Perhaps you saw the NYTimes piece on the Church’s stance on evolution expanding on the background to Cardinal Schonborn’s op-ed:

The cardinal’s essay was submitted to The Times by a Virginia public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, which also represents the Discovery Institute.

Mr. Ryland, who said he knew the cardinal through the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, where he is chancellor and Mr. Ryland is on the board, said supporters of intelligent design were "very excited" that a church leader had taken a position opposing Darwinian evolution. "It clarified that in some sense the Catholics aren’t fine with it," he said.

Bruce Chapman, the institute’s president, said the cardinal’s essay "helps blunt the claims" that the church "has spoken on Darwinian evolution in a way that’s supportive."

But some biologists and others said they read the essay as abandoning longstanding church support for evolutionary biology.

"How did the Discovery Institute talking points wind up in Vienna?" wondered Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, which advocates the teaching of evolution. "It really did look quite a bit as if Cardinal Schönborn had been reading their Web pages."

Mr. Ryland said the cardinal was well versed on these issues and had written the essay on his own.

Dr. Francis Collins, who headed the official American effort to decipher the human genome, and who describes himself as a Christian, though not a Catholic, said Cardinal Schönborn’s essay looked like "a step in the wrong direction" and said he feared that it "may represent some backpedaling from what scientifically is a very compelling conclusion, especially now that we have the ability to study DNA."

"There is a deep and growing chasm between the scientific and the spiritual world views," he went on. "To the extent that the cardinal’s essay makes believing scientists less and less comfortable inhabiting the middle ground, it is unfortunate. It makes me uneasy."

But what is the middle ground?

Related: A Mirror of Justice post on a Times article on a decision by a Tulsa museum

When the New York Times devotes an editorial to events in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you can bet that the editors are not espousing the virtues of midwestern common sense as a template for their readers. It seems that the directors of the Tulsa Zoo voted to supplement a display about evolution with a display about the Genesis account of creation. An ill-advised vote, perhaps. But from the Times’ perspective, these votes are the stuff of knee-slapping hilarity:

What I don’t understand (regarding the first link, not the second) is why asking questions about certain aspects of evolutionary theory and you know, wondering how they might be compatible with the traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of God is such a horrible thing for those who say they want a middle ground between science and religion?