Most of my life I attended Catholic school. We were never taught the story of evolution in any class. It was always that Adam and Eve were the start of human species on earth placed here by God. Simply talking about evolution in school was considered to be offensive. Human evolution is a process that shows how humans today originated from primates. This process was most definitely not short, but rather lengthy and took millions of years to get to where we are at now. Human evolution is a very controversial topic when dealing with both religious and scientific minded people. According to Masci, “More broadly, most Americans (59%) say that science and religion are both in conflict” (Masci). When reading this statistics you believe that the Catholic Church is against the process of human evolution, but in all actuality they accept it.
The amount of tension was not necessarily lightened in 1950 when Pope Pius XII made a papal encyclical called Humani Generis. It basically stated that he wants the thought of evolution to just be a scientific fad and he goes on to attack those people who do believe evolution is true. One thing he could do was coincide with the idea of evolution as long as people realized the soul was something that
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Human evolution is important whether people choose to believe it or not. Being able to see the similarities we have with primates is quite interesting and has helped with many of our technological and medical advances. Being in a Catholic school most of my life and studying biology has allowed me to see both point of views and still accept them. Having an open mind and looking at the facts is definitely important when understanding human evolution and the Catholic Church. Having both faith and