...in recent years I have had the grace of teaching Protestant student for the ministry as well as Catholic candidates for the priesthood. The Roman Catholic Church could not have made its advance in biblical criticism without Protestant aid. If the first third of the century the torch of biblical criticism was kept lighted by Protestant scholars; and when after 1943 Catholic lit their candles from it, they profited from the burnt fingers as well as the glowing insights of their Protestant confreres. It is no accident that Protestant and Catholic biblical scholars have been coming closer together ever since, to the point now of producing common studies of divisive problems....along with the presence of Protestant teachers in many Catholic institutions, brings new knowledge into the Catholic perspective.⁴⁸

Yes, for once Fr. Brown is right. It is precisely because of the incursion of Protestant theology into Catholic academia that liberal Catholics such as Fr. Brown owe much of their present occupation. The ideas, for example, that Scripture contains historical errors; that the Gospels are not literal accounts of the events that transpired in Jesus' day and were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and that St. Paul wrote only four, possibly seven, of the thirteen epistles attributed to him, are all products from the putrefying garbage of liberal Protestants stemming from the 1700-1900s and which Brown and his entourage of Catholic modernists were only too happy to engorge themselves, like flies to dung.

Along with his dependence on Protestants, Brown has a pernicious way of turning the silence of the Church, or the offhand remarks of a Vatican hierarch, into definitive evidence favoring his view of Scripture. Here's how he puts it:

By that time [1950s] the pursuit of the scientific method had led Catholic exegetes to abandon almost all the positions on biblical authorship and composition taken by Rome at the beginning of the century. No longer did they hold that Moses was the substantial author of the Pentateuch, that the first chapters of Genesis were really historical, that Isaiah was one book, that Matthew was the first Gospel written by an eyewitness, that Luke and Acts were written in the 60's, that Paul wrote Hebrews, etc. This dramatic change of position was tacitly acknowledged in 1955 by the secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission who stated that now Catholic scholars had "complete freedom" with regard to those decrees of 1905-1915 except where they touched on faith and morals (and very few of them did).⁴⁹

Notice that, as he did with the 1964 PBC (see the previous issue of CFN), Brown does the same here. He has no official ecclesiastical statements on which to stake his claim, so he resorts to "tacitly acknowledged" appeals to the "secretary" of the 1955 PBC, as if these are dictates from the pope himself. Fr. Brown was an expert at making it appear as if he had the formal backing of the magisterium when, in fact, the Church said very little in official support of his exegesis of Scripture, and usually said nothing at all.⁵⁰ Despite Brown's rhetoric, the Church has made no official reversal of the teachings of the1905-1915 PBC. Consequently, Catholics can continue believing that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (save his obituary); that the first chapters of Genesis are historical; and that the Gospel were written by the Evangelists and give an accurate rendering of Jesus' life, because Fr. Brown has nothing but his biased opinion to claim that these beliefs have been changed.

We see the same distorting of reality in Brown's comment on the 1972 PBC. He writes:

And as a further sign of the Church's commitment to biblical criticism, in 1972 Pope Paul VI restructured the Pontifical Biblical Commission so that scholars, instead of being merely consultors, now constituted the Commission itself.⁵¹

I don't know what was in the pipe Fr. Brown was smoking, but suffice it to say, the above statement is nothing but wishful thinking. Those who know the truth are probably already chuckling at Brown's attempt at obfuscating the events of 1972. When Paul VI "restructured" the Pontifical Biblical Commission it was then that he took away their official status as an authoritative arm of the Church! As a result, the PBC became, and is to this present day, merely an advisory board of scholars that have absolutely no authority over what Catholics are required to believe, which was not the case in 1905-1915. Instead of telling his reader the real truth, Brown gives the impression that the present PBC is not only authoritative, but that liberal scholars like himself constitute that authority! If this is not the biggest snow job I have ever seen in liberal literature, I don't know what is.

Not only did Scripture receive the assault of Fr. Brown's wayward methodology, but Catholic dogma was likewise attacked. He writes:

While doctrinal formulations of the past capture an aspect of revealed truth, they do not exhaust it; they represent the limited insight of one period of Church history when can be modified in another period of Church history as Christians approach the truth from different direction or with new tools of investigation.⁵²

And what does Fr. Brown see as "modified" dogma? Well, we've seen a good portion of his views already in this series of essays, nevertheless, we'll let Fr. Brown speak for himself, once again:

By way of example, the physical sciences have traced patterns of human evolution; biblical criticism has given a better understanding of the type of literature represented by the early chapters of Genesis; and so together the physical sciences and biblical criticism have helped Catholics to see that in the ancient doctrine of God's creation of man it is no longer necessary to maintain that man's body was directly created by God from the earth, or that woman's body was directly created from man's.⁵³

