It’s both. None other than Pope St. John Paul II himself said, “Evolution may very well be the process by which God the Creator developed life.” Note that he used both words in the same sentence. That teaches us a very important point: that Creation and Evolution are not mutually exclusive terms -- they can both be right. How?

Think of it this way: God is the Master Chef, and let’s say that He wants to make soup. He has a choice: He can either open a can of store-bought soup, heat it up, and serve it. (This corresponds to a strict interpretation of the “7 Days of Creation” as related in the Bible’s Book of Genesis.) Or He can decide to make it from scratch, pre-cooking some ingredients, slicing up others, etc. (This corresponds to the billions-of-years evolutionary path.) Or He can use some combination of the two methods.

So which method did He use? Well, He’s God, so whichever He chose was optimal. Did He make everything as is, without evolution’s development time? Perhaps. Did He make everything across the span of billions of years, with evolution’s development time? Perhaps. Did He use a combination of the two? Perhaps.

My money’s on the last one -- the combo. Why? Because I believe an evolutionary mechanism within the framework of God’s creation has three hallmarks of the divine m.o.:

The use of a stunningly beautiful process

Intelligent design throughout

Allowance for creatures’ variation within the Creator’s parameters

The Catholic Church has made no official pronouncement on which method we are to believe God used. All that’s required is our acknowledgement of two foundational facts:

God started everything ;

and

Uniquely among His creatures, God gave us human beings a rational, eternal soul, with which we can relate to Him in a very special way.