Pope to Dissect Evolution With Former Students

c. 2006 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI will conduct a weekend seminar in early September examining Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and its impact on Roman Catholicism’s teaching of Creation. The seminar, titled “Creation and Evolution,” is sure to attract the attention of supporters of “intelligent design” _ the idea that […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI will conduct a weekend seminar in early September examining Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and its impact on Roman Catholicism’s teaching of Creation.

The seminar, titled “Creation and Evolution,” is sure to attract the attention of supporters of “intelligent design” _ the idea that the world is too complex to have been created by natural events alone _ and Vatican scientists who do not consider it valid science.


The seminar is the latest edition of the annual “Shulerkreis,” or “student circle,” a meeting Benedict has held with his former Ph.D. students since his days as a theology professor at the University of Regensburg in Germany in the 1970s.

The seminar is to take place Sept. 2-3 at Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence south of Rome.

According to the Rev. Stephan Horn, 71, a former student and theologian who coordinates the meetings, the topic of the seminar was selected when the circle last met in 2005 to discuss relations between Christianity and Islam. Horn said the students usually choose the topic of discussion, and the pope approves it.

“The consensus was that this topic would be very useful and the Holy Father gave his consent,” said Horn, a retired German university professor.

One of the circle’s most influential members is Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, a former student and close adviser of Benedict whose support of intelligent design has been instrumental in introducing the theory into Catholic discourse.

Asked if Schonborn had played any role in proposing the theme, Horn said he could not recall. “I don’t know who proposed the theme,” Horn said in an interview. “Certainly, Cardinal Schonborn was present, and this is a theme that is dear to him.”

Schonborn and Peter Schuster, president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, will deliver the seminar’s opening addresses. Other speakers at the event will include the Rev. Paul Erbrich, a German scholar, and the conservative German philosopher Robert Spaemann.


Proponents of intelligent design helped Schonborn place a high-profile Op-Ed piece in The New York Times last summer that rebuffed as “rather vague and unimportant” remarks by the late Pope John Paul II in 1996 that called evolution “more than a hypothesis.”

Schonborn has made several attempts to clarify his own position amid a torrent of criticism that he _ or the Vatican _ was trying to roll the clock back on evolution and scientific thought. Schonborn has said he does not disagree with Darwin’s theory per se, but with its use to mount ideologically driven attacks to disprove the existence of a creator-God.

Horn expressed concern that Darwin’s theory had become a “worldview” that extends beyond the reach of science.

“The issue is not only scientific. There is also a philosophical and theological side” to evolution, Horn said. “We want to discuss where the limits (to evolution) lie and where there’s a potential for overlap” with the fields of philosophy and theology.

Benedict has at times appeared to favor intelligent design, describing the natural world as an “intelligent project” one day after the Kansas Board of Education voted last November to adopt new standards that cast doubt on evolution. But in January, an editorial published in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, questioned the validity of intelligent design, reaffirming Roman Catholicism’s support for evolution.

The Rev. George Coyne, an astronomer who heads the Vatican Observatory, has also emerged as a vocal opponent of intelligent design, describing support for the theory as a “religious movement” rather than science.


This year’s seminar will mark the second time Benedict has led the meeting as pope. Horn described discussion in the meetings as a free-flowing debate, adding that he expected Benedict to preside over the group as “the mentor of a group of students” rather than as pope.

“He doesn’t impose his ideas. He speaks not as pope but as a theologian,” Horn said. “If someone has an opposing idea, he tries to develop it or offer criticism. He doesn’t try to have the last word.”

KRE/PH END MEICHTRY

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