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The Catholic Church holds no official position on the theory of creation or evolution, leaving the specifics of either theistic evolution or literal creationism to the individual within certain parameters established by the Church. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, any believer may accept either literal or special creation ...
In October 1996, Pope John Paul II outlined the Catholic view of evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, saying that the Church holds that evolution is "more than a hypothesis," it is a well-accepted theory of science and that the human body evolved according to natural processes, while the human soul is the creation of God. [129]
The position of the Roman Catholic Church on the theory of evolution has changed over the last two centuries from a large period of no official mention, to a statement of neutrality in the early-1950s, to limited guarded acceptance in recent years, rejecting the materialistic and reductionist philosophies behind it, and insisting that the human ...
The great chain of being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals. [1][2][3] The great chain of being (from Latin scala naturae 'ladder of being') is a concept derived from Plato ...
Theistic evolution (also known as theistic evolutionism or God-guided evolution), alternatively called evolutionary creationism, is a view that God acts and creates through laws of nature. Here, God is taken as the primary cause while natural causes are secondary, positing that the concept of God and religious beliefs are compatible with the ...
Recurring cultural, political, and theological rejection of evolution by religious groups[ a ] exists regarding the origins of the Earth, of humanity, and of other life. In accordance with creationism, species were once widely believed to be fixed products of divine creation, but since the mid-19th century, evolution by natural selection has ...
Catholic religion can take evolution theory into account at some time: "This certainly would be praiseworthy in the case of clearly proved facts; but caution must be used when there is rather question of hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation, in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved." [39]
The Roman Catholic Church now explicitly accepts the theory of evolution, [5] (albeit with most conservatives and traditionalists within the Church in dissent), [citation needed] as do Anglican scholars such as John Polkinghorne, arguing that evolution is one of the principles through which God created living beings.