Pretty Good Coverage of the Pope and Evolution

Reuter's writer Tom Heneghan, whose pre-event report on the Pope's schuelerkreis (annual gathering with former students to discuss a particular topic) discussion of evolution far exceeded in its competence Time magazine's article, has this report on the results of the schuelerkreis.

Heneghan's post-event reporting is pretty good. He notes the distinction between affirming a divine Creator of life and affirming the particular theory of Intelligent Design (ID), which claims to show scientifically that life was designed. Also, Heneghan registers the distinction, widely held in Catholic theology, between what we can know from science on the one hand and what we can know only from a broader rational analysis (philosophy).

Heneghan's article refers to Cardinal Schoenborn's famous NYT essay. Heneghan says that it suggested Catholic support for ID. While Cardinal Schoenborn has indicated that he thinks he could have been clearer in his essay, distinguishing better between the scientific aspects of evolution and the materialist philosophical commitment sometimes dubbed "neo-Darwinism", it isn't evident that he intended the essay to support ID.

Schoenborn support for ID seems to be an inference many people drew from his defense of the power of the mind to detect design in nature. Since the ability to detect design in nature is not the same as ID, it doesn't follow that the Cardinal's embrace of the former entails advocating the latter.

Let's see whether others in the media will grasp the aforementioned distinctions.

Via Insight Scoop.
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