The Catholic View of Evolution

In this blogger's latest post, "Theistic Evolution" was criticized. Following is a summary of an article on Catholic.org that clearly states the Catholic position on evolution. I leave it to the reader to decide if this opinion is reasonable and adequately supported.

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Pius XII insisted that regardless of the amount of research completed on the topic of evolution, Catholics must believe that 1) by virtue of man's human soul, he is essentially superior to the animals; 2) the first woman was derived in some way from the first man; 3) it is impossible that the immediate father of man could have been anything other than a human being; that is, it is impossible that the first man was the son of an animal.

Rev. Spirago explains: "The Church, through the Biblical Commission, requires us to believe in the special creation of Adam, that is, we must believe that Adam came into being through no merely natural process, but through some special intervention by God. God creates every human soul immediately out of nothing. The Church also teaches that God, by a special act, formed the body of Eve from the body of Adam" (Ibid).

Further, there are some who think that a population of humanoids evolved on the surface of the earth, and that the human race descended from that group. In other words, there is the incorrect notion that all human beings are not the descendants of one human pair (Adam and Eve). This theory is known as polygenism, and is contrary to the official teaching of the Magisterium.

Pope Pius XII declared: "it is unintelligible how such an opinion can be squared with what the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Magisterium of the Church teach on Original Sin, which proceeds from sin actually committed by an individual Adam, and which, passed on to all by way of generation, is in everyone as his own" (HG, 38).