The Vatican's View of
Evolution:
The Story of Two Popes
The
relationship
between the
papacy and scientists has sometimes—just ask
Galileo—been testy. Interestingly,
however, the Catholic Church
has largely sat out the cultural battle over the
teaching of evolution. One
of the reasons Catholics have remained
largely on the sidelines is the well-established system
of parochial
schools in
the United States, which make state laws relating to the
public school
curriculum of much less concern to Catholic clergy and
parents than to
Protestant
clergy and parents. A
second reason is
that the Catholic Church, at least in the twentieth
century, takes a
more
flexible approach to the interpreting Genesis than do
several
Protestant
denominations. H. L.
Mencken
expressed
admiration for how Catholics handled the evolution
issue: [The
advantage of
Catholics] lies in the simple fact that they do not
have to decide
either for
Evolution or against it. Authority
has
not spoken on the subject; hence it puts no burden
upon conscience, and
may be
discussed realistically and without prejudice. A
certain wariness, of course, is necessary. I
say that authority has not spoken; it may,
however, speak tomorrow, and so the prudent man
remembers his step. But
in the meanwhile there is nothing to
prevent him examining all available facts, and even
offering arguments
in
support of them or against them—so long as those
arguments are not
presented as
dogma. (STJ, 163) A
majority of
American Catholics
probably sided with the prosecution in the Scopes trial,
but—with one
notable
exception, defense attorney Dudley Field Malone—all the
major
participants in
the controversy, from the author of the Butler Act, to
the defendant,
the
judge, the jury, and the lawyers were either members of
Protestant
churches or
were non-churchgoers. Catholics
tended
to be viewed with some skepticism in Pope
Pius XII,
a
deeply
conservative man, directly addressed the issue of
evolution in a 1950
encyclical, Humani Generis.
The
document makes plain the pope’s fervent hope that
evolution will prove
to be a
passing scientific fad, and it attacks those persons who
“imprudently
and
indiscreetly hold that evolution …explains the origin of
all things.” Nonetheless,
Pius XII states that nothing in
Catholic doctrine is contradicted by a theory that
suggests one specie
might
evolve into another—even if that specie is man. The
Pope declared: The
Teaching
Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in
conformity with the
present
state of human sciences and sacred theology, research
and discussions,
on the
part of men experiences in both fields, take place with
regard to the
doctrine
of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin
of the human
body as
coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the
Catholic faith
obliges us to
hold that souls are immediately created by God. In other
words,
the
Pope could
live with evolution, so long as the process of
“ensouling” humans was
left to
God. (He also insisted on a
role for
Adam, whom he believed committed a sin— mysteriously
passed along
through the
“doctrine of original sin”—that has affected all
subsequent
generations.) Pius
XII cautioned, however, that he considered the jury
still out on the
question
of evolution’s validity. It
should not be
accepted, without more evidence, “as though it were a
certain proven
doctrine.” (ROA, 81) Pope
John Paul
II
revisited the
question of evolution in a 1996 a message to the
Pontifical Academy of
Sciences. Unlike Pius
XII, John Paul
is
broadly read, and embraces science and reason. He
won the respect of many scientists in 1993, when in
April
1993 he
formally acquitted Galileo, 360 years after his
indictment, of
heretical
support for Copernicus’s heliocentrism.
The
pontiff began his statement with the hope that “we
will all
be able
to profit from the fruitfulness of a trustful dialogue
between the
Church and
science.” Evolution, he
said, is “an
essential subject which deeply interests the Church.” He recognized that science and
Scripture
sometimes have “apparent contradictions,” but said that
when this is
the case,
a “solution” must be found because “truth cannot
contradict truth.” The Pope
pointed to the Church’s coming to
terms with Galileo’s discoveries concerning the nature
of the solar
system as
an example of how science might inspire the Church to
seek a new and
“correct
interpretation of the inspired word.” When the
pope
came to
the subject
of the scientific merits of evolution, it soon became
clear how much
things had
changed in the nearly fifty years since the Today,
almost half a century after
publication of the encyclical, new
knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of
evolution as more
than a
hypothesis. It is indeed
remarkable that
this theory has been progressively accepted by
researchers, following a
series
of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The
convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the
results
of work
that was conducted independently is in itself a
significant argument in
favor
of the theory. Evolution,
a doctrine that Pius XII only
acknowledged
as an unfortunate possibility, John Paul accepts
forty-six years later
“as an
effectively proven fact.” (ROA,
82) Pope
John Paul’s words on evolution received
major
play in
international news stories. Evolution
proponents
such as Stephen Jay Gould enthusiastically welcomed
what he
saw as
the Pope’s endorsement of evolution.
