Rocks of Ages (8 page)

Now add to this mix a brilliant hothead who had caused trouble before, and who now mocked prior papal directives (or had, at least, been purposely, even outrageously, provocative) by composing his new book as a supposed dialogue between equally matched advocates, and then putting the arguments for a central earth, the official Church position, into the mouth of a character whose cogency fully matched his name—Simplicio. Urban VIII made a really bad move by the proper judgment of later history, but I have no trouble understanding why he felt miffed, if not betrayed—and such feelings did engender predictable consequences in this earlier age of far different sensibilities and accepted procedures.

The power of Galileo’s story continues to haunt any issue involving science and the papacy, today as much as ever. I don’t know how else to understand the enormous surprise of scientific commentators, and the banner headlines in newspapers throughout the Western world, when
Pope John Paul II recently issued a statement that struck me as entirely unremarkable and fully consistent with long-standing Roman Catholic support for NOMA in general, and for the legitimate claims of human evolution as a subject for study in particular. After all, I knew that the highly conservative Pope Pius XII had defended evolution as a proper inquiry in the encyclical
Humani Generis
, published in 1950, and that he had done so by central and explicit invocation of NOMA—that is, by identifying the study of physical evolution as outside his magisterium, while further distinguishing such Darwinian concepts from a subject often confused with scientific claims but properly lying within the magisterium of religion: namely the origin and constitution of the human soul.

But, on more careful reading and study, I realized that Pope John Paul’s statement of 1996 had added an important dimension to Pius’s earlier document issued nearly half a century before. The details of this contrast provide my favorite example of NOMA as used and developed by a religious leader not generally viewed as representing a vanguard of conciliation within his magisterium. If NOMA defines the current view of Urban VIII’s direct descendant, then we may rejoice in a pervasive and welcome consensus.
²

Pius XII’s
Humani Generis
(1950), a highly traditionalist document written by a deeply conservative man, faces all the “isms” and cynicisms that rode the wake of World War II and informed the struggle to rebuild human decency from the ashes of the Holocaust. The encyclical bears the subtitle “concerning some false opinions which threaten to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine,” and begins with a statement of embattlement:

Pius lashes out, in turn, at various external enemies of the Church: pantheism, existentialism, dialectical materialism, historicism, and, of course and preeminently, communism. He then notes with sadness that some well-meaning folks within the Church have fallen into a dangerous relativism—“a theological pacifism and egalitarianism, in which all points of view become equally valid”—in order to include those who yearn for the embrace of Christian religion, but do not wish to accept the particularly Catholic magisterium.

Pius first mentions evolution to decry a misuse by overextension among zealous supporters of the anathematized “isms”:

Pius presents his major statement on evolution near the end of the encyclical, in paragraphs 35 through 37. He accepts the standard account of NOMA and begins by acknowledging that evolution lies in a difficult area where the domains press hard against each other. “It remains for US now to speak about those questions which, although they pertain to the positive sciences, are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith.”
³

Pius then writes the well-known words that permit Catholics to entertain the evolution of the human body (a factual issue under the magisterium of science), so long as they accept the divine creation and infusion of the soul (a theological notion under the magisterium of religion).

I had, up to here, found nothing surprising in
Humani Generis
, and nothing to relieve my puzzlement about the novelty of Pope John Paul’s 1996 statement. But I read further and realized that Pope Pius had said more about evolution, something I had never seen quoted, and something that made John Paul’s statement most interesting indeed. In short, Pius forcefully proclaimed that while evolution may be legitimate in principle, the theory, in fact, had not been proven and might well be entirely wrong. One gets the strong impression, moreover, that Pius was rooting pretty hard for a verdict of falsity. Continuing directly from the last quotation, he advises us about the proper study of evolution:

To summarize, Pius accepts the NOMA principle in permitting Catholics to entertain the hypothesis of evolution for the human body so long as they accept the divine infusion of the soul. But he then offers some (holy) fatherly advice to scientists about the status of evolution as a scientific concept: the idea is not yet proven, and you all need to be especially cautious because evolution raises many troubling issues right on the border of my magisterium. One may read this second theme of advice-giving in two rather different ways: either as a gratuitous incursion into a different magisterium, or as a helpful perspective from an intelligent and concerned outsider.

In any case, this rarely quoted second claim (that evolution remains both unproven and a bit dangerous)—and not the familiar first argument for NOMA (that Catholics may accept the evolution of the body so long as they embrace the creation of the soul)—defines the novelty and the interest of John Paul’s recent statement.

