The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 41: Origins and Ends (2025)

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Together with Fr. Mike, we examine some of the different explanations for God’s existence outside of the Catholic understanding, such as Pantheism, Dualism, Manichaeism, and Deism. Fr. Mike explains that while some understanding of man’s origin can be perceived through human reason and the natural world, we also need Revelation, as it answers many questions about creation we could never possibly hope to answer with reason alone. Today's readings are Catechism paragraphs 285-289. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is Day 41, we are reading paragraphs 285-289. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any

recent version. Also, you can download your Catechism and your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. It, as I said, is day 41. We're reading paragraphs 285 to 289. This is continued catechesis on creation. We're going to be sticking with creation for quite a little bit. Tomorrow we'll talk about, like we'll crack into the importance and what's revealed to us in Genesis chapters one through three, which is amazing and

incredible, but today we're all going to continue what we talked about yesterday, which is the fact that people have always asked the questions. Who are we? Where are we going? Where'd we come from? What's our origin? What's our end? That kind of situation. We're also going to talk about the fact that, and paragraph 285 will highlight this, that since the beginning of Christian faith, or since the beginning of everything, the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the questions of origins that differ from our own. So we have a very specific response of how the world, how everything started. And so paragraph 285 will go into a number of

different theories for the creation and origin of the universe. Some people will talk about pantheism, like God is everything essentially, or everything is God essentially as well. Also dualism, where there's good and evil battling it out We'll talk about deism which is the idea of like they call it the clockmaker God So yes, there's a God who made all things but he just kind of like wound up a clock or made the clock wound it Up and let it go. So he's not really involved anymore There's also materialism which I mentioned yesterday where this is just stuff all there is is stuff All it is is the material world and there's nothing beyond the material world. Now, we'll go from there to talk about how

important the reality is that God has revealed Himself to us in creation and also in revelation because we recognize that God's existence can be perceived from human reason. Romans chapter 1 emphasizes this or makes this claim that here if we're looking around at this universe we can see that and be perceived from human reason. Romans chapter one emphasizes this or makes this claim that here if we're looking around at this universe, we can see that this did not come up on its own, that it has an origin. And we can assume then by the origin

that maybe even has an end to it. And so there is something about the human reason that can look at the world and say, okay, this had a beginning and the beginning must have been made by something outside of this or someone even maybe outside of this. But also recognition that Revelation is super important. That we wouldn't actually know for certain the nature of this Creator. We would know some things about his attributes potentially. We would know

that yeah maybe we could discern that God must be powerful that God must be outside of the world we maybe discern that God must be intelligent God must have a some kind of sense of beauty because we look around this world and we see design we see beauty we see that only a powerful being could create such a an incredible creation so we can realize some of these but then revelation steps in. Revelation, I don't want to say fills the gaps, but revelation answers some of the questions that we could never possibly hope to answer. And not only that but also the revelation of creation is inseparable. This is paragraph 288. The revelation of creation is inseparable from the revelation and

Forging of the covenant of the one God with his people. So we realize that creation is revealed as the first step toward God Establishing a relationship with us. In fact, I'm that's we're gonna pause on that then we're gonna paper and then launch into today The first step of God entering to relationship with us is creation, which on one hand you might think, well, duh, if we didn't exist, it'd be kind of difficult to have a relationship with us. But Revelation, for lack of a better term, reveals that this is the intention behind God making everything. That God did not make the universe with all of its beauty, all of its wonder, all of its incredible reality just for itself. But he did make human beings.

He did make you for yourself so that you could have a relationship with him. And that is one of the important realities that is communicated in the Christian revelation. Which I think is just remarkable to sit with that. The sun was not made for itself. This whole and entire expanding universe not made for itself. But a single individual, a human being on this planet, regardless of how great or how small, how smart or how challenged, they were made for themselves.

