[mlmonge]

As nuclearnice1 has noted... "Catholics seem almost the same as the US population overall to believe in evolution." I am a practicing Catholic, happily formed and informed. There is nothing in Church teaching that prevents the faithful from studying and defending evolution(1) (or any of the natural sciences, for that matter--contrary to popular belief, the Church does not condemn science that is true to its discipline). Some will reject it (often out of ignorance of what evolution actually teaches(2) or simply as a matter of choice) while others will prayerfully accept it. Myself, I am fascinated by science and always in appreciation to those who genuinely "stick to the science."

(1) But there is an important provision to be considered by the faithful: the teaching of evolution cannot patently claim that there is no God. It is outside the scope of any science to disprove (or prove) the existence of God. And thus it is a misrepresentation of the science for any of the faithful to claim otherwise. The Church respects science in its endeavor to sincerely discover truth; Pope John Paul II once put it as such in his writings (I am paraphrasing here): "Faith forms reason, reason informs faith."

(2) Darwin's work was in fact not motivated by a sense of atheism [1]. In fact, I believe that I once discovered that in the Forward to On the Origin of Species, he references God in a positive note. The exact comment escapes me--perhaps someone with the actual text can verify this.

[1] https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-12041.xml