{"id":1595,"date":"2006-05-31T01:15:19","date_gmt":"2006-05-31T01:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html"},"modified":"2006-05-31T01:15:19","modified_gmt":"2006-05-31T01:15:19","slug":"darwins-divisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html","title":{"rendered":"Darwin’s Divisions"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the June issue of Touchstone, an article on recent statements about evolution, etc. from various Catholic luminaries:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

In a telephone interview given after the Times<\/em> article appeared, Sch\u00f6nborn said that although his article had not been vetted by the Vatican, he had spoken with Ratzinger a few weeks before his elevation to the papacy about what he perceived to be misrepresentations of the church\u2019s views on evolution, and the future pope had encouraged him to work to set the record straight.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Sch\u00f6nborn admitted that he was angered by those who taught that neo-Darwinian evolution was compatible with the Catholic faith. \u201cEvolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense\u2014an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection\u2014is not.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the cardinal was angry at the misrepresentations of John Paul\u2019s and Benedict\u2019s thought, the head of the Vatican Observatory, Father George Coyne, S.J., was livid at the cardinal\u2019s intervention. In an essay, \u201cGod\u2019s chance creation,\u201d published in the English Catholic magazine The Tablet<\/em> in early August, he accused the cardinal of muddying the already \u201cmurky waters of the rapport between the Church and science\u201d by attacking the \u201cbest of modern science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coyne conjured up the ghost of the Galileo case as an example of what he meant by incompetent handling of the relation between the church and science. In the case of evolution, he thought that Communion and Stewardship<\/em> was a step in the right direction. Sch\u00f6nborn\u2019s piece, on the other hand, put the church on a collision course with science once again.<\/p>\n

To work towards avoiding unnecessary antagonism is laudable, but there are two serious problems with Coyne\u2019s analysis. First, he is wrong in thinking that Sch\u00f6nborn\u2019s op-ed piece was at odds with John Paul II and the International Theological Commission. Second, he claims that science is neutral with regard to religion, but then blatantly contradicts himself when he says that the results of modern science make it necessary to adjust our concepts of divine omniscience and omnipotence. Coyne is neither a careful reader of texts, nor a coherent philosopher.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At First Things, Stephen Barr elaborates on and responds to Hilbert’s piece.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the June issue of Touchstone, an article on recent statements about evolution, etc. from various Catholic luminaries: In a telephone interview given after the Times article appeared, Sch\u00f6nborn said that although his article had not been vetted by the Vatican, he had spoken with Ratzinger a few weeks before his elevation to the papacy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDarwin's Divisions - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Darwin's Divisions - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From the June issue of Touchstone, an article on recent statements about evolution, etc. from various Catholic luminaries: In a telephone interview given after the Times article appeared, Sch\u00f6nborn said that although his article had not been vetted by the Vatican, he had spoken with Ratzinger a few weeks before his elevation to the papacy…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-05-31T01:15:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Darwin's Divisions - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Darwin's Divisions - Via Media","og_description":"From the June issue of Touchstone, an article on recent statements about evolution, etc. from various Catholic luminaries: In a telephone interview given after the Times article appeared, Sch\u00f6nborn said that although his article had not been vetted by the Vatican, he had spoken with Ratzinger a few weeks before his elevation to the papacy…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-05-31T01:15:19+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html","name":"Darwin's Divisions - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-05-31T01:15:19+00:00","dateModified":"2006-05-31T01:15:19+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/darwins-divisions.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Darwin’s Divisions"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}