The Living Centrifuge

PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2005.11.05
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A1 / Front
BYLINE: Martin Penner
SOURCE: The Times, London
DATELINE: ROME
WORD COUNT: 458
Darwin 'perfectly compatible' with Genesis, Vatican says: Stance seen as rebuke to U.S. Christian right

ROME - The Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the Biblical account of creation literally.

Paul Cardinal Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said that the Genesis description of how God created the Universe and Darwin's theory of evolution are "perfectly compatible" if the Bible is read correctly.

His statement is a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the U.S., who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.

"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," the French prelate said.

He said at a Vatican press conference that the real message of the first chapter of Genesis is that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator."

This idea is part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasized, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belong to a different realm -- science. "Science and theology act in different fields, each in its own," he added.

Cardinal Poupard said that it is important for Roman Catholic believers to know how science sees things so as to "understand things better."

His statements have been interpreted in Italy as a rejection of "intelligent design," which asserts that the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail. In the U.S., this view is often advocated by groups that say schools should not teach only Darwin's view of the origins of life on Earth.

Cardinal Poupard will speak before an international conference at the Vatican next week that will bring together scientists, philosophers and theologians to talk about the concept of infinity.

Gianfranco Basti, the conference co-ordinator, was even more blunt in his rejection of creationist arguments, saying that they were simply false. He added: "To say that the principle of evolution goes against the principle of creation makes no sense."

Since its first horrified reaction to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, the Church has edged closer to accepting his ideas. Pope John Paul II said in 1996 that the principle of evolution was "more than a hypothesis." Mr. Basti said: "In favour of evolution, there is now evidence that makes it a consolidated scientific theory."

Vatican analysts said that Cardinal Poupard's remarks were partly designed to distance the Church from American conservatives campaigning against the teaching of evolution in state schools.

A court in Pennsylvania is hearing a lawsuit brought by parents against a school district that teaches intelligent design as well as evolution. It is a test case, the result of which is expected to affect the curriculum in thousands of schools.

In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court abolished a law that banned the teaching of the evolution theory unless creationism was also taught. President George W. Bush has said that he believes schools should teach both.