Can anyone help me find what the Catholic Chruch REALLY says about evolution?

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SueKrum

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Hi,
My husband is a non Catholic Christian and we’ve sort of been going round about on what the Cathoic Church has to say about evolution. Yesterday, he found an article saying that a bisship in Rome said that Darwinism is compatable with our faith. Now, I’m sure that the person who wrote this article misconstured the biships woerds. But does anyone know where I can find a copy of this speach? I’m leaving the link to the web page that this article came from. It’s upsetting because every time I think my husband has started to understand and respect the Catholic church a little more, garbage like this comes out and I feel like I have to start all over!
Thanks for any help anyone could provide,
Sue
here’s the link. I think it’s from a news group in Austrilia.
news.com.au/story/0%2C10117%2C17162341-13762%2C00.html
 
The bishop is critical of a certain brand of fundamentalism which takes a hyper-literal interpretation of the Bible (selectively of course–watch what happens when they get to John 6). Since Scripture does not elaborate on the scientific process of how God created the world, theories of evolution are not necessarily incompatibile with faith.

Scott
 
Try the Cathechism. The Catholic Church doesn’t accept Darwinism. Darwin didn’t believe in God. The Church believes that evolution is a possible theory. Meaning that we could have it could have evolved.
 
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MommaKat:
Try the Cathechism. The Catholic Church doesn’t accept Darwinism. Darwin didn’t believe in God. The Church believes that evolution is a possible theory. Meaning that we could have it could have evolved.
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I copied this from another thread in this forum:

Cardinal Ratzinger: “We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the ‘project’ of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary – rather than mutually exclusive – realities. But let us look a little closer, because here, too, the progress of thought in the last two decades helps us to grasp anew the inner unity of creation and evolution and of faith and reason.” (In the Beginning…: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall [1986])

Cardinal Schonborn: “With this, his major work, Darwin undoubtedly scored a brilliant coup, and it remains a great oeuvre [work] in the history of ideas. With an astounding gift for observation, enormous diligence, and mental prowess, he succeeded in producing one of that history’s most influential works. He could already see in advance that his research would create many areas of endeavor. Today one can truly say that the ‘evolution’ paradigm has become, so to speak, a ‘master key,’ extending itself within many fields of knowledge…I see no difficulty in joining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution, but under the prerequisite that the borders of scientific theory are maintained…When science adheres to its own method, it cannot come into conflict with faith…” (Creation and Evolution: To the Debate as It Stands, 10/2/2005)

Cardinal Darwin: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” (Origin of Species, chapter 14, last sentence, 2nd to 6th edition)
 
Darwin would have been a Cardinal had he been Catholic. 😃 :eek: Of course there is the Catechism paragraphs 159, 283-284 and the faith and science tracts by Catholic Answers, and an article by Jimmy Akin that is quite reasonable.

Your longest sustained explanation of the whole creation-evolution-design “controversy” is contained in the International Theological Commission statement endorsed by Cardinal Ratzinger in July 2004. Print this out.

And some bottom line De Fide statements from Ludwig Ott on creation.

God was moved by His Goodness to create the world. (De Fide)
The world was created for the Glorification of God. (De Fide)
The Three Divine Persons are one single, common Principle of the Creation. (De Fide)
God created the world free from exterior compulsion and inner necessity. (De Fide)
God has created a good world. (De Fide)
The world had a beginning in time. (De Fide)
God alone created the world. (De Fide)
God keeps all created things in existence. (De Fide)
God, through His Providence, protects and guides all that He has created. (De Fide)

Phil P
 
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SueKrum:
Hi,
My husband is a non Catholic Christian and we’ve sort of been going round about on what the Cathoic Church has to say about evolution. Yesterday, he found an article saying that a bisship in Rome said that Darwinism is compatable with our faith. Now, I’m sure that the person who wrote this article misconstured the biships woerds. But does anyone know where I can find a copy of this speach? I’m leaving the link to the web page that this article came from. It’s upsetting because every time I think my husband has started to understand and respect the Catholic church a little more, garbage like this comes out and I feel like I have to start all over!
Thanks for any help anyone could provide,
Sue
here’s the link. I think it’s from a news group in Austrilia.
news.com.au/story/0%2C10117%2C17162341-13762%2C00.html
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John Martignoni does a good job with these questions. Try googling biblechristiansociety. Many of his tapes are free. I heard him discussing this particular topic today on our local Catholic radio station.
 
