Notre Dame's legendary priest-scientist Father John Zahm, CSC,
was the first prominent U.S. Catholic scholar to embrace evolution
publicly. He popularized the theory in his writing and on the
lecture circuit, which attracted large crowds wherever he spoke.
Unfortunately, Zahm was slightly ahead of his time. His 1896
book Evolution and Dogma, in which he argued that evolution
was compatible with Catholic doctrine, didn't sit well with the
Vatican at the time. Among their objections, curial officials
worried that Zahm had reduced the story of Adam and Eve to a myth
which cast doubt on Scripture. They also were upset by his suggestion
that the saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were evolutionists.
The Congregation of the Index threatened Zahm with public condemnation
of his book unless he recanted and withdrew it from publication.
The Holy Cross priest complied out of obedience and never again
commented publicly on the theory. However, Zahm was eventually
vindicated, as he privately predicted he would be, when Pope Pius
XII issued his encyclical Humani generis in 1950.
While Pius didn't endorse evolution outright, he signaled guarded
openness to the theory, proclaiming "the teaching authority of
the Church does not forbid that . . . research and discussions
take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution in as far
as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from
pre-existent and living matter."
John Paul II further amplified papal teaching on evolution with
his 1996 message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which
was holding a meeting on the origin of life and evolution. The
pope observed, "[F]resh knowledge [since Humani generis]
has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis."
He went on to say, "It is indeed remarkable that this theory has
been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series
of discoveries in various fields of knowledge." While cautioning
against "materialist, reductionist and spiritualist" interpretations
of Darwin, the pope concluded that the convergence of independent
work "is in itself a significant argument in favor of [evolution]."
(January 2006)
