NOT!
Yes, yes. I know that you read headlines like
VATICAN SLAMS INTELLIGENT DESIGN
from know-nothing MSM sources.
The basis of these stories is a recent piece that appeared in L’Osservatore Romano that did slam intelligent design.
But there’s a problem.
L’Osservatore Romano is not Acta Apostolica Sedis. The latter, as its Latin name indicates, is a chronicle of the Acts of the Apostolic See. L’Osservatore Romano does not have the same status, nor do articles it prints.
John Allen clarifies:
One question that a number of American media outlets asked me this week: Is the L’Osservatore article an official Vatican statement?
The quick answer is "no," but as always with quick answers, things are a bit more complicated. The article was not issued by a Vatican dicastery or approved by the pope, and while L’Osservatore is informally known as the "Vatican newspaper," technically only the items in the "Nostre Informazioni" box amount to official Vatican releases. Yet the contents of the paper reflect attitudes and judgments at high levels, and in that sense provide a window onto what at least some Vatican officials are thinking [SOURCE].
The real story here is that churchmen are split on the subject of evolution. Some, such as Cardinal Schonborn, make the point that the Christian faith is incompatible with purely naturalistic conceptions of evolution. Others, like the author of the piece in L’Osservatore Romano, at least appear more open to purely naturalistic conceptions.
How this all shakes out we will have to wait and see. I suspect that PART of the dispute between the parties may turn out to be semantic. (But only part.)
However that may be, in neither case can such reports be accurately represented as "Rome’s" or "the Vatican’s" or "the Catholic Church’s" position on this matter.
NONE of them are official.
So the headlines you saw screaming "Church Opposes Evolution" after Schonborn’s essay in the NYT came out were inaccurate, and the new ones screaming "Church Opposes Intelligent Design" after the L’Osservatore Romano piece are inaccurate.
The reason for the inaccuracy, of course, is obvious.
The people writing the headlines are too dangerously unqualified to keep their jobs.
I think what Schonborn objects to is not evolution qua science, but evoluation qua metaphysics. He accepts that a purely naturalistic theory of evolution is the best scientific explanation for the origin of existing species, but argues that there is a further non-naturalistic metaphysical explanation for the origin of existing species that lies beyond the realm of scientific inquiry. The error would be to deny this further explanation at the metaphysical level and argue that the naturalistic account is all that there is.
Talk about unqualified media!!! A few years ago I read an article in the NY TIMES on something the pope wrote. The article showed about as much knowledge of the Catholic Faith as a slug would have–=and all the opinion quotes–instead of being balanced as it should be in a news story–were from the most radical anti-papal, anti-orthodox Catholicism loudmouths in America.
I decided to call the newspaper and got through to the story’s writer. He was polite and showed genuine concern about his product.
It seems, at the time, he was the one assigned to cover all religions. Why?? Because he had graduated from a Jewish Yeshiva. What did he know about other religions than Orthodox Judaism??? Nothing, nada, zero, zip. To his credit he admitted it. He had only called those in his story because they were the only ones listed in the NY TIMES “to call” for interviews computerized phone listings.
Now if this is typical of America’s “newspaper of record”–no wonder coverage of things Catholic is so twisted or ignorant in the mainstream media.
ID -is- evolution, with a few modifications now and then, not being in a closed universe.
It is compatible with Islam and perhaps B’hai and Zoroastrianism.
No form of death, suffering and sin before the fall is compatible with Christianity or Judaism. And where those become what God calls “very good”, then you create -tremendous- ethical issues, as well as trampling underfoot as an unholy thing the blood of Christ who died for us.
Your comment about problems with semantics generalizes to problems with technical issues that are too deep for the vast majority of churchmen, policy makers and even scientists to comprehend. Issues that begin with metaphysics quickly bleed over into technical questions about fundamental physics or computer models of protein synthesis and DNA coding, and vice versa — issues of science bleed into metaphysics. Part of the frustration of all sides of this debate is that no one has a complete picture of the technical and philosophical issues, and nearly everyone tends to cling to their little island of understanding.
Jimmy,
But on a more practical level, have you ever heard a bishop say anything negative about evolution? Would Notre Dame hire M. Behe?
