Paul II practiced certain forms of self-mortification or, in the immortal words of the Associated Press, “John Paul II used belt to whip himself.”

It is not surprising that our pleasure-obsessed culture would find this unusual, nor is it surprising that latent anti-Catholic tendencies in the culture would cause people to read it in a negative light—as something shocking or repulsive.

So what can we say to those who have this kind of reaction?

Let’s start with what we can say to fellow Christians (Catholic or not) who find themselves thinking this way: While not every person is called to the kind of self-mortification that John Paul II practiced, self-mortification is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition with roots going all the way back to the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.

We read in the Old Testament, for example, of people fasting, wearing sackcloth (which abrades the skin; the Old Testament equivalent of a hairshirt), putting ashes on their heads, and lying tied-up in uncomfortable positions for long periods of time (Ezekiel 4:4-8).

In the New Testament we also read of such practices, and of particular note are Jesus’ own remarks about (and personal practice of) fasting. If Our Lord himself practiced fasting, then self-mortification could scarcely fail to find a place in Christian spirituality. Note also that in the Sermon on the Mount he doesn’t say “if” you fast but “when” you fast—implying an expectation of his followers.

Once we have recognized this, the issue of self-mortification becomes one of degree and occasion, for the fundamental principle has been established. If a particular Christian’s faith tradition (or personal view) hasn’t made room for self-mortification then he needs to conduct an open-minded re-examination of the issue.

He might be helped in that re-examination by what we can say to a non-believer, which goes beyond establishing that self-mortification is biblical and deals with the underlying principles.

The first thing to point out is that this isn’t masochism. It’s not the case of wanting the pain out of some sick craving. While there are masochists, anything they do along these lines is not a genuine spiritual exercise. The whole point of self-mortification is that you don’t find the pain attractive but are willing to submit to it anyway for a higher goal.

And the non-believer, unless he is a unthinking hedonist, should be able to acknowledge that it can be legitimate to endure pain for a higher goal (i.e., that there can be higher goals in life than just avoiding pain). For example, the pain that soldiers undergo to defend their country, the pain that parents undergo to help their children, and the pain that absolutely all of us must shoulder in order to achieve important goals.

So what goal was John Paul II, and other practitioners of self-mortification, striving for?

Holiness.

Specifically, virtues like humility, compassion, self-control, the ability to say no to your body in the pursuit of a spiritual goal.

A close analogy is the athletic saying, “No pain, no gain.” In order to get your body in shape, you must be willing to endure some hardship, and the same is true of your soul (or your personality if the person doesn’t believe in souls).

Self-mortification teaches humility by making us recognize that there are things more important than our own pleasure. It teaches compassion by giving us a window into the sufferings of others—who don’t have a choice in whether they’re suffering. And it strengthens self-control.

As well as (here’s the big one I’ve saved for last) encouraging us to follow the example of Our Lord, who made the central act of the Christian religion one of self-denial and (in his case) literal mortification to bring salvation to all mankind.

Even if a non-believer doesn’t buy the religious premises involved, he should be able to see the nobility of the principle of shouldering hardship for the sake of others and for the sake of learning virtues like humility and compassion rather than focusing exclusively on one’s own pleasure.

Hopefully he can see why a pope, as the vicar of Christ and as the leader of the Christian world, would be called to personal mortification in a way that goes beyond what most people are.

NOTE: Any form of significant self-mortification must be done under the guidance of a competent spiritual director. Do not try this at home on your own.

 

Filed under john paul ii, mortification, spirituality

Pro-Life Super Bowl Advertising

People who know me know that I know next to nothing about sports. I just never got the sports bug. (Except for rodeo.)

But even a person as sports-benighted as myself is aware that Super Bowl ads are the pinnacle of television advertising, that they can cost millions of dollars, and that they can create notable ripples in the culture.

