Dear Twinc:

The Church does not make a definitive statement either way about Evolution itself. One can be a good Catholic and accept most of the theory of Evolution, and one can be a good Catholic and not accept Evolution.

This refers to the science itself. Unfortunately the science has been wrapped tightly around rhetoric of atheist as an alternative to the idea that God created the universe. It is very unscientific for scientists to assert that. The Church separates the bias rhetoric from the actual science of the the theory of evolution and speaks to the science.

Pope John-Paul II, speaking to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, said that the Church leaves the investigation of the mechanisms of creation and biological development up to legitimate science. This is a scientific question, not a religious one.

While the Church allows science to investigate the details, the Church insists upon the following three positions, according to Pope John-Paul II:

1) the scientific theory of evolution does not disprove the existence of God: God is the Creator (any science that tries to assert Evolution as an alternative to God or as proof that God does not exist or is not the Creator is out-of-line and to assert such a thing is not science. In like manner, religious people are out-of-line to assert religious theories as science when they are not)

2) there were an original pair of humans, which in Genesis story happened to be named Adam and Eve (actually science has pretty much proven that the human race can be traced to a single pair)

3) the Soul is not evolved, but is specifically and individually created by God imbued within the human person at the very moment of conception.

Other than these three provisos the Church has no problems letting science be science and do its job to try to explain with the scientific method the origins of species.

From a religious point-of-view the Genesis story of creation is not science nor is it meant to be. The point of the Genesis story is not how the universe was created, but who created it. Anything beyond that is mere speculation theologically.

The book of Genesis contains mythological stories, oral histories. This is a literal fact, not opinion. That is the very nature of oral histories. That is the literary style of the Genesis story. Oral histories tell a truth but reveal that truth through mythology in order to teach the truth being conveyed. Being a mythological literary form does not make the stories fiction. Most myths contain a combination of facts and fiction. It is similar to the docu-drama movies of today. Movies based on real events are give some literary license in order to make the story more understandable or interesting. This is what the oral histories of old did.

If evolution be true, it means that when God's time was right, and a creature existed that would be human, God gave that creature a soul. It is that creature, and not other man-like creatures, who became human beings made in the image of God.

It is when God imbued a soul into that creature that made him human regardless of whether ot not that creature was created instaneously or evolved. It is the rational soul that makes us human.

St. Thomas Aquinas taught the existence of three souls:

1) Vegetative Soul: this is the life-force that all living things have (plants, animals, humans)

2) Sensitive Soul: this is the faculty that allows creatures to sense, feel, and respond to their environment (animals & humans have this, but plants do not)

3) Rational Soul: this is the faculty to be creative, for higher thought, for self-awareness, for awareness of our mortality, to love, and to choose apart from instinct and environment, and is immortal (only humans have this form of soul)

Animals have both Vegetative and Sensitive Soul. Humans have all three forms of soul.

The Rational Soul is created at the moment of conception of a human person. Any and all creatures without this Rational Soul is not human regardless of how human-like they may be or genetically close they are to humans.