Pope John Paul II on Oct. 23, 1996 met with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and recalled that Pope Pius XI, who restored the academy in 1936, called this group of scholars 'the Church's 'scientific senate' and expressed delight on the plenary's theme on the origin of life and evolution, 'a basic theme which greatly interests the Church, as Revelation contains, for its part, teachings concerning the nature and origins of man."If the scientifically-reached conclusions and those contained in Revelation on the origin of life seem to counter each other, he said, "in what direction should we seek their solution? We know in effect that truth cannot contradict truth."
In the domain of inanimate and animate nature, the evolution of science and its applications make new questions arise. The Church can grasp their scope all the better as she knows their basic aspect.

Regarding the origin of life and evolution, the Church's magisterium is cited in particular in Pope Pius XII's 1950 encyclical 'Humani Generis" and the conciliar Constitution 'Gaudium et Spes."

A city built on a mountain cannot hide from the world, and if Mr Abbott aspires to be prime minister, people need to see muscular Christianity, and that's nothing personal, thank you very much.

Tony Abbott's Federal Liberal Party, the NSW Labor Party, and the new Democratic Labor Party - two are right wing Catholic led parties, and the other is the DLP.

One cannot separate one's personal, moral and social convictions from one's policy decisions, just as one cannot separate one's personal, moral and social character, from political reputation.

What is wrong with Tony Abbott is that he has committed himself to political compromise, notwithstanding his convictions. It's just one of the two versions of big party populism on offer.

The new DLP, which is registered federally, and registered in NSW for local elections, and is seeking registration to contest state elections is very different. Conviction first, policy second, and popularity optional. It's an old style labor party to the left of the current NSW ALP, but with a strong moral base, opposed to the irresponsible individualism of the Liberal party.

In case your wondering, I'm a member and I'm Protestant.

Geoff

Before you criticise Tony Abbott's view, it is best to know what the Catholic Church teaches on evolution. I find this repeatedly with so called experts, they just "know" what the Church teaches and proceed to tell the world. But they never actually make the effort to find out what the Church in fact teaches. Within the Church framework Catholics are entitled to a personal view.

The faith of any politician should be totally irrelevant to their role as a politician. Faith is what someone thinks is true without having any evidence to support their position. Politicians have to make decisions for the good of society by weighing up all the evidence they have before them and choosing the most reasonable and logical course of action. Good politicians are those who adhere to this kind of process. Religious people make many decisions that have no foundation at all in the laws of reason and logic. Often when pressed they will try and present an argument but ultimately their position is a matter of ‘faith’.

If politicians begin to make decisions for the public welfare based on nothing else but faith then we have a problem. Whose faith do we accept? Since there is no way to evaluate them then they must be all judged as equal. Why should only ‘religious’ faith be accepted? Why not the faith of those who believe in UFO’s or the healing power of crystals? Every decision would only need to be claimed as based on ‘faith’ to be put into practice. We would have utter chaos.

Human beings are defined by their rationality and not their proclivity for religious or any other type of faith. Once we allow important decisions to be made without reference to properly reasoned argument we have become less than human. If politicians want to make personal decisions based on faith then that is their democratic right but I do not want them making decisions about my future unless they have considered all the relevant evidence and argument.

Politicians should be asked why they decide what they decide and if the only answer they can supply is ‘faith’ then their value as a politician must be suspect. All other things being equal it would be much better to have a politician that was not religious rather than one who was.

Religion has no place in the public domain and the clergy should keep out of it, they are not welcomed and nor are their bigoted views. They're number one allegiance is supposed to be to their God not to their country and every time they join the public domain humanity usually suffers.

The US has just produced a disastrous decade. Two completely avoidable wars with deaths in the hundreds of thousand the end of which we won't see for a very long time (even when the Americans pack up and go home) and those wars resulted from the malign influence of the so called neo-cons and their interference in the public domain.

Examine how the church’s contribution in the public domain has adversely effected humanity throughout history: Hiding or burning books to keep the people ignorant, the taking of women and burning them to death as witches, their ambiguous stand on Hitler’s final solution of the Jews, their dictate to the faithful in Africa not to use contraception causing untold millions of men, women and children to suffer and eventually die from the ravages of HIV AIDS, their instance that woman is somehow inferior to man, their sexual abuse of children, their ostracising of homosexuals condemning them to a life time of misery.

And the amount of wars and deaths caused in their name, the most shameful example, Irish civil war saw the Christian Protestant church pit their soldiers against the Christian Catholic church. Don't you think the church’s interference in the public domain has done enough damage, caused enough death and spread enough ignorance and intolerance?

You are wrong, the Protestants have it right, keep your opinions to yourself, you and your views have caused enough deaths throughout the centuries. For those who want to listen to your point of view let them go to your churches to listen to your arcane views.

Thanks Ulis .......my sentiments exactly .