From July 12 2005 Issue:
Cardinal’s Op-Ed on Evolution Redefines Church’s PositionLast week, Roman Catholic Cardinal Christoph Schnborn penned an op-ed in the New York Times that pulled back from the church’s position on evolution, denying that chance plays any role. “Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true,” he wrote, “but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sensean unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selectionis not.”
Times reporters Cornelia Dean and Laurie Goodstein contacted Schönborn for a follow-up piece. Schönborn told them that his essay had not been approved by the Vatican, but that Pope Benedict XVI had encouraged him to clarify and make explicit the church’s position. He also said that he was “angry” over what he called the misrepresentation of the church’s position as an endorsement of the idea that evolution is a random process.
The Times reported that Schönborn’s essay was submitted by a public relations firm called Creative Response Concepts, which also represents the Discovery Institute, the leading purveyor of “intelligent design.” Mark Ryland, a vice president of the Institute, told the Times that he had encouraged the cardinal to write the essay. Ryland serves on the board of the International Theological Institute, of which Schönborn is the chancellor.
That an influential cardinal struck out at the principle that serves as the foundation for all biology, and did so in collaboration with the Discovery Institute, rankled many scientists of faith. “There is a deep and growing chasm between the scientific and the spiritual worldviews,” said Francis Collins, who led the National Human Genome Research Institute. “To the extent that the cardinal’s essay makes believing scientists less and less comfortable inhabiting the middle ground, it is unfortunate. It makes me uneasy.”
Also in this issue:
Avian Flu Found in Migratory Geese Far from Disease’s Epicenter
Humans May Have Killed Off Big Mammals in Ancient Australia
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