The Vatican and Creationism

Many will remember the controversy last July over remarks by Christoph Cardinal Schoerborn regarding evolution, widely interpreted in this country as an endorsement of intelligent design. The more intelligent vaticanistas remarked that this was less likely to be an entry into the American political scene than a response to someone's personal research, interest, or gripe with secularist issues in Europe -- in other words, creationists in Kansas weren't even on the good Cardinal's radar.

As if in confirmation, yesterday's edition of L'Osservatore Romano, (also here in the NY Times article) the newspaper which is to the Vatican as Pravda was to the party, labeling intelligent design as "ideology" rather than science. I would imagine there had been not-so-happy rumblings in the hallways of the eternal city about the difficulties, or perhaps the sheer tastelessness, of becoming identified with the creationist parties in the United States. I'd bet money that the article will be selected for the weekly English-language edition, and will post a link if and when that happens.