Whatever the best answer is to these theological objections, this doesn’t deny the fact that the Popes since Pius XII state human evolution is compatible with Catholic faith. Cardinal Ratzinger:
“All of this is well and good, one might say, but is it not ultimately disproved by our scientific knowledge of how the human being evolved from the animal kingdom? Now, more reflective spirits have long been aware that there is no either-or here. 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.” (
In the Beginning: Commentary on Genesis 1-3)
How it all fits is basically up to you to figure out.
Denying science is not an option since the Church upholds faith and reason together.
The book
Origin of the Human Species by Catholic philosopher Dennis Bonnette explains “immortality” this way:
St. Augustine notes that the attendant “preternatural gift of immortality” should be understood as the possibility of not dying, rather than as being the impossibility of dying (Ott, 104). The gift of immortality does not contradict every physical substance’s potential corruptibility, its composition of matter and form. The possible immortality of our first parents in no way opposes the dictum, “every man is mortal.” This famed syllogistic axiom merely states the potentially corruptible character of human hylemorphic nature. Ott maintains that the associated gift of impassibility means “the possibility of remaining free from suffering” (Ott, 104). The preternatural gifts of integrity and immortality seem to violate early humans’ natural condition. We do not easily control our passions, nor do we possess bodily immortality. But the proper ordering of elements in human nature that constitutes the gift of integrity is nature’s perfection, not its contradiction. So too, immortality, the possibility of not dying, entails the possibility of continued life. Life is the first act and perfection of any living nature, not its contradiction.
From the standpoint of intrinsic finality, the proof that such gifts were praeter-natural is the dismal fact that they have been lost. If they were natural properties flowing from human nature, we could never have lost them. The preternatural gifts of integrity and immortality are beyond human nature. They represent simply the ultimate natural perfection of human nature, awaiting eschatological realization. Predictably, the fossil record gives no evidence of such gifts. Still, revelation presents no intellectual scandal if it maintains our first parents possessed them.
Further, evolutionary science sees the broad picture of human origins taking place over a time-frame measured in hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. It cannot focus on events affecting a single pair of humans at a given point in time. Anthropological data and theories are so general that they cannot oppose particular facts about an Adam and Eve, unless even the broad trends of such data are shown to oppose such particulars’ possibilities. Speculation based upon present data can, at best, indicate the nature and activities of early humans, pointing to largely undefined populations and imprecise time periods. It cannot address with precision the conditions of existence of a single pair of humans at a particular, distant-past time. It cannot exclude, a priori, the possibility of miraculous divine intervention whose reality falls entirely outside the fossil record.
This is a summary from Bonnette’s book and
Adam, Eve, and the Hominid Fossil Record
Phil P
