On the 200th Birthday of Charles Darwin

As a 15-year old Catholic, reading “On the Origin of Species” and “Descent of Man” was a liberating experience. It opened up for me a new paradigm of the world. It helped me develop answers to the questions: “Who am I?” and “What is my relationship to the world?” Later on in college I studied biology, chemistry, and philosophy. Darwin remained for me an intellectual hero. After college I became an agnostic. Later readings, speculations, writing, meditations, and spiritual gymnastics made me return to the Catholic Church. Thinkers like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin accompanied me through the journey. The times were not right for Darwin himself to harmonize the idea of an evolutionary world and the workings of a loving God, but his sufferings on this topic certainly make him a martyr. For his spiritual struggles and his intellectual honesty despite the consequences, Charles Darwin deserves to be declared a saint.