Let’s hope this one does:

Focus on the Family will broadcast the first Super Bowl ad in its history February 7 during CBS Sports’ coverage of the game at Dolphin Stadium in South Florida.

The 30-second spot from the international family-help organization will feature college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. They will share a personal story centered on the theme of “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.” . . .

The Tebows said they agreed to appear in the commercial because the issue of life is one they feel very strongly about.

According to other news accounts,:

The Associated Press reported this week that the ad’s theme will be “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,” with Pam Tebow sharing the story of her difficult 1987 pregnancy—instead of getting an abortion she decided to give birth to Tebow, the now-famous quarterback who went on to become a Heisman Trophy winner, leading the Gators to two BCS wins.

So this has a bunch of people on the pro-abortion side of the aisle atwitter, and according to Reuters (big surprise they’d make the pro-aborts the lens through which to view the story):

U.S. women’s groups are urging television broadcaster CBS not to air an ad during next month’s Super Bowl football championship final because they say it has a strident anti-abortion rights message. . . .

The Women’s Media Center and over 30 other liberal and women’s advocacy groups sent a letter to CBS, the TV network to air the Super Bowl on Feb. 7, saying: “… we urge you to immediately cancel this ad and refuse any other advertisement promoting Focus on the Family’s agenda.”

“We are calling on CBS to stick to their policy of not airing controversial advocacy ads … and this is clearly a controversial ad,” Jehmu Greene, the president of the Women’s Media Center, told Reuters.

Fortunately, CBS seems to be sticking to its guns:

CBS said it no longer had a blanket filter on advocacy submissions for ad slots. “We have for some time moderated our approach to advocacy submissions after it became apparent that our stance did not reflect public sentiment or industry norms on the issue,” said CBS spokesman Dana McClintock.

I look forward to following what happens with this one.

Because, y’know, not every pro-life ad has been allowed to air during the Super Bowl.

Filed under abortion, advertising, pro-life, sports, television

The Age of the World–Part III

Piusxii Some time ago I did a couple of posts (part I, part II) on the age of the world, in which I looked at Vatican documents dating from recent years–the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the International Theological Commission's document on our being created in the image of God. 

Both of these documents took an open stance regarding the findings of mainstream modern science concerning the age of the universe and the existence of some form of biological evolution. 

They did not impose these as matters of faith, for they are not matters of faith–which was precisely the point. At present the Magisterium and related bodies like the ITC have determined that the sources of faith do not conflict with the findings of mainstream modern science on these points, and so one may follow the scientific evidence where it leads. (On other points, such as the creation of the world out of nothing and the special creation of each human soul, including those of the first humans, the faith does have something to say and the same liberty is not enjoyed.)

You might question how long the Magisterium has held this position, and that's a good question. I, for one, would love to know the answer.

Certainly, though much of Christian history a young earth view was common, though there were also voices urging that the biblical creation accounts, especially Genesis 1, should be handled with care and that they might not be the kind of chronological guide many thought. (St. Augustine, in particular, went into a great deal of depth on this point.)

It seems to me that this view is correct, that a careful reading of Genesis 1 shows that it never intended to offer a purely chronological account, and that it overtly signalled this to the original audience by placing the creation of the sun three days after the creation of the day/night cycle. People back then understood that the sun is a light, that it lights up the sky, and that it thus causes the day/night cycle.

Indeed, the ancient world was full of people whose religion was intensely bound up with this fact, such as the Egyptians, who held that the sun god Ra had to fight with the serpent monster Apophis every night so that the solar barge could return to the sky and bring daylight again. An occasional Apophis attack on Ra during the day was the explanation for eclipses and the darkness they bring. The idea was that Apophis swallowed the solar barge earlier than normal in the daily cycle, and Ra's forces were able to cut him free in a short space of time.

