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.... ======================================== Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-1860310,00.html ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).