Zápolení o pravdu, naději a lidskou důstojnost - Česká katolická teologie 1850-1950 a výzvy přírodních věd – Pospíšil Ctirad Václav (2025)

This Czech-language monograph by Ctirad V. Pospíšil substantially expands earlier research into the relationship between Catholic theology and the findings of the natural sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first part examines contemporary theology’s attitude towards astronomy and finds no conflict whatsoever. The second discusses theology’s response to evolution in the animal and plant kingdoms, revealing considerable openness to evolution as a fact, though not to its materialist interpretation. The main point of friction was the theory that humanity arose through evolution, which provoked heated debate not only in theology but also among representatives of other scientific disciplines. The author presents the positions of Czech theologians as well as those who, from the final decades of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, connected this theory of human origins with Christian theology of creation and anthropology. This previously unexamined topic in the Czech context, with significance for international research as well, demonstrates that theologians’ response was far from uniformly negative. From the 1920s onward, the acceptance of the evolutionary origin of the human body was a relatively common feature of Catholic theology of creation, particularly in German-speaking countries and, in connection with them, in Bohemia and Moravia.