Gould
was reminded of a passage in Proverbs (25:25): “As
cold
waters to
a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” (ROA, 820)
Creationists,
however, expressed dismay at the pontiff’s
words
and
suggested that the initial news reports might have
been based on a
faulty
translation. (John Paul gave the speech in French.) Perhaps, some creationists
argued, the pope
really said, “the theory evolution is more than one
hypothesis,” not
“the theory of evolution is more than a
hypothesis.” If that were
so, the Pope might have been
suggesting that there are multiple theories of
evolution, and all of
them might
be wrong. The
“faulty translation” theory, however,
suffered at
least two problems. Most
obviously, the
theory collapsed when the Catholic News Service of the
Most scientists would be
content to let Pius
and John Paul
have their “ensoulment” theory and walk away happy. Not Richard Dawkins,
however. In
an
essay on the Pope’s evolution message
called “You Can’t Have it Both Ways” the
controversy-loving biologist
accused
Pope John Paul of “casuistical double-talk” and
“obscurantism.” (SAR,
209) Dawkins
took issue with the Pope’s declaring off-limits
theories
suggesting that the human mind is an evolutionary
product. In his
address the
Pope said: In
his essay, Dawkins paraphrased the Pope’s
statement: “In plain
language, there
came a moment in the evolution of hominids when God
intervened and
injected a
human soul into a previously animal lineage.” Dawkins
expresses mock curiosity as to when God jumped
into the
evolution
picture: “When? A million
years ago? Two million
years ago? Between Homo
erectus and Homo
sapiens? Between
‘archaic’ Homo
sapiens and H. sapiens sapiens?” Clearly,
Dawkins finds the divine intervention implausible. He suggests that the
ensoulment theory
becomes a necessary part of Catholic theology in order
to sustain the
important
distinction between species in Catholic morality. It
is fine for a Catholic to eat meat,
Dawkins notes, but “abortion and euthanasia are murder
because human
life is involved.” Dawkins
contends that evolution tells us that
there is
no “great gulf between Homo sapiens and the
rest of the animal
kingdom.” The Pope’s
insistence to the
contrary is, in the biologist’s opinion, “an
antievolutionary intrusion
into
the domain of science.” Dawkins
makes no secret of his distain for
the
distinction so critical to the Pope John Paul’s 1996
speech on
evolution: I
suppose it is gratifying to have the pope
as an ally in the struggle
against fundamentalist creationism.
It
is certainly amusing to see the rug pulled out from
under the feet of
Catholic
creationists such as Michael Behe.
Even
so, given a choice between honest-to-goodness
fundamentalism on the one
hand,
and the obscurantist, disingenuous doublethink of the
Roman Catholic
Church on
the other, I know which I prefer.
(SAR,
211) Popes
have had
considerably less
to say recently on the subject of the origin of the
universe than they
have on
the subject of human origins. In
1951,
interestingly, Pius XII (who so grudgingly acknowledged
the possibility
of
evolution) celebrated news from the world of science
that the universe
might
have been created in a Big Bang. (The
term,
first employed by astronomer Fred Hoyle was meant to be
derisive,
but it
stuck.) In a speech before
the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences he offered an
enthusiastic endorsement
of the
theory: " But the
Pope
didn’t
stop
there. He went on to
express the
surprising conclusion that the Big Bang proved the
existence of God: Thus,
with that concreteness which is
characteristic of physical
proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the
universe and
also the
well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world
came forth from
the hands
of the Creator. Hence,
creation took
place. We say: therefore,
there is a
Creator. Therefore, God
exists! The man
who
laid the
groundwork
for the Big Bang theory, astronomer Edwin Hubble,
received a letter
from a
friend asking whether the Pope’s announcement might
qualify him for
“sainthood.” The friend
enthused that
until he read the statement in the morning’s paper, “I
had not dreamed
that the
Pope would have to fall back on you for proof of the
existence of God.” (ME,
255) Other
people,
including Belgian astronomer
Georges Lamaître and the Vatican’s science
advisor, had a
different
reaction. They understood
that the Big
Bang in 1951 remained very much a contested theory and
worried what
might be
the effect if the Pope pinned the Catholic faith too
much on its
proving
true. They spoke privately
to the Pope
about their concerns, and the Pope never brought up the
topic again in
public. Big Bang
theories
become a
problem for Catholic theology only when they consider
“the moment of
creation.” That, at least,
is what Pope
John Paul allegedly told Stephen Hawking and other
physicists during an
audience
that
followed a papal scientific conference on cosmology. (Some scientists dispute
Hawking's account, and say that
the
Pope suggested no limitations on their inquiry.) The
Pope told the
physicists they should not
inquire into the Big Bang itself because that was “the
work of God.” Stephen W.
Hawking, in his A Brief History
of Time, reported that he was among those
physicists whom the Pope
privately addressed. He
wrote: notes:
SOG= Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson (1997) SAR= Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? (edited by Paul Kurtz)(2003) ROA=Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen J. Gould (1999) STJ= H. L. Mencken on Religion by S. T. Joshi (2002) ME= Measuring Eternity by Martin Gorst (2001) |