Thursday, July 14, 2005

The Vatican re-enters the evolution fray

Secular humanists are calling down thunder upon Cardinal Christoph Schonborn and his boss, B16, for Schonborn's reiteration of the Catholic interpretation of evolution, specifically, that the process is guided at every step by the hand of God.

Andrew Sullivan hyperventilates that he "...expected reactionary radicalism from Benedict. But this kind of stupidity?" Elsewhere, he alternates between charging that Benedict wants to "rush back to the Middle Ages" and "return to the 19th century"

Sigh. The least Sullivan could do would be to choose a century to accuse Benedict of living in and then stick to it.

Benedict hasn't taken the Church back one month, let alone half a millennium. Schonborn's statement, presumably made with papal approval, merely reiterates some of the points made by Pius XII in Humani Generis and endorsed by every pontiff thereafter, including JPII.

Sullivan's chief complaint is that Benedict refuses, as head of the Catholic Church on earth, to be an agnostic like Sullivan himself.