John Wilkins notes that Fr. George Coyne was been removed from his post as head of the Vatican observatory. It's not clear from the news reports that I have read whether Coyne was removed due to this stance on ID, which he described as a "kind of paganism". He has been replaced by Fr. José Funes who apparently has stated:
"When I teach at the University of Arizona, I tell students, I am a priest, a Jesuit, but my class is a science class ... and Science is about natural, not supernatural causes."
It will be interesting to see what Funes has to say about ID.
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This, from LifeSite:
The Jesuit priest-astronomer who vocally opposed the Catholic understanding of God-directed creation, has been removed from his post as head of the Vatican observatory.
Fr. George Coyne has been head of the Vatican observatory for 25 years is an expert in astrophysics with an…
Contrary to the claims of certain IDologists, the new director of the Vatican Observatory, Fr. Jose Funes, has stated that the rumors that Fr. Coyne was replaced because of his stance on Intelligent Design were "absolutely false" and that Coyne requested in May to be replaced (source). Kind of…
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Oh come on. It's a much better story if you say he was replaced for his anti-ID views...
Anyway, that's how my source put it.
Is there a shift in the Catholic church towars supporting ID and creationism? I was always under the impression that the Vatican supported evolution and the notion of Genesis as allegory, rather than literal.
John,
It is a much better story, but until an official Vatican sources says that is why Coyne left, we have only the hyperbole of the likes of the conservative Catholic Bruce Chapman to go on. Lifesite isn't exactly unbiased commentary straight from the Vatican!
It will be very interesting to see what comes from this Creation and Evolution seminar being led by his royal Popeness himself. Will they use it to clear up recent noise from Schoenborn, etc and re-establish the evolution-friendly line put out by JP2? Or will they stack it with pro-ID participants, and then use it as an opportunity to overturn JP2 and steer the world's largest Christian organization back into the dark ages?