Ed,
Reading your last paragraph I don't know if you are being rhetorical
(saying Catholicism accepts Evolution) or asking a real question. I
frankly have spent the bulk of my theological efforts in Protestant
rather than Catholic theology. But if one looks at a Wikipedia overview
of the subject,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution and moves
down toward the bottom one gets Wiki's opinion of the most recent
official views of he Catholic Church which strike me as rather complex
and not completely digested by the laity:
Lawrence
The /Catechism of the Catholic Church
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechism_of_the_Catholic_Church>/ (1994,
revised 1997) on faith, evolution and science states:
159. Faith and science: "... methodical research in all branches of
knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner
and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith,
because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from
the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets
of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of
himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them
what they are." (Vatican II GS 36:1)
283. The question about the origins of the world and of man has been
the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched
our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the
development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These
discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness
of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works
and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and
researchers....
284. The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly
stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the
proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of
knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man
appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin....
Paragraph 283 has been noted as making a positive comment regarding the
theory of evolution, with the clarification that "many scientific
studies" that have enriched knowledge of "the development of life-forms
and the appearance of man" refers to mainstream science and not to
"creation science
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_science>".^[68]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-68>
Concerning the doctrine on creation, Ludwig Ott in his /Fundamentals of
Catholic Dogma/ identifies the following points as essential beliefs of
the Catholic faith ("De Fide"):^[69]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-69>
* All that exists outside God was, in its whole substance, produced
out of nothing by God.
* God was moved by His Goodness to create the world.
* The world was created for the Glorification of God.
* The Three Divine Persons are one single, common Principle of the
Creation.
* God created the world free from exterior compulsion and inner necessity.
* God has created a good world.
* The world had a beginning in time.
* God alone created the world.
* God keeps all created things in existence.
* God, through His Providence, protects and guides all that He has
created.
Unofficial Catholic organizations[edit
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Catholic_Church_and_evolution&action=edit§ion=11>]
See also: List of Catholic creationist organisations
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_creationist_organisations>
There have been several organizations composed of Catholic laity and
clergy which have advocated positions both supporting evolution and
opposed to evolution, as well as individual figures such as Bruce
Chapman <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Chapman>. For example:
* The Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation
<http://www.kolbecenter.org/> operates out of Mt. Jackson, Virginia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Jackson,_Virginia> and is a
Catholic lay apostolate promoting creationism.^[70]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-70>
* The "Faith Movement
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Faith_Movement&action=edit&redlink=1>",^[71]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-71>
was founded by Catholic priests Fr. Edward Holloway and Fr. Roger
Nesbitt in Surrey, England
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrey,_England>^[72]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-72>
and "argues from Evolution as a fact, that the whole process would
be impossible without the existence of the Supreme Mind we call
God."^[73]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-73>
* The "Daylight Origins Society
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_Origins_Society>" was
founded in 1971 by John G. Campbell (d.1983) as the "Counter
Evolution Group". Its goal is "to inform Catholics and others of the
scientific evidence supporting Special Creation as opposed to
Evolution, and that the true discoveries of Science are in
conformity with Catholic doctrines." It publishes the "Daylight"
newsletter.^[74]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-74>
* The Center for Science and Culture
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_and_Culture> of
the Discovery Institute
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute> was founded, in
part, by Catholic biochemist Michael Behe
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe>, who is currently a
senior fellow at the Center.^[75]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-William_A._Dembski-75>
^[76]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-Andrew_J._Petto.2C_Laurie_R._Godfrey-76>
There are many Catholic organizations who gain insight into the relation
between Catholic faith and evolution theory from the writings of Fr.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin>
S.J.^[/citation needed
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed>/] Despite
occasional objections to aspects of his thought, Teilhard was never
condemned by the magisterial church.^[77]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-77>
^[78]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-78>
^[79]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-79>
The website "catholic.net", successor to the "Catholic Information
Center on the Internet", sometimes features polemics against
evolution.^[80]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-80>
Many "traditionalist" organizations are also opposed to evolution, see
e.g. the theological journal /Living Tradition/.^[81]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#cite_note-81>
On 8/7/2015 10:18 AM, Edward Farrell wrote:
Re: [lit-ideas] Matthew Arnold and the loss of faith Lawrence,
"Whining" may be unfair. But in spite of some nice imagery, "Dover Beach" has rhetorical harmonics that prevent me from feeling its angst too keenly. The angst seems a bit stagey. It's too snug and there's no fear of God in it, only a sort of wistfulness for a "faith" that is portrayed more like a season of weather than a foundation of life. See D. H. Lawrence's "Abysmal Immortality" or "The Hands of God" for real primaeval angst and terror of God (or rather Godlessness). For modern man everything is a mirror of self and Lawrence's vision of the abyss rings particularly true because, contra Nietzsche, when you stare into it it doesn't look back.
The language of the secular/christian culture wars have almost totally been within the "hows" of science and not the "whys" of Christian salvation/right action. Yes, this has resulted in some general idiocy. From the Christian side you mention literal interpretations of Genesis offered up to counter the theory of evolution, as if they were speaking the same language. But from the science side we see things like this interview between Nick Pollard and Richard Dawkins:
POLLARD: [...] if I asked, "Why is that kettle boiling?" we
could talk in terms of the processes or we could consider
another meaning of 'why', which is to do with purpose. The
reason it's boiling is because your wife Lalla put the
kettle on to make a cup of tea.
DAWKINS: Yes. I'm not impressed, because the explanation
that somebody switched on the kettle and had a purpose in
doing so simply is not a different kind of explanation. It's
just a more complicated problem that we now have to solve.
We now have to go and look at her brain and ask what it is
that made her want to switch the kettle on. And that takes
us back to the workings of her brain, to why she has a brain
in the first place, which gets us back to evolution. There's
a whole cascade of similar explanations.
This just kills me. Could the water be boiling because your spouse wanted to make some tea? No, according to Dawkins. That line of thought would tell us nothing the about the electro-chemical state of the spouse's brain cells prior to the contraction of muscle that put the pot on the stove; only along such lines of investigation would a true answer lie. How wonderfully obtuse we would become if somehow we could manage to eschew our normal modes of perception and conduct our thinking habitually along these lines.
Now Dawkins probably does not conduct his daily life much differently from anyone else, and within the context of a particular scientific investigation he may be right that an "intention" can and must be reduced to simpler parts to be properly understood. But to categorically disallow "purpose" from the realm of the explanatory forces us from the human realm into the land of "technique" (here seen specifically in Jacques Ellul's coinage) where real freedom of thought has no purchase. Many so-called "evolutionary" explanations of behavior are like this. Evolution is an idea that can have a very specific meaning only with the context of scientific investigation and has great fuzziness outside of it. The Alfred L. Kroeber bemoaned the effect of this on anthropology as long ago as 1923:
"What has greatly influenced anthropology, mainly to its
damage, has not been Darwinism, but the vague idea of
evolution, to the organic aspect of which Darwin gave such
substance that the whole group of evolutionistic ideas has
luxuriated rankly ever since."
Certainly this is true in the secular/Christian culture wars. For most of the secular world who are not scientists, evolution is the definitive, scientific model of the natural world that killed God once and for all. Christian fundamentalists see it the same way, without the killing of course, and have long equated it with atheism. Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, calls evolution a fact. Does this mean that they don't believe God created the universe, or that He didn't create man in his own image? Of course not. So what DOES it mean?
Ed
