Fr. O’Brien was our religion teacher at St. Mary’s High School back in 1950, and he tried to ease us into the realization that the Bible was not a science book. The story of the Garden of Eden, he told us, was allegorical, a literary device using symbols. And so we came to realize Darwin had made a great discovery which revealed God’s hidden modus operandi, or manner of creating humans.
It gave us a clue to recognizing the great literature that the Bible was, and so we went on to Shakespeare and Macbeth. Yes, humans tend to sin, part of their beastly evolution, you could say, and they have struggled with that ever since they fell upon good versus evil.
So do we plod on and risk failing as human beings? What is this, a trap? No, human mercy is by far outdone by divine mercy. No fellow human has ever forgiven me as many times as God. And forgiven for as grievous an offense.
Civilization 