Kolbe Center: Pope Pius XI’s understanding of the Catholic Doctrine of Creation

[Stone]

Pope Pius XI refuted Darwinism 100 years ago, but his lessons have not been learned
In assessing natural selection, spontaneous generation, and the evolutionary mechanisms expounded by Charles Darwin, Pope Pius XI found they fail under scrutiny, highlighting gaps and debunking falsehoods created by its proponents to prop up the evolutionary theory.



Charles Darwin
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Jan 31, 2025
LifeSiteNews [Adapted and reformatted - The Catacombs]

Editor’s note: This article is Part 2 of a four-part study of Pope Pius XI’s understanding of the Catholic doctrine of creation as opposed to the modern scientific proposition of the evolution of mankind.

(Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation) — Having established the theological case for the special creation of Adam, body and soul, the future Pope Pius XI turns his attention to the hypothesis of human evolution:

The theory of Transformism or Evolutionism conflicts with the expounded points of doctrine because, as we have said, it is produced to explain the origin of man. This theory, not unknown to the old materialists, was reawakened at the beginning of the present century by the Frenchman Lamarck (1741-1829), cultivated and embellished by the Englishman Darwin (1809-1881), and amplified by the German Häckel. But for brevity and clarity’s sake, some things must be distinguished, namely: the theory itself of the transformation of species; the reasons by which it is said to be supported; the means by which transformation has occurred; finally, the suppositions from which the whole theory proceeds.

The substance of the theory itself, as it is taken here, is reducible to the transformists’ claim that man, at least regarding the body, had his first and immediate origin not from a certain direct action of God, but from a lower animal through the successive and progressive transformation or evolution of species.

The future pope correctly identifies the principal arguments in favor of human evolution:

The first reason is anatomical-physiological, and it is based on the similarity between the human body and the bodies of animals (a unit of configuration and arrangement, commonly known as a floor unit). “Nor,” says Darwin, “is it right to believe that so many individuals of the largest of each natural class were created with such apparent, but deceptive, indications of the common filiation of all from one progenitor.” The transformists also combine anatomical similarities with physiological similarities. The second reason is embryogenic; for it is sought from the development of the human fetus (ontogeny), as it recapitulates in its different stages the longest epochs of transformation from species to species (phylogeny). This is that fundamental biogenetic law, thanks to which Häckel congratulates himself, as if he had laid a new foundation for Darwinism and discovered the true efficient causes on which the evolution of all individuals depends. Finally, the transformists draw a third reason from the presence of certain parts in the human body, which, when appearing completely useless and considered as remains or rudiments of organs that once existed, should be explainable only by admitting the derivation through the transformation of species.

But if one looks for means by the aid of which a transformation of this kind has occurred, the transformists assign more. Indeed, as Lamarck says, along with Häckel, living beings begin from brute matter by spontaneous or heterogeneous generation, and from this they try to explain the first beginning of life in nature. Darwin, however, admitting that he knows nothing about the first beginning of life, refrains from this point. Lamarck teaches that in order to explain the successive evolution, new organs, whose development and active power are always adequate for exercise or use, should be produced by means of the modification of adjuncts arising from new needs and corresponding efforts; but what has once been acquired in any organism is transmitted and preserved through generation; for life itself always tends toward the growth of living bodies.

Darwin did not reject the means of this kind of evolution, but added several more: namely, natural selection, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest: also, sexual selection, combined with the laws of correlation, heredity, divergence, and permanence.

All of these, however, have been seen by some as insufficient, since they present the transformation of species as accomplished only gradually and under the influence of external agents. Retaining the origin of all species from a few primitive forms, these say that new species sometimes appeared suddenly and as if by leaps from the lower ones, and not without the influence of external agents, but mainly due to certain unknown changes inherent in the individuals of a species.

Finally, the suppositions of transformism, insofar as it is extended to man, are two, namely: the variability of species and the enormous, even indefinite antiquity of man; furthermore, it is clear to everyone that these two [suppositions of the] transformists are utterly wanting.

Now, it seems that these can be said of the expounded theory, namely: there is nothing to prove its reasons; the means are in part arbitrary, in part absurd, but altogether insufficient and inept; the suppositions are either gratuitous or false; finally, the whole assertion of the theory contradicts the certain principles of philosophy and facts discovered in the natural sciences themselves.

Therefore first, the reasons of the transformists prove nothing: The first reason proves nothing; for the similitude, whether anatomical or physiological, between man and brute, is not as great as the transformists say; and what this similitude really concerns is not scientifically explained through some original typical unity of shape, but both by the conformity of the two into one genus, and also by the different application of the same mechanical laws according to the requirements of diverse cases.

