EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



sequently it is not astonishing that such an evolution should 

 have issued in a single human couple. 



Hence we are wholly reasonable if we conclude that 

 monogenism, which Humani generis teaches on the basis of 

 revelation, is not against, but only beyond science. It does not 

 in any way preclude the evolutionist vision of the formation 

 of the first human beings. 



IV. CONCLUSIONS 



Yet areas of uncertainty remain, and the Church is aware 



of them. The encyclical Humani generis of 1950 repeats what 



Pius XII had said in 1941, that the derivation of man's body 



from organic matter has not yet been completely proved. 



Hence no one should speak as though it were a demonstrated 



fact, and no one should proceed as though the sources of 



revelation did not caution prudence and moderation in this 

 question. 28 



The previous attitude of the Holy See, about a generation 

 ago, is illustrated by a report emanating from a trustworthy 

 theologian in Rome and printed in a Catholic periodical.. In 

 resistance to pressure brought to bear on him to express dis- 

 approval of anthropological evolution, Pius XI is said to have 

 replied: "We must not close a door which perhaps we should 

 have to open again. In the history of the Church, one Galileo 

 case is enough. "29 Progress has accelerated since that day. 

 On February 28, 1959, the New York Times carried a story 

 about a lecture on evolution delivered at the University of 

 Rome, with Eugene Cardinal Tisserant in attendance. A 

 paragraph from the account may be quoted: "Scientists here 

 who had been consulted by the Vatican in recent days said 

 they had gained the impression that its [the Vatican's] 

 appraisal of the evolutionary theory was going 'far beyond' 

 the positions laid down in the encyclical 'Humani Generis.' " 

 These, to be sure, are only reports, and names are not named. 

 There seems to be little reason to quarrel with their credibility. 



In any case, contemporary scientific advance cannot, or at 

 least should not, engender in the Christian either disquiet or 



28 AAS 42 (1950) 562, 575 f. 



2^ C. Colombo, "Trasfonnismo antropologico e teologia," La Scuola 

 Cattolica 77 (1949) 20 n. 



117 



