The Vatican Aims to Dispel the Conflict between Faith and Science

The Vatican Aims to Dispel the Conflict between Faith and Science

By E. Stanley Ukeni

The conventional wisdom has been that science and religion maintains divergent views on creation. To most fundamental Christian adherent, the notion of Christian-Scientist would be considered an oxymoron. It’s understandable that many, especially on the Christian side, would find the two disciplines irreconcilably contradictory.

In what would come as a shock to many, the Catholic Church has long held a seemingly convergent view on the subject. Although the ancient history of the Catholic Church is filled with instances of the Church’s efforts to suppress the advancement of science and indeed past persecutions of eminent scientists such as Galileo, its more modern history however chronicles its sustained efforts to advance the frontiers of science.

As a testament of the holy church’s dedication to the enhancement of human understanding of our temporal world and the broader universe, over the centuries, Catholic universities around the world have graduated world-class scientists who have made incredible strides in the advancement of the body of scientific knowledge.   

This uncelebrated effort of the Catholic Church to support the fields of human knowledge is exemplified by the groundbreaking achievement of Monsignor George Lemaitre—a Jesuit Priest, is considered to be the father of the scientific theory that the universe began with a gigantic explosion. As well as being a Catholic Jesuit Priest, Monsignor Lemaitre was regarded within the scientific community as one of the world’s most renowned cosmologists.

It was Monsignor George Lemaitre who, in 1927, first theorized that the receding of distant galaxies was caused by the expansion of the universe. He arrived as this astonishing conclusion after solving the scientific equations of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Lemaitre’s theory was known as the ‘primeval atom’ but it is more commonly known today as the big-bang theory.

The head of the Vatican Observatory—a Jesuit Brother, Guy Consolmagno, suggested in an Associated Press release that Monsignor Lemaitre’s revolutionary scientific accomplishment is a testament that we can believe in God and the big-bang theory.  

In honor of the accomplishment of Monsignor George Lemaitre, the Vatican Observatory has invited the world’s leading scientists and cosmologists to a conference. The event will be held from Tuesday May 9^th 2017 through to Friday May 12^th 2017.

This gathering is not aimed at discussing issues pertaining to religion and science. Rather, the topics of the conference will range from discusses on black holes, gravitational waves to such arcane subjects as space-time singularities.

Brother Guy Consolmagno has been quoted as saying, “Christians believe in a supernatural God who is responsible for the existence of the universe, while our science tells us how He did it.”

The choice of venue is quite symbolic, as the Vatican Observatory was founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to help dispel the conventional impression that the Roman Catholic Church was unaccommodating to scientific discoveries.   

This should be an interesting event. Who knows, perhaps one or two groundbreaking scientific papers will be presented at the conference.

Authored by E. Stanley Ukeni, © 2017. All Rights Reserved. This material and other articles or stories posted on this blog site may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed, in whole or in part, without prior expressed written permission from the author, E. Stanley Ukeni.

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Photo Credits: Vatican Observatory;