Science is central to modern life. It is because of science that you are reading Aleteia on a screen, via the internet, not on paper, by the light of an oil lamp. This series of articles (click here for the whole series) dives deep into the story of the Catholic Church and science. The story goes back a long way. It is still unfolding today. It is not the story you might think you know. But it is a story you should know, exactly because science is so central to modern life.
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We have seen that the Church has been dealing with the question of how scientific discovery impacts faith going all the way back to the time of St. Augustine in the Roman Empire. The question then was Genesis and the astronomer Ptolemy and the “two great lights.” We have seen the imperfections of the Vatican’s processes for handling such questions. We have also seen, through the question of polygenism and “scientific racism,” that science can go so far wrong in such consequential matters that even those who might not support religion could nevertheless agree that some sort of interference from outside of science is warranted.
So let’s look at a famous case where all of this came together — the Vatican’s discussion of evolution at the end of the 19th century.
As we saw in Part 2 of this series, scholars have identified six cases of the Vatican confronting the evolution question in the late 19th century. All six arose from Catholics writing on evolution. In all these cases, the Congregation of the Index handled things. It never took any recognizable public action against evolution — the closest thing being the condemnation of the 1877 book, New Studies of Philosophy: Lectures to a Young Student, by Fr. Raffaello Caverni. It was condemned, but since the only decision made public was the prohibition of the book, and the book’s title does not mention evolution, there was no way to know why it was condemned. In the other five cases, the Congregation took no public action of any sort, although one scholar has argued that the Vatican’s private censuring of various authors effectively amounted to at least a temporary condemnation of evolution.
If the science is bad ...
In the late 19th century, evolution was easier to attack on scientific grounds than it is today. Scholars note that the late 19th century saw an “eclipse of Darwinism” — scientists at that time did not agree on a mechanism for evolution; Charles Darwin himself retreated a bit on the idea that natural selection was the sole mechanism of evolution; some in the world of British biology were sounding the death knell of Darwinism. Certainly, Darwin’s ideas were not so easily confirmed as Ptolemy’s (see Part 1).
And here is something to keep in mind: Ptolemy was right that stars are much farther away and much larger than the moon; but he was wrong about how large and how far. Stars are much larger, and much farther away, than he calculated. Ptolemy did not understand the nature of light like we do today. That threw off his results. Science goes wrong often. Ptolemy’s star size science was not so far off base as scientific racism (see Part 3), and certainly not so consequential, but it had real problems.
Scholars have found one Catholic critic after another in the late 19th century harping on the real problems they perceived in the theory of evolution, its scientific weaknesses. Most of these critics emphasized in some way that we do not abandon the obvious, natural sense of biblical words, unless necessary (like with the “two great lights”), and that there was no such necessity in the case of evolution because of the scientific problems in that theory.
Francesco Salis-Seewis, for example, was one of a group of Jesuits who wrote against evolution in the Roman Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica. He argued in the 1890s that evolution must first pass scientific muster. “Only then,” he said, “will it merit to face Revelation.” Until then, it is pointless “to introduce this failure of science in the sacristy.” Salvatore Brandi, another La Civiltà Cattolica Jesuit, noted:
The first impediment to accepting evolution for educated Catholics comes not from the fear of contradicting the Bible, but from the scientific insufficiency of that system, that is, the absolute lack of evidence that confirms it.
... why bring in religion?
A scientific idea must be solid before it can be used in interpreting Scripture, Brandi said. “It is certainly required,” he wrote, “that the words of eternal Truth not be interpreted and warped on the basis of gratuitous hypotheses, to make [those words] say today in obedience to one theory, what will be said tomorrow in obedience to another.”
In other words, the fact that science could influence scriptural interpretation was obvious, thanks to the “two great lights” of Genesis 1. But the science had to be solidly demonstrated. If a theory had weaknesses scientifically, why bother to consider it theologically? After all, the interpretation of Scripture could not be allowed to simply flutter in the changing winds of passing scientific ideas, following one fallible scientific idea today, another tomorrow.
One perceived scientific weakness of evolution was the matter of infertility of hybrids discussed in Part 3 of this series. Different species were known to beget offspring; a horse and an ass can beget a mule. But that offspring is sterile. This is not considered relevant to evolution today, but in the late 19th century even writers who were enthusiastic about evolution considered it a problem.
Another scientific problem, one that the Jesuits of La Civiltà Cattolica found particularly significant, was the problem of the origin of life.
Salis-Seewis wrote, “The first postulate with which evolutionism opens its series of imaginative theories is that of the spontaneous generation of the very first organisms.” He then went on to point out that the idea of the spontaneous generation of life from inanimate matter, though very ancient, had been repudiated by modern science. Indeed, he said, science had repeatedly pronounced judgement on “this first and fundamental supposition” of evolution, and “primordial spontaneous generation has been declared devoid of any foundation and contrary to the constant induction of facts and to one of the best-established laws of Nature.”
Salis-Seewis was correct — while there were still a few advocates for some sort of spontaneous generation even in the late 19th century, by the end of that century the idea had been rejected by science. Today the origin of life remains a puzzle, scientifically speaking.
Many Catholic theologians in the late 19th century viewed support for evolution as a sort of atheistic ideology based on a scientific theory that lacked any serious foundation. Without such a foundation it was easy to dismiss evolution from a theological point of view. But with time, the changing winds of passing scientific ideas calmed. Science that once seemed all too obviously fallible began to have the kind of persuasive power possessed by Ptolemy’s work. And importantly, that science of evolution ceased to be something associated with polygenism that undermined the idea of the unity of the human family.
Imperfect processes still today
We see, in the Vatican’s confrontation of evolution in the late 19th century, an effort to wrestle with science that was unsettled and consequential. Evolution was consequential, seen at that time as undermining the unity of humanity and placing some people outside of salvation history. Evolution was unsettled, with Darwinism in “eclipse” and many thinkers having serious scientific questions about it (at least one of which remains unanswered today).
The Vatican’s process for wrestling with the idea of evolution was, in essence, a committee of men who lacked the time, expertise, and commitment really necessary to address the matter at hand. As imperfect as this process was, it is difficult to envision better processes, or to envision no processes. Many people today view evolution as emblematic of “conflict between science and religion,” but if today a scientific idea arose that was promising yet unverified, and that had “race”-based implications for who was fully human and who was not, what would happen? Panels and committees would be formed; reports would be issued; harsh words would be said — outside of religion. There would be consequences to individuals much like what the Vatican could dish out in the late 19th century. The process would be imperfect. Modern processes for dealing with consequential scientific ideas, whether they involve the development of weapons or the response to deadly diseases, have been imperfect — like the Vatican’s discussion of evolution at the end of the 19th century.
But what about back when the Vatican dished out consequences worse than just having a book put on a “prohibited” list? What about Galileo?
We'll see that question next.
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This series is based on the paper “The Vatican and the Fallibility of Science”, presented by Christopher M. Graney at the “Unity & Disunity in Science” conference at the University of Notre Dame, April 4-6, 2024. The paper, which is available through ArXiv (click here), contains details and references for the interested reader.
The paper, and this Aleteia series, expands on ideas developed by Graney and Vatican Observatory Director Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J. in their 2023 book, published by Paulist Press, When Science Goes Wrong: The Desire and Search for Truth (click here).
