At the “Living The Catholic Faith” conference promoted by the American archdiocese of Denver, the Jesuit Fr. Guy Consolmagno, astronomer for the Vatican Observatory said: “Science is one of the best ways to know God”.
He added that his study of the universe through science has helped him to better understand the person of Christ. The Italian American Jesuit brother and scientist, who has been studying comets and asteroids for thirty years (one asteroid bears his name) does not exclude the possibility of intelligent life outside Earth.
But the existence of E.T. does not rock the faith: “What we learn does not invalidate what we already know. If one day we discovered we are not alone in the universe, all we believe in will not necessarily be wrong, we're going to find out that everything is truer in ways we couldn't even yet have imagined.”
To confirm this Fr. Consolomagno quotes 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”.
Before the Universe was created, Christ existed and therefore he embraces not only us and the earth, but also other hypothetical beings. “Modern atheism tends to understand God as being merely a force that fills the gaps in our understanding of the universe” observed the Jesuit who was born in Detroit in 1952.
“To use God to fill the gaps in our knowledge is theologically treacherous”, because it minimizes God to just another force inside the universe rather than recognizing him as the source of creation. Those who believe in God should not be afraid of science, but should see it as an opportunity that God gave humanity to get to know him better.
Faith and reason are like two wings that the human spirit can use to fly towards the contemplation of the truth. God put in Man’s heart the desire to know the Truth and ultimately to get to know Him, because by knowing and loving Him mankind can reach the full truth about itself. Fr. Guy Consolomagno said that he believes in God, “not because he is at the end of some logical chain of calculations” but because: “ I experienced what physics and logic can show me but cannot explain: beauty and reason and love.”
The primary difference between him and atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking is that he recognizes that God is not another part of the universe that explains the inexplicable, but rather “Logos” and “Reason itself.”
Other religions and philosophies can give us a rational view of the universe, but “only the Gospel could tell us that Reason itself became flesh and dwelt among us” in the form of Jesus Christ. Thomas Aquinas spoke of many worlds.
According to the Gospel the Incarnation happened here, but it could also have happened elsewhere; after all "The Bible is divine science, a work about God” explained Consolomagno “It does not intend to be physical science and explain the making of planets and solar systems”.
The limitless universe "might even include other planets with other beings created by that same loving God. The idea of there being other races and other intelligences is not contrary to traditional Christian thought. There is nothing in Holy Scripture that could confirm or contradict the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe".
Human understanding "is always incomplete. It is crazy to underestimate God's ability to create in depths of ways that we will never completely understand. It is equally dangerous to think that we understand God completely," by narrowing his work to Earth and mankind.
Observing asteroids, meteorites and celestial bodies “is one of the things that brings me closer to God” Consolomagno said.
St. Thomas Aquinas was always proposed by the Church as a master of thought and model of the right way of doing theology. He too was able to recognize that nature, the object of his philosophical thought, could contribute to the understanding of the divine revelation.
Faith therefore does not fear reason, but seeks it and confides in it. Like Divine Grace has its roots in nature, but also brings nature to completion, in the same way faith is born out of reason, but also perfects it.
Reason, enlightened by faith is free from the weakness and limitations of sin and finds the necessary strength to rise towards the understanding of the mystery of the triune God.
John Paul in the encyclical “Fides et ratio” (Faith and Reason) in 1998 warned that “many people stumble through life to the very edge of the abyss without knowing where they are going”.
Philosophy, which bears the great responsibility of forming ideas and culture through the constant call to search for truth, must regain with vigour its original vocation.
“There is thus no reason for competition of any kind between reason and faith: each contains the other, and each has its own scope for action”. “Faith asks that its object be understood with the help of reason; and at the summit of its searching, reason acknowledges that it cannot do without what faith presents”.
To believe in the possibility of knowing a universally valid truth is not source of intolerance on the contrary it’s a necessary condition for an honest and authentic dialogue between people.