Turning the tables and issuing a challenge

This is really getting good.

There’s been this flap in the press in recent weeks over Pope Benedict’s annual private seminar with his former theology students at Castel Gandolfo in early September, because one of the topics chosen for study this year is “intelligent design” versus random selection, or Creationism vs. Darwinism. If you really want to know the Church’s teaching, and the real story of Benedict’s study, go here to Chiesa, Sandro Magister’s always illuminating analysis of the Church, the Pope and world as they intersect. That’s the background, and of course you want to know that, because you’re informed, engaged and eager to learn the truth.

That’s why you’ll appreciate the clarity some are trying to bring into the media mire. Like Phil Lawler at CWNews who put this out today:

Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines in the secular press this week, saying that the Pope might take a new public stand on evolution and/or the theory of intelligent design. Those stories are inaccurate.As CWN has reported, the Holy Father is holding a closed-door seminar for his former theology students. He has held this seminar annually for years, and each year the talks focus on a different topic. This year’s topic is Creation and evolution.

We may– in fact, probably will– hear second-hand reports about the discussion, and the Pope may come away from the experience with some new ideas of his own. But there’s no reason to expect any formal statement or Vatican policy change.

But the media are, anyway.

And meanwhile, we have a voice of clarity in Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, who says (essentially), bring the debate on.

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn has asked for a “reasoned, ideology-free” debate on the nature of the Darwinian proposition for the origins of life. He hoped that the shortcomings of Darwin’s theory of evolution could one-day be discussed freely in schools. “This should be discussed in a serene manner. If a theory is scientific and not ideological, then it can be discussed freely,” he said.

There’s the challenge to the secularists who believe themselves to be wiser than those who ground their beliefs in the existence of natural law and moral order. Look at that last sentence. “If a theory is scientific and not ideological, then it can be discussed freely,” he said. So look who’s being scientific and calling for a discussion free of ideology!

The archbishop of Vienna and a primary author of the Catholic catechism, clarified again that the Catholic Church does not adhere to the “creationist” theory that takes its information on the origin of life exclusively from the bible. But he said pure materialist Darwinism that precludes the action of God is unacceptable and unscientific.

Darwinism is unscientific. So let the debate be based on science and reason!

The creationist position is one that is largely held by American Protestant evangelicals among whom there is also much debate on the relationship between the action of God and the scientific evidence. The tarring by the media of the creationist theory as anti-intellectual and retrograde has become a major source of tension between American Christian groups and the scientific community.

Schönborn was careful to distinguish in his speech between the scientific theory that species change and develop from one form to another and the quasi-religious ideology that denies any possible intervention of God in the origin of life.

There is “no conflict,” Schönborn said, “between science and religion.” The debate lies, he said, “between a materialist interpretation of the results of science and a metaphysical philosophical interpretation.”

There is “no conflict between science and religion.” But don’t let that fact, and the bold challenge to engage the truth, get in the way of the reporting.

Despite the Cardinal’s call for a reasoned debate, the mainstream media, having already made up the Pope’s mind, is spreading the story around the world that Benedict is preparing, as the UK’s Guardian put it, “to embrace theory of intelligent design”…

The assumption that the “debate” is closed and Darwin has won, is a major part of the arguments being made, especially in the US, against the teaching in high school biology classes of Intelligent Design, or any other theory of the origins of life, in addition to the pure materialist Darwinian proposal.

Against teaching high school students any theory of the origins of life besides pure materialist Darwinism?! What’s the fear, or motive, behind that?

The Cardinal cited Marxist materialist theory as an example of where ideological Darwinism can lead when it is taken out of its scientific boundaries. He warned against the current infusion of Darwinian materialism into bioethical issues, where, he said, they have given rise to a revival of eugenics.

Oh, so those who want to promote eugenics and things like abortion and euthanasia would gain from this single-minded pursuit in forming young minds? Should we not be debating these teachings on their sheer merit?

Yes, says Cardinal Schonborn. Ask those questions.

On Wednesday, Schönborn said, “The open questions of the theory of evolution should be exposed,” which questions, “(Darwin) himself recognised and regretted” .