Catholics have been "allowed" to believe in "intelligent design" since the days of Augustine.
When I was in college, our professor told us that Darwinian evoluation was a theory, and that although we had to understand and know about it, we didn't have to believe it.
In the Philosophy of science, theories are the way we desribe what we find in experimentation. These theories use the philosophy of the one making the theory. So Darwin, who was seeking a way to explain God didn't exist, found blind evolution, while Pasteur, a Christian, did experiments to explain why "spontaneous evolution" of life didn't exist, and Mendel, who was also a Christian, did experiments to explain why all life inherited all traits from parents via genes, which went against an early "evolutionary theory" that acquired traits were inherited (i.e. if your parents go t sunburned, you would be born with the genetic trait to be dark skinned)...
When I was in college, our professor told us that Darwinian evoluation was a theory...
When I was in college I was told evolution was a fact. That's always bothered me. I think it is a theory. And coupled with the theory of natural selection they are the best theories to date that explain the physical evidence (the real facts). I've been inclined to regard the fact or theory argument about evolution as nothing more than an argument over the definition of the word. The 'fact' proponents are just collectively calling the physical evidence 'evolution'.