Thank God! The first response to the idiotic and chilling NYT op-ed column attacking evolution by Cardinal Schonborn has finally arrived. No surprise: it comes from a Jesuit. The Independent in the UK has the story about a column blasting the Cardinal's fear of science and knowledge that appears in the British Catholic newspaper The Tablet.
In an article with explosive implications for the Church, Father George Coyne, an American Jesuit priest who is a distinguished astronomy professor, attacks head-on the views of Cardinal Christoph Shonborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a long-standing associate of Joseph Ratzinger, the German cardinal who was elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April....I know some of you think that "religion is crazy, so why do you still pay attention." But the simple fact is that billions of people follow an organized religion. They are a fact of life and a force in the world -- people of faith need to push to make certain they're a force for good. This battle will help determine that for the Catholic Church and it's one war I heartily endorse. The hearts -- and especially minds -- of Catholics are at stake. After this, we'll move on to the malarkey about interfering in elections and telling public officials who must faithfully represent non-Catholics how to vote.
In The Tablet he says that Cardinal Shonborn's article has "darkened the waters" of the rapport between Church and science, and says - flatly contradicting the cardinal - that even a world in which "life... has evolved through a process of random genetic mutations and natural selection" is compatible with "God's dominion".
For a Vatican official of such seniority openly to attack the views of a cardinal on such a potentially explosive subject as evolution is unprecedented. It also reveals a deep rift at the heart of the Catholic Church's thinking. It is known that Fr Coyne wrote privately to both Cardinal Shonborn and the Pope himself protesting against The New York Times article soon after it was published last month. But it is understood that so many scientists, especially Catholic scientists, have since contacted him to express their disquiet, that he felt he had to go public....
The key question behind the debate is the opinion of new Pope. Some fear that the cardinal would never have published such a controversial article in such a prominent medium without his personal approval. But nothing will be known for certain until the Pope speaks for himself.
