Michael Zimmerman on the Catholic Equivalent of Biblical Literalism

I didn’t manage to blog about Michael Zimmerman’s latest blog post until now. It is a challenge to Rick Santorum to heed his own church’s teachings about evolution. Here’s an excerpt:

The Pontifical Academy itself, on January 24, 2009 issued a statement arising from the meeting that is as powerful as it is clear. “It is important for scientific knowledge on evolution to become integrated into our world-view and for our world-view to be steadily updated. The extraordinary progress in our understanding of evolution and the place of man in nature should be shared with everyone.”

So, if Rick Santorum actually believes what he says about his own religious beliefs, that “A Catholic is required to form his conscience in accordance with the church’s teachings,” I guess he will be changing his stance on the teaching of evolution and I can think of no better place to make a public pronouncement on the topic than to the Iowa Christian Alliance. After all, the teachings of his church are crystal clear on the issue.

It seems to me that adhering to the Church’s teachings in Catholicism is probably, in most instances, like “believing the whole Bible” and “taking it all literally” within certain branches of Protestantism. What it means in practice is “I call on you to submit to the authority of the Bible/Church on this point which happens to agree with my own views, and to ignore those places where I ignore or conveniently explain away what the Bible/Church has to say on other issues.”