holmes vatican quote writes:
An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith.The cardinal, Christoph Schnborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."
This is where I get somewhat confused. It seems to me that evolutionary theory states simply that we have evolved over time from basic life forms. This has happened primarily because of genetic mutations. As I understand it in the most simplistic of terminology that is evolutionary theory.
The question of how those mutations occurred is not part of Darwinism, once again, as I understand it. The question of whether the mutations occurred by a "an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection", or whether there is an "Intelligent Designer" manipulating these mutations would, as I see it be another question entirely, and frankly, I can't see why science would have any position on that.
My guess is this isn't a change in the position of the Catholic Church at all. If some evolutionists have extended something beyond what Darwin said so that Darwinism has become Atheistic instead of Agnostic then obviously the Catholic Church won't agree. It sounds to me as if the Catholic Church still supports theistic evolution but not atheistic evolution, which is something of a no-brainer.
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