> Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican
> observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican
> meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive
> myth" had developed in modern society that religion
> and science were competing ideologies.
>
> He described creationism, whose supporters want it
> taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of
> paganism" because it harked back to the days of
> "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.
>
> Brother Consolmagno (also said) the idea of papal
> infallibility had been a "PR disaster". What it
> actually meant was that, on matters of faith,
> followers should accept "somebody has got to be the
> boss, the final authority".
>
> "It's not like he has a magic power, that God whispers
> the truth in his ear," he said…
I don't know about this last bit, but the Vatican's been cool with or at least not opposed to evolution for a while now.
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/18/news/evolution.php>
ROME: Although not presented as an official church position, the Vatican newspaper published an article this week labeling as "correct" the decision by a judge in Pennsylvania last month that the concept of intelligent design could not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution.
But the article, in the Vatican's most visible publication, seemed notable, given the strength of the comments on a delicate question much debated under the new pope, Benedict XVI.
"If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another one," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in the Jan. 16-17 edition of the paper, L'Osservatore Romano.
"But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote. "It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."
In July, Christoph Schönborn, an Austrian cardinal who is close to Benedict, seemed to call into question what has been official church teaching for years: that Catholicism and evolution are not necessarily at odds.
In an opinion piece in The New York Times, he played down a 1996 letter by Pope John Paul II that evolution was "more than a hypothesis."
He added, "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."
In the Pennsylvania case, a U.S. federal judge ruled that it was unconstitutional for a school district in Dover to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology courses. The judge called it a religious viewpoint that advanced "a particular version of Christianity."
The case, the first in the United States to test the legal merits of intelligent design - which posits that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent source - was a stinging rebuke to advocates of the concept and provided strong support for scientists who have fought to bar it from the science curriculum.
Benedict himself has signaled an interest in the issue of evolution at least twice, prompting questions about where exactly he stood on the question of intelligent design.
In April, when he was formally installed as pope, he said human beings "are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution." In November, he called the creation of the universe an "intelligent project," wording lauded by intelligent-design supporters.
Many Catholic scientists have criticized intelligent design, notably the Reverend George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory. "Intelligent design isn't science, even though it pretends to be," he said in November, according to the Italian press service ANSA. "Intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."
In October, Schönborn sought to clarify his remarks, saying that he meant to question not the science of evolution but what he called "evolutionism," or an attempt to use the theory to rule out the hand of God in creation.
"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," the cardinal said in a speech in Vienna.
In the Osservatore article, Facchini similarly wrote that scientists could not rule out a divine "superior design" to creation and the history of mankind. But he said that Catholic thought did not rule out that that design could take place through an evolutionary process.
"God's project of creation can be carried out through secondary causes in the natural course of events, without having to think of miraculous interventions that point in this or that direction," he wrote.
Neither Facchini nor the editors of L'Osservatore could immediately be reached for comment.
-- Andy