Schönborn again

[mmcirvin]

Orac has another take on Cardinal Schönborn's evolution op-ed: he thinks that this is an attempt to sway church policy on the part of one or a few Intelligent Design-movement-influenced cardinals, but one that he doubts will succeed in, say, getting ID taught in Catholic schools, which have typically done better at teaching evolution in biology classes than American public schools do. I do hope he's right.

(I say "typically": I vaguely recall a former student of one Ontario Catholic school telling me that, a few decades ago when he was there, the nuns there never got the memo about faith being compatible with Darwin.)

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's because Schönborn used specific language suggesting (and this later turned out to be the case) that he was not just talking about theology, but had been influenced by a pseudoscientific pressure group (the Discovery Institute of Seattle) seeking the teaching of miraculously guided evolution as science in science classes. The church runs schools that have science classes, which currently often do a pretty good job of teaching science. So, in the wake of the election of a new pope known to be even more culturally conservative than the previous one, people are trying to figure out whether or not this policy is going to change. From my point of view, that's the key question.

Of course the church has the right to teach any damn thing it believes, and my arguing with them on points of theology is like adherents of Euclid and Lobachevsky arguing whose postulates are better, a pretty pointless activity. But their educational system has some reputation for quality beyond the church, and if that's going to change it would be interesting to know it. I suspect and hope that Orac's right and this is not going to happen.