July 2007 Print

Dear Editor,

 

Once again I am sending you a few newspaper clippings. In one of them (Il Giornale of November 4, 2005), Cardinal Poupard and Msgr. Gianfranco Basti accept evolution–quite wrongly, in my opinion–by citing, among other things, the words of Pope John Paul II: "Evolution is more than a hypothesis." I seem to recall that in that speech, the late Pope referred to a declaration by Pope Pius XII while turning his thinking upside down. As you can read for yourself, the article concludes with these words of Msgr. Basti: "For decades science has gotten beyond the scholastic-type [?] thesis of pure chance, abandoned because it does not hold up scientifically."

Dear Editor, things are going from bad to worse: the silent apostasy is invading the whole world despite the vast crowds that applaud Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square. What an illusion!

 

Signed, a Priest

Pope Pius XII and Evolution

The statement of Pope John Paul II to which Msgr. Basti refers is taken from his Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996.¹ We shall see if it was used judiciously.

We looked at this message in a previous number of Courrier de Rome.² At that time we remarked that this text simplified Pope Pius XII's teaching, and made him say something which in reality he never said on the subject of evolution. He simplified it, because in the Encyclical Humani Generis Pope Pius XII 1) unconditionally condemned atheistic, materialistic evolution; and 2) denied the conclusiveness of the scientific proofs of theistic evolution, which, by admitting the direct creation of the soul by God and His direct or indirect intervention in evolution, laid claim to, and still claims, a "Christian baptism" of the theory.³ That is why Pope Pius XII postponed the Church's judgment on theistic evolution until the time when science would be able to provide "clearly proved facts." Here is the passage of Humani Generis that is concerned with theistic evolution:

It remains for Us now to speak about those questions which, although they pertain to the positive sciences, are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith. In fact, not a few insistently demand that the Catholic religion take these sciences into account as much as possible. This certainly would be praiseworthy in the case of clearly proved facts; but caution must be used when there is rather question of hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation, in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved. If such conjectural opinions are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can in no way be admitted.

For these reasons 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 experienced 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 matter, for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.⁴

At this point in the letter, Pius XII parenthetically references his Allocution to the members of the Academy of Sciences of November 30, 1941, in which he had said:

The many investigations in the domains of paleontology, biology, and morphology into other problems concerning the origins of man have not yet returned anything positively clear and certain. There remains nothing else to do than leave to the future the answer to the problem, should science, enlightened and guided by Revelation, one day be able to give certain and definitive results on a subject of such importance.

Continuing (in Humani Generis), Pius XII then deplores that "some rashly transgress this liberty of discussion" [this is all that the Encyclical conceded],

when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question. (§36)

This last phrase clearly shows that Pius XII's reserved judgment on "theistic" evolution was more negative (non licet) than positive.

The Reversal

In Pope John Paul II's Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, one reads:

In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points....Taking into account the state of scientific research at the time as well as of the requirements of theology, the encyclical Humani Generis considered the doctrine of "evolutionism" a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation and in-depth study equal to that of the opposing hypothesis.⁵

That is how Pius XII is made to say what he did not say. Everyone can see for himself that, contrary to what the Message says, in Humani Generis Pius XII absolutely did not say that the doctrine of evolution is a "serious hypothesis"; rather, he said that it is a hypothesis that must be "weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure" (which is obviously not the same thing); he does not say that it is a hypothesis "worthy of investigation and in-depth study equal to that of the opposing hypothesis," but on the contrary he finds fault with the theistic evolutionists who consider "the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter" as something clearly demonstrated, "as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question" (§36). This is tantamount to saying that the "opposing hypothesis" is more in conformity with the sources of divine Revelation than theistic evolution, hence the injunction to ponder the evolutionist hypothesis "with the necessary seriousness," since the evolutionist hypothesis, even when it is theistic, requires that "the former convictions, based upon the Bible, the doctrine of the Fathers, and the usual teaching of the Church"⁶ be set aside.

