Thursday 10/30/14

If you are anything like me, you like Pope Francis. A lot. I like his personality, his approachability, his charm. Most of all, though, I like his charisma. We haven’t had charisma like this leading the Church in my lifetime. Yes, it’s true that I was alive for a good chunk of Saint John Paul II’s Papacy, but it was not when he was “new” and “fresh.” He didn’t have the kind of buzz around him that Pope Francis does, at least not by the time I was old enough to notice it.

Pope Francis has so much charisma that people are starting to actually listen to him, and when they do, they are hearing things that they have been told time and time again. The difference is, this time, they are actually getting it.

Take this week, for example. Pope Francis made comments that evolution is not incompatible with Catholicism or the idea of an intelligent creator, and that it is alright to believe in the Big Bang Theory. People lost their minds. All of a sudden, Pope Francis is some sort of radical man, overturning years of Church teaching.

Except that he isn’t.

In Humani Generis Pope Pius XII wrote: “For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, 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 - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.” If you have to grapple with the language for a minute, that’s okay. Welcome to my world. Basically, what it is saying is that the Church is open to investigation into whether or not evolution was the method of physical creation employed by God, so long as we hold on to the belief that God directly creates our souls. In other words, if legitimate science reveals that evolution is real, we, as Catholics, ought to accept it.

Your parents probably do not remember hearing about this document. That’s because it was probably written before they were born. It’s from 1950.

There are some other statements on evolution that most Catholics probably don’t remember, although it is most likely not their fault. In the past, when the Pope has spoken, none of the news media seemed to notice or care what he was saying. Now, when Pope Francis speaks, people lean in. News reporters’ pens stand at the ready and voice recorders are thrust forward anxiously. No one wants to miss the tiniest snippet of him affirming what his predecessors have voiced tirelessly while they looked the other way.


So what are those other statements? Well, in 1996 Saint John Paul II affirmed that evolution was more than just a hypothesis. In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI, whom many news agencies are now calling “a creationist,” held a conference about creationism and evolution. The result was a book of legitimate debate, not about whether or not evolution was a reality, but about what sort of mechanisms drove it.

In short, what Pope Francis is saying is nothing new. Still, everyone seems to be reacting to it like it is, and it begs the question, “Why?” I don’t have a good answer. I wish people would recognize that what the Pope is saying has been part of our Church teaching for a long time. I wish people realized that the Pope is not “fixing” some sort of “backwards” institution, but rather affirming the beautiful teachings of an ancient faith. I wish people would stop bashing Pope Francis’ predecessors. Still, more than anything, I’m glad that people are finally getting the point that Catholics can embrace science, and if it means the news has to report it in a way which is unfair to our history, so be it. I am more concerned with the next 50 years of our Church than the last.