Genesis 1 rejects this pagan understanding of matters and simply refers to the sun as a "light." It doesn't even use the Hebrew word for "sun"–shamash–because this word as also the name of the Canaanite sun god and the author didn't want any confusion about God creating the Canaanite solar deity. So he just calls the sun a light, with the implication: "It's just a light, Don't worship it."

The point is, though, that the ancients understood the fact that the sun is the source of daylight and thus by putting the creation of the sun after the creation of the day/night cycle, the author of Genesis 1 is showing us a topically-structured rather than chronologically-structured account.

At least in my humble opinion.

For those who came from different cultural traditions, who were not as in touch with ancient Semitic ways of writing, this kind of detail could be easily missed and the whole account taken as what it superficially appeared to be–a chronologically-organized description of the creation of the world in one, seven-day week.

The need to be careful in such matters was stressed by Pius XII in his 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu:

35. What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use. 

36. For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries. What those exactly were the commentator cannot determine as it were in advance, but only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the East. The investigation, carried out, on this point, during the past forty or fifty years with greater care and diligence than ever before, has more clearly shown what forms of expression were used in those far off times, whether in poetic description or in the formulation of laws and rules of life or in recording the facts and events of history.

A bit earlier in the same encyclical, Pius XII notes some of the historical difficulties in interpreting the early chapters of Genesis:

31. Moreover we may rightly and deservedly hope that our time also can contribute something towards the deeper and more accurate interpretation of Sacred Scripture. For not a few things, especially in matters pertaining to history, were scarcely at all or not fully explained by the commentators of past ages, since they lacked almost all the information which was needed for their clearer exposition. 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; likewise by the reiterated attempts of St. Jerome so to translate the Psalms that the literal sense, that, namely, which is expressed by the words themselves, might be clearly revealed.

A few years later, in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, which deals with biological evolution, he also commented on the literary character of the early chapters of Genesis in a way that anticipates the approach taken by the Catechism:

38. . . . the first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which howevermust be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters . . . in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give apopular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents.

Now, I don't quote these passages from Pius XII as having a great deal of bearing on the age of the universe. They are illustrative of the Magisterium's attitude toward the early portions of Genesis.

So what does Pius XII say on the age of the world from a scientific perspective?

This is found in a speech he gave in 1951 to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences. In it, he says [My comments added in red–JA]:

35. First of all, to quote some figures–which aim at nothing else than to give an order of magnitude fixing the dawn of our universe [so he's not signing off on any specific date], that is to say, to its beginning in time–science has at its disposal various means, each of which is more or less independent from the other, although all converge. We point them out briefly [Note that in what follows Pius XII mixes evidences regarding the dates for the origin of the universe and the origin of the solar system, both of this he is evincing regarding "the dawn of our universe." He does not clearly distinguish between the two–a conflation which may have been common at the time. This conflation is in part responsible for the range of dates he considers.]: 

(1) recession of the spiral nebulae or galaxies: 

36. The examination of various spiral nebulae [i.e., galaxies], especially as carried out by Edwin W. Hubble at the Mount Wilson Observatory, has led to the significant conclusion, presented with all due reservations [so even the scientists are being tentative about this and the Church isn't signing off on it as a certainty or an article of faith], that these distant systems of galaxies tend to move away from one another with such velocity that, in the space of 1,300 million years, the distance between such spiral nebulae is doubled. If we look back into the past at the time required for this process of the "expanding universe," it follows that, from one to ten billion years ago, the matter of the spiral nebulae was compressed into a relatively restricted space, at the time the cosmic processes had their beginning. [Ten billion is a little on the small side, viewed by 2010 mainstream science; 13-14 billion is the common estimate today, though this doesn't matter since Pius XII is only aiming for an order of magnitude.]

(2) The age of the solid crust of the earth: 

37. To calculate the age of original radioactive substances, very approximate data are taken from the transformation of the isotope of uranium 238 into an isotope of lead (RaG), or of an isotope of uranium 235 into actinium D (AcD), and of the isotope of thorium 232 into thorium D (ThD). The mass of helium thereby formed can serve as a means of control. This leads to the conclusion that the average age of the oldest minerals is at the most five billion years. [This agrees with the common age held for the formation of the earth and the solar system: 4.6 billion year.]

