Dear Douglas,
"Radio Replies" by Fathers Rumble and Carty, vol. 1 of 3,
page 144, says:
"684. Besides Adam and Eve we read only of Cain and Abel.
Whom did Cain marry?
Your knowledge is inadequate. Had you read on, you
would have seen in the fifth chapter of Genesis that Adam
begot Seth, and after that lived on for some 800 years,
begetting sons and daughters. Cain very probably married
a sister. He could even have married a niece! But that
would involve the marriage of a brother and sister at
some stage, or indeed of several brothers and sisters.
With the cessation of necessity, such close
inte-relationship was forbidden. But special conditions
naturally prevailed in such special circumstances as the
starting of the human race. God exercised a special
providence to safeguard the earliest human beings from
the evils usually associated with close inter-marriage.
And after all, a sister would not be so closely related
to Cain as Eve was to Adam. Cain's wife was not made out
of his own rib! Whom Cain married precisely is not
mentioned, as not being very important. One book cannot
give all the names that have occurred in history, and the
Bible gives but a summary outline of chief events.
"Catholic Replies" by James Drummey, page 36, ssys:
" Q. If Cain and Abel were the only children of Adam
and Eve, how were their heirs produced --D.B, Florida
A. First of all, Cain and Abel were not the only
children of Adam and Eve. They had other sons and daughters,
including a son named Seth (Genesis 5:3-4). Where did their
desecedants come from? There are two possible explanations:
(1) They married other human beings on earth who did not take
their origin from Adam and Eve. (2) The desecndants of Adam
and Eve produced heirs by marrying among themselves. There is
a theological problem with the first explanation. In his 1950
encyclical *Humani Generis*, Pope Pius Xii said that Catholics
could not "embrace that opinion which maintains either that
after Adam there existed on earth true men who did not take
their origin through natural generation from him as from the
first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number
of first parents" (n. 37). That opinion is known as polygenism,
and the Holy Father said that it cannot be reconciled with the
Church's teaching on original sin, `which proceeds from a sin
actually committed by an individual, Adam and which through
generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.'
There is a moral problem with the second explanation,
according to modern standards, but God permitted the
marriage of brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, for
a limited time in order to propagate the human race. He
most certainly protected the earliest human beings from
the evils usually associated with intermarriage in
families and, when these special circumstances were no
longer necessary, God forbade such intermarriage."
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In special circumstances, God has relaxed his prohibition of
divorce, and has later reestablished it (Matt. 19:3-9). God is
the Supreme Lord, after all (Psalms 115:3, 135:6; Rom. 9:20-21).
Sincerely in Christ,
Father Mateo
- Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit -
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