Friday, November 04, 2005

Cardinal Poupard: Faithful should listen to science

(Via Yahoo)


A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

"The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said.

But he said science, too, should listen to religion.

"We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: the atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link," he said.

"But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism," he said.

"The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity."

Poupard and others at the news conference were asked about the religion-science debate raging in the United States over evolution and "intelligent design."

Intelligent design's supporters argue that natural selection, an element of evolutionary theory, cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul's 1996 statement that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis."
"A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false," he said. "(Evolution) is more than a hypothesis because there is proof."

He was asked about comments made in July by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who dismissed in a New York Times article the 1996 statement by John Paul as "rather vague and unimportant" and seemed to back intelligent design.

Basti concurred that John Paul's 1996 letter "is not a very clear expression from a definition point of view," but he said evolution was assuming ever more authority as scientific proof develops.

Poupard, for his part, stressed that what was important was that "the universe wasn't made by itself, but has a creator." But he added, "It's important for the faithful to know how science views things to understand better."

The Vatican project STOQ has organized academic courses and conferences on the relationship between science and religion and is hosting its first international conference on "the infinity in science, philosophy and theology," next week.
MSNBC carries the very same AP story under the headline, "Vatican wants to end battle with science." There's a battle? Really? Oh, maybe the editor who put that up had been reading the Dan Brown :) While not minimizing the historical antagonisms and misunderstandings, this just plays into the assumption that by its very nature, religion is opposed to science. An assumption that's all too current in American culture, especially in Southern American culture, and especially when it comes to the intransigent polemics surrounding evolution.


Cardinal Poupard also spoke on Monday, on the four historic steps that have cemented the alliance with science: the condemnation of fideism and rationalism (Vatican I), the legitimate autonomy of scientific research (Vatican II), the commission appointed by Pope John Paul II to investigate the Galileo affair and the Jubilee of Scientists in 2000. (Zenit)

Check out the slick (if a little confusing) website of the Science Theology and Ontological Quest conference (Hey, with a name like that, it can't but be confusing! :))

On the Gallileo Commission:

LA Times story on the Commission's results (Oct 31, 1992)

The Gallileo Affair (at catholiceducation.com --- apologetic perspective)

A critic: Fr. George Coyne SJ (of the Vatican observatory) is skeptical of the Commission's conclusions (pdf link).

No comments: