The Catholic Church and Evolution

It is not surprising that the Pope’s announcement that “Christianity is compatible with evolution” caused such a stir worldwide. Many were angry and shocked that Church would break tradition and admit that the theories of evolution may be correct and from a personal standpoint, I am shocked as well. This is not necessarily because I hold different views about evolution or religion, but because I find it stunning that after all these hundreds of years, the Catholic Church is not taking the Bible as the literal truth. For so many decades, the Church has openly and fervently declared the Bible to be literal truth and thus this announcement is not only a mere break with tradition—but a whole new era of religious thought that is beginning. The way I see it, the Pope’s statement on the viability of evolution coupled with the Christian faith is groundbreaking—perhaps it is one of the most important religious announcements made in the last century. 

What I find most interesting about the Pope’s admission of evolution into the debates about creation is the rhetoric he used to fuse both religion and evolution. He makes a very clear distinction between the “realm” of the church and that of science by saying in this debated speech “if the human body has its origin in living material which preexists it, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God.” There can be no mistake made here about what this means: The physical body (and it’s various genetically and evolutionarily created traits) are the “realm” of evolution and scientific forces that are separate from God. However, the Pope’s view isn’t entirely secular—he goes on to say that God’s involvement outside the realm of science is the soul. He is saying that God created and has power or dominion over the human soul—even though our bodies may be the product of evolutionary forces.