Faith & Science

Science and Religion: In Conflict or Complementary?

STEVEN VETTER ‘23, DIOCESE OF BISMARCK

During the fall semester of 2021, I was enrolled in a seminar at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas

Aquinas (Angelicum) entitled Science and Religion: A Historical Approach.

The course opened up to me the complex history and relationship between science and religion. There are many in our world today who teach a false dichotomy that says science and religion are in perpetual conflict. What we discovered over the course of the semester is that they are not in conflict. Instead, they enrich each other and advance man’s search for knowledge and truth.

The Catholic Church recognizes and encourages investigation into all forms of knowledge. Although each has its own field of action and inquiry, science and religion are both directed to coming to know and understand the all-good and all-loving God who created us. God created us in his image and likeness and made us part of the material universe. He gave us the capacity to seek and know the highest truth. Indeed, the nobility of human beings lies in searching for and discovering truth through the use of reason. Religion reveals to us that God is the highest truth and that ultimately, we were not created for this world, but for eternity with him. Science helps us to examine and explain the created order and beauty we see

Seminarians from the Diocese of Bismark stand next to one of the telescopes in the Vatican Observatory: (from left) Joshua Hill ’23, Rev. Mr. Jacob Magnuson ’22, Steven Vetter ’23, and Rev. Mr. Grant Dvorak ’22.

around us—all of which is a partial glimpse of the beauty we will see in God. Science and religion are not in conflict; they are complementary.

One of the many gifts we receive while living in Rome is the witness of the saints, and we have a wonderful example from recent times who spoke beautifully about the relationship between faith and reason. St. John Paul II is buried next door to us in St. Peter’s Basilica, and he continues to teach us how to live a life in the pursuit of knowledge, truth, and holiness.

As he wrote in his encyclical Fides et Ratio: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” n

Come, Let Us Adore God the Creator

ANDREW MESSER ‘25, DIOCESE OF TOLEDO

Deum Creatorem Venite

Adoremus: these are the words that greeted me outside the Vatican

Observatory at Castel Gandolfo.

These are the words that, for the many priests who have worked at the observatory, define a spirituality rooted in tradition. When I visited the telescopes at Castel Gandolfo,

I found this tradition alive and growing in the Church today.

I received a short tour of the Papal Palace and gardens that overlook the mountainside, along with the four telescopes that are housed in the city. There are two telescopes built in the 1930s, after the observatory moved to its permanent location at Castel Gandolfo. The telescope in the gardens was built in 1957; this is the one Pope St. Paul VI used to view the moon on the night Neil Armstrong landed there. There is also an older telescope, completed in 1891, which bears witness to the Vatican’s astronomical tradition from the beginnings of modern science. The Carte du Ciel telescope was constructed as part of an ambitious project to “map the sky.” The Vatican received its own portion of the sky to catalogue, and the images can still be found today. This telescope was moved to the gardens in 1942.

I was particularly struck by the images from the Carte du Ciel telescope. The Vatican Observatory has preserved its own portion of the sky in these early photos, called “plates.” This shows that the Church truly partakes in her own research and preserves what she finds as a treasure to be presented to the Lord. We can say that we live in a Church that preserves both Sacred Tradition and “sacred science.” We are part of a tradition that believes in adoring God the Creator and does not find any opposition between the book of Scripture and the book of nature.

I that found this place was more of a ressourcement than a discovery. There are many who may be shocked to discover that the Church has such a relationship with science. But the fact is, she has never denied it. From a spiritual point of view, she does not ask us to deny it for ourselves, either. My own intellectual conversion can be described as a Copernican revolution. When I was at the center of my own life, I considered everything in orbit around myself. I learned, however, that Jesus is our real center of gravity, who takes us down from the stars in order to place us at the dust of his feet.

A priest at the Vatican Observatory stands beside his telescope, pen and notepad in hand.

We must not deny the stars. Instead, as the Church does, let us place all at the feet of Jesus, if only to discover that even the stars are as dust at his feet. n

Andrew Messer ’25 (Toledo) stands next to one of the telescopes at the Vatican Observatory.