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Catholic World News News Feature

Publication planned after Pope's seminar on evolution September 04, 2006

The proceedings of a closed-door seminar on Creation and evolution, organized by Pope Benedict XVI and held at Castel Gandolfo on September 1-3, will be published later this year, informed sources report.

Pope Benedict, who gathered his former theology students at the papal summer residence for seminar, asked that the main presentations be published, sources say. This is a new development for the Pontiff, who has held such seminars for his former students each year; in the past, the discussions were kept confidential.

The seminar did not form any concrete conclusion, participants said. Pope Benedict XVI took an active part in the discussions; his comments were reportedly in line with previous public statements in which he had said that while the theory of evolution forms a valid scientific hypothesis, Creation is not a random process.

Participants said that the Pope chose Creation and evolution as the topic for this year's discussions because he hoped to advance the dialogue between religious faith and scientific knowledge, and to provide support for the belief that there is no contradiction between the known facts of evolution and the Christian faith in God's act of creation.

The Pope's seminar has attracted intense public attention because of the heated public debate about evolution and the theory of intelligent design. Cardinal Christoph Schöborn, who was one of the four main speakers at the seminar, told the German-language Catholic news agency Kathpress: "I think that the choice of this theme was prompted by the debate taking place on this subject in recent months."

The four main speakers were Peter Schuster, the president of the Austrian academy of sciences; Robert Spaemann, a noted German political theories; Father Paul Erbich, a professor of natural philosophy from Munich; and Cardinal Schönborn. Their presentations (all in German) were followed by intensive discussion "at the highest academic level," the Austrian cardinal reported. The intellectual contest between "Darwinists" and "Creationists"-- joined most recently by intelligent-design theorists-- has been most active in the United States, where the issue has prompted a series of political disputes and courtroom battles. Catholic Church leaders, who for decades were counted as opponents of Darwinism, have more recently taken a more detached position, arguing that the theory of evolution is not incompatible with the Christian understanding of Creation.

However, Church leaders continue to insist that any account of man's existence must acknowledge God's role, rather than attributing the process of blind chance. "We are not some causal and meaningless product of evolution," Pope Benedict said in the homily delivered during the inaugural Mass of his pontificate.

The seminar on evolution was the latest in a long series of gatherings that the Pope has organized for his former students. As a theology professor at the University of Regensburg he began holding a seminar each year, at which discussions of a chosen theme would be combined with communal prayer. He continued those sessions after he became Archbishop of Munich in 1977, and in Rome after his appointment in 1981 as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Last year, after his election to the papacy, he asked the regular participants in the seminar to join him for a few days at Castel Gandolfo. The theme for discussion last year was the Islamic understanding of God.