Guest Post by Morbo
In 1857, an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel began experimenting with pea plants in the garden of his monastery. Mendel’s experiments, conducted over the course of several years, laid much of the groundwork for modern genetics.
Flash forward to 2005. Instead of emulating Mendel and celebrating the ability of the human mind to discover things about the natural world (and attributing that amazing ability to God), the Roman Catholic Church is increasingly adopting the anti-science views of fundamentalist Protestants.
The latest blow came last week when Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, described by The New York Times as a “theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI,” published an op-ed piece assailing Darwinian evolution.
Schonborn has bought the “intelligent design” line completely. In his Times column he observed, “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.”
A certain air of arrogance hangs over some members of the clergy. They lack degrees in science, biology or geology yet do not hesitate to flatly state that accepted scientific theories that form of the basis of modern biology, theories formulated by scientists about 50 times smarter than your average religious leader, are wrong. What credentials does Schonborn possess to make such a startling claim?
What’s worse, Schonborn went out of his way to attack Pope John Paul II, who backed the theory of evolution. In one 1996 speech, John Paul called evolution “more than a hypothesis” and made it clear that the theory does not conflict with church teachings.
Schonborn says the late pope’s comments were “rather vague and unimportant.” He called for students in Catholic schools and other institutions to be taught that evolution is just one of many theories of origins.
According to The Times, Schonborn wrote the essay himself, but it has the fingerprints of the Discovery Institute all over it. The Seattle-based Institute, the nation’s leading proponent of “intelligent design” creationism, regarded the column as a coup, with a spokesman telling The Times that it “helps blunt the claims” that the Catholic Church unreservedly backs evolution. The op-ed, in fact, was submitted to The Times on Schonborn’s behalf by a public relations agency that works for the Institute.
Given the Catholic Church’s history in this area, one would think Benedict and the bishops would be wary of popping off on scientific topics they are clearly not qualified to address. They might have been able to pull that off in the Middle Ages; these days it just leads to embarrassment.
Consider the case of Galileo. In 1632, officials with the church’s Inquisition banned Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World — Ptolemaic and Copernican and ordered him to appear before them in Rome.
Galileo was tried, found guilty and sentenced to a type of house arrest for daring to proclaim that the Earth moves around the sun, not the sun around the Earth. Galileo was forced to recant, although he probably did that just to avoid the rack. (A charming story holds that after he recanted, Galileo muttered under his breath, “Eppur si muove” – “Nevertheless it still moves.” Alas, the tale is considered apocryphal.)
Galileo had to watch his step. His next work, Discourses and mathematical demonstrations concerning the two new sciences, had to be smuggled out of Rome and sent to Holland for printing.
It took a while, but the church eventually realized it had made a mistake. On October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II apologized to Galileo — sort of. In an address, the pope conceded that errors had been made by the theological advisors overseeing Galileo’s case. (Talk about an understatement!) He never admitted that the church had been in the wrong but did declare the case against Galileo closed. That’s about as much as you can expect from dogmatic religious leaders these days.
The Catholic Church has always taken pains to distance itself from the ignoramuses of fundamentalism. The church has an intellectual tradition and prides itself on the ability of some of its clergy, notably Jesuits, to defend the faith with arguments that rise above, “We believe it, so it must be true.”
How sad to see some church leaders today siding with the know-nothings. I guess they won’t be happy until everyone who can read and write has been driven out.