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It would be good first to define some terms and make sure we're all clear on what we mean by evolution,

or at least what I mean by evolution.

I think when people have these sorts of conversations about evolution, they have in mind a sort

of conjunction of views, a combination of views. One is what you might call the ancient

earth thesis. So the earth is very old. Another one is what we could call the progress thesis.

Life has progressed from relatively simple to relatively complex forms of life.

Common ancestry thesis says life originated at only one place on earth,

and all subsequent living things are related by descent to those original living things.

And then Darwinism is the proposed mechanism by which this happens, at least typically. And Darwinism is the view of life developed on Earth by means of natural mechanisms,

natural selection operating on random genetic mutation, or perhaps other mechanisms

like genetic drift and migration, etc. And then finally, the last thesis is naturalistic

originous thesis. Life itself originated from non-living matter. So when I say evolution,

I mean the combination of these views.

Okay, why I think there's a sort of tension between evolution and Catholicism?

Well, here's something that Pope Pius X. 12 said in 1950, specifically about

Darwinism. For reasons having to do with the doctrine of original sin, Popeius declared,

the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either, so you can't accept

either one of these, that 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. Okay, so all humans have to come from Adam,

ultimately. And you can't say Adam represents a certain number of first parents. It's like

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