Do Catholics believe in evolution?

The Catholic Church permits belief in biological evolution as a scientific explanation for the development of living bodies. Evolution becomes incompatible with Catholic faith when it is used to deny God, the spiritual soul, human dignity, or original sin.

What Catholics are free to accept. The Church does not teach a particular scientific account of how species developed. Catholics may accept evidence that living organisms share ancestry and changed over long periods. Pope Pius XII explicitly permitted research and discussion about the evolution of the human body from preexisting living matter, provided Catholic doctrine is preserved in full. Scientific study can deepen our appreciation of creation because truth discovered by reason cannot contradict truth revealed by God (CCC 159, 283).

What faith requires. Whatever biological processes occurred, God is the Creator of everything that exists. Creation depends upon His will and sustaining power at every moment (CCC 290, 296, 301). Every human being is made in God's image and possesses a spiritual, rational soul. That soul does not emerge from matter or come from one's parents. It is created immediately by God and is immortal (CCC 355, 366).

Adam, Eve, and the fall. Genesis uses figurative language while affirming a real primeval event: humanity freely disobeyed God at the beginning of human history (CCC 390). Original sin is a condition inherited by the human race, not merely a symbol for the fact that everyone eventually sins (CCC 404). Scientific proposals about early human populations must therefore be understood in a way that preserves the unity of the human family, the reality of the first sin, and the Church's doctrine of original sin. The Church has not defined one scientific model that resolves every related question.

Where the boundary lies. A Catholic cannot accept atheistic materialism, the claim that matter is all that exists, or that human beings have no God-given purpose. Randomness within a scientific model does not mean creation is outside divine providence. God can govern creation through genuine natural causes without competing with them.

Catholics can study evolutionary science honestly and without fear. Hold firmly to what revelation teaches, and allow scientific evidence to address the biological questions within its proper competence.