Posted for Declan Butler.

Today’s newspapers are full of the supposed ‘news’ that the Vatican has reconciled Darwin and evolution as being compatible with Christian faith – see for example Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin and The Vatican claims Darwin’s theory of evolution is compatible with Christianity, or search for “Vatican” AND “evolution” on Google News.

The reports stem from remarks made this morning by archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, at a press conference in Rome detailing a conference to be held in Rome 3-7 March – Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories: A critical appraisal 150 years after ‘The Origin of Species’ – on the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth. The meeting intended to boost dialogue between religion and science on evolution.

Ravasi, however, had already made similar statements last September, when the conference was first announced – see for example Evolution fine but no apology to Darwin: Vatican. Moreover, Roman Catholic Church theology has long cohabited comfortably with the science of evolution, with the church itself endorsing evolution in 1950, although with the theological rider that it should be a hypothesis and not a doctrine. And in 1996, pope Jean John Paul II – the man who rehabilitated Galileo – fully embraced evolution (see Nature’s new piece from back then, Papal confession: Darwin was right about evolution).

There have been concerns though about where pope Benedict XVI stood on evolution. In his first mass as Pope, he stated that “we are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution”. And Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, a prominent Church official has expressed scepticism of evolution and at times appeared to advocate some divine intervention in evolution, akin to intelligent design. The fact that intelligent design will be will only be discussed at next month’s conference as a sociological phenomenon, and not as a genuine issue in itself, is seen as ending any speculation here.

But Benedict’s rejection of intelligent design has been fairly explicit since a retreat he held on evolution in 2006 – see my piece, When science and theology meet.

Here’s an excerpt:

But discussions at the meeting suggest that the Church will probably affirm a form of theistic evolution, which posits the general principle that biological evolution is valid, although set in motion by God. At the same time, it seems likely to reject the fundamental intelligent-design principle that God was a watchmaker, intervening in the details. “Intelligent design as an intervention of God during evolution will not be an outcome,” predicts Schuster [Peter Schuster, a molecular biologist and president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, present at the meeting]. “I got the impression that there was general agreement that evolutionary biology is a undeniable science and not a hypothesis.”

Unlike creationism, which is largely a US phenomenon, the Roman Catholic Church has less bones to pick on the science of evolution and more how it shapes the way we see human beings. Another excerpt details this:

But although there is likely to be agreement that the Church should not attempt to question the basic theory of evolution, those at the meeting were also adamant that science should not stray into theology. Schuster says there was a wide desire to address the Church’s concern that darwinism is being extrapolated as a wider metaphysical stance. This argues that we are random products of evolution, and that there is therefore no need for God. “I agree that, as in science, everyone should stay within their realms of competence,” says Schuster.

It will be interesting to see if next month’s conference brings any further clarifications from Benedict XVI. But at this morning’s press conference, church leaders seemed to be even claiming prior art of at least the concept of evolution as species changing over time, arguing that this was articulated by two theologians – the 4th century St Augustine of Hippo, famous for his “make me chaste, but not yet” quote, and the 13th century St Thomas Aquinas. In passing, Aquinas would have also probably allowed embryo research as he installed the theology that embryos did not acquire a soul until later life, a position overturned by Pope Pius IX in 1869.