A subject that comes up from time to time is how old the world is–either the earth or the cosmos as a whole.
In a short series of posts, I'd like to look at some magisterial texts that have a bearing on this question and offer a few thoughts on them.
The first thought, before I even get to the magisterial texts, is that both positions are compatible with the Catholic faith. You can be a good Catholic and hold that the universe is thousands or millions or billions or trillions or quadrillions or other numbers of years old. The Church does not teach any particular age or age-range for the earth or the cosmos. You can follow the evidence where you think it leads.
This is because the Magisterium has determined that the question of the ages of the earth and the cosmos are principally scientific questions that are not (or at least that do not appear to be) settled by the sources of faith.
This may not always have been so. I would not be at all surprised if there are past papal, curial, or conciliar texts that do indicate an age-range for the earth or the cosmos as part of ordinary magisterial teaching, perhaps in the thousands or tens of thousands of years range.
In fact, if a reader knows of such passages, I'd love to see them.
Such a prior position, at least of itself, would not pose a problem for the Church's current determination since ordinary magisterial teaching is nondefinitive and thus can be revised, as with the case of the Church removing the theological speculation of limbo from its ordinary teaching while still allowing the theory of limbo to be held (a rather striking parallel for what might be the case on the age of the world question).
However that may be, recent magisterial statements have made it clear that the age of the world is an open question and we are not limited to the thousands or tens of thousands of years age-range.
A second thing I'd like to point out before going to the first text is that the Magisterium's current judgment that this is primarily a scientific question puts the Magisterium in an interesting position in terms of how to articulate the position.
Of course, they could always say, "This is a scientific question; the sources of faith don't determine it," and leave it at that, but they usually aren't that concise in how they answer such questions. They want to say a little more about it, and so what they often do is express openness to the modern scientific view but without making a formal endorsement of this view as correct (i.e., "The universe is billions of years old, as modern science tells us").
So that's all to the good.
Here is how the Catechism handles the question:
283 The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man.These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon they can say: "It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me."
dge such a person a bad scientist (or at least badly informed on scientific matters) but not a bad Catholic.
