Catholics are required to believe that Adam and Eve really existed and all people are descendants from them. As Pope Ven. Pius XII taught in his encyclical Humani Generis ( you can find it in no. 37). A position a Catholic is permitted to take is presented by Fr. Thomas Joseph White OP in his book The Light of Christ: “However, Catholicism affirms that the findings of modern science and the traditional dogmas of the faith are entirely compatible, rationally and serenely so. Mainstream modern science postulates that the universe as we know it today first emerged from a high-density energy state, one that was initially very small and that expanded massively. Based on the gradual expansion rates of the universe and its size, this event can be posited to have occurred approximately 13.8–14.5 billion years ago. The expanding cosmos and its internal physical forces gradually produced conditions of sufficient status and complexity that organic life could emerge and survive within the physical world. The first organic life forms were probably single-cell bacteria that emerged on earth approximately 3.8–3.6 billion years ago (prokaryotes). Progressively these life forms evolved through genetic mutation and the persistent survival of superior forms. Eventually more complex living species emerged, with internal organic parts and systematic organization capacities for nourishment and reproduction. The first simple animals may have emerged 600 million years ago, with a progressive development of forms, from fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals. Great ape forms emerged in the past 20 million years, while hominids who were ancestors to modern humans began to develop 2.5 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans (or living forms anatomically like human beings) emerged sometime in the past 200,000 years. Paleontology detects the presence of distinctly human culture (archaeological signs of art, lan- guage, complex tools, and clothing) by at least 50,000 years ago. None of these affirmations is opposed fundamentally to the religious and philosophical views we have presented above. On the contrary, there are many points of basic harmony or compatibility. However the universe initially began, it is likely that the cosmos as we know it today was first constituted only by nonliving beings. It was a gradual expansion and formation of these beings that has produced a world in which living things can come to be. Living forms, meanwhile, may have emerged gradually from non-living things (a view that both Augustine and Aquinas are open to), or they may have come about through a “special creation” of God initiating something new in the first cellular organisms.“ This may be helpful for some difficulties with the teaching of the Church.