by Doug Linder (2004)
"Big Bang
theories become a problem for Catholic theology only when they consider “the
moment of creation.” That, at least, is what Pope John Paul
allegedly told Stephen Hawking and other physicists during an audience that
followed a papal scientific conference on cosmology. (Some
scientists dispute Hawking's account, and say that the Pope suggested no
limitations on their inquiry.) The Pope told the physicists they should not
inquire into the Big Bang itself because that was “the work of God.” Stephen
W. Hawking, in his “A Brief
History of Time”, reported that he was among those physicists whom the
Pope privately addressed. He wrote:
"I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference—the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation."
The relationship between the papacy and scientists has
sometimes—just ask Galileo—been testy. Interestingly, however, the
Catholic Church has largely sat out the cultural battle over the teaching of
evolution. One of the reasons Catholics have remained largely on
the sidelines is the well-established system of parochial schools in the
United States, which make state laws relating to the public school curriculum
of much less concern to Catholic clergy and parents than to Protestant clergy
and parents. A second reason is that the Catholic Church, at least
in the twentieth century, takes a more flexible approach to the interpreting
Genesis than do several Protestant denominations.
H. L. Mencken expressed admiration for how Catholics
handled the evolution issue:
[The advantage of Catholics] lies in the simple fact that
they do not have to decide either for Evolution or against
it. Authority has not spoken on the subject; hence it puts no
burden upon conscience, and may be discussed realistically and without
prejudice. A certain wariness, of course, is
necessary. I say that authority has not spoken; it may, however,
speak tomorrow, and so the prudent man remembers his step. But in
the meanwhile there is nothing to prevent him examining all available facts,
and even offering arguments in support of them or against them—so long as
those arguments are not presented as dogma. (STJ, 163)
A majority of American Catholics probably sided with the
prosecution in the Scopes trial, but—with one notable exception, defense
attorney Dudley Field Malone—all the major participants in the controversy,
from the author of the Butler Act, to the defendant, the judge, the jury, and
the lawyers were either members of Protestant churches or were
non-churchgoers. Catholics tended to be viewed with some
skepticism in Dayton; local prosecutor Sue Hicks discouraged William
Jennings Bryan’s suggestion that Senator T. J. Walsh of Montana, a Roman
Catholic, be added to the prosecution team. (SOG,
131-32) The Catholic Press Association did take enough interest in
the case, however, to send a top correspondent to Dayton to cover
the trial for diocesan newspapers. Writing from Tennessee,
reporter Benedict Elder wrote, “Although as Catholics we do not go quite as
far as Mr. Bryan on the Bible, we do want it preserved.” (SOG,
127)
Pope Pius XII, a deeply conservative man, directly
addressed the issue of evolution in a 1950 encyclical, Humani Generis. The
document makes plain the pope’s fervent hope that evolution will prove to be
a passing scientific fad, and it attacks those persons who “imprudently and
indiscreetly hold that evolution …explains the origin of all
things.” Nonetheless, Pius XII states that nothing in Catholic
doctrine is contradicted by a theory that suggests one specie might evolve
into another—even if that specie is man. The Pope declared:
"The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that,
in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology,
research and discussions, on the part of men experiences in both fields, take
place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into
the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living
matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately
created by God."
In other words, the Pope could live with evolution, so long
as the process of “ensouling” humans was left to God. (He also
insisted on a role for Adam, whom he believed committed a sin— mysteriously
passed along through the “doctrine of original sin”—that has affected all
subsequent generations.) Pius XII cautioned, however, that he considered the
jury still out on the question of evolution’s validity. It should
not be accepted, without more evidence, “as though it were a certain proven
doctrine.” (ROA, 81)
Pope John Paul II revisited the question of evolution in a
1996 message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Unlike
Pius XII, John Paul is broadly read, and embraces science and
reason. He won the respect of many scientists in 1993, when in
April 1993 he formally acquitted Galileo, 360 years after his indictment, of
heretical support for Copernicus’s heliocentrism. The pontiff
began his statement with the hope that “we will all be able to profit from
the fruitfulness of a trustful dialogue between the Church and
science.” Evolution, he said, is “an essential subject which
deeply interests the Church.” He recognized that science and
Scripture sometimes have “apparent contradictions,” but said that when this
is the case, a “solution” must be found because “truth cannot contradict
truth.” The Pope pointed to the Church’s coming to terms with
Galileo’s discoveries concerning the nature of the solar system as an example
of how science might inspire the Church to seek a new and “correct interpretation
of the inspired word.”
When the pope came to the subject of the scientific merits
of evolution, it soon became clear how much things had changed in the nearly
fifty years since the Vatican last addressed the issue. John
Paul said:
"Today, almost half a century after publication of the
encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of
evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that
this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series
of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence,
neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted
independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of the theory."
