Patrick, I'm just going to follow up
what I posted to you in that other thread yesterday and say just a little more about why the Catholic Church would violate its own doctrine if it were to make a statement in support of Creationism and/or Intelligent Design which, contrary to the speculative reports suggesting that the Pope might be moving in this direction, was never in the cards. And it really does reflect what VictoryGal said when she remembered she learned in Catholic School that
science is the way we understand the genius workings of God, something doc30 and Vaquero have applauded her for posting. I want to add my own voice in support of VictoryGal here, because I specifically remember learning in my Catechism classes -- I went to public schools -- that I should
never fear what science might produce because science was of the material world and was therefore limited in what it has to offer mankind and that it can never bring humanity to an understanding of God.
Though we have seen no official statement coming out of this seminar -- it seems that its participants will post papers on their own -- it should have been obvious from the beginning to anyone who has read Pope John Paul II's "
Truth Cannot Contradict Truth" address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in November, 1996 that the focus of the Catholic Church when dealing with the Theory of Evolution would be to delineate the separation between distinct epistemological lines of inquiry as they relate to the Theory of Evolution; and especially with the impossibility of establishing a transition from Materialism to Theology based upon observations of material phenomena. In the Catholic view, it is only through Theology, the highest form of
Metaphysical philosophy, that we can even begin to approach an understanding of God. As a scientific pursuit, the Theory of Evolution is entirely within
Materialistic inquiry, which does not offer anything in the way of approaching God. This is where Intelligent Design runs directly contrary to Catholic Doctrine because it holds, and quite falsely in my opinion, that there is scientific evidence which proves the
physical intervention of a
designer, who is generally considered to be God. If Intelligent Design were to be supported by the Catholic Church it would represent a departure from its doctrinal assertion that evidence for the existence of God cannot be inferred from observation of specific phenomena because that would represent a transition from and linkage between materialistic inquiry and Theology. Pope John Paul II was very clear on this point when he stated
the sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation ("Truth Cannot Contradict Truth," part 6). So the possibility that Intelligent Design could have been endorsed by the Catholic Church was a dead issue even before the inquiry began.
But going back to VictoryGal's statement that
science is the way we understand the genius workings of God, it is possible for Roman Catholics to look at the wondrous and systemic harmony in nature as evidence of a
Divine Causality which is removed from any direct intervention in the workings of the natural order, and includes within it the
contingent materialistic processes upon which the Theory of Evolution relies for its scientific justification. I'm going to quote the
Vatican web site document Patrick was kind enough to link me to yesterday to illustrate this point, excerpted from paragraph 69:
. . . The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. . . . it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. . . .
This is why most Roman Catholics who have been schooled in the religious traditions of the Church do not fear the debate over the Theory of Evolution, Abiogenesis, and the Biblical story of creation. We still see the wondrous hand of Divine Causality at work even as scientific evidence supporting evolution and abiogenesis is advanced because there is no conflict between a truly contingent natural process and God's divine plan.