OSV News – When people ask me “What does the Catholic Church think about evolution?” they are rarely prepared for my answer: “Let’s sit down for a few months and talk about it.”
The problem is this: The Catholic Church doesn’t just think about evolution. It sees the theory of human evolution in the much larger context of its understanding of human being, human reason, human science, human sin, human morality and the redemption of humanity by God incarnate. The Church can’t think about something, without thinking about nearly everything because everything is made by God.
I make this point straight off, because the tendency of our sound-bite culture is to land on some short quote made by a Pope in a speech or encyclical, or by a Vatican official, or a Catholic scientist, or a Catholic theologian, and treat it in isolation as if all we needed to know about evolution as Catholics could be written on an index card and carried in our wallet or purse for handy reference.
But that is not how the Catholic Church thinks about evolution, or anything else for that matter. The Church doesn’t think in sound bites crafted for the impatient. It thinks like a cathedral where everything is connected, stone placed upon carefully balanced stone, complexly and intimately interdependent, built in centuries to last for even more centuries according to the eternal plan, all harmoniously crafted for worship of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so that everything human is redeemed, nature transformed by grace as it stretches to heaven.
Perhaps the best place to begin to understand what that might mean in regard to evolution is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You will find some isolated statements specifically about evolution, but these statements are an integral part of the entire catechism, the vast cathedral-like presentation of the faith. Like individual stones in a cathedral, you can’t snatch out the isolated statements without causing the whole edifice to crumble. More directly, we may say that the Catholic consideration of evolution takes place within the Catholic catechesis on creation and redemption. Within this catechesis there are certain givens – both natural and supernatural – that set definite limits to the consideration of evolution.
Let me offer two examples from the catechism that haven’t appeared in the popular press’ coverage of the Catholic Church and evolution. “By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his works” (No. 50). That is actually a dogmatic assertion based upon the wonderful capacities of natural human reason and the fact that nature itself – including the biological aspects of nature – manifests the glory and wisdom of its Creator, each creature reflecting “in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness” (No. 339).
What does that mean for our consideration of evolution? That any view of evolution that assumes on principle that biological nature is entirely governed by chance and blind laws must be in error. On that view of evolution – championed today by such prominent atheists as Richard Dawkins – nature reveals the entire absence of wisdom – that is, the absence of a wise Creator. Against this, the Catechism stoutly maintains: “We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate and chance” (No. 295).
Aha! That must mean that the Catholic Church rejects evolution! No – sorry. There are no such quick and easy answers. The Catholic Church doesn’t reject evolution, because it doesn’t reject – but, in fact, welcomes – any legitimate scientific inquiry. Science studies nature, and the truth of creation can never contradict the truth of the Creator.
So (quoting from the First Vatican Council’s “Dei Filius”), the Catechism informs us that “methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God” (No. 159).
So what does that mean for evolution in particular? Well, read on. “Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created ‘in a state of journeying’ (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it” (No. 310). “In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature” (No. 310).
On this view, as Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has noted, evolution is understood as creation “extended over time.”
Aha! That must mean that the Catholic Church accepts evolution! No – sorry.
There are no such quick and easy answers. The Church can’t simply accept the theory of evolution, because there isn’t some one thing, evolutionary theory, that it can accept. There are, instead, different theories, different approaches to evolution.
As St. John Paul II wisely noted, “rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution. The use of the plural is required here – in part because of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution, and in part because of the diversity of philosophies involved.”
The truth of the matter is this. The Church cannot whole-heartedly affirm evolution because evolution as a science itself isn’t wholly firm. We have to distinguish between the thing itself (evolution), and our knowledge of the thing (what scientists at this point in time happen to think they know about evolution).
Evolution, we have every reason to believe, is something that happened, but what actually happened in evolution is something that must be discovered on the long, difficult road of scientific discovery, along which we have only traveled part of the way. That is why the Church is rightfully cautious.
So, what is the truly Catholic stance?
So much confusion has been stirred up by recent controversies in regard to evolution, intelligent design and creationism, it is small wonder that Catholics are almost entirely mystified about what to think. Sorting things out will be no easy task, but here’s a start, point by point.
First, Catholics must hold that our study of nature confirms the existence of God. The Catechism clearly states, “The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason, even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error” (No. 286).
The catechism grounds itself in the definitive statement of the First Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution “Dei Filius”: “Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason: ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.”
And this declaration is rooted firmly in Scripture, as St. Paul asserts in Romans: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (1:19-20).
We should not, then, be surprised to find the catechism stating the following: “Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of ‘converging and convincing arguments,’ which allow us to attain certainty about the truth” (No. 31).
We can indeed prove the existence of God through a kind of philosophic argument. But to say that it is a philosophic argument doesn’t mean that it is therefore nonscientific or, even worse, an unscientific argument. If we are able to reason from nature to the existence of God, surely it must be from a very well-informed understanding of nature – that is, one that takes into full account the very latest in the sciences that pertain to the area or aspect of nature that one is considering in using one’s reason.
So, what about creationism and intelligent design? Unfortunately, “creationism” as a term is associated with denying evolution altogether, and trying to prove a literal reading of the Bible against modern science. But the Church doesn’t reject the possibility of evolution outright, and the Catholic approach to the Bible is not that of a fundamentalist.
