The Church and the Colour Question

Extract

The Catholic attitude to the colour question is necessarily I bound up with the doctrine of human origins. It is clear, from the recent Encyclical of Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, that we cannot maintain that the names Adam and Eve in Genesis should be taken in a generic sense, and so must hold that all existing men are descended from only two first parents. It follows that such differences of race or colour as exist among men can only be regarded as partially fixed characteristics due to periods of different climatic, cultural and hereditary factors. These periods may have been very long, and the fixing of characteristics so deep rooted that it cannot quickly be changed. But all have developed from a common beginning and, if the differentiating factors were now neutralised, particularly if inter-marriage took place, colour distinctions and all other racial distinctions could disappear in a common future. Moreover it must always be remembered that these distinctions are, from the Catholic point of view, only in the less essential part of men. The ‘living soul’ that God breathed into Adam is similarly breathed into each individual by him, and is that which makes him to be a human person. Human persons who, in addition to this, have the bond of grace in the Mystical Body of Christ, have a greater unity, however far apart they may be in their physiological composition, than even blood-relations who have it not.