Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
In this short clip Peter Helland talks about two people in the world of theology that he thinks are gatekeepers. Eric Sammons is the editor for Crisis magazine which was started by Michael Novak and Ralph McInerny in 1982 through the Brownson Institute. It stayed in the Brownson Institute until 1995 and was moved to another organization. Orestes Brownson himself hated evolution and a geology that posited an old earth of millions and billions of years. The last 15 years of his life he dedicated himself to fighting this heretical teaching. Typical of Notre Dame Crisis magazine fully supports evolution and an earth of billions of years in age. In March of this year Sammons writes: “In our day, the old age of the universe has been scientifically proven; it is billions of years old……..to reject cosmic evolution because it supposedly contradicts the Bible and the Fathers is contrary to the mind of the Church.”
Hugh Owens of the Kolbe Center for Creationism fought back. His best quote on this topic is: “In his masterpiece Pascendi, St. Pius X identified the worst heresy in the history of the Church and foresaw the untold damage that this heresy would inflict upon the Church and world if it remained unchecked. The heresy was “modernism,” “the synthesis of all heresies,” and its “principal doctrine,” wrote St. Pius X, was “evolution.”
The next person Peter Helland thinks is a gatekeeper is Mark Noll, professor emeritus of Christian history of Notre Dame University. Noll regards six day creationists as half way crazy. In his famous book “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” Noll attacks six day creationists. According to the book review by Carl Wieland Noll regards people who teach six day creationism as the biggest scandal to Christianity. This fits into Notre Dame and the Catholic church in general. Since Vatican II the hatred from Catholics professors for the six day fundamentalist position has been super intense. Peter also touches on Noll’s apparent refusal to be honest with the historic Christian position on whether slaveholding is automatically a sin. Although Peter found a quote from Noll quoting Eugene Genovese praising Dabney and Thornwell as superior theologians to almost everyone today.
#GatekeepersOfTheFaith
#CreationVsModernism
#CrisisInCatholicThought
In this short clip Peter Helland talks about two people in the world of theology that he thinks are gatekeepers. Eric Sammons is the editor for Crisis magazine which was started by Michael Novak and Ralph McInerny in 1982 through the Brownson Institute. It stayed in the Brownson Institute until 1995 and was moved to another organization. Orestes Brownson himself hated evolution and a geology that posited an old earth of millions and billions of years. The last 15 years of his life he dedicated himself to fighting this heretical teaching. Typical of Notre Dame Crisis magazine fully supports evolution and an earth of billions of years in age. In March of this year Sammons writes: “In our day, the old age of the universe has been scientifically proven; it is billions of years old……..to reject cosmic evolution because it supposedly contradicts the Bible and the Fathers is contrary to the mind of the Church.”
Hugh Owens of the Kolbe Center for Creationism fought back. His best quote on this topic is: “In his masterpiece Pascendi, St. Pius X identified the worst heresy in the history of the Church and foresaw the untold damage that this heresy would inflict upon the Church and world if it remained unchecked. The heresy was “modernism,” “the synthesis of all heresies,” and its “principal doctrine,” wrote St. Pius X, was “evolution.”
The next person Peter Helland thinks is a gatekeeper is Mark Noll, professor emeritus of Christian history of Notre Dame University. Noll regards six day creationists as half way crazy. In his famous book “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” Noll attacks six day creationists. According to the book review by Carl Wieland Noll regards people who teach six day creationism as the biggest scandal to Christianity. This fits into Notre Dame and the Catholic church in general. Since Vatican II the hatred from Catholics professors for the six day fundamentalist position has been super intense. Peter also touches on Noll’s apparent refusal to be honest with the historic Christian position on whether slaveholding is automatically a sin. Although Peter found a quote from Noll quoting Eugene Genovese praising Dabney and Thornwell as superior theologians to almost everyone today.
#GatekeepersOfTheFaith
#CreationVsModernism
#CrisisInCatholicThought
