[Apologetics] Re: Evolution dispute now set to split Catholic hierarchy

[Art Kelly]

Jim,

I agree 100% with Cardinal Shönborn, who is the
principal author of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, that evolution is just plain wrong!

I also think it is highly likely that Cardinal
Sconborn was speaking for Pope Benedict XVI. 

If others in Catholic Church don't like it, they
should be directed to the nearest Eastern Orthodox,
Anglican, or Lutheran church, let them take their
pick.

The Pope is on record that the Catholic Church should
grow SMALLER, i.e. no "big tent" for disparate
beliefs.

If the Catholic Church lost half its members, it would
still be far larger than any other Christian
denomination.

In the next year or so, I think that theological
liberals in the Church will find that they no longer
have the latitude they once had to disagree with
Catholic beliefs.

Art

--- jmurf80 at bellsouth.net wrote:

> Evolution dispute now set to split Catholic
> hierarchy 
> 
> By Michael McCarthy
> 
> The conflict at the highest level of the Catholic
> Church about the truth of Darwin's theory of
> evolution breaks out publicly today. 
> 
> Recent comments by a cardinal close to the Pope that
> random evolution was incompatible with belief in
> "God the creator" are fiercely assailed in today's
> edition of The Tablet, Britain's Catholic weekly, by
> the Vatican astronomer. 
> 
> In an article with explosive implications for the
> Church, Father George Coyne, an American Jesuit
> priest who is a distinguished astronomy professor,
> attacks head-on the views of Cardinal Christoph
> Shönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a
> long-standing associate of Joseph Ratzinger, the
> German cardinal who was elected as Pope Benedict XVI
> in April. 
> 
> In an article entitled "Finding Design in Nature" in
> The New York Times last month, Cardinal Shönborn
> reignited the row between the Church and science by
> frankly denying that "neo-Darwinian dogma" was
> compatible with Christian faith. He wrote:
> "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." 
> 
> His views have provoked alarm among many scientists
> and liberal Catholics around the world, who thought
> that Catholicism had come to terms with evolution,
> and who now see the spectre of creationism rising in
> the Catholic Church as it has risen among
> fundamentalist Protestants in the US. 
> 
> Only this week President George Bush said that the
> theory of "intelligent design" - a version of
> creationism, which disputes the idea that natural
> selection alone can explain the complexity of life -
> should be taught in America schools alongside the
> theory of evolution. 
> 
> Cardinal Shönborn is understood to have been urged
> to write the article, and to have been helped to
> place it in The New York Times, by Mark Ryland, a
> leading figure in the Discovery Institute, a
> conservative American Christian think-tank that
> promotes intelligent design. 
> 
> The cardinal's views are publicly and robustly
> rejected by Fr Coyne, director of the Vatican
> Observatory, which is a scientific institution
> sponsored by the Holy See. 
> 
> Fr Coyne, who is 72, has been in charge of the
> observatory since 1978; he spends half the year in
> Tucson, Arizona, as a professor in the University of
> Arizona astronomy department, where he is still
> actively involved in research. 
> 
> In The Tablet he says that Cardinal Shönborn's
> article has "darkened the waters" of the rapport
> between Church and science, and says - flatly
> contradicting the cardinal - that even a world in
> which "life... has evolved through a process of
> random genetic mutations and natural selection" is
> compatible with "God's dominion". 
> 
> For a Vatican official of such seniority openly to
> attack the views of a cardinal on such a potentially
> explosive subject as evolution is unprecedented. It
> also reveals a deep rift at the heart of the
> Catholic Church's thinking. It is known that Fr
> Coyne wrote privately to both Cardinal Shönborn and
> the Pope himself protesting against The New York
> Times article soon after it was published last
> month. But it is understood that so many scientists,
> especially Catholic scientists, have since contacted
> him to express their disquiet, that he felt he had
> to go public. He is believed to have cleared the
> article with his Jesuit superiors. 
> 
> The previous pope, John Paul II in 1996 declared to
> the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that evolution
> was "no longer a mere hypothesis". In his July
> article Cardinal Shönborn played down this statement
> as "vague and unimportant". He points instead to
> comments Pope John Paul gave during an audience in
> 1985, when he spoke at length of the role of God the
> creator. 
> 
> Fr Coyne attacks the cardinal's analysis and says
> that the Pope's later statement was "epoch-making".
> He goes on: "Why does there seem to be a persistent
> retreat in the Church from attempts to establish a
> dialogue with the community of scientists?" 
> 
> The key question behind the debate is the opinion of
> new Pope. Some fear that the cardinal would never
> have published such a controversial article in such
> a prominent medium without his personal approval.
> But nothing will be known for certain until the Pope
> speaks for himself. 
> 
> 
> 


ART KELLY, ATM-S
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