  This paper provides an overview of work, published since the opening of the
archives of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the end
of the twentieth century, regarding the Vatican confronting evolution in the
nineteenth century. It argues that this work, considered in light of recent
studies of scientific writings by Jesuit astronomers who in the seventeenth
century were opposed to the ideas of Copernicus, points to interesting things
yet to be learned regarding the Vatican's actions on heliocentrism. Concern for
Scripture and for the fallible and consequential nature of science, together
with the processes used by the Vatican in these confrontations, inevitably led
to messy results in these well-known "religion and science" confrontations.
Nevertheless, these confrontations suggest that what the Vatican was attempting
to do in confronting evolution or heliocentrism is something that is needed in
science, and something that will be done in the future, probably not by the
Vatican, and probably in a fashion not less messy.
