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  • Evolution and Christian Thought in Dialog according to the Teaching of John Paul II
  • Józef M. Życiński (bio)

In his teaching, John Paul II consistently emphasizes that

the Church's dialogue with culture has a decisive role for the future of humanity. More than once I repeated this with conviction and I appealed to all the Church's institutions to see to it that their activity in regard to culture may always be more enlightened, lively, and fruitful.1

The natural sciences occupy a special place in contemporary culture. It would be hard to point to another pontificate in modern times in which dialog with the world of science was as intense as is the dialog conducted by John Paul II.2 That dialog has its roots in Cracow, when then Archbishop Karol Wojtyła organized interdisciplinary meetings of physicists, biologists, philosophers, and theologians in his residence.3 His bold and innovative initiatives made the later Interdisciplinary Research Institute a place of important meetings in which such famous authors as Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Charles Misner, Frank Tipler, Louis Michel, Ernan McMullin, Jerzy Rayski, Andrzej Staruszkiewicz, Stanisław Lem, and Zygmunt [End Page 13] Chyliński took part. The summer seminars organized by Jerzy Janik at the papal residence at Castello Gandolfo were a continuation of those meetings. They are an expression of that great papal openness to the dialog of science and faith which was an exceptionally important feature of John Paul II's pontificate. Its earlier counterparts would have to be sought in the Renaissance, when new works concerning the theory of comets and arguments against the physics of Aristotle were read at mealtime to popes interested in the development of science and culture.

Evolutionism according to the Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences

One symbol of John Paul II's openness to dialog with the natural sciences was his message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of October 22, 1996, concerning the theory of evolution.4 It goes a long way toward bringing order into the controversies that have been waged by philosophers and theologians from the time of Charles Darwin's presentation of his theory of natural selection. Not limiting himself to Darwinism as one of many possible forms of evolutionism, John Paul II makes more precise the earlier formulations of Humani Generis and defines the interpretive horizon on which it is possible for Christian thought and various versions of evolutionism to work creatively together.

John Paul II's message definitely excludes the possibility for a reconciliation with the Christian position of those versions of fundamentalism in which an attempt is made to put in opposition a biblical and a scientific interpretation of the origin of man. That was by no means the first document of his pontificate concerning the theory of evolution. An earlier pronouncement of John Paul II can be found, for example, in the 1986 volume Evolutionismus und Christentum.5 That volume contains materials from scientific sessions organized by the University of Munich and the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine [End Page 14] of the Faith. The introduction to the volume was written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself. Among the authors who explain how evolution should be discussed in catechesis is Christoph Schönborn, the current archbishop of Vienna. The volume closes with a pronouncement directed to the session's participants by John Paul II on April 26, 1985, in which the Pope shows the agreement of the Christian conception of continuous creation achieved by St. Augustine with formulations of contemporary evolutionism.

In a text that appeared eleven years later, John Paul II both develops a general comprehensive view for Christian evolutionism and indicates several of its particular components. It is hard to overvalue the substantive significance of this message when one considers that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992, contains not a single mention of evolution. Four years later, in his message, John Paul II emphasized that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the "scientific Senate" of the Church. Its vocation is service to the truth, which makes possible an authentic dialog, undertaken in a spirit of mutual trust, between the Church and contemporary science...

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