Expert: J.M.J. West - 9/29/2008

Question
How does the Catholic church explain dinosaurs?

Answer
There is no set explanation, but the Church has no problem with the most common scientific explanation - i.e. that they existed x million years ago.  One is permitted to hold a whole range of opinions and this matter without contradicting church teaching, so long as certain lines aren't crossed.

I wrote this article for a news paper:

St. Augustine once wrote to the effect that many things about the world, the planets, and nature can “be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or experience, even by one who is not a Christian.”  He concluded that it was disgraceful to hear Christians speaking in ignorance on such matters “as if in accord with Christian writings.”

The Church certainly is not anti-science.  In fact, it has been one of the largest supporters of science in the history of the world.  The Church teaches “there can be never any real discrepancy between faith and reason.  Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.” (CCC 159)

Vatican I defined that everyone must "confess the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing" (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5).  All of creation is subject to the divine plan and will of God, and nothing acted apart from that will.  This much is clear.  What is not particularly clear is how we must understand certain passages.

Genesis 1 and 2 – certainly wellsprings of contentious interpretations – use metaphorical language to relay a real event in our primordial history (CCC 390).  We can know that at least one of the two chapters is not literally true because they present different orders of creation.  Indeed, laying down a literal, scientific ordering of creation does not seem to be what the author of Genesis has in mind.  One supposes that what such descriptions are doing are primarily showing the importance and intentional creation of man, both confirming man is no accident and is made in the image and likeness of God himself.  

God could have created the animals and even man through a guided natural process of evolution, or he could have created them on the spot as they were, and a Catholic is free to believe either in good conscience at this time.  But this raises an interesting point of speculation: supposing God created Adam instantly, how old was he?  15?  30?  “Middle-aged”?  Nope.  He’d have been one day old.  And being one day old, he would have been created with the “illusion of age”.  And if God can do that with the man, one sees no reason he couldn’t do it with the universe.  But then if he can create it to make it look like it has history, there is no reason to suppose he couldn’t just create it with such an actual history either.

The short answer is thus:  The Catholic Church permits one to hold a range of opinions regarding Evolution, so long as none of them contradict truths of the faith.  The range of acceptable beliefs is wide.

Hope that helps!

Pax Christi,

-J.M.J. West