Catholic Position on Evolution

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GiveMeSomeTruth said:
What is the Catholic position on evolution?
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The Catholic does not have an official position. You can be a Catholic and a creationist, or you can be a Catholic and an evolutionist.

The only limitation for a Catholic is that he cannot believe EVERYTHING happened by chance. But a Catholic can believe that some things, even many things, happened by chance.

A Catholic is free to take the first three chapters of Genesis literally, or he can take them symbolically. The Church does not tell us what to think. Rather, it sets the boundaries of what we should not think. Within those boundaries, there is much room to play.
 
packermann said:
The Catholic does not have an official position. You can be a Catholic and a creationist, or you can be a Catholic and an evolutionist.

The only limitation for a Catholic is that he cannot believe EVERYTHING happened by chance. But a Catholic can believe that some things, even many things, happened by chance.

A Catholic is free to take the first three chapters of Genesis literally, or he can take them symbolically. The Church does not tell us what to think. Rather, it sets the boundaries of what we should not think. Within those boundaries, there is much room to play.
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May I respectfully point out that contemporary evolutionary theory has expanded way beyond its original concept of chance happenings.

Currently, the evolution model is used to determine the source of humanity which at this point only refers to human’s anatomy due to the limitations of natural science. This material/physical approach to you and me intersects with the Catholic doctrine that our human nature, as created by God, unites both the material and the spiritual worlds. It is because of its God-created spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living human person.
(Source: Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, paragraphs 355 - 421, including footnotes)

Each one of us is called by our Creator to share eternally in His own life. What guarantees this truth is that all of us are descended from one person who is referred to as the living Adam. And how do we know this? We accept the fact that God blest the two sole founders of humanity so that they could be fertile and multiply. (Genesis 1: 27-28) Because of the unity of the human species which is founded in one couple, you and I are assured that we are included in the Salvific Mission of Jesus Christ. (Romans, chapter five)

In other words, Catholics can be evolutionists when it comes to the material/physical world with its animals and plants, etc. But when it comes to the human person, Catholics cannot accept the claim that we slowly descended from 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs which is what current evolution theory is proposing.
 
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