buffalo;5240729:
Not true, Buffalo. As Mariano Artigas demonstrated in Negotiating Darwin
(2006) there was no Vatican campaign against evolution. Of the six authors denounced to the Sacred Congregation of the Index, the reason in only four cases was evolution, and none of these were brought to trial.
St.ana, these are the** infallible** pronouncements of the church, there has always been opposition of evoltuion from the church, you may have priests and even people in the vatican who have their thoughts, but just because they are in favour doesnt mean their thoughts are infallible and that it changes the infallible pronouncement of the church. This debate is no doubt favour of our Lord and his precious church. so ana just give up your job, buy a pair of sandals and a donkey, and come on home
hug because Evolution was indeed brought to trial a long time ago and infallibly condemned. the last infallible pronouncement being 1950.
1950 – On August 12, Pope Pius XII issues the encyclical Humani Generis which addressed false opinions that were threatening to undermine Catholic doctrine. The pope, in echoing St. Augustine and Providentissimus Deus, declared that the modern exegete’s desire to depart from a literal interpretation of Scripture in favor of a non-literal interpretation was foreign to Catholic teaching: “Further, according to their fictitious opinions, the literal sense of Holy Scripture and its explanation, carefully worked out under the Church’s vigilance by so many great exegetes, should yield now to a new exegesis, which they are pleased to call symbolic or spiritual” (no. 23). “Everyone sees how foreign all this is to the principles and norms of interpretation rightly fixed by our predecessors of happy memory, Leo XIII in his Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, and Benedict XV in the Encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus, as also by Ourselves in the Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu” (no. 24). The pope also broached the theory of evolution with caution by stating that the Church “does not forbid research and discussions…with regard to evolution,” but warns that “divine revelation demands the greatest moderation and caution” when so discussing, and says we must ultimately “submit to the judgment of the Church” (no. 36). The pope further condemned “polygenism,” the heretical belief that the human race is not the product of a single set of parents (Adam and Eve), but multiple parents, as evolutionary theory maintains.
In 1870, Vatican Council I issued an infallible dogmatic statement with an accompanying anathema: “If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing, let him be anathema.” Once again, the Church infallibly proclaims that “the world and all things” in it are the product of an ex nihilo creation.
In addition, the Church, for the first time, adds the phrase “as regards their whole substance.” This phrase essentially prevents anyone from advancing the theory of evolution (that is, arguing that God made some parts, but evolution contributed to the other parts). Moreover, the Church affirms Lateran Council IV that both the “spiritual and material” were made out of nothing. Spiritual refers to the creation of angels, and no one has argued that angels were created by an evolutionary process. There is never any distinction between how God created the angels (instantaneously, out of nothing) and how God created humans (instantaneously, out of nothing). Pope Leo XIII affirmed the same in his encyclical Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae. John Paul II has never (and could never) contradict this infallible teaching.
Statements from the Pontifical Academy of Science (made up primarily of non-Catholic agnostics) have absolutely no authority.
*Catholic Apologist John salza *www.scripturecatholic.com:whackadoo: