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What Catholics Think of EvolutionThey don't not believe in it.

By Keelin McDonellPosted Tuesday, July 12, 2005, at 6:19 PM ET

Let's not have a repeat of that Galileo messIn a New York Times op-ed, Roman Catholic Cardinal Christoph Schönborn wrote that it's a misconception that the Catholic Church believes in evolution. While conceding that "[e]volution in the sense of common ancestry might be true," Schönborn asserted that natural selection is not compatible with church teachings. In a follow-up article, several Catholic biologists refuted the cardinal's essay. What is the Catholic Church's stance on evolution?

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That it's a fine theory for explaining the natural world as long as it doesn't deny divine purpose and causality. The Catholic Church has never embraced biblical literalism. That may be why, unlike evangelical Christian faiths, Catholics have never made creationism a religious tenet. The church has produced letters, studies, encyclicals, and speeches in the last 100 years that praise the scientific research behind the concept of evolution. But it has never endorsed "belief" in evolution by including it in the Catholic Catechism, the church's official compendium of teachings and beliefs.

Largely due to its embarrassing condemnation of Galileo in the 17^th century, the church has since been very cautious about responding to scientific theories. It took the Vatican nearly a century to react formally to Darwin's 1859 treatise The Origin of Species. The official response came in 1950, when Pope Pius XII wrote in the encyclical Humani generis that "the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that … research and discussions … take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution." Some Catholic scholars say Pius XII issued the encyclical as a response to the rise of communism. Embracing evolution could have been the Vatican's way of heading off the atheistic Communist Party, which might have used Darwin's theories as evidence that God doesn't exist.

Between 1859 and 1950, several Catholic biologists tried to reconcile evolution with church doctrine. In the 1920s, the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made a controversial attempt to integrate the new science with Catholic beliefs. His unorthodox views were silenced, however, when his Jesuit superiors shipped him off to do research in China. But around the same time, a consensus started to develop among Catholic biologists that evolution did not necessarily contradict Catholic teachings.

The Vatican made no more major pronouncements until the pontificate of John Paul II. In 1996, John Paul sent a letter to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences noting that there was "a significant argument in favour of this theory [of evolution]." At the same time, the pope assigned the question of "ultimate meaning" to theology. In 2002, the church's International Theological Commission, which convened to address challenges posed by "scientific understanding and technological capability," seemed to support John Paul's statements. "[A]ccording to the Catholic understanding of divine causality," the commission wrote, "true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence."

After Cardinal Schönborn's op-ed was published last week, he told the New York Times that it had not been approved by the Vatican. He also stated that there were no plans to issue new guidelines on teaching evolution in Catholic schools. Theological experts think that Schönborn's essay likely has more to do with Pope Benedict XVI's desire to caution Catholics against relativism than to change the church's thoughts on evolution.

Explainer thanks Kenneth Miller of Brown University, Michael A. Hoonhout of Catholic University, John F. Haught of Georgetown University, and Paul Crowley of Santa Clara University.