John Paul begins by summarizing Pius’s older encyclical of 1950, and particularly by reaffirming NOMA—nothing new here, and no cause for extended publicity:

The novelty and news value of John Paul’s statement lies, rather, in his profound revision of Pius’s second and rarely quoted claim that evolution, while conceivable in principle and reconcilable with religion, can cite little persuasive evidence in support, and may well be false. John Paul states—and I can only say amen, and thanks for noticing—that the half-century between Pius surveying the ruins of World War II and his own pontificate heralding the dawn of a new millennium has witnessed such a growth of data, and such a refinement of theory, that evolution can no longer be doubted by people of goodwill and keen intellect:

In conclusion, Pius had grudgingly admitted evolution as a legitimate hypothesis that he regarded as only tentatively supported and potentially (as he clearly hoped) untrue. John Paul, nearly fifty years later, reaffirms the legitimacy of evolution under the NOMA principle, but then adds that additional data and theory have placed the factuality of evolution beyond reasonable doubt. Sincere Christians may now accept evolution not merely as a plausible possibility, but also as an effectively proven fact. In other words, official Catholic opinion on evolution has moved from “say it ain’t so, but we can deal with it if we have to” (Pius’s grudging view of 1950) to John Paul’s entirely welcoming “it has been proven true; we always celebrate nature’s factuality, and we look forward to interesting discussions of theological implications.” I happily endorse this turn of events as gospel—literally, good news. I represent the magisterium of science, but I welcome the support of a primary leader from the other major magisterium of our complex lives. And I recall the wisdom of King Solomon: “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country” (Proverbs 25:25).

2. T
HE CLERIC WHO OUT-NEWTONED
N
EWTON
. If NOMA did not work, and religion really did demand the suppression of important factual data at key points of contradiction with theological dogma, then how could the ranks of science include so many ordained and devoted clergymen at the highest level of respect and accomplishment—from the thirteenth-century Dominican bishop Albertus Magnus, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas and the most cogent medieval writer on scientific subjects; to Nicholas Steno, who wrote the primary works of seventeenth-century geology and also became a bishop; to Lazzaro Spallanzani, the eighteenth-century Italian physiologist who disproved, by elegant experiments, the last serious arguments for spontaneous generation of life; to the Abbé Breuil, our own century’s most famous student of paleolithic cave art?

In the conventional view of warfare between the magisteria, science began its inevitable expansion at religion’s expense during the late seventeenth century, a remarkable period known to historians as
“the
scientific revolution.” We all honor the primary symbol of the new order, Isaac Newton, whose achievements were captured by his contemporary Alexander Pope in the most incisive of all epitomes:

Many people are then surprised to discover—although the great man made no attempt to disguise his commitments—that Newton (along with all other prominent members of his circle) remained an ardent theist. He spent far more time working on his exegeses of the prophecies of Daniel and John, and on his attempt to integrate biblical chronology with the histories of other ancient peoples, than he ever devoted to physics.

Scientists with strong theological commitments have embraced NOMA in several styles—from the argument of “God as clockwinder” generally followed by Newton’s contemporaries, to the “bench-top materialism” of most religious scientists today (who hold that “deep” questions about ultimate meanings lie outside the realm of science and under the aegis of religious inquiry, while scientific methods, based on the spatiotemporal invariance of natural law, apply to all potentially resolvable questions about facts of nature). So long as religious beliefs do not dictate specific answers to empirical questions or foreclose the acceptance of documented facts, the most theologically devout scientists should have no trouble pursuing their day jobs with equal zeal.

The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: “Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains
important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science.” In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as “miracle”—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. (I know that some people use the word “miracle” in other senses that may not violate NOMA—but I follow the classical definition here.) NOMA does impose this “limitation” on concepts of God, just as NOMA places equally strong restrictions upon the imperialistic aims of many scientists (particularly in suppressing claims for possession of moral truth based on superior understanding of factual truth in any subject).

All consensuses of this sort develop slowly, and from inchoate beginnings before later distinctions become clarified and established. In the early days of modern science, the conceptual need to place miracles outside this developing magisterium had not been fully articulated, and the issue generated much discussion, eventually resolved as outlined above (with God’s direct action in the creation of living species persisting as a last stronghold, long after miraculous action has been abandoned for all the rest of nature’s factual realm). Ironically, Newton himself held a fairly lenient view on the admissibility of miracles to scientific discourse. He certainly recognized the explanatory advantages of God’s
working within His own established laws, but he regarded as unnecessarily presumptuous any attempts by students of the natural order thus to confine God’s range of potential action. If God wished to suspend these laws for a moment of creative interference, then He would do exactly as He wished, and scientists would have to pursue the task of explanation as best they could.