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SueKrum:
Hi,
My husband is a non Catholic Christian and we’ve sort of been going round about on what the Cathoic Church has to say about evolution. Yesterday, he found an article saying that a bisship in Rome said that Darwinism is compatable with our faith. …
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Darwinism as a source of our soul and spirit is against Church teaching. I found the following information:

Furthermore, while the formulation of a theory like that of evolution complies with the need for consistency with the observed data, it borrows certain notions from natural philosophy.
And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations. What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology.
…
[T]heories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man.
…
Pope John Paul II
(letter to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences)

The Pope is aware of this controversy among evolutionists, writing that ‘rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution. The use of the plural is required here . . . because of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution.’ And he goes on to reject the essence of Darwinism.
George Sim Johnson

hurst
 
Creationism and Evolution are both compatible so long as design is not denied.

See this report on the Pope’s General audience today.

catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=17523

World ‘intelligent project’ reflecting divine origin, Pope Benedict says
By John Thavis

11/9/2005

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Benedict XVI said that, far from being a product of chance, the created world is an “intelligent project” that reflects a divine origin.

The pope made the remarks at a general audience at the Vatican Nov. 9, commenting about Psalm 136, which gives thanks for creation.

The pope quoted St. Basil the Great, who in the fourth century warned that some people, “fooled by the atheism that they carry inside them, imagine the universe deprived of direction and order, as if at the mercy of chance.”

Speaking extemporaneously to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, the pope said St. Basil’s words had “surprising relevance” today.

“How many people are there today who, fooled by atheism, think and try to demonstrate that it would be scientific to think that everything is without direction and order,” he said.
 
Go to the Catechism as one source. Also, go to EWTN and search the document library for documents on Evolution. I suggest the document Humani Generis by Pius XII as well as some documents by JPII.
 
Darwianism is wrong as a scientific theory is it not? First of all, it traces us all to a common ancestor, which has not been found…research the Cambrian explosion…many animals appeared out of nowhere 430-450 billion (million?) years ago without any previous ancestors. They say that the ancestors of those were softbodied and therefore couldn’t be fossilized, but Chinese scientists have discovered fossilized softbodied creatures from the Cambrian explosion. Therefore, it has yet to prove the #1 point of Darwianism that we came from a common ancestor. Secondly, Darwianism involves gradualism, in that every species gradually changes from the next and thats how evolution comes about. Yet it is scienitifically proven gradualism does not occur, but rather punctuated equilibriam, in which a small genetic change causes a massive change, evolves, and then the species stays the same for a long period of time until it changes again. Neither of these points, however, refrutes the theory of evolution, but do detract from Darwin’s original theory which I do believe is referred to as Darwianism. No scienctific theory however can explain the coming of a human soul.
 
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canadianlife:
No scienctific theory however can explain the coming of a human soul.
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Well, I can agree at least with your last statement. As for the rest, I suggest you check posts and their links in any of the other evolution threads (Hey, try the “Intelligent Design” thread). Links there may lead you to a better understanding of what evolution as a science really is.
 
zian << LOL at Phil’s title to post#6 >>

Let me finish off the next billion evolution threads, or start a few more with these important facts about evolution.

Evolution has never ever never ever never ever been observed.
Evolution is just a theory, not a fact.
There are no transitional fossils, and even more we should be worrying about the ones we don’t have, not debating the ones we do have.
The Church Fathers denied evolution.
The Popes, like Pope Pelagius of the 5th-6th century AD, denied evolution.
Evolution is random chance.
Darwin was an atheist, therefore Darwinism is atheism.
It is Catholic dogma that no cockroach died before the Fall (still working on that one), therefore Florida must be the terrestrial paradise since cockroaches (or palmetto bugs) here are immortal.

