A little while ago, his Holiness the Pope received in audience a
group of educational professionals who presented themselves as the Turbo Teachers for Instantaneous Creationism.
The things an elderly Pontiff has to
go through to keep up with the world outside…
Their spokesman wore a shabby beige
turtleneck, unpolished sandals, a beard that needed trimming, and a brand new
tailor-made suit jacket. The Pope sighed. Back in the old days in Tübingen, he
often had had to deal with New Theologians who favoured the same dress code.
The memory alone wearied him terribly. His interlocutor, however, was full of
cheer and jumped into the conversation with gusto.
‘Your Holiness, before anything, I
have a confession to make.’
‘Go on, my son’
‘Holy Father: not all of us here are
Catholics.’
Now why was the Pope not overly surprised?
‘As a matter of fact, Holy Father,
many of us are not even believers in the strict sense of the word. We are
schoolteachers with a theological problem. That’s why we came to see you.’
A theological problem? How, the Pope wondered, does an infidel get a
theological problem? Fish, on the average, rarely run into aerodynamic trouble.
Circles don’t worry about their angles. ‘I am most sorry to hear so,’ the Pope
spoke. ‘What may be its nature?’
‘Darwin.’
Darwin? Well, small surprise, the
Pope thought. We all have a problem with Darwin. And with Galileo, Keppler,
Copernicus, Marx, Einstein, Freud, not to mention that Madonna woman and Harry
Potter. ‘I see,’ the Pope said. He had no inkling what the fellow was getting
at.
‘He is too slow.’
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘Darwin. He’s by far too slow.
Another confession, Your Holiness: most of us here think his ideas make a lot
of sense. I’m sorry if that hurts. But if you look at all the evidence… The
fossils… The human genome… The Platypus… The… The-’
‘The Spotted Galapagos Turtle Dove,’
the Pope volunteered.
‘Precisely! If you look at all those,
you can’t get around it. The man had a point. A very strong point. However, we here, and many hard-pressed professionals
like us, have to teach his theories
in biology class. And that’s another cup of tea. You see: the man deals in
hundreds of millions of years. For one petty creation only! The kids just won’t
buy that anymore, Holiness! Today’s young adolescents demand instant satisfaction. No beating around
the bush. No inertia! A high-speed, exciting story. Something that moves, you know? That don’t stall. That
gives ‘m a thrill. Evolution simply doesn’t do that. All of us here know from
experience: you Darwin, you do lose. That’s a little joke of mine. Win – Lose,
see?’
The Pope forced his facial muscles
into his most sincere smile. He had heard better jokes from octogenarian Carthusians
under a vow of silence.
‘That’s why our group has decided to
return to the Biblical story of Creation. Now there you have a tale you can sell
to these Digital Children! No halting the narrative to have the dinosaurs die
out. No Sinanthropus Pekinensis being
gobbled up by beefy Neanderthalers
before those are themselves cruelly knocked out of existence by Crô Mignons, with none of the earlier humanoid
variations leading anywhere… No: progress straight and simple: heaven, earth,
seas, plants, beasts, man! And in that order if you please! That’s a godsend
for a teacher in front of 25 twitchy Twitterkids! That’s what we need on the
curriculum!’
‘And you can teach it in two hours,
instead of an entire semester,’ a crumpled, chubby fellow at the far end of the
table chipped in.
The Pope sighed. Here you always
thought you’d seen it all, but there was still more lunacy to meet in this mad
mad mad mad world. For a century now, the greatest minds of the Church had struggled
to keep Divine Creation in the picture. The harder they tried, the less they
succeeded. And just when you think all is lost, children are returned to
Scripture so as to cater to their lust for instant satisfaction? Who ever heard
of such a thing? He was ready to give these Turbo
Teachers a piece of his mind. But then he remembered something a
predecessor of his had said, back in the turbulent 60s. He said: “I don’t know
what it means when a longhaired hippie writes JESUS on his T-shirt, but it is a start!” Yeah, the Pope thought. Old
Paul was nobody’s fool…
‘I appreciate your dilemma,’ he spoke
at last, picking his words carefully. ‘And if teaching the beautiful beginning
of Genesis is your solution, then you have of course my blessing.’
‘Except that…’
Now what? the Pope wondered.
‘The Biblical story takes six days,
Holiness…’
Does it now? the Pope almost asked. Oh,
it was hard – very hard - not to give
in to temptation and treat this fellow to a goodly dose of German sarcasm. But
Pride is a sin and Patience a virtue. ‘I know,’ he said once he had swallowed,
putting the most tolerant tone possible into his voice.
‘Of course you do. And that’s a
problem.’
‘It is?’
‘It is, Your Holiness. Your
Holiness: let’s not beat around the bush here…? Let’s put our cards on the
table? You rarely meet young people in the wild, and you never meet the kind of kids we are up against. So take it from me,
sir: they are animals! They give you lip at the least occasion. They have no
patience whatsoever. Their concentration span is about as long-lived as a soap
bubble. Six days, sir! That’s an eternity to them! Their most meaningful
relationships don’t last that long! They are used to creating entire mid-term
papers with three clicks of the mouse! They put together a feature film length
movie in a minute and a half! A whole day seems like a thousand years to them! So
imagine six! Six!’
Oh, don’t, DON’T tell me, the Pope screamed inwardly. He also was
nobody’s fool. He began to suspect where this was going…
‘You mean to say God’s Divine
Creation took too much time…?’ he probed.
‘TAKES too much time, Your Holiness!
I’m not criticizing God’s output or his efficiency. It’s just that… To make
that quarter drop in the timeslot of our pupils’ heads, can’t we perhaps reduce
the timespan a little somewhat? God is omnipotent, right? So why does he need
six full days? Seems to me that – if He wished - He could do the same job considerably
quicker?’
‘Six hours, you mean?’
There was an uneasy pause.
‘Six minutes?’
‘Your Holiness… Why be so specific?
What good is that to anyone? Look, all we are asking here is some room to maneuver.
We don’t expect you to rewrite Scripture… We understand that’s not usually done
on request. But you are, when push comes to shove, the ultimate authority on
these matters, aren’t you? Isn’t there a way you might solicit a somewhat freer translation of the original
wording? I don’t know… Your Hebrew surely is better than mine… Could we have a
version which speaks of, say, Six Units Real Time? Or something of the sort?
You give me that, and I promise you that half the schools in the Western World
will be teaching Divine Creation before the decade is out! No more Darwinism.
No more Mendel or Kropotkin or Linneaus! Only God as the Express Demiurg. Is
that a fair deal or what?’
Once the Turbo Teachers for Creative Something-or-Other were gone, the Holy
Father flipped open his cell phone and dialled a number. ‘Doctor Funes?’ he
asked when the phone was picked up. ‘Tell me: that little pet project of yours?
The reconciliation of Evolutionary Theory with Biblical Creation? How’s that
coming along?’ He listened for a moment, then spoke with a terse voice. ‘Fray
José: in the name of common sense and everything that’s holy, would you please
please please hurry up with it?!’
Earlier this month, Fray José Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican
Observatory, came out with a declaration that the Big Bang Theory is not necessarily
in contradiction to the message of the Bible…
So it goes, dear reader. So it goes…
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