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The first extended study on John Zahm is John L. Morrison’s unpublished 1951 dissertation at the University of Missouri, A History of American Catholic Opinion on the Theory of Evolution: 1859-1950. As the title suggests, Morrison’s story stretches from the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 to just before the publication of Humani Generis in 1950, at which point, Morrison writes, there was almost unanimous scholarly approval for evolution in Catholic circles. He begins by painting the tricky process of discerning an “official view” of evolutionary theory: “Evolution was not one problem but a multitude of questions to which a variety of answers were given. Indeed, the answers given by a single author were not always consistent."
Morrison traces the beginning of American Catholic immersion in the discussion to an anonymously authored 1873 article entitled “The Evolution of Life,” in the popular journal Catholic World. This article approved the general evolutionary sentiments of two English Catholics, distinguished scientist St. George Jackson Mivart and future bishop John Cuthbert Hedley, while simultaneously echoing Hedley’s warning that “the theory of human evolution was 'rash and proximate to heresy.'" While the general idea of evolutionary transformation may have been acceptable to some, Darwin’s specific version of evolutionary natural selection, especially his focus on human evolution, “became inseparably connected in Catholic thinking” to “the agnosticism of Thomas Henry Huxley and Herbert Spencer and the materialism of Ernst Haeckel.”
After the First Vatican Council (1869-70) said nothing regarding the matter of evolution, the debate grew unchecked in the United States. The 1870s, Morrison writes, represented a low point in the dialogue between evolution and Catholicism as William Draper’s infamous book, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, was published and read widely in 1874. Draper’s book landed on the Vatican’s “Index of Prohibited Books” in 1876, which did little to quell the problem of aligning evolution with atheism and anti-Catholicism.
Because of this alignment, Morrison argues, the prevailing spirit of the late 1870s could be encapsulated by Fr. Camillius Mazella, who published an anti-evolutionary book in 1877, and was shortly thereafter named a Cardinal by Pope Pius IX. In Mazella’s work, “every effort was made to make the evolution of man appear as revolting as possible…Darwinism was spiritually degrading…[and] in contrast to Christianity, which exalted human nature to a supernatural plane.” The journals Nature and Popular Science Monthly were the evildoers, touting evolution alongside Draper’s anti-Catholicism and Huxley’s agnosticism. There was no good to be found in any scientific theory that produced such philosophical horrors.
The 1880s saw several key changes in the Catholic discussion of evolution in America. First, Catholic World, the leading Catholic journal in the United States, stopped publishing article anonymously, forcing authors to be more cautious and precise in their discussions. Second, Pope Leo XIII, a scholar and intellectual, was elected after the death of Pius IX in 1879. Third, the first book by an American priest which spoke positively of evolution was published by Rev. John Gmeiner in 1884, who claimed that evolution could produce “a more exalted conception of God.” While Gmeiner would come short of explicitly supporting evolution, his book set the stage for a generation of clergy to warm to the idea. Fourth and finally, the American bishops wrote specifically of the liberty of Catholics in scientific matters at the 1888 Council of Baltimore. By the end of the 1880s, a large group of Catholics—deemed Americanists—were becoming more at ease with evolution, while the rest still held rather anti-evolutionary and anti-Darwinian tendencies.
The 1890s saw the further demarcation between these two factions, brought about largely because while “the leaders of Catholic thought steadfastly rejected the doctrine of evolution…in the nineties they displayed considerable sympathy towards it.” But as more Catholic authors warmed to evolution, the voices against it became louder and stronger still, exacerbating the political divide that encompassed many issues beyond evolutionary theory and spread far beyond the United States. Morrison notes that “a determined attack against all aspects of liberalism, of which evolution was only one, was being conducted in America, England, France, and Italy. Rome rather than America was the focal point of the conservative campaign.” Upon this politically divided stage of the early 1890s, after two decades of struggle and discussion, John Zahm enters Morrison’s story.
This American historical perspective gives Morrison his methodological uniqueness. Zahm becomes part of an American problem that creeped into European discussions. Morrison sees Zahm’s tenure at the helm of the evolution debate in American Catholic circles beginning with his 1893 lectures at the Catholic Summer School, a nationally-known event which presented several days’ worth of lectures from well-known Catholic educators on a variety of topics. These lectures, while not necessarily original in the grand scheme of intellectual thought, proffered, Morrison avers, “startling views” to the Catholic crowd of 1893: first, that the great flood may not have been universal; second, that evolution was now a “plausible, yet unproven, concept,” third, “that the venerable St. Augustine was the father of theistic evolution.” His lectures were followed quickly by numerous articles and further speaking engagements. The lectures themselves were transformed into books, and the 1893 summer lectures would become well known as his book Bible, Science, and Faith.
(excerpted from chapter 1)
