The Vatican and the Fallibility of Science: Augustine, Copernicus, Darwin and Race

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of work, published since the opening of the archives of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the end of the twentieth century, regarding the Vatican confronting evolution in the nineteenth century. It argues that this work, considered in light of recent studies of scientific writings by Jesuit astronomers who in the seventeenth century were opposed to the ideas of Copernicus, points to interesting things yet to be learned regarding the Vatican's actions on heliocentrism. Concern for Scripture and for the fallible and consequential nature of science, together with the processes used by the Vatican in these confrontations, inevitably led to messy results in these well-known "religion and science" confrontations. Nevertheless, these confrontations suggest that what the Vatican was attempting to do in confronting evolution or heliocentrism is something that is needed in science, and something that will be done in the future, probably not by the Vatican, and probably in a fashion not less messy.