Old Testament
Scripture
Genesis Genesis 1:27
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Short answer
Evolution is not a doctrine of the Church. She teaches that God created all things from nothing, that each human soul is created immediately by God, and that original sin comes to all from a sin actually committed by one first parent, Adam. Within those limits she permits research and discussion about whether the human body came from earlier living matter, and she asks that the reasons for and against be weighed. The Fathers read the six days of Genesis in more than one way, and the Catechism says that Scripture presents the Creator's work symbolically as a succession of six days.
Drafted from primary sources. Every quotation is checked against the page it links to.
16 quotations in date order
The Old Testamentbefore Christ
Old Testament
Scripture
Genesis Genesis 2:7
“then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
Old Testament
Scripture
The mother of the seven martyred brothers 2 Maccabees 7:28
“I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.”
The Apostolic AgeAD 1 to 100
c. AD 57
Scripture
St. Paul Romans 5:12
“Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned”
The Early Church100 to 325
c. 180
Church Father
St. Irenaeus of Lyons Against Heresies 2.10.4
“While men, indeed, cannot make anything out of nothing, but only out of matter already existing, yet God is in this point pre-eminently superior to men, that He Himself called into being the substance of His creation, when previously it had no existence.”
c. 225
Church Father
Origen De Principiis, Book IV, 16 (from the Latin of Rufinus)
“Now who is there, pray, possessed of understanding, that will regard the statement as appropriate, that the first day, and the second, and the third, in which also both evening and morning are mentioned, existed without sun, and moon, and stars — the first day even without a sky?”
The Age of the Councils325 to 800
c. 370
Church Father
St. Basil the Great Hexaemeron, Homily 2, 8
“And the evening and the morning were one day. Why does Scripture say one day the first day? … If it therefore says one day, it is from a wish to determine the measure of day and night, and to combine the time that they contain. Now twenty-four hours fill up the space of one day — we mean of a day and of a night”
c. 417
Church Father
St. Augustine of Hippo The City of God 11.6
“For in these days the morning and evening are counted, until, on the sixth day, all things which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!”
The Middle Ages800 to 1500
1215
Council
Fourth Lateran Council Constitution 1, Confession of Faith
“…one principle of all things, creator of all things invisible and visible, spiritual and corporeal; who by his almighty power at the beginning of time created from nothing both spiritual and corporeal creatures, that is to say angelic and earthly, and then created human beings composed as it were of both spirit and body in common.”
c. 1267
Doctor of the Church
St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae I, q. 68, a. 1, I answer that
“The first [rule] is, to hold the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation, only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it, if it be proved with certainty to be false; lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.”
The Modern Era1800 to today
1893
Magisterium
Pope Leo XIII Providentissimus Deus, 18
“There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the theologian and the physicist, as long as each confines himself within his own lines, and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us, "not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known." … the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost "Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation." Hence they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time”
1950
Magisterium
Pope Pius XII Humani Generis, 36
“For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure”
1950
Magisterium
Pope Pius XII Humani Generis, 37
“For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.”
1992
Magisterium
Catechism of the Catholic Church CCC 337
“God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine "work", concluded by the "rest" of the seventh day.”
1996
Magisterium
Pope St. John Paul II Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 22 October 1996, no. 4
“Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. … And to tell the truth, rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution.”
1996
Magisterium
Pope St. John Paul II Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 22 October 1996, no. 5
“As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man.”