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Non-overlapping magisteria - Special Issue: Science and Religion: Conflict or Conciliation? - religion and science have their own respective domains of teaching authority
Skeptical Inquirer, July-August, 1999 by Stephen Jay Gould
Pius XII's Humani Generis (1950), a highly traditionalist document written by a deeply conservative man, faces all the "isms" and cynicisms that rode the wake of World War II and informed the struggle to rebuild human decency from the ashes of the Holocaust. The encyclical bears the subtitle "concerning some false opinions which threaten to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine," and begins with a statement of embattlement:
Disagreement and error among men on moral and religious matters have always been a cause of profound sorrow to all good men, but above all to the true and loyal sons of the Church, especially today, when we see the principles of Christian culture being attacked on all sides.
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Pius lashes out, in turn, at various external enemies of the Church: pantheism, existentialism, dialectical materialism, historicism, and, of course and preeminently, communism. He then notes with sadness that some well-meaning folks within the Church have fallen into a dangerous relativism - "a theological pacifism and egalitarianism, in which all points of view become equally valid" - in order to include those who yearn for the embrace of Christian religion, but do not wish to accept the particularly Catholic magisterium.
Speaking as a conservative's conservative, Pius laments:
Novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of theology. . . . Some question whether angels are personal beings, and whether matter and spirit differ essentially. . . . Some even say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation, based on an antiquated philosophic notion of substance, should be so modified that the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist be reduced to a kind of symbolism.
Pius first mentions evolution to decry a misuse by overextension among zealous supporters of the anathematized "isms":
Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution . . . explains the origin of all things. . . . Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.
Pius presents his major statement on evolution near the end of the encyclical, in paragraphs 35 through 37. He accepts the standard model of non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) and begins by acknowledging that evolution lies in a difficult area where the domains press hard against each other. "It remains for Us now to speak about those questions which, although they pertain to the positive sciences, are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith."(1)
Pius then writes the well-known words that permit Catholics to entertain the evolution of the human body (a factual issue under the magisterium of science), so long as they accept the divine creation and infusion of the soul (a theological notion under the magisterium of religion).
The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.
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