November 07, 2005
A POPE FOR OUR TIMES:
Why Darwin is back on the
agenda at the Vatican
William Rees-Mogg
Summary quote:
"It is a precautionary statement,
distancing the Church from the American
attack on Darwinism that Rome considers
to be neither good science, nor good
theology.... "
[Excerpts]:
IN THE mid-1980s I was a member
of a Vatican body with the impressive
title International Committee of
the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Each year we had a meeting....
[This year] our chairman was
Cardinal Paul Poupard, an...example
of the cultivated French intellectual
in the Roman Curia; he is still the
head of the Pontifical Council for
Culture. Whether the council still
has an international committee I do
not know, since I left it nearly 20
years ago. Last week the cardinal
was giving a press conference before
a meeting in Rome of scientists,
philosophers and theologians; this
week they will be discussing the
difficult subject of infinity.
Cardinal Poupard has a beautifully
trained French mind and inner loyalty
to the Catholic faith. Nothing he says
is said without careful thought. At
the press conference he was discus-
sing the issue of evolution, which
is the critical dividing line between
science and religion.
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin
of Species shook religious belief when it
was first published in 1859 in a way
that Isaac Newton’s equally important
Principia had not shaken the faith of
1687.
In The Times Martin Penner
reported the cardinal’s argument.
He had said that the description
in Genesis of the Creation was
“perfectly compatible” with Darwin’s
theory of evolution, if the Bible
were read properly.
“Fundamentalists want to give
a scientific meaning to words that had
no scientific aim.”
He argued that the real mes-
sage of Genesis was that the Universe
did not make itself, and had a creator.
“Science and theology act in different
fields, each in its own.” In Rome, the
immediate reaction was that this was
a Vatican rejection of the fundamental-
ist American doctrine of “intelligent
design”. No doubt the Vatican does want
to separate itself from American crea-
tionists, but the significance surely
goes further than that. This is not
another Galileo case; the teachings of
the Church have never imposed a literal
interpretation of the language of the
Bible; that was a Protestant mistake.
Nor did the Church condemn the theory
of evolution, though it did and does
reject neo-Darwinism when that is made
specifically atheist....
It is a precautionary statement,
distancing the Church from the American
attack on Darwinism that Rome considers
to be neither good science, nor good
theology....
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Original URL:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-1860310,00.html
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