Evolution dispute now set to split Catholic hierarchy

[emad]

Evolution dispute now set to split Catholic hierarchy
By Michael McCarthy
Published: 05 August 2005


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.

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."

His views have provoked alarm among many scientists and liberal Catholics around the world, who thought that Catholicism had come to terms with evolution, and who now see the spectre of creationism rising in the Catholic Church as it has risen among fundamentalist Protestants in the US.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article303775.ece

[Dudley_DUright]

1. As a scientist, all I can say is

amen Father Coyne. :yourock:

[nickinSTL]

2. leave it to a Jesuit to be the voice of reason

n/t