F A C U LT Y D E V E L O P M E N T
At the Crossroads of Faith & Science by Jeremy Reuther ’01
A
t the risk of stoking old fears, let’s start with a pop quiz.
Q A
IN RESPONSE TO GALILEO FORMALLY TEACHING AND PROMOTING HELIOCENTRISM IN THE 17TH CENTURY, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH… A. BURNED GALILEO AT THE STAKE. B. SENTENCED GALILEO TO HOUSE ARREST. C. EXCOMMUNICATED GALILEO. D. IMPRISONED GALILEO TO PREVENT HIS TEACHING.
As you think about the question, also think about how a class of high school sophomores at Jesuit might answer it. Is one of the answers just a little too obvious to be the correct one? Is there a common assumption that the teacher is trying to uncover with the question? These and countless other testtaking strategies come to mind for a sophomore who couldn’t quite find enough time to study the material. For most of us, whose precise knowledge of the historic relationship of the Catholic Church to scientific inquiry is as fuzzy as the unprepared sophomore, the mishandling of the Galileo affair by the Church appears to be a paradigm for all that is (at 26 | J A Y N O T E S | S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 2 1
worst) backwards and superstitious about religious belief, and (at best) simply embarrassing. Eight Jesuit faculty members spent their summer taking a hard look at this big issue and others at the intersection of science and theology. How should Catholics interpret the creation story of Genesis 1 in light of the scientific theory of evolution? What does the archeological evidence for man’s hominid ancestors mean for the Catholic doctrines of original sin and the special creation of the human soul by God? Over the course of two week-long seminars, a mix of theology and science teachers from Jesuit sharpened their scientific and philosophic tools to navigate these questions in the hopes of offering greater clarity to their students. Participating theology teachers included Daniel Augustin ’15 (Christology), Roger Bacon ’10 (sacraments, morality), Susan deBoisblanc (Christology, bioethics), and Scott Delatte ’06 (Christ in Scripture, ecclesiology). From the science department were Matthew Firmin ’10 (biology, environmental science), Karen Harper (environmental science), Khanh Nguyen (physics), and Jeffrey Reuther ’99 (chemistry).
Hosted by the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life, the program included stout offerings of theological essays, in-person labs and simulations of scientific concepts, seminar discussions, communal prayer, and sharing of best-practices with other mission-driven educators from around the country. Participants also received a generous stipend from the McGrath Institute and a collection of reading materials. At the end of the program, Jesuit teachers reinforced their understanding that the Galileo affair, far from being the paradigm for the Church’s hostility to scientific inquiry, is actually the exception to the rule of an otherwise lavish patronage of the sciences through the ages. A quick survey of Catholic priests or clerics making ground-breaking contributions to scientific knowledge makes the point well. St. Albert the Great (a German Dominican priest) and Roger Bacon (an English Franciscan Monk, to be distinguished from the Jesuit teacher of the same name) were instrumental in the incorporation of Greek science and the early discoveries and inventions
