Catholic Church39S Position On The Theory Of Evolution

The Catholic Church's position on the theory of evolution has been very slow to admit a certain evolution

In creating man and woman, God had given them a special participation in his divine life, in holiness and righteousness. In the plan of God, man would have had to suffer or die. In addition, there was a perfect harmony of man himself, between creature and Creator, between man and woman, as also between the first human couple and all creation. (CCC 374-379)

Scripture shows the dramatic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness (cf. Rom 3, 23). They are afraid of what God (cf. Gn 3: 9-10) they created a false image of a God jealous of its prerogatives (cf. Gen 3, 5).

Leo XIII

Initially, the Catholic Church although clearly unfavorable to the transmutation does not directly condemn yet, but precise in 1893 in the encyclical Deus Providentissimus what is meant by the truth of the inspiration by the Holy Spirit Bible:

"The books of the Old Testament and New Testament , with all their parts, as they were recognized by the Council of Trent must be recognized as sacred and canonical , not in the sense that compounds by human genius They then received his approval, nor only that they contain revelation without error, but because they were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and thus God for its author. "

- Pope Leo XIII , Providentissimus Deus

Pius X

The opposition of the Catholic Church to the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin is part of a broader distrust against the scientism and socialism respectively seeking to understand the world in a strictly material and solve problems. For a long time in France , you will see a clash between the revolutionary positivists and the Catholics of the restoration of the monarchy. In French Canada , the same type of confrontation will lead to quarrel ultramontane. Behind all these quarrels, lies a distrust of ideas liberal exiting the spirit of the Enlightenment , and a religious point of view of relativism Modernism.

The motu proprio sacrorum Antistitum ( 1910 ) introducing his anti-Modernist Oath rejects evolution of dogma and the use of reason alone. Up abandoning it in 1961 , that is to say on the eve of Vatican II , Catholics remain largely creationists, as evidenced by the manuals of apologetics vested with the imprimatur and nihil obstat. It prohibits, for example the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to continue to publish his work in their state at the time, though not disputing its right to pursue them without difficulty, and to communicate internally.

The Church does not lay direct condemnation, and changes went into Christian education with the progress of education in the ^twentieth century. And we note that neither the distribution nor the popularity of the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was not really started.

It must also be said that, while maintaining the principle of Biblical inerrancy , in Catholic thought better then determines the contours and incorporates criticism of its biblical sources. The exegesis does not consider the Genesis as to be read at face value, continuing a tradition of polysemic reading very old (the four senses of Scripture ) as this was one of the thinkers of the school of Chartres in the ^twelfth century or even the Church Fathers like St. Augustine or Origen.

However, it is insufficient for a Catholic to speak only of "poetic style" to account for these stories of Genesis (implied: it is a myth or legend). Without claiming to be a scientific description in the modern sense of the word, the Bible does contain some historical truths revealed. To the question "What are the fundamental truths revealed to us the Scriptures? "Are then identified :

1. In the beginning it was God who made all creation.
2. The first man was the subject of a special creation from God.
3. The woman was formed consubstantial with man ("from her side").
4. Oneness of humankind (God did not create many couples).
5. Our first parents were created in the state of justice, integrity and immortality (= praised original).
6. God gave man a formal precept (/ "fruit" dangerous forbidden).
7. But man, at the instigation of the devil has transgressed.
8. Hence his disqualification from the original pristine condition.

But God does not abandon his creature, and promises a redemptive future.

Pius XII

In the encyclical Humani Generis , Pius XII explicitly acknowledges that theologians and scientists can discuss the origins of the human body as it comes from a pre-existing living matter, the soul itself being directly created by God. He officially condemned the theory of polygenism considered incompatible with the doctrine of original sin.

Paul VI

In 1966, at a Symposium of Theology on "Original Sin and the modern natural sciences", Pope Paul VI strongly condemned the theologians who "from the prejudice polygenism, deny, more or less clearly, that sin from which so much evil to humanity, was primarily the disobedience of Adam, the first man. "

John Paul II

After Vatican II , the Catholic Church remains discreet about this doctrine until 23 October 1996 during a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of Pope John Paul II

He states that "nearly half a century after the publication of the Encyclical (Humani generis), new knowledge leads to recognition in the theory of evolution more than a hypothesis", stating that nuancing must talk more to these variations in theories of evolution.

He also said that some of them "who, according to philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit as emerging from forces of living matter or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth of man. "

The Archbishop of Vienna Christoph von Schnborn published on 7 July 2005 in the New York Times a forum saying that we could not interpret the speeches of John Paul II as a recognition of evolutionism. And in his argument, Christoph von Schnborn takes arguments that lean more towards a " soft creationism "in the style of the Intelligent Design (the Intelligent Design ).

The Church accepts the neutrality of science , but feared deviant philosophical extrapolations. The term evolution is not neutral, as would that of "changes", but heavy philosophical presuppositions (oriented toward what?). One could say that God has taken a australopithecine or a monkey to infuse it with soul spiritual eligible Catholic perspective, this spirit is so because the man be a substantially different, and willed by God as such; the "clay" of the story of Genesis as well preexisting matter to man, also created by God, which he uses to make the human body.

In the encyclical Fides et Ratio (1988) is recalled that the distinction between science and religion does not opposition.

Christians still believe "in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, visible and invisible universe" Nicene Creed ( 325 ) but Catholics admit that the universe can evolve as required by law God, that science must continue to be discovered.

Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI , successor to John Paul II, said the views of the Catholic Church in April 2007: Christianity was "Option priority of creative reason in the beginning of everything and principle of all. He thus rejected the second option, that of "the priority of the irrational that anything that runs on land and in our lives would be only occasional and a product of the irrational and asserts that" each of us is the result of a thought of God. " This position does not contradict the theory of evolution, but denies that this theory dictates the vision we must have the individual.

Notes and references

• Catholicism portal
• Gateway to the origin and evolution of living

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