Over the summer, the Vatican newspaper ran a series of articles on Darwinism, creation and intelligent design. In a nutshell, they said evolution and Christian faith are compatible as long as evolutionary theories do not exclude a greater divine plan.

Pope Benedict XVI has also shown a keen interest in the issue and its implications for the faith. He described creation as an “intelligent project” in 2005 and hosted his former doctoral students in a symposium about evolution in 2006.

I was very interested in the articles the Vatican newspaper ran, but alas, I couldn't find them. I'm normally fairly good at tracking that stuff down, but no luck this time.

I like the church's stance because it recognizes that their doesn't have to be a conflict between God and science. They two aren't mutually exclusive, and in fact, in many places work to support one another. From everything I can read, it appears that a big push of Pope Benedict XVI is to show that relationship. I'm very glad.

In college, my fraternity (which was historically Catholic... if not practicing at the time) arraigned for a priest to give a series of talks on God and science at our school (an engineering college). It made for some interesting talks. I'll have to see if I can dig up the notes I took at the time...