Dear Joslyne:

The Church teaches that we have indeed a literal original pair of parents, but this is not just Catholic doctrine. Science also says that all humans beings can be traced back to an original pair of parents.

As for the Adam and Eve story in the Bible, the book of Genesis is not meant to be history book, or a science book. Many stories in the Bible may or may not be literally true, but that does not matter. What matters is the religious message. In the religious message of the Bible there are no mistakes. The Bible is infallible in that regard.

No one knows for sure how God created the universe, or what happened with our first parents. The Oral Histories that came to be written down in Genesis were meant to tell the story of "who" created the universe, not "how".

The six days of creation is thus most likely a representation of the creation, not literal six twenty-four hour days. Twenty-four hour days did not even exist until after the sun and earth were created and the earth began orbiting the sun in the way it does today. Twenty-four hours is a function of how fast the earth rotates on its axis, and a year is a function how long the earth takes to complete a complete orbit around the sun.

In the beginning of creation there was no earth and sun, thus no twenty-four days. To God there is no time, thus twenty-fours has no applicability to Him.

With that said, God is God and it He wants to create the universe in what we humans call six twenty-four days, He can certainly do. At the same time, He can choose to create a big-bang and allow the universe evolve for what we call billions of years (which to God is instantaneous since God knows no time) to the point that the earth and sun formed.

Concerning the story and Adam and Eve, the same thing holds true. It could have happened exactly as the writer of Genesis says it happened, maybe not. It does not matter. What matters is the religious message that God is the Creator of all things, and that our first parents sinned and brought into the world "original sin."

You can be a good Christian and believe literally in the six days of creation and the Adam and Eve story as written. You can also be a good Christian and think that the story is symbolic and that the religious message is all that is literal.

Pope John-Paul II, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Science, said that the "how" of creation is a scientific issue. The Church is concerned with the "who" and the religious message. He said that evolution does not threaten Christian faith as long as science understands three things and does not try to refute these three things, which are immutable Truths:

1) God is the Creator of all things
2) Mankind did have an original pair of parents
3) The soul is not evolved, but individually created by God and placed in the human person at the moment of conception

As long as these three things are not messed with, science is free to explore the mechanisms of how God created the universe and the origins of the human race.

Thus, to your question as to whether Adam and Eve existed in a particular time in history? Yes, there was a literal Adam and Eve, that is, an original pair of parents of the human race. Even science admits that.

As for Cain and Abel, again the primary point is the religious message of the stories, but there is no reason to say that those two brothers did not literally exist in my opinion. They certainly could have.

The bottomline is not to worry about this. You may believe in the stories literally. This does not violate Church teaching. One can believe it is all symbolic if the desire. This also does not violate Church teaching, as long as those three points made by Pope John Paul II are not violated.

The priest, and us all, need to recognize that on this issue we are free to have differing views and must not chide those who disagree with us.

Always, remember that the real point is what these stories are telling us religiously regardless of our belief on the historical details.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary