VATICAN THINKING EVOLVES

THE POPE GIVES HIS BLESSING TO NATURAL SELECTION--THOUGH MAN'S SOUL REMAINS BEYOND SCIENCE'S REACH

The relationship between faith and science can be vexing, but one way the Roman Catholic Church and mainstream Protestant denominations reconcile the two is to say they each deal with different spheres of knowledge and so are not in conflict. This is a sort of metaphysical version of Christ's admonition to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, and it is a position that Pope John Paul II reaffirmed last week when he made a statement on evolution. "Consideration of the method used in diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of...

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