Catholic thought of the 19th - early 20th centuries in search of compromise with evolution

In this paper I will examine the views of Catholic scientists and clergy, who tried to reconcile evolutionism with Christian belief during the 19th - early 20th centuries. The first such attempt was made by Belgian geologist J. В. d’Оmаlius d’Halloy before the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of species” in 1859. During the first decades of the post- Darwinian period a whole bunch of Catholic thinkers embraced theory of evolution. Among them were paleontologist A. Gaudry, priest M. D. Leroy (France), biologist S. G. Mivart (UK), priest J. Zahm (USA), priest J. G. Arintero, cardinal Z. González (Spain), priest and entomologist E. Wasmann (Austria-Hungary). All these early Catholic evolutionists unanimously shared negative attitude towards Darwinism, which they rejected in favor of more teleological and spiritualistic explanation of evolution. Besides that, all of them to some extent accepted the existence of direct Divine interventions in the process of evolution. The authorities of the Roman Catholic Church initially was quite hostile to evolutionism, but the early Catholic evolutionists paved the way to the subsequent compromise. Key ideas used by the Vatican in dealing with evolution in the late 20th century could be traced back to the 19th Century Catholic evolutionists