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Does "THE CHURCH" have a position on Evolution?
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Cardinal Expounds on Pope?s Remarks From a 1997 New York Daily News Report.
Adding to Pope John Paul?s statement that the theory of evolution was ?more than just a hypothesis,? New York?s Cardinal O?Connor has proposed that Adam and Eve could have been ?some other form,? not man and woman. As reported in the New York Daily News, O?Connor said: ?the Catholic Church remains open to scientific inquiry, and that?s true in the case of biological evolution.? In a sermon given at St.?Patrick?s Cathedral, the cardinal stated: ?Is it possible that when the two persons that we speak of as Adam and Eve were created, it was in some other form, and God breathed life into them, breathed a soul into them?that?s a scientific question.? A headline in the conservative Italian newspaper Il Giornale said succinctly: ?The Pope Says We May Descend From Monkeys.?
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An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith.
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Cardinal Christoph Sch?nborn, pictured at the Vatican in 2003, said students should be taught that evolution is just one of many theories.
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Forum: Contemporary Education
Forum: Human Origins
The cardinal, Christoph Sch?nborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, "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 a telephone interview from a monastery in Austria, where he was on retreat, the cardinal said that his essay had not been approved by the Vatican, but that two or three weeks before Pope Benedict XVI's election in April, he spoke with the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, about the church's position on evolution. "I said I would like to have a more explicit statement about that, and he encouraged me to go on," said Cardinal Sch?nborn.
He said that he had been "angry" for years about writers and theologians, many Catholics, who he said had "misrepresented" the church's position as endorsing the idea of evolution as a random process.
Opponents of Darwinian evolution said they were gratified by Cardinal Sch?nborn's essay. But scientists and science teachers reacted with confusion, dismay and even anger. Some said they feared the cardinal's sentiments would cause religious scientists to question their faiths.
Cardinal Sch?nborn, who is on the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, said the office had no plans to issue new guidance to teachers in Catholic schools on evolution. But he said he believed students in Catholic schools, and all schools, should be taught that evolution is just one of many theories. Many Catholic schools teach Darwinian evolution, in which accidental mutation and natural selection of the fittest organisms drive the history of life, as part of their science curriculum.
Darwinian evolution is the foundation of modern biology. While researchers may debate details of how the mechanism of evolution plays out, there is no credible scientific challenge to the underlying theory.
American Catholics and conservative evangelical Christians have been a potent united front in opposing abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia, but had parted company on the death penalty and the teaching of evolution. Cardinal Sch?nborn's essay and comments are an indication that the church may now enter the debate over evolution more forcefully on the side of those who oppose the teaching of evolution alone.
One of the strongest advocates of teaching alternatives to evolution is the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which promotes the idea, termed intelligent design, that the variety and complexity of life on earth cannot be explained except through the intervention of a designer of some sort.
Mark Ryland, a vice president of the institute, said in an interview that he had urged the cardinal to write the essay. Both Mr. Ryland and Cardinal Sch?nborn said that an essay in May in The Times about the compatibility of religion and evolutionary theory by Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, suggested to them that it was time to clarify the church's position on evolution.
The cardinal's essay was submitted to The Times by a Virginia public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, which also represents the Discovery Institute.
Mr. Ryland, who said he knew the cardinal through the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, where he is chancellor and Mr. Ryland is on the board, said supporters of intelligent design were "very excited" that a church leader had taken a position opposing Darwinian evolution. "It clarified that in some sense the Catholics aren't fine with it," he said.
Bruce Chapman, the institute's president, said the cardinal's essay "helps blunt the claims" that the church "has spoken on Darwinian evolution in a way that's supportive."
But some biologists and others said they read the essay as abandoning longstanding church support for evolutionary biology
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The church believes in what the bible says.
It all begain when God created Adam and Eve.
This is it for many churches.
other Churches believe in other facts.
Some say man come from apes.
Other say men are from mars and women are from venus.
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All others apart from oz used external sources which is against website terms
The church is anti-religion (presuming by the church u mean christian) and some members go as far to say things like fossils are placed by god to trick us.
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The church? well. the Christian church supports the theory that God created the universe.