(no subject)
Jake found this excerpt on the forums of bustedhalo.com.
(Sidenote: bustedhalo.com is pretty awesome; today they have a featured article called, "What the hell is Purgatory?", and they don't shy away from the controversial stuff.)
Pope John Paul II, in his message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (October 22, 1996), observed that "we will all be able to profit from the fruitfulness of a trustful dialogue between the Church and
science." John Paul took as his starting point the principle voiced by his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, that "truth cannot contradict truth." John Paul II recalled the encyclical of another predecessor, Pope Pius XII (Humani generis, 1950) that scientific theories of evolution do not contradict Catholic teaching providing they allow for the spiritual dimension of the human person.
John Paul observed that since Pius XII’s encyclical "fresh knowledge that led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis." He voiced no difficulty with this. John Paul saw science as providing important truths about the physical and biological origins of the human race, but advised that "science cannot observe the development of the spiritual, the human capacity for self-awareness and self-reflection, moral conscience, freedom and religious experience." These are the subjects for theology and philosophy.
I'm not all that familiar with the whatever controversy evolution is faced with, but I like this approach to it, because it seems like atheists/agnostics take Darwin and turn him into a demigod, and Christians get on the defense and say he's completely wrong, no matter what. The above excerpt is much better of dialogue on the matter.