Expert: J.M.J. West - 11/1/2008

Question
Dear West,

            That is really neat that you know the co founder of Life teen. Tell him that my parish Mount Virgin of Garfeild Nj is taking part with them as well. :D I also founded out that my family could have imagrated from Iberia! I am fully Puerto Rican. Does this mean that I could be Jewish in blood? I have mtDNA and I do everything Jewish but christian oriented.

My mom and I love Jewish food too. We even love Challah bread :) my mom and I also both have long hair not too long but past our shoulders, is that also a Jewish custume? I also read that most of Puerto Ricans today must have came from Tarshish.

I also want to note how do you preach to a non christian and non catholic? How do you make them believe that Catholicism is the only true church! I also believe that Christ was Catholic and also that the earth was made in a 1000 period so yes I am a creationist. lol

I pretty much believe the earth to be at least 12,000 years old. I believe in a young earth. Is it possible that hispanics today like Puerto Ricans for example could be Jewish? over 85% of them are catholic!

Answer
YOU WROTE:
"That is really neat that you know the co founder of Life teen. Tell him that my parish Mount Virgin of Garfeild Nj is taking part with them as well. :D I also founded out that my family could have imagrated from Iberia! I am fully Puerto Rican. Does this mean that I could be Jewish in blood? I have mtDNA and I do everything Jewish but christian oriented."

I have no such knowledge of these matters.  The Jews are a very dispersed people, historically speaking.

YOU WROTE:
"My mom and I love Jewish food too. We even love Challah bread :) my mom and I also both have long hair not too long but past our shoulders, is that also a Jewish custume? I also read that most of Puerto Ricans today must have came from Tarshish."

I like various types of ethnic food of ethnicities to which I do not belong.

YOU WROTE:
"I also want to note how do you preach to a non christian and non catholic? How do you make them believe that Catholicism is the only true church!"

Honestly, I just talk to people and get to know them first.  After enough discussion, the topics invariable turn to the most meaningful things in life, and I go from there.

Catholicism is the broadest spectrum of Christianity, as well as the oldest and the first.  With nearly 2000 years of though delved into subjects like Philosophy, History, Science/Astronomy, and the like, whatever topic somebody brings up, there is an answer which is well thought out and coherent.  In fact, having studied Philosophy (I have my Bachelors and am in the process of pursuing my Ph.D.), seldom if ever have I seen a philosophical system with the solid underpinnings that smack of reality as I have found in the Catholic Church, and on o the Doctors of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas.

Everybody is motivated by a desire for happiness, and even the pagans knew that the good life consisted in the Moral life - but just what exactly the moral life was they sometimes couldn't account for, and as such their answer is not as full as the Catholic Answer, which is, again, vastly internally consistent.

Most people in the world are familiar to some degree with the Church, and simply starting with what they know (Christian or not) is a good place to begin.

YOU WROTE:
"I also believe that Christ was Catholic"

Well, Christ was a Jew but he FOUNDED the Church on Peter and the Apostles, and He is the Head of the church as the husband is the head of his wife, who herself is the body and the image of the Church (St. Paul makes this clear).

YOU WROTE:
"and also that the earth was made in a 1000 period so yes I am a creationist. lol...I pretty much believe the earth to be at least 12,000 years old. I believe in a young earth. Is it possible that hispanics today like Puerto Ricans for example could be Jewish? over 85% of them are catholic!"

As for the 1000 year creationism, I'd caution you to be careful.  At the very least, there is no official church teaching on the matter, and moving forward very little evidence points towards such a conclusion - and presenting such a conclusion as a tenet of the faith could actually push people away.  St. Augustine said it best when he wrote:

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"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation" (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20 [A.D. 408]).

"With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation" (ibid., 2:9).

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Certainly there is no inherent logical contradiction that would prevent God from creating the universe with "the illusion of age" (for when he created Adam - assuming the stories to be literal, which is also not set in stone - regardless of the age which Adam would have seemed (20s?  30s?  "Middle-aged?"), he would have been one day.

But bear in mind if nothing that there are two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 and that they conflict in such a way that they could not BOTH be literally, word-for-word accounts of the events of creation.

Hope that helps.

Pax Christi,

-J.M.J. West