Pope Francis In radical break with his predecessors…

Pope John Paul II …Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.* In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.and Pope Benedict XVI, who called the supposed “clash” between creation and evolution an “absurdity” and hosted a big conference on evolution to which real scientists and not creationist scientists were invited: …Pope Francis stated… pretty much what his predecessors have said.“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.“He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.”And, right on time, the usual suspects weigh in to get everything wrong. MSNBC’s David Berger announces that Francis made a “significant rhetorical break with Catholic Tradition“; fundamentalists both Catholic and Protestant announce the End of Days again, and atheist fundamentalists like P.Z. Myers have hysterics and declare that evolution and creation are completely incompatible.And lest you think this is anything recent, here’s St. Thomas on the doctrine of Creation, sounding pretty darned evolutionary:Nature is nothing but the plan of some art, namely a divine one, put into things themselves, by which those things move towards a concrete end: as if the man who builds up a ship could give to the pieces of wood that they could move by themselves to produce the