ET Phone The Vatican

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In one of yesterday's posts, The Vatican, Aliens, Ahmadinejad, Hillary, Operation Chaos and Bill Shatner, Too - This Post Has It All I talked about a story in which a Vatican astronomer said that the possible existence of intelligent aliens wouldn't "contradict belief in God". As I mentioned then, the impact of contact with extraterrestrials on religion was a topic that I've been interested in for some time and I'd done some research on it.

Well judging by the rather noticeable spike in my traffic yesterday (and my traffic software's ability to pinpoint what posts are getting attention) it would seem that I'm not the only one interested in the subject. So, it seemed like a good idea to revisit my previous research and do a bit more and I came up with some fascinating things.

As I had remembered yesterday, the "news" that the Catholic Church had no real problem with the idea of intelligent alien life wasn't news at all. Not only isn't the Vatican intimidated by the discovery of alien intelligence in particular but it isn't intimidated by scientific discovery in general, even having its own Pontifical Academy of Sciences, manned by very real and forthcoming scientists as you can see here. If you're interested the Vatican's take on science there is a terrific audio series now on YouTube in which Brother Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory talks about a wide range of scientific issues and their interrelationship with religion. The first one is below:



Consolmagno is a delightful and amazingly unpretentious man who wrote the booklet (published in 2005) in the upper left corner of this post which, as its sub-title states is about "Catholic Belief and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life". Consolmagno did a great interview with (of all things) Astrobiology Magazine, some of which follows:

AM: You're at an astrobiology conference, and the goal of astrobiology is to understand the origin of life on Earth and to search for life elsewhere, including other intelligent life. So let's just go for the big prize. Suppose another intelligent species is discovered. What would that do to the Church's beliefs about God creating the universe, and Earth, and the creatures on Earth, and sending his only son - which is what it says in the book - to this planet, where there is an intelligent species, perhaps one among millions?

GC: There are five hypotheticals there. So, "I don't know," "I don't know" and "How the heck could I know?" But, I'm also a science fiction fan --

AM: Have you read "The Sparrow"?

GC: Yes, and I hated it. But that's a whole different issue. Nobody in that book had a sense of humor. Nobody in that book knew how to laugh.

But here are three scenarios. The most likely one: We find an intelligent civilization and there's no way in creation we can communicate with them because they're so alien to us. We can't talk to dolphins now. In which case, we'll never know.


The number of stars in the visible universe is estimated to be ten times more than the number of grains of sand on Earth and eleven times the number of cups of water in all the Earth's oceans-- or 70 sextillion, or 70,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000 [seven followed by twenty-two zeros].
Credit:NASA/STScI/ESA


Second scenario: We find the intelligent civilization. We can communicate. We discover that they have the two essentials that theologians talk about for the human soul, intelligence and free will. They know who they are, they're self-aware, and they're able to do something about it. I think dogs are self-aware, but they don't have a whole lot of free will. Maybe computers are the same sort of thing. Human beings have to have both.

That means if you're going to have freedom, you've got the capability of doing right and wrong. There is evil in the world, that's an observed fact. There is the need to overcome evil in the world. There's that need for salvation that we all have. I can't imagine they wouldn't need it, if they've got the same freedom we've got.

If you want to trade good bible quotes, here's one: The beginning of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word." The Word is, of course, Jesus, the Word is the second person of the Trinity, the Word is the salvation, the Word is the incarnation of God in the universe, who according to the Gospel is there before the universe was made. The one point in space-time that's the same on every timeline. So that the salvation occurs and is made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ here.

Is it possible that there are other Words in other languages to other cultures? Beats the heck out of me. But that's scenario number two. And people have talked about that for hundreds of years, the idea that there could be other lives - this is classic Catholic poetry. And that's what it is, it's poetry, it's not theology. 'Cause it's so many hypotheticals.

A third scenario: We find a dozen civilizations out there, and a bunch of Jehovah's witnesses go up and convert them all. At the end of the day, every civilization is Christian, except the human race is still not too sure about this. I mean, anything's possible.

The rest of the interview is well worth reading as is this interview with the Catholic News Service in which Consolmagno quotes an obviously very secure Pope John Paul II who once told a group of scientists the reason he wasn't afraid of scientific inquiry,

"Truth does not contradict truth," meaning scientific truths will never eradicate religious truths and vice versa.

All of the above raises a lot questions. Does the Church believe aliens have souls? Why? How would the Church view aliens' place in the universe vis-a-vis humans? There is plenty of material here for conversation and I have more research as well, so if people would like comment, please feel free.

I'll be doing further updates in the future but this looks like a good starting point.

American Papist comments, too

The Pope in America

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The arrival today of Pope Benedict XVI is a welcome event. It is always interesting to watch the reaction of the msm, which loves the pomp and ceremony that invariably accompanies Papal visits but is also hostile to the Pontiff, forever looking for weakness in the church and seeming to revel in the difficulties that it faces.

The press is especially conflicted with this Pope, who has expressed disagreement with the Iraq War, which they are sure to mention with joyous regularity. But George Weigel, one of the the most astute observers of the Holy See has insights that the media is likely to either miss or ignore:

In my own conversations with senior Vatican officials over the past 18 months, I have been struck by the fact that the debates of 2002-2003 are over. That there was serious disagreement between the U.S. government and the Holy See prior to the invasion of Iraq is, and was, obvious. Today, however, the page has been turned, and despite what Winters’s Vatican leakers may be telling him, the people who make the decisions tell me, as they have told the Bush administration, that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster for both Iraq and the entire Middle East.

Pope Benedict will likely urge President Bush to demand that the Iraqi government be more assertive in defending the Christian minority population of Iraq; but that means more and stronger American involvement in the evolving politics of Iraq, not the end of an “occupation.” As for a papal “denunciation” at the U.N., Winters and his friends among Catholic Democrats are likely to be disappointed; Benedict XVI is far too shrewd to give fall campaign sound-bites to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (either of whose victory in November would cause nightmares for the Holy See at the U.N. and other international agencies).

There is much for conservatives to like in Benedict, a man who has little use for moral relativism and is fully aware of the dangers a radicalized Islam presents.

Nor would a pope who thought in Eurocrat terms about world politics have appointed as his “foreign minister” Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, a man who combines extensive experience of Islamist aggression (he was formerly papal nuncio in Khartoum) with a fondness for the United States and a clear-eyed view of the weaknesses and corruptions of the present U.N. (where he served for three years). Furthermore, Benedict XVI and Archbishop Mamberti are both fully aware that the “dictatorship of relativism” of which then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned just prior to his election as pope is not only being imposed across Europe by radically secularist governments like the Zapatero regime in Spain; it is also being imposed by the E.U. bureaucracy, the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European human rights courts. Rather than the pope and Mamberti being driven by the “Brussels-think” in the permanent Vatican bureaucracy, it is far more likely that this pontificate will continue to challenge those default positions; it may even start the process by which the defaults are decisively changed.

Benedict has had large shoes to fill, following as he has the unusually popular and successful Pontificate of John Paul II. Benedict XVI may not have the personal dynamism of his extraordinary predecessor but Americans would do well to get to know him better as his intellect, natural conservatism and devotion to God are resources that America would be wise to tap.

Cross-Posted At Liberty Pundit