Over the past year, the Vatican has demonstrated a remarkable inability to keep its message straight. In a way, this is a refreshing contrast to the current monomanical executive branch of the U.S.. It’s clear that when it comes to evolution and science, the Vatican is capable of expressing not only a variety of opinions from all levels of its hierarchy, but also demonstrating an often hit-and-miss understanding of science.
Today is the next volley is in the ongoing tennis match that is the Vatican’s public opinion on the teaching of evolution and evolution as a means of achieving an understanding of the universe. The Vatican’s official newspaper contained an article which expressed support not only for evolution as science, but for the recent Dover, PA court ruling that set the record straight on the teaching of non-science in the science classroom [NYT20060118].
The article was written by Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, in the most recent edition of the paper, L’Osservatore Romano. The New York Times article has a few reassuring quotes:
“…it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science,” he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific. “It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious.”
This is an excellent and short way of describing the underlying problem. I couldn’t hope to put it better. While *L’Osservatore Romano* is not the letter of official church policy, it is apparently understood that it basically represents the Church’s views. As the NYT article also points out, this is the latest in a developing series of somewhat contradictory opinions from all levels of the Church [TAOMPH192].
.. [NYT20060118] “In Design vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome, New York Times, Jan. 18, 2006”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/science/sciencespecial2/19evolution.html?ex=1295326800&en=62dc61eb5d27673d&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
.. [TAOMPH192] http://steve.cooleysekula.net/blog/?p=706
