From LifeSite:
The Jesuit priest-astronomer who vocally opposed the Catholic understanding
of God-directed creation, has been removed from his post as head of the Vatican
observatory.
Fr. George Coyne has been head of the Vatican observatory for 25 years
is an expert in astrophysics with an interest in the interstellar medium, stars
with extended atmospheres and Seyfert galaxies. He also appointed himself as an
expert in evolutionary biology and theology last summer in an article for the
UK’s liberal Catholic magazine, The Tablet.
Fr. Coyne was writing against Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, a principal
author of the Catholic catechism, who said that an “unplanned process of random
variation and natural selection,” both important parts of evolutionary thinking,
are incompatible with Catholic belief in God’s ordering and guiding of
creation.
Coyne, retiring after 25 years of service for the Vatican observatory,
said, “The classical question as to whether the human being came about by
chance, and so has no need of God, or by necessity, and so through the action of
a designer God, is no longer valid.”
