Cardinal redefines Catholic view of evolution

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.

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, 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."

The cardinal said in a telephone interview from a monastery in Austria, where he was on retreat with seminarians, that his essay was not approved by the Vatican but that two or three weeks before Pope Benedict XVI's election in April this year, 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," Schoenborn said.

The cardinal said that he had been "angry" for years about writers and theologians, many of them Catholics, who he said "misrepresented" the church's position as endorsing Darwinism.

Opponents of Darwinian evolution said they were gratified by Schoenborn'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.

Schoenborn, who serves on the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, said that the office had no plans to issue new guidance on evolution to teachers in Catholic schools. But he said he believes that students in Catholic schools, and all schools in fact, 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.

U.S. 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. Schoenborn's essay and comments in the interview 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.