ความคิดเห็นที่ 234
The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experiences in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matterfor the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.
In other words, the Pope could live with evolution, so long as the process of ensouling humans was left to God. (He also insisted on a role for Adam, whom he believed committed a sin mysteriously passed along through the doctrine of original sinthat has affected all subsequent generations.) Pius XII cautioned, however, that he considered the jury still out on the question of evolutions validity. It should not be accepted, without more evidence, as though it were a certain proven doctrine. (ROA, 81)
Pope John Paul II revisited the question of evolution in a 1996 a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Unlike Pius XII, John Paul is broadly read, and embraces science and reason. He won the respect of many scientists in 1993, when in April 1993 he formally acquitted Galileo, 360 years after his indictment, of heretical support for Copernicuss heliocentrism. The pontiff began his statement with the hope that we will all be able to profit from the fruitfulness of a trustful dialogue between the Church and science. Evolution, he said, is an essential subject which deeply interests the Church. He recognized that science and Scripture sometimes have apparent contradictions, but said that when this is the case, a solution must be found because truth cannot contradict truth. The Pope pointed to the Churchs coming to terms with Galileos discoveries concerning the nature of the solar system as an example of how science might inspire the Church to seek a new and correct interpretation of the inspired word.
When the pope came to the subject of the scientific merits of evolution, it soon became clear how much things had changed in the nearly since the Vatican last addressed the issue. John Paul said:
Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.
Evolution, a doctrine that Pius XII only acknowledged as an unfortunate possibility, John Paul accepts forty-six years later as an effectively proven fact. (ROA, 82)
Pope John Pauls words on evolution received major play in international news stories. Evolution proponents such as Stephen Jay Gould enthusiastically welcomed what he saw as the Popes endorsement of evolution. Gould was reminded of a passage in Proverbs (25:25): As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country. (ROA, 820) Creationists, however, expressed dismay at the pontiffs words and suggested that the initial news reports might have been based on a faulty translation. (John Paul gave the speech in French.) Perhaps, some creationists argued, the pope really said, the theory evolution is more than one hypothesis, not the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis. If that were so, the Pope might have been suggesting that there are multiple theories of evolution, and all of them might be wrong.
The faulty translation theory, however, suffered at least two problems. Most obviously, the theory collapsed when the Catholic News Service of the Vatican confirmed that the Pope did indeed mean more than a hypothesis, not more than one hypothesis. The other problem stemmed from a reading of the passage in more complete context. In the speech, the Pope makes clear in his speech that he understood the difference between evolution (the highly probable fact) and the mechanism for evolution, a matter of hot dispute among scientists. John Paul said, And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. He recognized that there were different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution and different philosophies upon which the theory of evolution is based. The philosophy out of bounds to Catholics, the pope indicated, is one which is materialist and which denies the possibility that man was created in the image and likeness of God. Human dignity, the pope suggested, cannot be reconciled with such a reductionist philosophy. Thus, as with Pius XII, the critical teaching of the Church is that God infuses souls into manregardless of what process he might have used to create our physical bodies. Science, the Pope insisted, can never identify for us the moment of the transition into the spiritualthat is a matter exclusively with the magesterium of religion.
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Bernadette
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