It is my understanding that the previous pope declared that Catholicism is not incompatible with the theory of evolution. (I am not a Catholic, and if I am mistaken, I would appreciate correction.)
I am curious to know what the reality is of Catholic beliefs in evolution. A pit thread reminded me of a conversation I had last summer with a couple of Catholic girls I met in India. Like a lot of the Indians I met, they wanted to know my religious background, and were surprised to find that I am an atheist. They asked if I believed in evolution, and I said yes. They then exchanged glances like “ooookay, now we’re talking to a crazy one” and told me that they’re Catholics, so they don’t believe in it. I told them that the pope has said that evolution is cool for Catholics to believe in, but they clearly disbelieved me and had no idea what I was talking about.
Don’t know what the church is up to these days but when I was young in Jr. high and high school, evolution was taught like any other science subject and I don’t remember any particular confusion about what was said in religion class and what was taught by Sister Margaret the science teacher.
My mom was a devout Catholic and she had no problem with evolution or anything. Most Catholics I knew would say either God snapped his finger and created the universe to look like it’s 15 billions years old and we evolved from apes, or he snapped his finger 15 billion years ago and the universe is that old, and we evolved from apes. It wasn’t an important detail for them. Or me.
It sounds like things are getting more conservative than they were 20-30 years ago.
Those girls were at best misinformed (I’m trying to be charitable and avoid the words ‘total idiots’). The Catholic Church is not resistant to the theory of evolution. I was taught it in Biology class by Sister Kendra in the early 1980’s, for example.
I coach debate at a Catholic school and one of the first things I asked- just bc I was genuinely curious- was the church (and school’s) position on evolution. I basically didn’t want to stick my foot in my mouth about some hot button issue, so I thought it’d be better to ask.
But yeah, Catholics are down with the evolution. At the school I work at, the kids get a full scientific education and all the trappings that go along with that. In fact, they actually get a better course study on evolution than I did in my public school bio class.
I think this all goes back to the fact that Catholics aren’t Biblical literalists. Earth wasn’t literally created in a week, blah blah. So, it makes sense they believe in evolution.
I went to Catholic school my whole life and we were taught evolution. We were also taught that the beginning of the Bible was a collection of stories and fables. Either King David or King Solomon sent out scribes to interview the very oldest people they could find and write down their historical stories.
I have heard uneducated Catholics argue against evolution and I have heard somebody say he stopped being Catholic because he believes in evolution. There are *a lot *of people who are Catholic but don’t actually know anything about the religion.
If they’re taught that the Bible is the result of a king sending messengers across the land to hear fables from old citizens, what justification is there for treating it as the word of God?
That’s what I meant by “what’s the point?” If it’s not the word of God at all, then what’s the point?
But the whole point of my post is that Catholics don’t believe that those stories are true. It’s not the whole Bible, it’s the beginning of the Bible: the part up until when the scribes went out.
It is the word of God, as spread by word of mouth and written down and translated a few zillion times by humans, and they’ve got the Pope and the church in general to interpret it.
In my Catholic upbringing, I was taught that the story of creation was a metaphor and that the Old Testament wasn’t literally true, but more of a collection of cultural stories. The attitude about the New Testament was very different, though. THAT stuff was 100% true. :dubious:
Actually, that was Pius XII, in 1950, 60 years ago. He basically took a hands-off position, saying that there was faith and reason, and that they do not conflict.
The last Pope, John Paul II, went further, pretty specifically endorsing evolution, saying “leading us to the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis”.
In fact, my frosh year religion teacher, a Jesuit, taught us more about evolution than our biology teacher the same year. This might just be a sign of a useless biology teacher.