Similar to Teilhard de Chardin and the liberals of the 1940s and 50s, all the way up to today's theistic evolutionists such as Stanley Jaki, evolution is the calling-card of the modern generation of Catholic exegetes. If, besides the fact that they believe Scripture can err, we needed one other common denominator among them to understand the driving force of their entire hermeneutic, it is the concept of evolution - the very aberration about which Pope Pius X warned in his encyclicals against modernism. "To evolution," thinks Fr. Brown, "everything must bow," including Scripture. Without a shred of scientific proof to its claims, evolution is elevated to the status of a demigod. Brown and the liberals have cast their lot with the religion of "Scientism"and bow to it just as the Israelites bowed to a wooden image instead of the One who created in six days (Isaiah 45:16-18). Brown even shows how he carved his icon. In his New Jerome Biblical Commentary he included an entire appendix to a chronology of the earth that stretches back to the so-called "Paleolithic" period of 1.6 million years ago.⁵⁴

But those of us who have studied the true science (not that pseudo-science of such secular icons as Stephen Gould of Harvard and Niles Eldredge of the Natural History Museum) have seen in the last 50 years or so, such overwhelming evidence against evolution - evidence that is consistently denied and suppressed by the secular establishment - it is rather easy to come to the conclusion that scientists who still believe in that childish nonsense are nothing but stubborn fools, and the theistic evolutionists who follow them, such as Brown, Jaki, Vawter, Johnston, et al, are the bastard children of such foolishness. As Sir William Gilbert, writing in the 16th century, recognized very early in the game: "Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done."

As he usually does, Fr. Brown twists and turns the papal statements on this issue to make it sound as if they are on his side. For example, Brown gives the impression that, even after Pius XII's encyclical Humani Generis, it is still acceptable for Catholic exegetes to believe in polygenism (viz., that the human race descended from more than one set of parents). Now, dear reader, judge for yourself. Here is Pius XII's statement condemning polygenism:

When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.⁵⁵

Now here is how Fr. Brown distorted this very paragraph to his own advantage (Brown quotes from Humani Generis and then adds a comment in brackets):

As for polygenism, "It is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled" with what has been taught on original sin, viz., that it proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam. [Note, however, that the pope does not absolutely condemn the theory of polygenism].⁵⁶

Notice that Fr. Brown has extracted one sentence from Pius' paragraph and avoided all the rest. Very slyly, Fr. Brown zeroes in on the word "apparent" and gives the reader the impression that Pius XII was not being firm and resolute on his refusal to accept polygenism. Brown does not tell the reader that, in the sentence prior, Pius said "...the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion..." No, as he usually does, Fr. Brown leaves out whatever disagrees with his preconceived notion of truth. This is the kind of subterfuge that is all over his writings. In all my 30 years of study, I have yet to see a Catholic twist and distort words and sentences to his own favor as much as Fr. Raymond Brown does. We can easily see why Fr. Brown states: "...it is no longer necessary to maintain that man's body was directly created by God from the earth, or that woman's body was directly created from man's," or "the bishops have spoken of God's creation of the world, but there is not a word against evolution and no indication that the Genesis account of creation must be taken literally."⁵⁷ To Brown, those who don't accept evolution are "pseudo-scientific antievolutionists."⁵⁸

Not surprisingly, Fr. Brown claims that in Humani Generis "there is virtually no chastisement of biblical scholars. Seemingly to his death Pius XII remained firm in his faith in modern criticism." But those of us who have studied Humani Generis know why Fr. Brown used the qualifiers "virtually" and "seemingly." If one reads the encyclical without Brown's bias, the "chastisement"of modern biblical scholars is very apparent. For example, in paragraph 23 Pius writes:

Further, according to their fictitious opinions, the literal sense of Holy Scripture and its explanation, carefully worked out under the Church's vigilance by so many great exegetes, should yield now to a new exegesis, which they are pleased to call symbolic or spiritual...By this method, they say, all difficulties vanish, difficulties which hinder only those who adhere to the literal meaning of the Scriptures.

This is a stinging indictment against Fr. Brown and his colleagues, for it is precisely their hermeneutic which says that the literal details of Scripture are incidental, unimportant and unreliable, and that the "spiritual meaning" is the only thing the author "intended."

In paragraph 38 Pius takes a clear shot at the Wellhausen theory that many Catholic biblicists were using to interpret the Old Testament:

This Letter, in fact, clearly points out that the first eleven chapters of Genesis...do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense...If, however, the sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations...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.

In paragraphs 25-26 Pius XII shows the damage this new hermeneutic has done:

It is not surprising that novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of theology....Some also question whether angels are personal beings. Disregarding the Council of Trent, some pervert the very concept of original sin, along with the concept of sin in general as an offense against God, as well as the idea of satisfaction performed for us by Christ. Some even say that the doctrine of transubstantiation, based on an antiquated philosophic notion of substances, should be also modified...