(3) The age of meteorites: 

38. The preceding method adopted to determine the age of meteorites has led to practically the same figure of five billion years. [Meteorites, as part of the solar system, ditto.] This is a result which acquires special importance by reason of the fact that the meteorites come from outside our earth and, apart from the terrestrial minerals are the only examples of celestial bodies which can be studied in scientific laboratories. [This was, of course, before we went to the moon and started bringing back samples from there and–robotically–from elsewhere in the solar system.] 

(4) The stability of the systems of double stars and starry masses: 

39. The oscillations of gravitation between these systems, as also the attrition resulting from tides, again limit their stability within a period of from five to ten billion years. 

40. Although these figures may seem astounding, nevertheless, even to the simplest of the faithful, they bring no new or different concept from the one they learned in the opening words of Genesis: "In the beginning . . .," that is to say; at the beginning of things in time. The figures We have quoted clothe these words in a concrete and almost mathematical expression, while from them there springs forth a new source of consolation for those who share the esteem of the Apostle for that divinely inspired Scripture which is always useful "for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, for instructing" (2 Tim., 3, 16). 

E. THE STATE AND QUALITY OF ORIGINAL MATTER 

41. [In this section, the pontiff again seems to conflate the origin of the universe with later events–the later events in this case being the creation of heavy elements. This may be because the concept of stellar nucleosynthesis–the creation of heavier elements in stars rather than in the Big Bang–was a new concept in his day that had just been proposed and was still being worked out.] In addition to the question of the age of the cosmos, scholars have, with similar earnestness and liberty of research and verification, turned their daring genius to the other problem which has already been mentioned and which is certainly more difficult, concerning the state and quality of primitive matter. [Here he seems to mean the matter at the beginning of the universe, at or just after the Big Bang.] 

42. According to the theories serving as their basis, the relative calculations differ in no small degree from one another. Nevertheless, scientists agree in holding that not only the mass but also the density, pressure, and temperature of matter must have reached absolutely enormous proportions as can be seen from the recent work of A. Unsold [Albrecht Unsold], director of the Observatory of Kiel (Kernphysik und Kosmologie ["Nuclear Physics and Cosmology"–see a short English language abstract of the paper via Google Bookshere.], in the Zeitschrift fur Astrophysik, 24, B. 1948, pag. 278-306). Only under such conditions can we explain the formation of heavy nuclei and their relative frequency in the periodic system of the elements. [Perhaps at the time this was the only way they could see such elements being formed; later thought–and according to a recently proposed theory by Hubble at the time–the pressures and densities found in the life cycle of certain stars will do the trick just fine. This is now the received view.] 

43. Rightly, on the other hand, does the mind in its eagerness for truth insist on asking how matter reached this state, which is so unlike anything found in our own everyday experience, and it also wants to know what went before it. In vain would we seek an answer in natural science, which declares honestly that it finds itself face to face with an insoluble enigma. [Both of the preceding sentences seem to confirm that he is thinking about the Big Bang and the state of matter in it.] It is true that such a question would demand too much of natural science as such. But it is also certain that the human mind trained in philosophical meditation penetrates more deeply into this problem. 

44. [Now Pius XII begins to meditate on the religious implications of the foregoing.] It is undeniable that when a mind enlightened and enriched with modern scientific knowledge weighs this problem calmly, it feels drawn to break through the circle of completely independent or autochthonous [i.e., native, indigenous] matter, whether uncreated or self-created, and to ascend to a creating Spirit. With the same clear and critical look with which it examines and passes judgment on facts, it perceives and recognizes the work of creative omnipotence, whose power, set in motion by the mighty "Fiat" pronounced billions of years ago by the Creating Spirit, spread out over the universe, calling into existence with a gesture of generous love matter bursting with energy. In fact, it would seem that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial "Fiat lux" ["Let there be Light"] uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies. [Note the quickness to associate the creation of light with the Big Bang; though this can be done in a literary or poetic way, one must be cautious not to take it too literally; see the link in the next paragraph.]

