Catholics: (POLL) Do you accept evolution?

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I frankly do not care what you believe re: the nature of creation. I was just saying that it was absurd to say that the Church considers evolution (in a theistic way) to be incompatible with the faith, when John Paul II, the former head of the CDF and theologian Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis have all made comments that indicate otherwise.
 
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I frankly do not care what you believe re: the nature of creation. I was just saying that it was absurd to say that the Church considers evolution (in a theistic way) to be incompatible with the faith, when John Paul II, former head of the CDF and theologian Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis have all made comments that indicate otherwise.
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And not to sound rude, but I do not understand why this is so hard to recognize. 🤔
 
Andy235 said:
it was absurd to say that the Church considers evolution (in a theistic way) to be incompatible with the faith, when John Paul II, the former head of the CDF and theologian Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis have all made comments that indicate otherwise.
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Their comments did not define evolution, did not set forward any specific theory, and did not address any of the contradictions between Evolution and Scripture.
 
Tell me: Which account in Genesis is literal (scientific/historical): The first creation account, when man was made after the animals, OR the second creation account, when man was made before the animals?
 
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But they allow for evolution. Clearly.

So who do we believe, all the Popes since Pius XII, who allow for Catholics to accept evolution, or you, who says Catholics cannot accept evolution?
 
But they all made comments indicating that they did not feel that theistic evolution contradicted the Catholic Faith. One canonized Saint, another Pope who had been the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith prior to the Papacy, and the current Pope have all indicated that it does not go against the defined doctrines of the Catholic Church. Do you think you know more about Catholic doctrine than Benedict XVI?
 
Man was not made before the animals in either account.
catholic1seeks said:
all the Popes since Pius XII, who allow for Catholics to accept evolution
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If the Pope says you can believe in a shnarkledorf that does no good unless you define “shnarkledorf”. Until a Pope comes out and addresses the specific theories of evolution and their conflict with Scripture, we must hold that Scripture is truth and whatever contradictions that arise between evolution and Scripture must be wrong on the side of evolution.
 
Again, clearly, no one on here — and no Pope — is defining evolution in a way that precludes God.

YOU are the one suggesting that Catholics cannot accept ANY evolution at all. So do tell us, please, what evolution is allowable?

Most people readily acknowledge the general definition of evolution whereby it does not need further definition, and when it does, the Popes are ADAMANT about in what sense evolution is to be rejected.

And also:

Tell me: Which account in Genesis is literal (scientific/historical): The first creation account, when man was made after the animals, OR the second creation account, when man was made before the animals?
 
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Listen. It isn’t difficult. Cardinal Ratzinger was literally head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for years before he became Pope. They are the body that is most responsible for promulgating and defending Catholic Orthodoxy. To say he does not know what Catholic Doctrine is — is frankly absurd. Full Stop. End of argument. I am done. No more.
 
Andy235 said:
Listen. It isn’t difficult. Cardinal Ratzinger was literally head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for years before he became Pope. They are the body that is most responsible for promulgating and defending Catholic Orthodoxy.
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They’re just going to say he’s wrong.
 
catholic1seeks said:
So do tell us, please, what evolution is allowable?
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Whatever theory does not contradict Scripture. I have no interest in creating one, but I would urge any evolutionist to begin working on one.
catholic1seeks said:
The first creation account, when man was made after the animals, OR the second creation account, when man was made before the animals?
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Genesis 2 is not contradictory with Genesis 1.
 
I never said he doesn’t know Catholic doctrine, I said he did not “allow for evolution.”
 
Whatever theory does not contradict Scripture. I have no interest in creating one, but I would urge any evolutionist to begin working on one.
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Does this contradict Scripture: “Evolutionary processes give rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.”
Genesis 2 is not contradictory with Genesis 1.
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So both these statements are true?
  1. Animals were created before humans.
  2. Humans were created before animals.
Interesting…
 
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catholic1seeks said:
Evolutionary processes give rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules
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Possibly. It depends on how the principle is applied.
catholic1seeks said:
Animals were created before humans.
Humans were created before animals.
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Genesis 2 does not say humans were created before animals. It mentions the creation of Man before mentioning the creation of animals, but this is a common literary technique. That’s like saying the events of the Magicians Nephew must have come after the events of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe because the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was written first. Genesis 1 is the chronology of creation and Genesis 2 is focusing on Man.

You will not find a passage in Genesis that says:

“Man was created before the animals” or “Man was created and then animals were created” or “Man was created and only after this were the animals created.”

I have a feeling you’re going to pretend that explaining this literary interpretation means that it must all be metaphorical, but again this is foolish. We should then understand the events of Luke as necessarily happening after the events of Matthew and that Christ must have lived four different lives because there are four different accounts and four different Gospels.
 
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No. A few people quote a few words from Pope John Paul II as if that’s the whole story. It’s not.

"Vienna - EVER since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was “more than just a hypothesis,” defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance – or at least acquiescence – of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.

"But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.

"Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

"Consider the real teaching of our beloved John Paul. While his rather vague and unimportant 1996 letter about evolution is always and everywhere cited, we see no one discussing these comments from a 1985 general audience that represents his robust teaching on nature:

“All the observations concerning the development of life lead to a similar conclusion. The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.”
 
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“Vatican Council II recognizes four conditions which must be fulfilled in order for a doctrine to be proposed infallibly by the ordinary magisterium; and as we shall show, these conditions had indeed already been fulfilled by the year 1880 in the case of the doctrines regarding the origin of Adam and Eve recalled by Leo XIII.”

DID WOMAN EVOLVE FROM THE BEASTS? - A DEFENCE OF TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC DOCTRINE - PART I

DID WOMAN EVOLVE FROM THE BEASTS? - A DEFENCE OF TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC DOCTRINE - PART II

At this point the Church was well aware of evo theory.

What magisterial document overturned this?
 
common literary technique.
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Good. See, we don’t take Scripture word-for-word without further context. This is the same principle that has led the Church to identify the creation accounts as using “figurative language” (as the Catechism says). To take Genesis literally technically means determining what the Holy Spirit is asserting through the style, personality, genre, context of the human author.

So the only way to make Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 non-contradictory is to admit that they are not word-by-word straightforward, descriptive details of what actually happened.
Possibly. It depends on how the principle is applied.
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Well, this is how most people understand evolution most generally. And this is exactly what the Popes are allowing. No need to fear much else. It simply means biological organisms have changed over time, and are related to each other through a slow process of development and change.
 
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