And I suppose it is just possible that a case like this was seen in Greece, close enough to Aristotle’s time to be responsible for getting the whole idea started.

Human double pregnancy, though rare, is possible. It’s called superfecundation. Twins can be born with different fathers.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7871943

“It is estimated that at least one dizygotic (DZ) twin maternity in twelve is preceded by superfecundation (the fertilization of two ova by sperm from different coitions). Presumably this parameter varies from population to population eg. with coital rates and rates of double ovulation. Sometimes superfecundation occurs by two different men. The frequency with which this occurs must depend on rates of infidelity (promiscuity). It is suggested that among DZ twins born to married white women in the U.S., about one pair in 400 is bipaternal. The incidence may be substantially higher in small selected groups of dizygotic twin maternities, eg. those of women engaged in prostitution.”

This froma medical abstract taken from a Chinese case report:

If a female has sexual intercourse with two males at short intervals within the same ovulatory period, superfecundation may occur. This article reports two cases of paternity identification in twins. The results showed that each twin had come from a different father. Thus, great attention should be paid to such a situation when the twin paternity identification is asked for.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8064269?dopt=Abstract

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfecundation

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_213.html

Santiago (Granada, Spain)
http://opinionciudadano.blogspot.com/

Actually, I’m not very expert on this either, but this is what I can tell you. Traditional parishes don’t have RCIA programs. That’s a relatively recent thing; the story is that it’s a return to how things were done in the earlier centuries of the Church, but I won’t try to enter into the debate about the extent to which that’s true. Anyway, before Vatican II there was of course catechesis for adult converts, but it was normally undertaken by some specific individual (usually a priest or nun, but it could also be a deacon or even a layman with the priest’s approval.) There was no set rule about how long the period of catechesis had to be or how many “lessons” had to be involved, but I think the usual thing was to go through some catechism or other. And this is the way things are normally done in Traditional parishes. The baptism could take place anytime after the person’s pastor was satisfied that he was ready. Probably it wasn’t uncommon for more than one person to be catechized by the same person at the same time (especially if, for example, multiple members of the same family were converting together) but there wasn’t a formal class, and there were none of those preparatory rites like they have during Lent in Novus parishes.

In my case, I was catechized by a deacon (a training deacon, so my catechist is now a priest) by going through the Baltimore Catechism. We met five or six times, I don’t remember precisely, and then when we had finished the catechism the priest interviewed me and satisfied himself that I had been adequately prepared. And then I was baptized on the Vigil of Pentecost, with a handful of friends from this Society in attendance. I think Easter is still sort of the presumptive date for baptism of adult converts, but Traditional parishes are just a lot less set on those sorts of formalities than Novus ones.

The other thing is, though, that I don’t think most Traditional parishes get that many adult converts. I could be wrong about that, but my general impression is that most don’t really get enough interested people to make it worth having a regular annual class in any case.

I look forward to the series on the gifts of the Holy Spirit…

I think this issue gets confused sometimes because people don’t understand what the “problem” really is. They think that they only need to explain how evolution is compatible with divine causality, and if that were the challenge it really would be easy because we have lots of practice explaining how divine and natural causality can simultaneously be attributed to the same thing or event. Pretty much all events in the natural world require those sorts of explanation, so if that were the only problem there would be nothing special about evolution per se.

That isn’t the main problem, however. The real problem is about teleology. Catholics have always taken it that species all fit into natural kinds, each with its own specific telos. Needless to say, this view of things becomes quite confused when natural kinds are always gradually morphing into other natural kinds — how can that be reconciled to a thing’s OWN telos?

I’m not saying that ID is the only way to deal with this, but if we’re to hang onto a natural kinds view (and really, as Catholics we can’t possibly let that go) it seems like we’ll need some special action of grace to allow a thing to “telos-jump” from one kind to another… And it’ll be much easier to handle if it happens in relatively dramatic bursts and not through a slow and gradual morphing. Which is why I say, from a metaphysical standpoint, ID starts to look relatively appealing.

I don’t suppose Stein ever mentioned Cardinal Schonborn’s writings on Evolution? I haven’t read his book myself, but it just seems to me that Catholics have never had the same kind of trouble reconciling evolution (but NOT dogmatic Darwinism) and their faith that many Protestants have. Of course, I believe that quite a few members of the Discovery Institute are Catholic, so ID isn’t necessarily just a Protestant enterprise.

Also, there are quite a few scientists/theologians who criticize Darwinism but nonetheless do not accept ID, mostly because they think that ID needlessly opens itself to criticism from evolutionists (i.e. the whole “God-of-the-gaps” approach). Alister McGrath and Francis Collins are the names that immediately come to mind.

Again, I’m hardly an expert on this whole subject, but these are just my thoughts upon reading this post. Any book suggestions?

Athenagoras:

“We say that women who use drugs to bring on an abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion . . . [for we] regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care . . . and [we do not] expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder.”