Evolution, a doctrine that Pius XII only acknowledged as an
unfortunate possibility, John Paul accepts forty-six years later “as an
effectively proven fact.” (ROA, 82)
The “faulty translation” theory, however, suffered at least
two problems. Most obviously, the theory collapsed when the
Catholic News Service of the Vatican confirmed that the Pope did indeed
mean “more than a hypothesis,” not “more than one hypothesis.” The
other problem stemmed from a reading of the passage in more complete
context. In the speech, the Pope makes clear in his speech that he
understood the difference between evolution (the highly probable fact) and
the mechanism for evolution, a matter of hot dispute among
scientists. John Paul said, “And, to tell the truth, rather than
the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of
evolution.” He recognized that there were “different explanations
advanced for the mechanism of evolution” and different “philosophies” upon
which the theory of evolution is based. The philosophy out of
bounds to Catholics, the pope indicated, is one which is “materialist” and
which denies the possibility that man “was created in the image and likeness
of God.” Human dignity, the pope suggested, cannot be reconciled
with such a “reductionist” philosophy. Thus, as with Pius XII, the
critical teaching of the Church is that God infuses souls into man—regardless
of what process he might have used to create our physical
bodies. Science, the Pope insisted, can never identify for us “the
moment of the transition into the spiritual”—that is a matter exclusively
with the magesterium of religion.
Most scientists would be content to let Pius and John Paul
have their “ensoulment” theory and walk away happy. Not Richard
Dawkins, however. In an essay on the Pope’s evolution message
called “You Can’t Have it Both Ways” the controversy-loving biologist accused
Pope John Paul of “casuistical double-talk” and
“obscurantism.” (SAR, 209) Dawkins took issue with the
Pope’s declaring off-limits theories suggesting that the human mind is an
evolutionary product. In his address the Pope said: "[I]f the human
body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is
immediately created by God…Consequently, theories of evolution which…consider
the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere
epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about
man."
In his essay, Dawkins paraphrased the Pope’s
statement: “In plain language, there came a moment in the
evolution of hominids when God intervened and injected a human soul into a
previously animal lineage.” Dawkins expresses mock curiosity as to
when God jumped into the evolution picture: “When? A million years
ago? Two million years ago? Between Homo
erectus and Homo sapiens? Between
‘archaic’ Homo sapiens and H. sapiens sapiens?” Clearly,
Dawkins finds the divine intervention implausible. He suggests
that the ensoulment theory becomes a necessary part of Catholic theology in
order to sustain the important distinction between species in Catholic
morality. It is fine for a Catholic to eat meat, Dawkins notes,
but “abortion and euthanasia are murder because human life
is involved.”
Dawkins contends that evolution tells us that there is no
“great gulf between Homo sapiens and the rest of the animal
kingdom.” The Pope’s insistence to the contrary is, in the
biologist’s opinion, “an antievolutionary intrusion into the domain of
science.”
Dawkins makes no secret of his distain for the distinction
so critical to the Pope John Paul’s 1996 speech on evolution:
"I suppose it is gratifying to have the pope as an ally in
the struggle against fundamentalist creationism. It is certainly
amusing to see the rug pulled out from under the feet of Catholic
creationists such as Michael Behe. Even so, given a choice between
honest-to-goodness fundamentalism on the one hand, and the obscurantist,
disingenuous doublethink of the Roman Catholic Church on the other, I know
which I prefer." (SAR, 211)
Popes have had considerably less to say recently on the
subject of the origin of the universe than they have on the subject of human
origins. In 1951, interestingly, Pius XII (who so grudgingly
acknowledged the possibility of evolution) celebrated news from the world of
science that the universe might have been created in a Big Bang. (The
term, first employed by astronomer Fred Hoyle was meant to be derisive, but
it stuck.) In a speech before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
he offered an enthusiastic endorsement of the theory: "…it would seem
that present-day science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has
succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux
[Let there be Light], when along with matter, there burst forth from nothing
a sea of light and radiation, and the elements split and churned and formed
into millions of galaxies." (ME, 254-55)
But the Pope didn’t stop there. He went on to
express the surprising conclusion that the Big Bang proved the existence of
God:
"Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of
physical proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and
also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world came forth
from the hands of the Creator. Hence, creation took
place. We say: therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore, God
exists!"
The man who laid the groundwork for the Big Bang theory,
astronomer Edwin Hubble, received a letter from a friend asking whether the
Pope’s announcement might qualify him for “sainthood.” The friend
enthused that until he read the statement in the morning’s paper, “I had not
dreamed that the Pope would have to fall back on you for proof of the
existence of God.” (ME, 255)
Other people, including Belgian astronomer Georges Lamaître
and the Vatican’s science advisor, had a different reaction. They
understood that the Big Bang in 1951 remained very much a contested theory
and worried what might be the effect if the Pope pinned the Catholic faith
too much on its proving true. They spoke privately to the Pope
about their concerns, and the Pope never brought up the topic again in
public.
Big Bang theories become a problem for Catholic theology
only when they consider “the moment of creation.” That, at least,
is what Pope John Paul allegedly told Stephen Hawking and other physicists
during an audience that followed a papal scientific conference on
cosmology. (Some scientists dispute Hawking's account, and say
that the Pope suggested no limitations on their inquiry.) The Pope told the
physicists they should not inquire into the Big Bang itself because that was
“the work of God.” Stephen W. Hawking, in his A Brief
History of Time, reported that he was among those physicists whom the
Pope privately addressed. He wrote:
"I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the
talk I had just given at the conference—the possibility that space-time was
finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment
of Creation."
notes:
SOG= Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson (1997) SAR= Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? (edited by Paul Kurtz)(2003) ROA=Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen J. Gould (1999) STJ= H. L. Mencken on Religion by S. T. Joshi (2002) ME= Measuring Eternity by Martin Gorst (2001) |
—umkc.edu
More errors of
Pius XII on another issue: Liturgical Revolution: The New Mass just was the final stage of a long process
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