45. It is quite true that the facts established up to the present time are not an absolute proof of creation in time [VERY important point, as written about before; good to see the point being made in this context!], as are the proofs drawn from metaphysics and Revelation in what concerns simple creation or those founded on Revelation if there be question of creation in time. The pertinent facts of the natural sciences, to which We have referred, are awaiting still further research and confirmation, and the theories founded on them are in need of further development and proof before they can provide a sure foundation for arguments which, of themselves, are outside the proper sphere of the natural sciences. [This theme very much taken up in later documents: Science can take us to a certain point but not farther.]

46. [Now the pontiff comments on what an earthquake the Big Bang turned out to be for the previously accepted view in mainstream science.] This notwithstanding, it is worthy of note that modern scholars in these fields regard the idea of the creation of the universe as entirely compatible with their scientific conceptions and that they are even led spontaneously to this conclusion by their scientific research. Just a few decades ago, any such "hypothesis" was rejected as entirely irreconcilable with the present state of science. 

47. As late as 1911, the celebrated physicist Svante Arhenius declared that "the opinion that something can come from nothing is at variance with the present-day state of science, according to which matter is immutable." (Die Vorstellung vom Weltgebaude im Wandel der Zeiten, 1911, pag. 362). In this same vein we find the statement of Plato: "Matter exists. Nothing can come from nothing, hence matter is eternal. We cannot admit the creation of matter." (Ultramontane Weltanschauung und Moderne Lebenskunde, 1907, pag. 55). 

48. On the other hand, how different and much more faithful a reflection of limitless visions is the language of an outstanding modern scientist, Sir Edmund Whittaker, member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, when he speaks of the above-mentioned inquiries into the age of the world: "These different calculations point to the conclusion that there was a time, some nine or ten billion years ago, prior to which the cosmos, if it existed, existed in a form totally different from anything we know, and this form constitutes the very last limit of science. We refer to it perhaps not improperly as creation. It provides a unifying background, suggested by geological evidence, for that explanation of the world according to which every organism existing on the earth had a beginning in time. Were this conclusion to be confirmed by future research, it might well be considered as the most outstanding discovery of our times, since it represents a fundamental change in the scientific conception of the universe, similar to the one brought about four centuries ago by Copernicus." (Space and Spirit, 1946, pag. 118- 119). 

Conclusion: 

49. What, then, is the importance of modern science for the argument for the existence of God based on the mutability of the cosmos? By means of exact and detailed research into the macrocosm and the microcosm, it has considerably broadened and deepened the empirical foundation on which this argument rests, and from which it concludes to the existence of an Ens a se [i.e., a being not contingent on another], immutable by His very nature. 

50. It has, besides, followed the course and the direction of cosmic developments, and, just as it was able to get a glimpse of the term toward which these developments were inexorably leading, so also has it pointed to their beginning in time some five billion years ago. Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, it has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the cosmos came forth from the hands of the Creator. 

51. Hence, creation took place in time. Therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore, God exists! Although it is neither explicit nor complete, this is the reply we were awaiting from science, and which the present human generation is awaiting from it.

The takeaway message from this is that the Magisterium's openness to the idea that the universe is billions of years old is not some new, sinister, modernist, post-Vatican II thing. It was accepted–enthusiastically–by Pope Pius XII–the pope who defined the Assumption of Mary and, incidentally, just the year after he defined it.

He also used the finding of Big Bang cosmology and Old Earth science to buttress the idea of the existence of God, while noting a number of important caveats that this reasoning from science cannot be taken as definitive.