Fair and Balanced

On September 16, 2008, the Catholic News Service (“CNS”) ran an article headlined “Vatican evolution congress to exclude creationism, intelligent design.” 

According to the article:

“The Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana are organizing an international conference in Rome March 3-7 as one of a series of events marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species.’”

I certainly don’t have any beef with the Council excluding creationists and supporters of Intelligent Design from the conference, but I do think the CNS headline is interesting, especially since the article’s author later goes on to say:

“Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the other extreme of the evolution debate — proponents of an overly scientific conception of evolution and natural selection — also were not invited.”

So it seems as if thinkers that the Council considers radical at both ends of the spectrum are being excluded from participation. Not that woulf know that from the CNS headline. But who says a religion-based news organization needs to be balanced in its views? Most churches aren’t.

CNS bias aside, it’s ironic that the Council would make the following statement to the service:

“Jesuit Father Marc Leclerc, a philosophy professor at the Gregorian, told Catholic News Service Sept. 16 that organizers “wanted to create a conference that was strictly scientific” and that discussed rational philosophy and theology along with the latest scientific discoveries.”

Obviously, the Council’s quest for truth only extends as fas as moderate views that fall somewhere in between the extremes of atheism (or naturalism, or whatever “ism” represents the scientific extreme) and creationism at the other end of the scale.

Leaves me wondering how much truth the Council (the Catholic church, really) can handle. And the church complains about so-called “cafeteria Catholics” who pick and choose the articles of faith they wish to follow? That’s like the pot calling the kettle black.