They were made to be in relationship with God. Their hearts are restless until they rest in Him. And so for these paragraphs today, let's say a prayer. We pray, Father Almighty, God all-powerful, you are good, you're merciful, you're powerful, you have created all things out of nothing. And you created all things for yourself. You've created us for yourself. You've created this universe for us to get to know you, to reveal you to us and to bring us closer to you. And so today we ask you to please bring us closer to you, bring us into your grasp, bring us into your heart and there we will find joy. In Jesus name we pray, amen. In the name of

the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. As I said, it is Day 41, we're reading paragraphs 285 to 289. Since the beginning, the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the questions of origin that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God, for example pantheism. Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to

Him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, good and evil, light and darkness, locked in permanent conflict, for example dualism or manacheism. According to some of these conceptions, the world, at least the physical world, is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind, for example, narcissism. Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watchmaker, who once he has made a watch abandons it to itself, for example, deism. Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world but see it as merely the interplay

of matter that has always existed, for example materialism. All of these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human. Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through His works by the light of human reason. Even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error, this is why faith comes

to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth. As the letter to the Hebrews states, By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear. The truth about creation is so important for all of human life that God in His tenderness wanted to reveal to His people everything that is salutary to know on the subject. Beyond the natural knowledge that every man can have of the Creator, God progressively reveals to Israel the mystery of creation. He who chose the patriarchs, who brought Israel out of Egypt, and who by choosing Israel created

and formed it, this same God reveals Himself as the one to whom belong all the peoples of the earth and the whole earth itself. He is the one who alone made heaven and earth. Thus, the revelation of creation is inseparable from the revelation and forging of the covenant of the one God with His people. Creation is revealed as the first step toward this covenant, the first and universal witness to God's all-powerful love. And so, the truth of creation is also expressed with growing vigor in the message of the prophets,

the prayer of the Psalms and the liturgy, and in the wisdom sayings of the chosen people. Among all the scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint, these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation, its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation. Read in the light of Christ within the unity of sacred Scripture and in the living tradition of the church,

these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the beginning, creation, fall, and promise of salvation. Okay, as I said today, it's just it's kind of a not just an intro. It is summing up what we heard yesterday, right? Would you recognize that? The question we all have is Where do we come from? Where do we go? Where did you come from? Cotton? I Joe that is gonna be stuck in your head today I'm so sorry. I had to do it though. It was stuck in my head all day yesterday when we recorded and That's my gift to you, but that's the question the question is

distinctively human and so again all of the different ways in which people can Imagine this is the beginning of the world. I love how the church highlights a couple different of the theories. One is you know pantheism, this idea that the world is God or God is the world, both and that we reject that. You know it's one of those things we're gonna find out why we reject that or how we can reject that based off the sacred scripture tomorrow because we're gonna hear about the fact that in the beginning God created and there's a specific word that is used in Hebrew in the book of Genesis that is incredibly unique that it directly reveals that God is not the world that he created the world outside of himself and that's that's coming tomorrow

So it's not we don't believe in pantheism dualism and manichaeism are also opposed to Christianity because they put forth that well There's two eternal forces good and and evil, light and darkness, and they continue to battle each other out. Well, again, the Christian revelation is that no, God is good. He is fully good. There's no mixture of evil in him. And so while there is a battle of good and evil in this world due to the fall, evil is not an eternal force because only God always existed while evil came in later. Furthermore, in addition to that, these philosophies also incorrectly believe that evil will never

be vanquished. Christianity, on the other hand, is much more hopeful in that it teaches that there was a time when there was no evil and that in Christ, evil is conquered and will be completely overthrown when he returns again in glory even further There's the idea of narcissism where the others a battle good and evil But um the world the material world is evil and the spiritual world is good. We also talked about deism I mentioned that the clockmaker God idea which actually is very interesting because there is a Sociologist dr. Christian Smith used to be out of University of