Notice that Pius XII warned about those who "pervert the very concept of original sin." What was Fr. Brown's goal? Listen carefully. This is something you will not hear from his admirers, and which is not well known among his detractors. Fr. Brown's goal is to eliminate, if possible, the Catholic notion that original sin began with a man named Adam who disobeyed God. Fr. Brown, as all liberals have tried to do, was trying to establish that man's condition (i.e., a condition that is hampered by imperfection and a proclivity to savagery) was merely the way he "evolved" into being. Man's hominid ancestors were savages and thus modern man retained some of those negative traits. In other words, man is today the way God allowed him to evolve, not the condition into which God placed man when he sinned in our first parent, Adam. Consequently, the onus is put on God, not man, for man's present condition. This is precisely what is behind the carefully chosen words Fr. Brown uses to describe his desire to reinterpret original sin:

But we should stress that the Genesis story is only a vehicle for the doctrine of original sin and not the substance of the teaching. Moreover, in loyalty to modern biblical scholarship, we should point out that the Genesis story is not an exact historical account of the origins of man. Thereby we prepare students for the possibility that, under the impact of theological reflection, the Church may not always phrase the doctrine of original sin in terms of a sin committed by Adam and Eve as sole parent of the human race...to keep abreast of modern theological discussion, so that the limitations of past understandings of those doctrines are not imposed on the students as if they had to be believed.⁶⁰

This attempt to reorient the doctrine of original sin goes hand-in-hand with Brown's continual praise of the Protestant liberal theologian, Karl Barth, who, having a wide influence on Catholic theologians (especially Hans Küng) believed and taught that "original sin" is merely a way of describing that man is today the way he always was. God allowed him to evolve that way. There was no "fall"of man. Not surprisingly, since Barth put the onus on God for man's condition, then, of course, it is God's responsibility to save all men from the state with which He hampered them, which then led to Barth's teaching of universal salvation. God did it, and thus God is responsible for undoing it. Conservative Protestants are very aware of Barth's theology. Historical theologian Francis A. Schaeffer writes that Barth, without any public repudiation, believed and wrote in his books that Scripture contained historical errors and that man did not have a "space-time Fall" and that he emphasized "the place of universalism in the new theology."⁶¹

If you want to know where the ideas of universal salvation originated that we see so prevalent in Catholic theologians today, including strong suggestions of it in the theology of Cardinal Wojtyla, look no further than the Protestant liberal theologians like Karl Barth and his ilk. Fortunately for us, Fr. Brown makes his acceptance of Karl Barth quite clear so that we don't have to guess what his theological motivations are for advancing polygenism. In fact, in his clever way, Brown tries to pass off Barth as a spokesman against "liberalism" as he writes: "The reaction against liberalism found eloquent spokesmen in Karl Barth in the area of systematic theology and Rudolf Butlmann in the area of biblical study."⁶² Bultmann, along with the other liberal Protestants such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Deitrich Bonhoffer, Emil Bruner, et al, all embraced Barth's elimination of original sin and advancement of universal salvation, and they systematically infected Catholic liberals such as Karl Rahner, Hans Kung, Henri de Lubac, Anthony de Mello, Edward Schillebeeckx, Gabriel Moran, et al, some of the very theologians who were invited as periti at Vatican II. Not surprisingly, many of these theologians lived immoral lives. Why not? If you believe that God made you the way you are and that it was His responsibility to save you, what will stop your savagery from dominating you? You can simply blame it on God, or chalk it up to the fact that you haven't "evolved" to the point of overcoming such tendencies.⁶³ Of course, this is the same reason many of today's bishops and priests advocate, protect and practice the homosexual lifestyle. As you can see, the whole world has been turned upside down by the hermeneutic practiced by Fr. Brown and company.

In the hermeneutic of Fr. Brown, one of his favorite ways of promoting the historical-critical method was to keep drumming into his student's heads that Scripture contains "fiction." The vehicle he used to support this idea was that it was never the biblical author's "intent" to write accurate history. You will see the word "intent" over and over again in liberal literature on Scripture. Even though he has no proof, the liberal critic gives the impression that he knows the intent of the biblical author, and can therefore construct his conclusions accordingly.

Here is a sample of how this plays out in everyday life. In the Good News Bible for Catholics, notice how the liberal editor weaves the author's "intent" in with the view that Scripture is only inerrant when it speaks of salvation. After giving a few examples of Scriptural "error,"⁶⁴ the editor of the Good News Bible writes:

All of this means only that the Bible must be understood in the sense in which it was intended by God and by the biblical authors. And their purpose was not to write a history book in the modern Western sense of that term, but to set forth the history of God's salvation. The Second Vatican Council in its document on Revelation (Dei Verbum, #11) recognized this when it declared that the Holy Spirit through these writings teaches us "that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation" (italics added).⁶⁵

Here, the unsuspecting Catholic who reads this biased and distorted preface will now be primed to read the Bible's narratives as if they were fiction. One will often see appeals to "history in the Western sense of that term" in the liberal literature, and which will immediately be used to claim that the biblical authors didn't know how to write, nor even intended to write, true and accurate history. The liberals think they have the license to teach these things because, according to their distorted interpretation of Dei Verbum 11, real truth only applies to matters of salvation. This is one of the biggest lies ever perpetrated on mankind, and its home is right in the heart of liberal Catholicism. As we have seen, the true Church, the official Church, has never taught such a blatant falsehood. She has said precisely the opposite in every one of her official statements on Scripture (see previous issue of CFN). Nevertheless, Fr. Brown and his cohorts claim that,

From the very first time the story of Gen 1-3 is told to kindergarten children, they should be taught to think of it as a popular story and not as history, even though the teacher may not wish at that level to raise formally the question of historicity.⁶⁶

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