Monday, November 07, 2005

Vatican Sides with Darwin

Since July, when Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna wrote an essay in The New York Times that seemed to support intelligent design, we’ve reported on how the Catholic Church has struggled to clarify its views on evolution vis-à-vis intelligent design. Last month we reported Schönborn’s climb-down, and now comes news from the Vatican itself that evolution, when defined in anti-materialistic terms, has its full support. Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press reports:

A Vatican cardinal said yesterday that the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, and warned that religion risks turning into ''fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, a Frenchman who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a project to help end the ''mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has been an issue for the Roman Catholic Church, and that is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

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