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16 results

  • 7 - Exposing Darwin's “hidden agenda”: Roman Catholic responses to evolution, 1875–1925

  • Edited by Ronald L. Numbers, University of Wisconsin, Madison, John Stenhouse, University of Otago, New Zealand
  • Book:
    Disseminating Darwinism
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    28 December 1999, pp 173-208

  • Summary

    In 1931, not long after the theory of evolution by means of natural selection had gained widespread acceptance in the scientific community, the Catholic Encyclopaedic Dictionary rendered the official Roman Catholic teaching on the subject as follows:

    EVOLUTION, EVOLUTIONISM. Transformism, or Evolutionism, means the theory of the transformation of species only, but evolution is a more general and universal theory which is applied to the physical world, to the realm of ethics, to man and to society (Spencer). Absolute evolutionism is not justified by physical science which has established without doubt the stability of species, without ever discovering veritable specific transformations; moreover, it is condemned by metaphysics which refuses to admit that effects can be more perfect than their efficient causes; and “extreme” evolution denies the special act of creation of life, attributing the whole process to a natural development from inorganic matter. The doctrine of the natural development of all the species of the animal and vegetable world from a few primitive types created by God is moderate evolution. Catholics are free to believe in moderate evolution, excluding the evolution of man. Animals, as distinguished from man, are devoid of reason. Hence the animal soul, i.e., the principle which gives an animal life, is essentially material. Hence, man's soul, though depending on material things for its activities, being essentially spiritual, the evolution of man as a whole from the lower animal is impossible.

  • Modernism as the Final Phase of Americanism: William L. Sullivan, American Catholic Apologist, 1899–1910

  • R. Scott Appleby
  • Journal:
    Harvard Theological Review / Volume 81 / Issue 2 / April 1988
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    10 June 2011, pp. 171-192
    Print publication:
    April 1988

  • The figure of William L. Sullivan, the Paulist missionary and teacher who renounced Roman Catholicism in 1910 and migrated eventually to Unitarianism, poses a continuing challenge for historians of American religion. How is one to interpret his spiritual pilgrimage? Is Sullivan best understood as a reformer whose abhorrence of the perduring Vaticanism and Romanism in Catholic ecclesiology impelled him towards liberal Protestantism? Was he primarily, as he put it in his unfinished autobiography, “a moral personality under orders,” ultimately restless with every institutional expression of the “religion of the Infinite Spirit”? Or does the key to his life and thought lie in an excessive patriotism and nationalism reflected, in part, by his allegiance to the “cause” of the Americanists? Was he a Modernist? Most provocative, perhaps, is the thesis linking these two heresies: does Sullivan's career stand as the embodiment of the continuity between Americanism and Modernism?

  • Between Americanism and Modernism: John Zahm and Theistic Evolution

  • R. Scott Appleby
  • Journal:
    Church History / Volume 56 / Issue 4 / December 1987
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 July 2009, pp. 474-490
    Print publication:
    December 1987

  • “Romanism and Evolution. Remarkable Advance. No Special Creation.” “Father Zahm on the Six Days of Creation.” “Father Zahm on Inspiration.” “Father Zahm Honored with a Private Audience by His Holiness.”1 During the final decade of the nineteenth century religious periodicals and secular newspapers alike chronicled the growing fascination of the American Catholic community with the public debate over the latest theories regarding the evolution of species. One figure in particular, John Augustine Zahm, a Holy Cross priest and professor of chemistry and physics in the University of Notre Dame, captured many of the headlines and captivated Catholic audiences with his sophisticated, clear expositions of the various theories in the post-Darwinian controversies and with his repeated assurances that the idea of evolution, properly understood, posed no obstacle to the faith of the individual Catholic.