The Catholic Church and Evolution

By Awake! correspondent in Italy

ON April 26, 1882, the funeral of Charles Darwin was held in Westminster Abbey, London. A church may seem to some to have been the most inappropriate place to bury the man accused of ‘dethroning God’ with his evolutionary theory of natural selection. Yet, Darwin’s tomb has been there for more than a century.

After Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859, the attitude of theologians gradually changed toward evolution. Theologian Carlo Molari wrote of how a phase of “open warfare” gave way to a “cease-fire” early in this century. Then, he said, there was an “armistice” in the mid-1900’s and finally the present-day “peace.”

Prior to Darwin

The idea of evolution, of course, was not initiated by Darwin. Ancient philosophers had theorized about the transformation of one form of life into another. The first modern evolutionist theses are traceable to a number of 18th-century naturalists.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, many scholars advanced different evolutionary theories, even though the word “evolution” rarely appeared. Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), aired a number of evolutionary ideas in one of his works, and that work was listed in the Catholic Church’s index of prohibited books.

Why “Open Warfare” Developed

Some in the secular world saw in Darwin’s theory a useful instrument to weaken the power of the clergy. So a fierce battle exploded. In 1860 the German bishops affirmed: “Our predecessors were immediately created by God. We thus declare entirely contrary to Holy Scripture and Faith the judgment of those who dare assert that man, as far as his body is concerned, derives from an imperfect nature by spontaneous transformation.”

Similarly, in May 1877, Pope Pius IX praised the French physician Constantin James for a publication against evolution and in support of the Genesis account of creation. The first phase of the conflict reached a climax with a series of letters published by the Pontifical Biblical Commission between 1905 and 1909. In one of these, the commission declared that the first three chapters of Genesis are historical and should be understood as “actual history.”

“Cease-Fire” and “Armistice”

Yet, as the prestige of Darwin’s theory grew in academic circles, Catholic theologians, such as French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, began to convert to evolutionism. Though Teilhard’s ideas differed from those of orthodox evolutionists, from 1921 on he considered “biological evolution . . . more and more certain as to its reality.” The drift toward conciliation between the Catholic faith and evolutionism became increasingly pronounced.

In 1948 another Jesuit stated: “For more than 20 years, there has been a singular increase in the number of theologians, above all suspicion when it comes to orthodoxy, who declare conciliation [between evolution and the Catholic faith] possible if confined within certain limits.” About the same time, the Pontifical Biblical Commission retracted much of what it had written in 1909 in support of the Genesis account of creation.

Then, in 1950, Pius XII’s encyclical letter, Humani generis, said that Catholic scholars could consider the theory of evolution to be a plausible hypothesis. Yet, the pope said: “Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.”

Why the So-Called Peace?

Carlo Molari notes that, with few exceptions, since the ecumenical council Vatican II, “reservations about evolutionary theories have been definitively surmounted.” Significantly, in October 1996, Pope John Paul II declared: “Today, almost half a century after the publication of [Pius XII’s] encyclical, new knowledge leads us to recognize that the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers.”

Historian Lucio Villari called the pope’s statement a “decisive admission.” A headline in the conservative Italian newspaper Il Giornale read: “The Pope Says We May Descend From Monkeys.” And Time magazine concluded that the pope’s admission “reflects the church’s acceptance of evolution.”

What is the reason for what has been called “this more or less condescending orientation toward evolutionism” on the part of Catholic leaders? Why has the Roman Catholic Church made peace with the teaching of evolution?

It is clear that many Catholic theologians consider the Bible to be “the word of men,” not “the word of God.” (1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 3:16, 17) The Catholic Church gives more weight to the word of modern evolutionists than to that of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who confirmed the Genesis account of creation as accurate by saying: “Did you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” (Matthew 19:4) Whose opinion do you consider to be deserving of more weight?

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Jehovah’s Witnesses and Evolution

Jehovah’s Witnesses have consistently upheld Christ’s teaching that God directly created the first human couple and “made them male and female.” (Matthew 19:4; Genesis 1:27; 2:24) In 1886, Volume I of Millennial Dawn (later called Studies in the Scriptures) referred to Darwinism as “an untenable theory,” and in 1898, the booklet The Bible Versus the Evolution Theory upheld the Bible’s creation account. The Bible’s creation account was also championed in the books The New Creation (1904) and Creation (1927) as well as in early articles published in The Watch Tower and The Golden Age.

At the time Pope Pius XII promulgated his encyclical letter Humani generis, in 1950, Jehovah’s Witnesses were publishing Evolution Versus the New World. This booklet contains scientific and historical proof of the Bible’s account of creation and denounces attempts by some clergymen to make “an alliance between evolution and the Bible.” The book Did Man Get Here by Evolution or by Creation? (1967) also upholds the Bible’s creation account, as do the book Life—How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?, published in 1985, and numerous articles published in The Watchtower and Awake!

Thus many have been helped by Jehovah’s Witnesses to become acquainted with the overwhelming evidence that it is God “that has made us, and not we ourselves.”—Psalm 100:3.