My parents were taught in Catholic high school in the 50s that evolution was fine and dandy.
Even supposedly “orthodox” Igantius Press comes out in favor of Benedict XVI’s rejection of Mosaic authorship of Genesis.
http://www.ignatius.com/magazines/hprweb/austriaco2.htm
Jeb,
I just read the article you gave the link for. Where did it even discuss Moses?
And could you quote Pope Benedict XVI’s rejection of Mosaic authorship of Genesis or the Church documents that your parents were taught from?
Take care and God bless.
J+M+J
See his book In the Beginning.
I just finished writing about this in my blog at http://spaces.msn.com/jamiebeu, in which I said:
According to the Reuters report “Intelligent design” not science: Vatican paper, the Vatican is not endorsing intelligent design. At least, that is the overall feel of the article.
However, a few things should be noted:
The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, wrote this article. It is not (necessarily) directly from the Pope or his direct advisors. It is most definitely not an infallible pronouncement from the See of Peter.
“Intelligent design” was rejected, not as a plausible explanation, but as not being scientific.
These may seem like hair-splitting points, but a hair can make all the difference in the balancing act called politics.
Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Schoenborn both stated that humans were part of an intelligent project designed by God. This does not mean that a literal reading of the Creation account in Genesis is absolute scientific fact. What it means is that God created the Universe, including all the laws that govern this universe, which we observe in action and discover how to quantify (and better understand, if not explain) by science.
On the other hand, the rejection of ID as not being scientific does not (as the article suggests) mean that the Vatican is endorsing evolution as an explanation for everything either. Pope John Paul II’s statement in 1996 stated that evolution is a valid, plausible theory to explain the myriad, yet subtle, differences among and within species, including the multitude of similarities between the human body and the bodies of other forms of life on this planet. However, as Cardinal Schoenborn warned, just because the theory of evolution might explain one thing, it does not mean that it explains all things – in his own words (based on the Reuters article), some Darwinists concluded that it proved God did not exist and could “explain everything from the Big Bang to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”
I then went on to quote Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy”, and explain why religion and science (or faith and reason) should be used together to see Truth, but should not be combined to cloud thought.
Thank you for explaining that the Vatican newspaper articles are not equal to infallible Vatican statements. Thank you for also pointing out the agenda of the American newspaper services.
i wonder what the Cathecism of the Catholic Church say about evolution?
I wonder what the Catechism of the Catholic Church say about evolution?
I wonder why someone would ask that question rather than read the Catechism?
I’m still wondering what the Catechism says about evolution?
Oh crumbs, this perennial wheel continues to turn.
the cheesemites considered where cheese came from
and hotly debated the matter
the orthodox said that it came from the air
and the heterodox , from the platter
The way neodarwinists and the trendies would have it, we all, the vatican included, must aaccept, or reject, in toto, the present – not the past or any future – neodarwinian sythesis of evoltionary theory, loaded language( eg the “selfish” gene) steady unpausing evolution, allelles and the like.
I am only an ignorant man with but little understanding, small latin, and less greek
Every new thing about the creation seems a lovely marvel : from mitochondrial eve to the very evolution of our solar system- and if you want to say god isnt here now , you can, and if you want to say he never was, ditto. My experience, by the way , as a rottenly sinful cradle catholic, is thatb all you gotta do is open the door, and if he still loves such a ghastly prodigal son as me, and shows it, aint noone he’ll leave adrift.
Anyhow, if he chose to multiply frogs in Egypt, which he did, by (Just as Miraculouly) keeping off tadpole’s predaqtors that seasson which is HOW he may have, fun to think about , but dont affect the price of cheese.
If he created as as the loving creaqtor I have a smidgin pf experience of, and believe, by means of evolution, marvellous facts pointing to perse, disregard superstructure, corblimey auint that amazing.
What I find hrd to be told is that He is subject to his own creation, Time, and incapable of foreseeing that lettin loose a sqozeup lil ball of energy n stuff would end up as a universe and critters and us sorter behind his back while he had a long divine teabreak,
Implicit is that idea
Skeletons, mitocondria, n stuff