Here the future pope makes the same observation that biologist Pamela Acker has made on many occasions – namely, that form follows function, so that similar features in diverse organisms, like five-digit extremities in humans and whales, can be explained more reasonably as evidence of a common designer than as evidence of common descent from a one-celled organism.

Nor is the embryogenic system more valid. In the first place it is gratuitously asserted that the evolution of the human embryo is a short repetition of the long evolution of the species, from which man was finally sprung.

Häckel, who had already arranged the genealogical tree of man (after his own method, of course), discovered so many gaps and contradictions that he was forced to resort to certain falsifications or innovations of embryonic development, which nature itself makes so frequently that indeed Ontogeny itself may be said to consist of a kind of Palingenesis and Cenogenesis (2).20

Next, it is asserted no less gratuitously, but rather completely falsely, that the human embryo undergoes true metamorphoses from one animal form to another, and that true identities prevail between its different successive forms and the final forms of the lower order of animals. In reality, what is being and what can only be affirmed is the gradual development of the embryo and certain successive analogies, which were not unknown to the old Aristotelians. Furthermore, the animal organism, which according to the present natural economy is not suddenly produced perfect, but gradually by concurring secondary causes, from the beginning only predominates the more general characters of animality, and is successively adorned with specific ones; this, being easily understood, suffices to explain the aforementioned similitudes and analogies. Rather, he who admits these true metamorphoses and identities supposes an indifference in the human germ toward the production of any animal; but this is completely at odds with continuous experience. Of course, there is no sufficient explanation of this experience, unless some principle of specific difference is posited in the germ itself.

Hence, if even the greatest embryogenic similarity is admitted, it can only be material and, so to speak, superficial.

Truly, such a similitude as the transformists boast is not to be admitted, as is clear from the most accurate experiments, with several done not many years ago (1876) by Th. Bischoff in the Münich Academy. It is also clear from the many forgeries which the most skilled men of natural science have discovered in Häckel’s painted tables.

Commenting on the fraudulent character of Häckel’s “proof” for human evolution, Christian Bergsma observes:

Ratti is one of the earliest contemporaries of Haeckel to call out his fraudulent paintings and sketches, along with Carl Semper and Wilhelm His. Ratti also cites the German Jesuit philosopher Fr. Tilman Pesch, who wrote scholastic and interdisciplinary critiques of Haeckel. Many other contemporaries would follow suit. In 1911, Haeckel responded in a tirade mainly directed against his Catholic critics, writing:

“They charged me with willful deception and falsifications, because I schematized the pictures of the embryos. By ‘schematize’ I mean I omitted unessential adjuncts and strongly emphasized essential form relations. I also filled in deficiencies here and there by comparative synthesis.” [1]

Of course, Haeckel essentially admits in saying this that he exaggerated parts of the embryos to make similarities appear obvious where they would otherwise not have, added in features from other embryos where they were absent to give the impression of similitude, and erased certain features that he felt would weaken his argument; in short, he engaged in falsification. By “unessential,” “essential,” or “deficiencies,” he means only what is thus in terms of his own presupposed argument. In 1915, Jesuit biologist Fr. J. Assmuth published a comprehensive review of Haeckel’s distortions up to that point.[2]

The Catholic retaliation against Haeckel was not unprovoked. Haeckel, with Darwin’s permission[3], used Darwin’s theory as tool for anti-Catholic polemics in the context of the German Kulturkampf, a period where Catholics were persecuted by the state:

“We do indeed now enjoy the unusual pleasure of seeing ‘most Christian bishops’ and Jesuits exiled and imprisoned for their disobedience to the laws of the state … In this mighty ‘war of culture,’ … no better ally than Anthropogeny can, it seems to me, be brought to the assistance of struggling for truth.[4]”

“The history of evolution is the heavy artillery in the struggle for truth. Whole ranks of dualistic sophisms fall before the monistic philosophy, as before the chain shot of artillery, and the proud structure of the Roman hierarchy, that mighty stronghold of infallible dogmatism, falls like a house of cards. Whole libraries of church wisdom and false philosophy melt away as soon as they are seen in the light afforded by the history of evolution. The church militant itself furnishes the most striking evidences of this, for it never ceases to give the lie to the plain facts of human germ-history, condemning them as ‘diabolical inventions of materialism.’”[5]

Darwin remained a close friend of Haeckel and thought highly of Haeckel’s The Evolution of Man, considering it comparable to his own The Descent of Man.[6]

References
↑1 Haeckel, Answer to the Jesuits (1911), pg. 4.
↑2 Assmuth and Hull, Haeckel’s Frauds and Forgeries (1915).
↑3 See Darwin, Letter to Ernst Haeckel, 29 April 1879, for example.
↑4 Haeckel, The Evolution of Man, preface to the 1st Edition, 1874.
↑5 Ibid.
↑6 Darwin, Letter to C.E. Ferguson, 12 January 1880.