The first notable statement after Darwin published his theory in 1859 appeared in 1860 from a council of the German bishops, who pronounced: The concentration of concern on the implications of evolutionary theory for the human species was to remain typical of Catholic reactions. No Vatican response was made to this, which some have taken to imply agreement. No mention of evolution was made in the pronouncements of the
First Vatican Council in 1868. In the following decades, a consistently and aggressively anti-evolution position was taken by the influential
Jesuit periodical
La Civiltà Cattolica, which, though unofficial, was generally believed to have accurate information about the views and actions of the Vatican authorities. The opening in 1998 of the
Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (in the 19th century called the
Holy Office and the
Congregation of the Index) has revealed that on many crucial points this belief was mistaken, and the periodical's accounts of specific cases, often the only ones made public, were not accurate. The original documents show the Vatican's attitude was much less fixed than appeared to be the case at the time. Though he was sensitive to claims to the contrary,
John Henry Newman did not believe that evolution contradicted the Catholic faith. In 1868 he corresponded with a fellow priest regarding
Darwin's theory and made the following comments: In 1894 a letter was received by the
Holy Office, asking for confirmation of the Church's position on a theological book of generally Darwinist cast by a French
Dominican theologian, ''L'évolution restreinte aux espèces organiques, par le père Léroy dominicain''. The records of the Holy Office reveal lengthy debates, with a number of experts consulted, whose views varied considerably. In 1895 the Congregation decided against the book, and Fr. Léroy was summoned to Rome, where it was explained that his views were unacceptable, and he agreed to withdraw the book. No decree was issued against Léroy's book, and consequently the book was never placed on the Index. Again, the concerns of the experts had concentrated entirely on
human evolution. To reconcile general evolutionary theory with the origin of the human species, with a soul, the concept of "
special transformism" was developed, according to which the first humans had evolved by Darwinist processes, up to the point where a soul was added by God to "pre-existent and living matter" (in the words of
Pius XII's
Humani generis) to form the first fully human individuals; this would normally be considered to be at the point of conception. Léroy's book endorsed this concept; what led to its rejection by the Congregation appears to have been his view that the human species was able to evolve without divine intervention to a fully human state, but lacking only a soul. The theologians felt that some immediate and particular divine intervention was also required to form the physical nature of humans, before the addition of a soul, even if this was worked on near-human
hominids produced by evolutionary processes. The following year, 1896,
John Augustine Zahm, a well-known American
Holy Cross priest who had been a professor of physics and chemistry at the Catholic
University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and was then Procurator General of his Order in Rome, published
Evolution and Dogma, arguing that Church teaching, the Bible, and evolution did not conflict. The book was denounced to the Congregation of the Index, who decided to condemn the book but did not publish the corresponding decree, and consequently, the book was never included on the Index. Zahm, who had returned to the United States as
Provincial superior of his Order, wrote to his French and Italian editors in 1899, asking them to withdraw the book from the market; however, he never recanted his views. In the meantime his book (in an Italian translation with the
imprimatur of
Siena) had had a great impact on
Geremia Bonomelli, the
Bishop of Cremona in Italy, who added an appendix to a book of his own, summarizing and recommending Zahm's views. Bonomelli too was pressured, and retracted his views in a public letter, also in 1898. Zahm, like
St. George Jackson Mivart and his followers, accepted evolution, but not the key
Darwinist principle of
natural selection, which was still a common position among biologists in general at the time. Another American Catholic author
William Seton accepted natural selection also, and was a prolific advocate in the Catholic and general press. ==Pope Pius IX==