Angry in the Great White North

From the Independent:

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.

Personally, I think Michael McCarthy is exaggerating. The issue is complex, and emotions might run high, but the idea that this has "explosive implications" is just a bit over the top.

Neither Cardinal is denying the role of God is Creation. They are arguing on whether a particular scientific description of evolution is compatible with Church teaching.

In this corner, Cardinal Shönborn:

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."

And in the oppposite corner, Fr. Coyne:

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 what it's worth, I think Cardinal Shönborn is in over his head and is exceeding his own personal and the Church's institutional competence by trying to choose one interpretation of evolution over another. I believe Fr. Coyne, a professor in the University of Arizona astronomy department and director of the Vatican Observatory (a scientific institution sponsored by the Holy See), has the right of this one.

Fr. Coyne is supported by Nicola Cabibbo, president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a 78-member body of academics who advise the pope on scientific matters. Cabibbo is a professor of particle physics at Rome’s La Sapienza University:

Cabbibo said he would call evolution “self-directed” rather than “undirected.” The point is that random genetic mutation, coupled with natural selection, does not require anything external to direct the process.

This does not exclude, Cabibbo said, the faith conviction that God arranged things this way.

“As a scientist, what I can say is this: If the will of God was to create man, he certainly organized things in a beautiful way to do it,” Cabibbo said.

But like all things in life, there are other issues at play. A priest giving a cardinal a dressing down in public is quite the sight (though it is known that Fr. Coyne privately wrote to Cardinal Shönborn and to the Pope with his concerns).

Coyne is a Jesuit, and Shönborn a Dominican. Rivalries matter.

Cardinal Shönborn seems to be uncomfortable with something that Pope John Paul II felt was quite acceptable for Catholics, and clearly undeniable based on the evidence:

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.

In fact, as early as 1950, in the encyclical Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII signaled the acceptance of the basic principles of evolution.

But what matters now is what the new Pope will say:

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.

On the other hand, as Cardinal Ratzinger, the Pope had already written on the role of randomness in God's design:

The debate between evolution and intelligent design, the document [“Communion and Stewardship”] notes in paragraph 69, “involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology.”

“But it is important to note,” it says, “that according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. … Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation.”

For the Church, the issue is not if God arranged evolution to work in a random way, but how some would use that to argue that this is proof that there is no God. The Church, in the persons of Coyne and Cabibbo (and apparently the Pope), argues that this is an unjustified leap. Fr. Takayanagi steps up to add his words to this debate:

“There’s quite a strong element in the natural sciences who simply don’t approve of any transcendental cause as a matter of philosophy,” said Jesuit Fr. Shun ichi Takayanagi of Sophia University in Tokyo.

“That doesn’t mean, however, that evolution as such is incompatible with Christianity,” Takayanagi said in a July 17 phone interview. “We are not against evolution as such, but the materialist use of evolutionary theory.”

Indeed, the real problem is for theology and science to respect the boundaries:

In the end, Cabibbo argued, the trick is for both scientists and theologians to respect the limits of their competence.

“We know that God wanted to create man by revelation,” Cabibbo said, “but we don’t know how he did it. This is what science attempts to explain. There should be no clash between science and religion, because they do different things.”