Vatican Evolution Debate Group

Ratzinger organises an annual debate for his former theology students. This weekend the topic was evolution - why anyone, including Ratzinger, would think that a group of theologians should have anything interesting or of value to say about evolution is beyond me. Still, the press had speculated that the group might come down on the side of Intelligent Design (obviously Schönborn would have liked that) which would be a tragedy for the Church, reason and scholarship. Not much is known about the detail of what the theologians had to say about biology this weekend but apparently the minutes of the meeting will be published later this year. Don't expect any important scientific insights.

The press reports here, here, here and here seem to reach a consensus that the theolgians' conclusion was that evolution is a fact and not incompatible with Catholic theology provided it doesn't seek to explain God away as the Prime Mover. Well, science as a mode of knowing has nothing formal to say about the existence or non-existence of God, which topic is beyond its competence, so we can give them that (which is not to say that scientists should not use their knowledge of nature to reach the conclusion that God is unnecessary to explain the existence of the Universe and intelligent life within it, as many, convincingly, do). Maybe Catholicism, in spite of Schönborn's ill-advised foray into the debate on the side of ID, will remain a beacon of reason and a defender of science amongst increasingly fundamentalist and anti-science Christians. Now that would be cause for celebration.