As to #609, you are proving that (to Catholics, at least) John Paul II or John Paul the Great as he will be known was, like all popes, limited in infallibility to situations in which he was speaking on a matter of Faith or Morals, ex cathedra as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The remarkable notion that we are trousered apes is NOT a matter of morals and NOT a matter of Faith. No claim is made that Catholics MUST believe in this nonsense. It would have been interesting to hear his response to a direct question as to whether the Blessed Virgin Mary (and thus Jesus Christ) was an ape playing dress up in human clothing with a soul added. I am believing that that would be a big NO and that John Paul II was being his usual too nice self in speaking to some pack of "scientists" beyond the reach of Faith. That Pius XII was inclined to such views may shed light on why the Church's internal subversion artists (not Pius XII) burst forth in many ways in subsequent decades. His was also the era of "evolutionist" fraud Jesuit Teilhard de Chardins whom Pius XII silenced.
I will give you credit for coming up with an article which peels me ever so slightly from my usual total submission to the wisdom of John Paul the Great. OTOH, I take it that you do not stand with the Middle Ages Vatican against Galileo any more than I do. I am sticking with Pope St. Pius X on the apeman issue.
It's always amusing to hear from someone who'd rather live under an absolute monarch on the grounds that the rhetoric is more elegant, and who knows more about Catholicism than the Pope.
You're probably right about JPII wanting to please the mighty scientists, though. Look how the Pope felt a need to be so obsequious about the Soviet Union.