At the same time, the Church takes a critical stance toward evolution rather than simply affirming whatever contemporary evolutionists of whatever stripe happen to be saying, and the Church also believes with all its heart the Bible is truly and wholly inspired and without error.
And intelligent design theory? We should point out right away that “ID theory,” as it is called for short, is not really one thing, but a rather complex assortment of approaches all jostling for position. In general, however, ID proponents have tended to assert that some scientifically verifiable fact – for example, this particular molecular biological structure is too complicated to have come about through natural selection alone – directly demonstrates the existence of an intelligent designer.
These types of arguments have considerable merit, more than Catholics have been inclined to grant, precisely because they focus on quite particular trouble spots for a purely materialist, reductionist account of evolution.
But as noted above, the Catholic approach is to consider scientific evidence as only part of a larger, philosophical argument that must be made if we are to demonstrate the existence of God from nature.
The point is this: Particular scientific evidence alone could never be enough to demonstrate the existence of God, and further, much more attention must be paid to philosophy in order to properly draw together all the “converging and convincing arguments” necessary to do so.
Historically, the most important jumping off point for a discussion of the Catholic Church and evolution is Pope Pius XII’s encyclical “Humani Generis” (1950), which said evolution was worthy of scientific study within certain limits.
It has seemed to many that the Church is saying something like this: You can believe anything you want about evolution as long as 1) you hold that all human souls are immediately created by God, 2) you hold some form of monogenism rather than polygenism – that is, you hold that all human beings have a common evolutionary ancestor rather than arise from a messy multitude – and (3) you don’t manifestly hold a purely materialistic theory of evolution that somehow undermines the dignity of the human person.
Can it really be all that easy? No it cannot, precisely because these seemingly simple limits are, upon closer inspection, not very simple at all.
Take the first one, that all human souls are immediately created by God. This statement does not represent a retreat of the Church to a minimalist position, “Say anything you want about the evolution of the human body, only let us still have the soul!” Rather, it signifies a defiant “No!” to all forms of materialism because they reduce human beings to mere physical beings.
That puts a rather large obstacle in the way of many prominent evolutionists, because they have been, as a rule, prone to complete materialism.
Charles Darwin himself purposely defined his evolutionary account of human beings in his “Descent of Man” (1871) to prove that he could explain everything about human beings – from their moral to their intellectual capacities, from their artistic abilities to their belief in God – according to an entirely materialist, reductionist scheme.
Today, the most prominent evolutionists have no place for the human soul. They and the majority of evolutionists assume that purely material causes – causes subject to natural selection – entirely explain human capacities.
And the second? Here again, the Church is saying quite a lot. It is saying, in effect, that no matter what current scientists think, no matter how well established their theories of human origins seem to be, that in the end, when all the evidence is finally in, science will not contradict the fact that human beings have a single set of parents.
Note, I am not saying that science will at last prove that Adam and Eve existed. The point is much more startling.
I am saying that, try as it might, wander where it will, science will find that all its attempts to investigate the possibility of human polygenism ultimately fruitless, and all its attempts to investigate the possibility of monogenism will prove wonderfully fruitful. The Church is declaring that faith cannot be contradicted because the God of Revelation is the Creator God.
And the last? This is perhaps the most expansive limit of all, and the one least understood. In saying that no evolutionary theory can be true that denies or distorts the dignity of the human person, the Church is demanding a great deal. Indeed, it places itself directly against the founder of modern evolution, Charles Darwin himself.
Darwin, in his “Descent of Man,” set forth an evolutionary account of human nature specifically designed to demonstrate that our moral nature was the direct result of natural selection. Several things followed from this.
First, morality is replaced with moralities, the singular with the plural. For Darwin, moral traits were evolved among particular peoples, during particular times and under particular circumstances. They were as variable and transient as, say, the plumage of birds or the shape of tortoise shells. A large number of our contemporary evolutionists agree.
Second, there are no intrinsically evil actions. In fact, good and evil are reduced to what contributes to survival and what harms chances for survival. Anything that contributes to the survival of an individual, a group, a race, a nation must be good; nothing that contributes to the survival of an individual, group, race or nation can be evil.
Most contemporary Darwinists have had trouble digesting this truth, and that is much to their merit – I think their hesitations are proof that they are indeed made in the image of God. But others have no qualms about infanticide and morally rating young human children below full-grown apes.
Third, if natural selection really is the basis of morality, then we should try to base our social policies on natural selection. If human beings evolved through fierce competition between individual and individual, tribe and tribe, race and race, where the unfit were extinguished and the fit lived to breed more of their superior kind, then our social policies should be bent accordingly: We should not allow the “unfit,” the weak, sickly, morally and intellectually inferior to outbreed the fit, the strong, the healthy, the morally and intellectually superior. In saying this, Darwin has the honor of being the father of the modern eugenics movement, a movement that is gaining ever more speed.
It should be clear, even from this short analysis, how large are these seemingly small limits placed by the Church among those who would legitimately investigate evolution, especially human evolution.
Benjamin Wiker holds a doctorate in theological ethics and is the author of several books.
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