Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish. Pope St. John Paul II, Letter to Rev. George Coyne, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory.
INTRODUCTION
In this article, I examine whether I, as a faithful Catholic, and as a scientist who holds that miracles are possible, must believe that the Creation account given in Genesis is literally true, without modification, and thereby exclude what science tells us about common descent and cosmology. In a way, it’s the other side of the coin to “Can a scientist believe in miracles”: Can a faithful Catholic believe in science?
DOES THE CHURCH SAY GENESIS IS LITERALLY TRUE?
Though revilers of the Christian faith refuse to acknowledge the never-interrupted doctrine of the Church on this subject …. We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep.-Leo XIII, Arcanum Divinae“
One submits to the authority of the Chair of Peter or one does not. Pope Leo XIII indicates that the above miracle is to be held by all and those that dissent from it are “revilers of the faith”. He enjoyed infallibility or he didn’t. Vatican I and her teaching on infallibility is accepted or it is not.–“Mark”,
SCIENCE AND THE LITERAL SENSE OF GENESIS
I: Do the various exegetical systems excogitated and defended under the guise of science to exclude the literal historical sense of the first three chapters of Genesis rest on a solid foundation?
Answer: In the negative.1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission on Genesis
Must these statements be believed by a faithful Catholic, as for example, the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary must be believed, or do they have a lesser status, such that one must examine them, seek advice, and determine by conscience whether one can hold them to be true?
My first impulse is to say while these documents might constitute part of the Magisterium, statements and actions from Popes later on-Piux XII (Humanae Vitae), St. John Paul II (see below)-are not in accord with such a strict, literal reading of Genesis. For example, Pope St. John Paul II in his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences said
Dans son encyclique « Humani Generis » (1950), mon prédécesseur Pie XII avait déjà affirmé qu’il n’y avait pas opposition entre l’évolution et la doctrine de la foi sur l’homme et sur sa vocation, à condition de ne pas perdre de vue quelques points fermes. Pope St. John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Oct. 1996
My predecessor, Pius XII, has already affirmed in his Encyclical, “Humani Generis” (1950) that there is not opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the fall of man and his vocation provided that certain fixed points are kept in mind. my translation.
Further, Pope St. John Paul II convened conferences on Evolutionary Biology, Quantum Cosmology, and Physics, Philosophy, and Theology, all dealing with Divine Intervention and the intersection between faith and science. Would he have done so had he believed, as evidently prescribed by Arcanum Divinae and the 1909 Biblical Commission, that Genesis 1-3 was literally true and not to be interpreted in terms of science?
POPE EMERITUS BENEDICT XVI ON SCIENCE, CREATION AND GENESIS 1
Pope Benedict XVI in his 2008 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences noted:
My predecessors Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II noted that there is no opposition between faith’s understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences.
and
Creation should be thought of, not according to the model of the craftsman who makes all sorts of objects, but rather in the manner that thought is creative. And at the same time it becomes evident that being-in-movement as a whole (and not just the beginning) is creation… Benedict XVI, in Creation and Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo
Writing as Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book, “In the Beginning”, a compilation of homilies and addresses on the Old Testament as a forerunner to the New, he said
It says that the Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such.It is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it. [emphasis added] One cannot get from it a scientific explanation of how the world arose; one can only glean religious experience from it. Anything else is an image and a way of describing things whose aim is to make profound realities graspable to human beings. One must distinguish between the form of portrayal and the content that is portrayed. The form would have been chosen from what was understandable at the time.
This echoes what the priests taught 17 years ago in my year-long Scripture class for the Ecclesial Lay Ministry training program of our diocese. And I would agree with critics that these homilies and messages to Congresses do not have the force of “ex Cathedra” pronouncements or Encyclicals. Nevertheless, it is clear they indicate what recent popes have thought.
DOES SCIENCE DICTATE CATHOLIC TEACHING?
When I brought these arguments up, one commentator asked whether I believed that science dictates Catholic teaching. The answer is resoundingly, “NO!” In everything I’ve written, I have stressed the limited domain of science.
MY BELIEF IN MIRACLES
And, as I have written before, I believe in miracles, because I believe C.S. Lewis’s proposition that God can feed new events into nature to create what seems to us to be a miracle. And since God made the “Laws of Nature,” He certainly can override them if He so chooses. These “Laws of Nature”, to repeat, are descriptive, not prescriptive. They are our attempts to understand and make sense of God’s wonderful creation. God could not and would not make 2 + 2 = 5, but he can curve space so that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle do not add up to 180 degrees.
DESIGN BY LAWS VS DESIGN BY MIRACLES
Design-by-laws is incomparably more intelligent than design-by-miracles.Paul Davies, The Cosmic Jackpot: Why our universe is just right for life.” p.200)
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. “(KJV)
3 thoughts on “Can a Faithful Catholic Believe in Science?”
(This is an older post, so who knows if you’ll see this comment)
Correct me if I’m wrong – isn’t one of the points that someone might make that the whole bible is considered divine revelation? I would think merely cleaving to modernism is something a Catholic would want to avoid (not rhetorical; I’m not Catholic, so I don’t know).
I say that not because that’s what I believe (I was raised vaguely Calvinist) but I would think that would be something you’d want to address because that’s the real argument against, no?
Incidentally, if you’re not familiar with it, Calvin’s commentary on Genesis is worth a read. He had some clarity in mind here (regardless of his other mistakes) that offered very thoughtful arguments for reconciling the seeming contradictions.
(Also showed that wise men in the past were not ignorant of the physical sciences, like modern propagandists teach, but chose to believe because they could see the bigger picture; i.e. societal benefits/necessity).
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Bob-Love this. I am getting more and more comfortable with believing in the Trinity, Divine Hypostasis, Incarnation, Resurrection, Redemption, Judgment, Heaven, and Eternity. As for science today-Mox Nix. I neither believe in it nor disbelieve. I really don’t care about science or apathy anymore. Thank you for some more of your fine-as-aged-wine writing. Guy, Texas
PS-Science today is telling us 2+2=5