The Pope' comments are not out of character or different than his positions before he became Pope. Science is not incompatible with Christian faith. He says that scientific processes are among the creations of God. Their perfection is a reflection of their Creator and the wonder of their complexity, with every new discovery, a testament to their author. He states that the Bible is not intended to be a science text book seeking to answer how God created the universe. It is a declaration that He created it and an explanation why.
In his 1986 Commentary on Genesis; "In the Beginning..." then Cardinal Ratzinger said;
"These words, with which Holy Scripture begins, always have the effect on me of the solemn tolling of a great old bell, which stirs the heart from afar with its beauty and dignity and gives it an inkling of the mystery of eternity. For many of us, moreover, these words recall the memory of our first encounter with God's holy book, the Bible, which was opened for us at this spot. It at once brought us out of our small child's world, captivated us with its poetry, and gave us a feeling for the immeasurability of creation and its Creator.
Yet these words give rise to a certain conflict. They are beautiful and familiar, but are they also true? Everything seems to speak against it, for science has long since disposed of the concepts that we have just now heard -- the idea of a world that is completely comprehensible in terms of space and time, and the idea that creation was built up piece by piece over the course of seven [or six] days. Instead of this we now face measurements that transcend all comprehension. Today we hear of the Big Bang, which happened billions of years ago and with which the universe began its expansion -- an expansion that continues to occur without interruption. And it was not in neat succession that the stars were hung and the green of the fields created; it was rather in complex ways and over vast periods of time that the earth and the universe were constructed as we now know them.
Do these words, then, count for anything? In fact a theologian said not long ago that creation has now become an "unreal" concept; that if one is to be intellectually honest one ought to speak no longer of creation but rather of "mutation and selection." Are these words true? Or have they perhaps, along with the entire Word of God and the whole biblical tradition, come out of the reveries of the infant age of human history, for which we occasionally experience homesickness but to which we can nevertheless not return, inasmuch as we cannot live on nostalgia? Is there an answer to this that we can claim for ourselves in this day and age?
Difference Between Form and Content
One answer was already worked out some time ago, as the scientific view of the world was gradually crystallizing; many of you probably came across it in your religious instruction. It says that the Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such. It is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it. One cannot get from it a scientific explanation of how the world arose; one can only glean religious experience from it. Anything else is an image and a way of describing things whose aim is to make profound realities graspable to human beings. One must distinguish between the form of portrayal and the content that is portrayed. The form would have been chosen from what was understandable at the time -- from the images which surrounded the people who lived then, which they used in speaking and in thinking, and thanks to which they were able to understand the greater realities. And only the reality that shines through these images would be what was intended and what was truly enduring. Thus Scripture would not wish to inform us about how the different species of plant life gradually appeared or how the sun and the moon and the stars were established. Its purpose ultimately would be to say one thing: God created the world.
1)"Creation," properly defined, has nothing to do with natural laws, natural processes, or how a theoretically tiny speck exploded to the size of the universe today. None of this is creation. Creation refers to ex-nihilation--the coming into being of reality (including scientific laws and processes) from absolute nothingness. As such, it is inherently inexplicable by scientific, natural means. Where did anyone ever get the idea that the explosion of a speck to an immense size had anything whatsoever to do with "creation???"
2)Everything recorded in the first eleven chapters of Genesis is just as plausible as any and all other events recorded in either the Hebrew Bible or the "new testament." To dismiss the creation of the first man as an adult directly by G-d by appealing to the birth process we observe today while insisting that J*sus' birth was unique and miraculous in contravention of those same observable laws is the height of hypocrisy, inconsistency, and irrationality. The only excuse for this war against the first eleven chapters of Genesis by people who profess to believe in every miracle or alleged miracle that has occurred since that time is sheer unadulterated sociological bigotry: "we don't believe that because that's what that white trash in the trailer parks believe."