One of the more snarky-but-accurate criticisms of "teach the controversy" runs something like "shall we teach kids that the Holocaust never happened?"
German Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's top expert in Catholic-Jewish relations, re-dedicated Boston's Holocaust Memorial Menorah last week and stated emphatically that not only must the Holocaust never be permitted to recur, but that Holocaust denial must likewise never happen again.
Cardinal Kasper had some choice words on evolution as well.
A couple of days earlier, in Collegeville, Minn., Cardinal Kasper spoke on theology and faith -- and sometimes the lack of it -- during an address at St. John's University.
"Thinking of God as absolute freedom means understanding God as a liberating God and the world as a place of freedom," he said March 23.
"Following the trauma of the wars of religion, theology underwent a process of purification through a process of self-criticism and constructive confrontation with the modern Enlightenment," he said. "Today all Christian churches profess freedom of religion, avoidance of violence, tolerance and respect toward other religions; while maintaining their own identity, they seek not conflict but dialogue."
He added, "The main Christian churches today no longer have difficulty in reconciling creation and evolution."
However, he said, "this does not mean that (Charles) Darwin becomes a new father of the church and evolution a new dogma. Evolution is and remains a scientific theory or hypothesis and not a matter of faith.
"So those who believe they have the evidence can deny evolution, but they cannot do it in the name of Christian faith," he said.
"In this sense theologians of all the main churches now leave it to the fundamentalist Christians, as well as the fundamentalist atheistic movements, ... to see belief in creation and the theory of evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives, and to counter the theory of evolution with creationism -- a literal understanding of the biblical creation narrative," Cardinal Kasper said.
"Theology which deserves to be taken seriously," he said, "knows how to distinguish the assertion of belief that God created the world from the scientific question of how the origin and development of the world came about."
"Thinking of God as absolute freedom means understanding God as a liberating God and the world as a place of freedom," he said March 23.
"Following the trauma of the wars of religion, theology underwent a process of purification through a process of self-criticism and constructive confrontation with the modern Enlightenment," he said. "Today all Christian churches profess freedom of religion, avoidance of violence, tolerance and respect toward other religions; while maintaining their own identity, they seek not conflict but dialogue."
He added, "The main Christian churches today no longer have difficulty in reconciling creation and evolution."
However, he said, "this does not mean that (Charles) Darwin becomes a new father of the church and evolution a new dogma. Evolution is and remains a scientific theory or hypothesis and not a matter of faith.
"So those who believe they have the evidence can deny evolution, but they cannot do it in the name of Christian faith," he said.
"In this sense theologians of all the main churches now leave it to the fundamentalist Christians, as well as the fundamentalist atheistic movements, ... to see belief in creation and the theory of evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives, and to counter the theory of evolution with creationism -- a literal understanding of the biblical creation narrative," Cardinal Kasper said.
"Theology which deserves to be taken seriously," he said, "knows how to distinguish the assertion of belief that God created the world from the scientific question of how the origin and development of the world came about."
posted by Cheryl Shepherd-Adams
