The Traditional Catholic Doctrine of Creation: The Only Firm Foundation for a Culture of Life | Kolbe Center Seminar, Dallas, September 2026
The Church Fathers already knew the idea of evolution, and rejected it. So how did it come to be taught in Catholic schools and seminaries? Hugh Owen traces how it got in, and what it has cost the culture of life.
Beginning with Our Lord’s words to St. Teresa of Ávila and his own family’s history with Planned Parenthood, Hugh Owen sets out what Our Lord, St. Augustine and the Church Fathers taught about Genesis, and shows that evolution is nothing new: Anaximander and Lucretius taught it before Christ. He follows the evolution revolution from Descartes through Lyell, Hutton and Darwin, and the Church’s answer in Pius IX, the First Vatican Council, the Congregation of the Index in 1878, St. Pius X and Pius XII’s Humani Generis. He shows how Father Zahm at Notre Dame and Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings carried it into Catholic institutions and fed the push for abortion, and closes with the principle that no effect is greater than its cause and the wine of Cana.
In this talk:
• What Our Lord, St. Augustine and the Church Fathers taught about Genesis
• Descartes, Lyell and Darwin, and how the Popes answered them
• Father Zahm, Haeckel’s embryos and the push for abortion
• Why church leaders embraced theistic evolution, and why no effect is greater than its cause
Chapters:
0:00 Opening prayer
0:31 Our Lord’s words to St. Teresa of Ávila
1:19 My father, the United Nations and Planned Parenthood
5:46 The Dutch Catechism and the myth of junk DNA
10:01 St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Kolbe Center
11:15 Faithful unto death: St. Louis and Zélie Martin
18:12 What our Lord taught about Genesis
20:50 St. Augustine and the Church Fathers
24:04 Evolution is nothing new: Anaximander and Lucretius
28:44 The holy icons of creation
36:07 The icon of human evolution
39:00 The Roman Catechism, creation and the Sabbath
44:51 St. Peter’s prophecy of the scoffers
46:47 Descartes and the evolution revolution
50:50 Lyell, Hutton and Darwin
54:59 Pius IX and Our Lady of Good Help
56:43 The Baltimore Catechism and St. Robert Bellarmine
1:01:15 The First Vatican Council
1:02:26 1878: the Congregation of the Index
1:06:09 St. Pius X and modernism
1:08:19 Father Zahm, Notre Dame and Haeckel’s embryos
1:11:06 Pius XII and Humani Generis
1:13:56 Haeckel’s fraud and the push for abortion
1:18:20 Why church leaders embraced theistic evolution
1:22:16 No effect is greater than its cause
1:23:46 The wine of Cana and the six days
1:27:40 Supernatural faith and our children
About the speaker: Hugh Owen is the founder and director of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation. The convert son of Sir David Owen, first Secretary General of International Planned Parenthood Federation, he entered the Catholic Church at eighteen as a freshman at Princeton and served as a teacher, headmaster and director of religious education for many years. He and his wife Maria have nine living children and twenty-two grandchildren and live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He is a member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family.
This talk was given at a Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation seminar at Mater Dei Parish, Dallas, in September 2026. The Kolbe Center is a Catholic apostolate dedicated to proclaiming the truth about the origins of man and the universe, in fidelity to Sacred Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the constant teaching of the Magisterium.
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