Phil P
 
canadian << First of all, it traces us all to a common ancestor, which has not been found…research the Cambrian explosion…many animals appeared out of nowhere 430-450 billion (million?) years ago without any previous ancestors. >>

The Cambrian “explosion” took place over 10 to 30 million year period (not out of nowhere, but it is an explosion in geologic terms) about 550 million years ago (you are close). The phylum (basic “body plans”) came into existence at that time, so we aren’t talking about reptiles, mammals, or birds (animals) of course which evolved from those much later. The expert on the Phyla and Cambrian “explosion” is James W. Valentine, who has studied this “problem” area for decades. Here is what he has to say at the beginning of his recent book representing his life’s work (available at your local university library, I found it at USF):

“The title of this book, modeled on that of the greatest biological work ever written [he means Origin of Species], is in homage to the greatest biologist who has ever lived [he means Charles Darwin]. Darwin puzzled over but could not cover the ground that is reviewed here, simply because the relevant fossils, genes, and their molecules, and even the body-plans of many of the phyla, were quite unknown in his day. Nevertheless, the evidence from these many additional sources of data simply confirm that Darwin was correct in his conclusions that all living things have descended from a common ancestor and can be placed within a tree of life, and that the principle process guiding their descent has been natural selection. And he was correct in so much more.” (Valentine, On the Origin of Phyla, preface page xxiii)

As for intermediate fossils and ancestors before the Cambrian, two articles by Christians are here:

The PreCamb to Camb Fossil Record and Transitional Forms by Keith Miller
Transitional Forms and the Evolution of Phyla by Glenn Morton

For more, I suggest this post from PandasThumb on the Cambrian explosion (and see the links) to clear up creationist misconceptions that you may have. 👋

Phil P
 
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PhilVaz:
z
It is Catholic dogma that no cockroach died before the Fall (still working on that one), therefore Florida must be the terrestrial paradise since cockroaches (or palmetto bugs) here are immortal.

Phil P
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So the Garden of Eden is Florida!

DUDE!!!

Shall I send Jeb Bush an email or something … :dancing:
 
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canadianlife:
Darwianism is wrong as a scientific theory is it not?
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Your source is incorrect. Evolution is about as well established as a scientific theory ever gets.
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canadianlife:
First of all, it traces us all to a common ancestor, which has not been found…
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Be careful what evidence you ask for. I might ask you for the remains of Adam and Eve.

When you have as little evidence as Creationism does it is dangerous to ask the other side to produce their evidence. Why do you think that most creationists spend most of their time trying to pick holes in the evidence for evolution rather than pushing the evidence in favour of creationism? They have no evidence of their own to produce. Perhaps you could start with evidence of cities [Gen 4:17] from the earliest 130 years [Gen 5:3] of life on earth, say in the Cambrian or Precambrian.
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canadianlife:
research the Cambrian explosion…many animals appeared out of nowhere 430-450 billion (million?) years ago without any previous ancestors.
Click to expand...
Million, not billion. The universe is only about 14 billion years old.

Again your sources are incorrect. We have Precambrian sponges and there are still sponges around today. For other pre-Cambrian fossil animals see this webpage, this webpage and this webpage. You can google “vendian” or “ediacaran” for more references. There were animals around in the Precambrian to provide ancestors for those coming later.
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canadianlife:
Therefore, it has yet to prove the #1 point of Darwianism that we came from a common ancestor.
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I await your reference to the discovery of the remains of Adam and Eve. Until then creationism has yet to prove its #1 point that all humanity is descended from a pair of common ancestors. I did warn you. 🙂
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canadianlife:
Secondly, Darwianism involves gradualism, in that every species gradually changes from the next and thats how evolution comes about. Yet it is scienitifically proven gradualism does not occur, but rather punctuated equilibriam
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How gradual do you want? On your own figures Cambrian explosion took 20 million years - seems pretty gradual to me. Nowhere does the theory of evolution say that the rate of evolution has to be constant. The rate will change due to such factors as selection pressure. Punctuated equilibrium vs gradualism is an argument about details within evolution; it does not disprove evolution any more than the argument about filioque disproves Christianity.
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canadianlife:
No scienctific theory however can explain the coming of a human soul.
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Agreed, souls are outside the limits of science.

rossum
 
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