"VATICAN CITY, OCT 23, 1996 (VIS) - In a Message made public today to the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, meeting this week in the Vatican in plenary session, the Holy Father recalled that Pope Pius XI, who restored this academy in 1936, called this group of scholars "the Church's 'scientific senate'" and asked them "to serve the truth." 

The Pope expressed delight on the plenary's theme on the origin of life and evolution, "a basic theme which greatly interests the Church, as Revelation contains, for its part, teachings concerning the nature and origins of man." If the scientifically-reached conclusions and those contained in Revelation on the origin of life seem to counter each other, he said, "in what direction should we seek their solution? We know in effect that truth cannot contradict truth." 

John Paul II, noting the academy's "reflection on science at the dawn of the third millennium," observed that "in the domain of inanimate and animate nature, the evolution of science and its applications make new questions arise. The Church can grasp their scope all the better as she knows their basic aspects." 

He pointed to the Church's magisterium on the question of the origin of life and evolution, citing in particular Pius XII's 1950 Encyclical "Humani Generis" and the conciliar Constitution "Gaudium et Spes." 

The Pope drew the academicians' attention to "the need for a correct interpretation of the inspired word, of a rigorous hermeneutics. It is fitting to set forth well the limits of the meaning proper to Scripture, rejecting undue interpretations which make it say what it does not have the intention of saying."

"'Humani Generis'," he stated, "considered the doctrine of 'evolutionism' as a serious hypothesis, worthy of a more deeply studied investigation and reflection on a par with the opposite hypothesis. ... Today, more than a half century after this encyclical, new knowledge leads us to recognize in the theory of evolution more than a hypothesis. ... The convergence, neither sought nor induced, of results of work done independently one from the other, constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory." 

He continued: "The elaboration of a theory such as that of evolution, while obeying the exigency of homogeneity with the data of observation, borrows certain ideas from the philosophy of nature. To tell the truth, more than the theory of evolution, one must speak of the theories of evolution. ... There are thus materialistic and reductionist readings and spiritual readings."

"The magisterium of the Church is directly interested in the question of evolution because this touches upon the concept of man, ... created in the image and likeness of God. ... Pius XII underlined this essential point: 'if the origin of the human body is sought in living matter which existed before it, the spiritual soul is directly created by God.' Consequently, the theories of evolution which, as a result of the philosophies which inspire them, consider the spirit as emerging from forces of living matter or as a simple epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are moreover incapable of laying the foundation for the dignity of the person." 

"Consideration of the method used in diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of view which seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure with ever greater precision the multiple manifestations of life and place them on a timeline. The moment of passing over to the spiritual is not the object of an observation of this type, which can nevertheless reveal, on an experimental level, a series of very useful signs about the specificity of the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of the awareness of self and of its reflexive nature, that of the moral conscience, that of liberty, or still yet the aesthetic and religious experience, are within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology extracts from it the final meaning according to the Creator's designs." 

ACAD VIS 961023 (660)"