Chance or Purpose by Schoenborn Cardinal Christoph

Author:Schoenborn, Cardinal Christoph [Schoenborn, Cardinal Christoph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586172121
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2009-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

VI.

”. . . Little less than God” (Psalms 8:6) Man as the Crown of Creation

Vatican II says, “According to the almost unanimous opinion of believers and unbelievers alike, all things on earth should be related to man as their center and crown.”1 Can this position still be maintained forty years later? Is everything on this earth really aligned in relation to man and supposed to be related to him? Should that be the conception believers hold? Is it also shared by non-believers? The unanimity about man being “the crown of creation” that the Council presupposes here does not seem to exist at all. For this would mean, at the same time, that evolution had reached its goal with man—and, thereby, that it corresponded to some plan. Man’s coming to be would then be the result of a purposeful process and not a random one.

For many people today, to consider man as the crown of creation sounds like an arrogant exaggeration of one’s own importance. We often read that where the Christian faith once (it is said) raised man up and exalted him above all other living beings, science has now knocked him off his pedestal again.

The manner of speaking about “the three great offenses to humanity” offered by science has become an accustomed scheme of things. The well known naturalist and researcher in behavioral patterns Antal Festetics describes this idea, which derives from Sigmund Freud, as follows:

The first offense came from Krakow, from Copernicus (the earth is not the center of the universe), the second from London, from Darwin (we are descended from animals), and the third offense came out of Vienna, from Sigmund Freud (with the analysis of our mind or “psyche”). We were most deeply hurt by Darwin’s “blasphemy” about being related to primates, and we found it both painful and infuriating, for it is apes in particular who look so much like us and who also “ape” the way we behave.2

So as to confirm the way man’s dignity has been “offended” by the progress of science, we offer yet another example: a few months ago, scientists succeeded in unlocking the genome sequence of chimpanzees. It is more than 98% identical with that of human beings. “The crown of creation” is tottering and faces strong competition. Is it not better to agree with the English evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson:

Many people would like to think that we men are the product of a special creation, separate from the other forms of life. I do not think this, I am happy that it is not so. I am proud to know that I am a part of this tumult of nature, to know that the same forces which produced me also produced the bees, the giant fern and the microbes.3

Any number of examples could be found. In three ways, man’s position as “crown of creation” has been called into question: the earth has been removed from the center of things, into an orbit around the sun, somewhere on the edge

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