Vatican Astronomer Contradicts Cardinal’s Support of Catholic Teaching on Evolution

Darwinian foundation to today’s scientific and medical ethics, de-populationists, eugenicists

ROME, August 8, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In recent weeks, a highly placed Vatican Cardinal rattled the liberal media establishment by making statements to the effect that the Church cannot accept an essentially atheistic understanding of evolution. Christoph Cardinal Schonborn wrote in the New York Times that the neo-Darwinian understanding of evolution, that of random mutations and development of species, is incompatible with belief in the Christian God.

Now the UK’s liberal Catholic magazine, the Tablet, has run an article by a priest astronomer, the director of the Vatican Observatory, who takes Schonborn to task for his defence of the Catholic understanding of who God is. George Coyne, a liberal Jesuit, has attempted to refute Schonborn and in doing so, has revealed the foundational bias of his – and the media’s – secularist mindset.

In his article, Schonborn wrote that the “defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.”

The mainstream media and the overwhelmingly secularist scientific community responded with howls of outrage. Particularly vexing to them was the Cardinal’s refutation of the popular misconception that in 1996, John Paul II had changed the Church’s stand to allow for Darwin’s theory that mere chance, not God, guides the development of life.

Schonborn said the “defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.”

“This,” the Cardinal says bluntly, “is not true.”

The rest