North Carolina Chapel Hill I believe but now he's at Notre Dame and he has this he did this survey of the spiritual lives of American adolescents and this was this goes back maybe almost 20 years now but when he investigated the spiritual lives of American adolescents one of the things one of the things he concluded was that we all believe or adolescents all believed basically in the same God and he called it moralistic therapeutic deism where even if someone was raised Catholic if they were raised mainline Protestant or evangelical Protestant even if they were raised atheist if they had any sense of God if they're Jewish same kind of thing

they had any sense of God they didn't necessarily Jewish, same kind of thing. If they had any sense of God, they didn't necessarily believe in the God of the Bible. They believed in this God, or this religion, he called moralistic, therapeutic deism. And so the idea behind it is, you know, God is good and he wants everyone to basically be nice. And that everyone goes to heaven when they die. Another idea behind this is, is God there to help you if you really need something? But otherwise, he stays out of your life. And so moralistic, is God's there to help you if you really need something, but otherwise he stays out of your life. And so moralistic meaning God wants you to be good. Therapeutic, God's there to help you out when you need to, when you need some help.

In deism, but he basically stays away. He basically stays out of your life. He's not actually involved in your life. There's about five characteristics of this moralistic, therapeutic deism, but those are three of the critical ones. But the idea that the belief is in deism, that yet God exists, but he's not really involved in our lives, is prevalent in our world. And so is the last vision of God, which is the lack of God, right? That the world doesn't have God and doesn't need God.

All there is is just stuff. We talked about that yesterday. And yet, this question is is just stuff. We talked about that yesterday. And yet this question is distinctively human. Where do we come from and where are we going is incredibly human. Now the catechism maintains that human intelligence is actually capable of finding a response to the question of origins that we actually can. We can find some kind of glimpse, right, of here is how we started, here is maybe even who started this whole thing. It is possible,

although often difficult by human reason alone, to know with certainty that God exists and that he started this whole thing. But God's revelation is necessary for knowing this even more certainly and also to know other important things about God. And so then here God who reveals himself to us, and this is so remarkably important to paragraph 287, it says the truth about creation is so important for all of human life that God in his tenderness wanted to reveal to his people everything that is salutary to know on the subject. So everything we need to know about creation of the world. God has revealed that

Now he didn't reveal everything about like so well how long ago exactly was the big bang or how long ago How exactly did that work God didn't have to reveal all of those things but in his tenderness and his love for us God wanted to reveal to his people everything that is salutary to know on the subject. Basically, everything we need to know, everything that would actually be helpful for us to know. Which is, I think, just to pause on that and realize, okay, there's more that human beings can dive deeply into the what and the how, but every part about the why and the who, God has revealed. Every part about the why and the who that will revealed. Every part about the why and the who that will be helpful for us, God wants us to know that too.

And he has revealed that to us. Paragraph 288, thus the revelation of creation is inseparable from the revelation and forging of the covenant of the one God with his people. Remember, the God created the world so that we could have relationship with him. And lastly, lastly, this is so important. Among all the scriptural texts about creation the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. Why is that super important? Because that's what

we're gonna talk about for the next quite a few, well a couple days here at least we'll say, because we're basing, we base what we know about creation off of what God revealed in Genesis 1, Genesis 2 and Genesis three. And I love the fact that it highlights this. Here are some of the things that we got to know about God and about the universe, about ourselves from Genesis chapter one, two, and three. Here we go, the origin and end. That it originates with God, it will end with God.

That creation has order and goodness. This is so important. That the vocation of man, the vocation of human beings, like why did God create us? He created us to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this life, to be with him forever and the next. Finally, Genesis one, two, and three

reveals the drama of sin and the hope of salvation. And this is all so important. We have creation, the fall, and the promise of salvation all there in Genesis chapters One two and three and that's why for the next few days We're gonna spend that time looking at creation based off of what we know in the whole Bible Of course remember we always read the Bible in the in context and read the whole content and unity of scripture But specifically in those three chapters of the book of Genesis And so I'm so excited to take these next steps with you

So here we go continuing the journey on day 41. I'm so proud of you for sticking with us this long Thank you so much. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow God bless