By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
The question of how evolution should be handled in Catholic schools and by Catholic parents continues to be an issue. Pope Francis offered some comments recently to those who feel there is no reason for Catholics to defend a literal interpretation of Genesis. Speaking at an unveiling of a statue of Pope Benedict XVI at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope stated flatly that evolution and the Big Bang theory are “not incompatible” with the Church’s teachings on the origins of the universe and human life:
“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine Creator, but, rather, requires it. Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Francis went on to say that God should not be seen as a “magician with a magic wand able to do everything.” Rather, “God created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that He gave to each one so that they would reach their fulfillment.”
I do not know if my experience is typical, but this is the understanding of the Book of Genesis that I have been taught since I was in high school in the Bronx in the 1950s. The Marist Brothers who taught me at the time would tell their students that Catholics are free to believe that evolution took place, as long as they understand it to be a process begun by God, and one in which human beings were created when God infused a soul into the evolving creature that became man. This was the same understanding taught to me by Jesuit priests at Fordham in the 1960s.
As a result, I never got caught up in the debates over whether evolution should be taught in science classes in our public schools. As long as a public school teacher did not teach his classes a version of evolution that specifically excluded the possibility of God playing this role in the evolutionary process, it never seemed to me a battle worth fighting.
It was a surprise to me when I came across an angry column by Joseph Farah attacking Pope Francis for his position. I expected any attack against the Pope to come from secular humanists who refuse to permit even the role for God in the evolutionary process that Francis describes. Farah does not take that stance. Instead, he attacks the Pope for discounting “the biblical account of the Creation,” of telling “his story” of creation, “not His story.” Writes Farah, “I wonder what else he discounts from the Word. Is there anything sacred in the Bible?”
Farah continues: “If the Fall of Man is just an allegory, one wonders why Jesus would have had to come to atone for man’s sins — a prophecy first revealed in Genesis. If Jesus did not come to fulfill that prophecy, who was he? I don’t understand Christians who discount Genesis. It makes no sense. Nothing in the Bible makes sense without the Creation account. If the pope doesn’t believe the foundational aspect of the Bible, does he believe any of it? If he does, he really owes the Christian world an explanation of which parts of the Bible he believes and which he discounts.”
I have been coming across Farah’s syndicated columns frequently of late. He was the editor of the Sacramento Union, until he left that position to co-found the Western Journalism Center. He identifies himself as an “evangelical Christian,” but I am not sure if that means he holds to a strict fundamentalist understanding of Genesis; whether he leaves any room at all for an interpretation of the story of the six-day creation or Eve’s temptation by a serpent. Does he believe that human beings and dinosaurs coexisted at one time on Earth?
I would not mock Farah if he interprets Genesis in a literal way. God could have created the universe and all that is in it as described in Genesis, even to the point of creating fossils that would later mislead scientists to dismiss the biblical account. A miracle is a miracle.
My objection is that I feel that Farah should be as willing to cut the Pope some slack for his conflicting understanding of the role of evolution in the creation of the universe and human life.
Pope Francis’ understanding of evolution does nothing to disparage the need for the Incarnation and Jesus’ role in salvation history. Whether sin entered the world as described in the story of Adam and Eve found in Genesis or in some other scenario, it entered the world. Mankind began to behave, not as God intended, but selfishly and cruelly. This made it necessary for Jesus to become man, to provide us the word, the truth and the life and a path back to the existence intended for us by the Father.
What does Farah find so objectionable about Francis’ understanding of evolution, specifically his understanding of the role humans now must play in ensuring that God’s will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven? Many reason that the first sin must be the sin of an individual first man and first woman for the concept of original sin to make sense. OK. But why must the sin be eating fruit from a tree in the Garden of Eden, sometime after the sixth day of creation? Or does Farah leave room for interpreting what is meant by the account of the serpent and the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? If he does, we are entitled to ask him the same question he put to Pope Francis: “I wonder what else he discounts from the Word. Is there anything sacred in the Bible?”
On another topic: In the December 11 edition of First Teachers the question was raised of whether it is wise to send our children to Catholic colleges now that so many of them encourage dissent from the teachings of the Church. In that column it was mentioned that some hold to the view that it is better for Catholic students to complete their studies in the atmosphere of a Catholic college — the regular Masses and the setting of crucifixes, statues, and stained-glass windows, for example — than at a secular institution.
T.W.V., a retired doctor from Minnesota, disagrees: “I don’t accept the contention that spending four years at an institution with stained-glass windows and a chapel will do some good. I think there is real danger in living with the hypocrisy of those traces of the college’s original identity coexisting with the dominance of modernist professors in the school’s theology and philosophy departments. The Cardinal Newman Society confirms that concern, reporting that 86 percent of four-year Catholic high school grads lose their faith after four years at these institutions.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.
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