A First Step in Favor of Evolution

Having understood Pius XII's Encyclical Humani Generis in this way, Pope John Paul II's Message takes a step forward in favor of evolution: "Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis." And after gratuitously asserting that this "theory" has been accepted because of "the convergence, neither sought nor fabricated [really? but isn't it within the habits of evolutionists to bend the facts to fit their theory, even resorting to fakery–a temptation from which even the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin was not exempt], of the results of work that was conducted independently," the Pope then wonders:

What is the significance of such a theory? To address this question is to enter the field of epistemology. A theory is a metascientific elaboration, distinct from the results of observation but consistent with them. By means of it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory's validity depends on whether or not it can be verified; it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought.

The speech is not the clearest, but we believe we have correctly understood it to say that "the theory of evolution" must no longer be considered as a hypothesis, but as a "theory." But since the theory, as the Message acknowledges, must also, like a hypothesis, be verified "against the facts" and eventually "rethought," it does not seem to us that evolution has gained much by this promotion from hypothesis to theory. The only result is to encourage the press to publish headlines like "Faith and Science/ Appreciation of the Pope's Words Rehabilitating Darwin's Theory/ Soul or Not, Thanks to the Monkey!"⁷

Another Step Forward and Another Reversal

Based on this fragile premise, Msgr. Basti felt authorized to take another step. John Paul II, he says, defined the principle of evolution as "more than a hypothesis"; now, "a hypothesis," Basti explains, can be true or false, and to say that it is more than a hypothesis means that proofs [sic] exist in favor of evolution which "tend towards the consolidation of a scientific theory." That is how John Paul II's Message, which reversed Humani Generis, is itself reversed by the interpretation given it by Msgr. Basti. Evolution becomes a solid "scientific theory" based on who knows what "proofs."

Desperate Recuperation of a "Shattered Myth"

But even a Pope's word cannot create ex nihilo scientific proofs in favor of a hypothesis which foundered long ago on the barrier of the fixity of the species:

The absence of links from species to species is not an exception: it is the universal rule. The more researchers have looked for transitional forms between species, the greater has been their disappointment.

This was the admission of the 160 evolutionists from all over the world who met at Chicago for a congress in 1980.⁸ And more recently, on August 25, 1992, the Corriere della Sera published a report from London entitled "Scientists at Congress: We Do Not Descend from Monkeys/Darwin Challenged on Evolution." It involved the yearly meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, an association at which the theory of evolution was first presented. The challenge was thrown down by the English scientist Richard Milton, author of The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. The Corriere della Serra added: "Milton is not alone in his challenge. Many other scientists have put in doubt Darwin's thesis."

It is in this "post Darwinian" atmosphere that churchmen, afflicted with "teilhardosis" (Teilhard de Chardin, recall, was one of evolution's mythmakers), believe they are opening the Church to the world by gathering the shards of a "shattered myth." Geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti rightly wrote:

Modernism's temptations are dangerous. One risks surrendering to modernity just when it has seen its day, of becoming a Darwinian for love of the world just when Darwin is on his way out, and of basing ethics on the descent of man from the monkey just when this theory has been definitively rejected.⁹

Hirpinus

 

Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from the French edition of SiSiNoNo, Courrier de Rome, November 2006, pp.4-6.

 

¹ English version: English Edition of the Osservatore Romano, October 30, 1996, available on line at www.newadvent.org /library/docs_jp02tc.htm.

² Published in the English edition of SiSiNoNo, No. 25, March 1998.

³ Dictionnaire de théologie dogmatique, ed. Parente, Piolanti, and Garofalo, s.v. "Évolutionisme."

⁴ §§35-36.

⁵ §§3-4.

⁶ E. Ruffini, "The Responsibility of Catholic Paleoanthropologists," Osservatore Romano [It. ed.], June 3, 1950.

⁷ La Nazione, October 25, 1996.

⁸ Newsweek, November 3, 1980.

⁹ Il Tempo, July 10, 1987.